Chauncey Devega, Salon

In a recent essay at Raw Story, Thom Hartmann summarized the danger to American democracy and society embodied by DeSantis:

Historians and political observers have been predicting that America would get our very own Mussolini ever since the days of Barry Goldwater. And there's been no shortage of candidates: bribe-taking Nixon; Central American fascist-loving Reagan; Gitmo torturing and war-lying Bush; and, of course, Trump.
But with Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini's guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die to advance his political career, all while being smart and educated enough to avoid the easily satirized buffoonishness of Trump.

DeSantis and other Republican fascists have proclaimed Florida to be a bastion of "freedom" and "liberty." In reality, Florida is now a laboratory for fascism. As part of his authoritarian project, DeSantis is enforcing thought crime laws that forbid the teaching of AP African-American studies in high school and other courses and programs across Florida's school system (including at the college and university level) that examine questions of power, race and systemic inequality. DeSantis and his agents recently declared that the AP African-American studies course was inappropriate and will not be taught in Florida's schools because it has "no educational value" and is "indoctrinating" (white) young people. DeSantis and his regime's thought crime attacks on African-American studies are Orwell's "1984" meets "Birth of a Nation."

Racism and white supremacy are a choice....

The antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory, for example, has been linked to many incidents of lethal violence, most notably the Jan. 6 coup attempt at the Capitol orchestrated by Donald Trump.

The white supremacist great replacement theory is an absurd and fantastical lie that there is a plot by Democrats and other so-called multiculturalists working in the name of diversity to eliminate white people and replace them with Black and brown people in the United States and Europe. It has been propagated by the likes of Fox News' Tucker Carlson, the network's biggest star. And it has been directly linked to hate crimes like the May 2022 massacre of 10 Black people in a supermarket in Buffalo by an avowed white supremacist.

And while extreme beliefs have grown increasingly common among Republicans, new research by the United States Secret Service sounds the alarm about the link between such widespread conspiracy theories and the country's plague of mass shootings....

On Jan. 8 "Diamond," whose real name is Lynette Hardaway, passed away. It was initially speculated that she died of COVID. It has now been publicly revealed that the cause of death was a heart condition caused by high blood pressure. Diamond rose to public prominence as one half of the duo known as "Diamond & Silk." These Donald Trump obsessives performed as "black conservatives" and were routinely featured at Trump's rallies, on Fox News, Newsmax, and across the right-wing propaganda disinformation media echo chamber.

"Black conservative" is a specific type of character and performance in post-civil rights America (although the archetype long predates it). In the white right-wing imagination, these are black people who fulfill a fantasy role in a type of new-age race minstrel performance where they denigrate and insult the intelligence, dignity, and political agency of other black people for the pleasures of white "conservatives" and white America. These black conservatives claim that other black people are lazy, have "bad culture", "can't think for themselves", are trapped on a "Democratic Party plantation." If they "knew better," black conservatives argue, more black people would actually be "conservatives." Black conservatives also elevate themselves as exemplars of "hard work" and as "proof" that America is a meritocracy where anything is possible — "if you just stop worrying" about racism.

In what is perhaps their most important role, black conservatives are professional "best black friends." They serve as mercenaries, human racism deflection shields who are deployed to tell white people some of the most grossly racist and vile things about other black people. For example, on the Friday edition of his Fox "News" program, Tucker Carlson's black conservative guest played the above role perfectly as he suggested that the savage killing of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police was somehow caused by "black culture," specifically single black mothers:...

Over the last few decades in America, partisanship has become a type of personal identity. A political party is more than an organization or the letter next to a candidate's name on a ballot. This is about much more than "political polarization" or "hyper-partisanship" or the other sterile technical language which experts routinely use in academia, the news media, and the larger political class. In today's America, party identification reflects fundamental debates and divides over what it means to be a citizen, a member of a political community and a human being.

Two concepts are particularly useful for understanding this broken politics and the larger democracy crisis:

Asymmetrical polarization describes how one party has become much more extreme than another party. As a practical matter, this means there is much less space for reasonable compromise or true consensus in some middle ground that accurately represents the desires of both parties and/or their voters....

America is becoming an idiocracy — assuming it isn't fully one already.

On a widely viewed cable TV network there is a new show called "Power Slap: Road to the Title," and the title is a perfect description of the show. In this "sport" two adults slap one another as hard as they can until one of them is knocked out, cannot continue, or the "judges" stop the "competition." The "slap-fighters" are not allowed to put up their hands to defend themselves or flinch. The participants in this human zoo have been knocked head over heels (literally) and appear to have suffered severe concussions as well as bloody and swollen faces that could result in permanent disfigurement. The crowd in the studio cheers as the competitors slap each other into oblivion.

It is all one more example of how American society is "amusing itself to death" as a culture that is infantile and broken — both socially and politically. Today's America is extremely anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-rational, unreflective, impulsive, narcissistic and juvenile. Such a dynamic breeds fascism, authoritarianism, fake populism, white supremacy, misogyny, violence, and a larger culture of cruelty and debasement that does not value or elevate human dignity and human respect. ...