The death of American Fascism

I know I keep harping on this, but the state of political discourse in general, and the GOP in particular did not come about by accident, in the 70s and 80s the party decided to start courting the religious block, and during the Reagan years managed to weld their conglomeration of the ignorant, the racist, and the evangelicals into an active and motivated power base that, despite it's comparatively low numbers, wields mass amounts of power because unlike most of the other groups out there, they actually get out and vote.

The reduction in voter turnout is entirely intentional as well, there are of course the obvious obstacles, ranging from threatening minority voters to simply throwing up barriers in the form of ID or travel time to voting, but more subtly and more successful was the idea that a lot of liberals have these days that voting doesn't change anything.
I do not know if that idea was intentional or not, but they certainly took advantage of it, while their base, until recently, was largely to ignorant and credulous to contest the claims made by those in power, the rest of the country wasn't, and began to recognize quite early on that the party that keeps winning with the promises of change and prosperity had actually no intention of following through on them, and that idea has been extended to anyone in politics, not just the Republicans. Liberal voter turnout has dropped pretty consistently and even in the 2008 and 2012 elections, with a candidate that is quite literally a once in a generation orator it hasn't recovered.

So we have a motivated minority, held together by religion, patriotism, bigotry, and fear, manipulated by a ruling elite that thinks only of its own power, but, for the reasons explained in my previous post, that elite is losing the reigns to the true believers, they cannot keep them in check anymore, the time is ripe for a charismatic firebrand who will do anything to convince people that he is their voice, and that he will give them the greatness they always knew they deserved.

People, we are lucky a Trump didn't pop up a decade ago, he has all the hallmarks of a classic fascist dictator along the lines of Mussolini, and I think in the years just after 9/11 America was just confused enough to let someone like that seize power, in that I feel like Bush was almost the best option, America was probably gonna go crazy no matter what, and a quagmire of two wars in the Middle East is probably the better option than electing a fascist during a time when they could manipulate fear into more power.

We came close in 2000 with Bush, very close, but he and his advisers were still playing by the old rules, they weren't running on an ideology, and that meant they didn't spend as much time drumming up hate as our current crop of candidates are, they were and are basically Gordon Gecko style hypercapitalists and still just barely controlling their base.

They lost control of the base too late for the extremists to seize power, now we have had time since 9/11, we've seen the cost, we've dealt(some) with the fear, and I hope and believe that we won't get sucked down that path again.

Unless the eventual Republican nominee does a complete  180 on policy and rhetoric and can somehow make people believe he actually means it, I do not foresee anything other than a massive blowout for the Democrats, they kept control of their wackos just long enough that they can't do any massive damage and for that we can breath a sigh of relief, the next twenty years will see a massive shift in both parties as the GOP begins to shed its extremist groups and the Democrats shift back towards the left, I really am optimistic about things.

Please note that I am not saying things are or will be perfect here, this coming election will be fought hard, really hard, and really dirty by a group of true believers who quite literally think they are doing gods work by running, people in power will do terrible things to keep that power, and more people will suffer for it, but I do believe we have lost our opportunity to turn into WWII Germany, and folks, that ain't nothin'.