I think you're onto something there... I feel like there's some counter-intuitive moves at work or perhaps neoliberalism was a faulty check on fascism in the first place.

I'm glad you don't think we've descended into the fascist black hole yet, but at what point does that slip definitively occur? If we start shooting immigrants at the border, that's kind of a dead giveaway for the fascist turn, isn't it? I'm not saying it will happen, but Trump's floating the idea and testing how palatable the notion is to his base, and I can tell you, it's quite palatable to them. Depressingly, I don't think they have ethical limits when it comes to human rights abuse.