Dog whistles, Trumpism and the American political movement.

In the last two years, the term "dog whistle" has gained increasing popularity. Ironically so, because dog whistles have become likewise increasingly rare during that time.

The Willie Horton ad was a dog whistle. Talking about welfare cheats is a political dog whistle.There are lots of examples of famous dog whistles in American political history. The last two or three years have been fairly devoid of dog whistles. Because what Donald Trump does isn't dog whistling, at all. Donald Trump stands on the front porch of his house and yells "Fido! Here boy!" so the whole neighbourhood can hear him.

See, I'm afraid a lot of you guys aren't getting something, here. We've all been hearing a lot about the time John McCain told the old racist Islamaphobe to shut up and sit back down. See, what a good bunch of you are missing is that his incident was emblematic in a very significant way.

What you're not getting, and what you should have gotten by now, is that a significant hunk of the population of this country are a bunch of rabid, authoritarian, militaristic, white nationalists. What you're not getting is that up until a couple years ago, the political system, and in particular the Republican Party, was holding these people back.

Yeah, they had their Willie Horton ads, they had lots of racist policies, lots of pro-war policies, lots of terrible policies in general, but 62 million people voted for Donald Trump. And they did it because they love all that shit and they want more of it.

An enormous portion of the American public are horrible, they've been horrible for a while, and up until just now, the political system, including all those mean nasty Republicans, was actually serving to tamp down the worst instincts of those people.

Now it isn't.

The difference between someone like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, John McCain, is that they actually had a moral centre and they largely did not actively encourage the worst, most virulent, most violent instincts of their demographic. They may have played footsie with it some, they may have ignored it a lot, but they weren't actively telling everyone how great it all is. They weren't leading chants about building walls, they weren't telling encouraging violence at their speeches. They weren't calling people animals.

Put Trump and today's Republican Party in precisely the same situation Bush and McCain were in 2001. Imagine what would happen, right now, if a major Islamic extremist terror attack happened in the US. Let's say 100 people. Now imagine 500. 1000.

Now imagine 3000 people. Imagine what would happen if a 9/11 size terror attack happened in the US and responsibility could be traced back to nations in the middle east.

Imagine Trump's reaction. Imagine what his base would want. Imagine what the congress would give him.

Now imagine that happening ten years from now, once the Trump right has dug itself in, once it's the norm on the right. Once the never Trump right is gone. Once the military is run by Trumpists.

Let me fill you in.. You would be looking back at the war on terror like it was the food fight in Animal House and the Patriot Act would look like it was written by the ACLU and Lysander Spooner. Tehran would be a parking lot, and you are out of your mind if you don't think Muslim immigrants would be in concentration camps, very likely some native born Muslims with them.

Trump has already said he wants to kill the families of terrorists. Hunt them down and kill them. Innocent men, women and children. Murdered. He wants to do that now, and his base loves him for it. With 3000 deaths to play off of, there's no telling where it could go.

The reason? 62 million people in this country (US) want every awful thing Trump can think of and they want it yesterday. Concentration camps, nuclear war, torture. All of it.

The postwar Republican order was conservative, sometimes warmongering, covertly racist. It was bad. It was nothing like Trumpism. Trumpism isn't a continuation, it's a dis-junction. Trumpism is openly authoritarian, aspiration-ally fascist, fanatically militaristic, and openly, malevolently, simply, evilly, white supremacist. The Trump right is as bad as an American political movement could realistically be right now. In fact, it's worse.

So go ahead, I guess, and piss on McCain's grave. I get it, he was absolutely responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. But just don't forget, there is simply no comparison between John McCain and his Republican Party and the vile swamp of orcs and Nazis and lickspittles that presently inhabit the American right.

We are at a major turning point in world history, right now, this minute. If you don't understand how much worse Trump and Trumpism is than any other American political movement in modern history, you are profoundly underestimating the seriousness and the danger of the situation we are in.