Why is fascism happening?

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there is a parable in the bible called "the Sower" where seeds that fall on fertile soil are able to sprout, grow, and produce a large crop. Metaphorically, it means that when ideas, messages, or efforts are presented to receptive individuals in an ideal environment, they are much more likely to succeed. The quality of the "soil" (the person or situation) is as important as the quality of the "seed" (the idea or message).

what do I mean? Fascism found fertile ground in the good o'l US of A. why? 400 years of slavery and casual dehumanisation of millions of human being treated worse than animals followed by decades of forced apartheid and anti-immigration policies whose legacy persists today.

My only point is trump's rise following 8 years of Obama shouldn't surprise anyone. we know it will take more time to remove the rotten roots which go deep in American soil.

Correct. The way the American political system is set up, third parties really can't succeed.

Leftists need to be encouraged to support the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), who generally try to work within the Democratic Party.


Agreed. That's very important.


How common is it for rural communities in the U.S.A. to still have only dial-up Internet? And are there any major websites specifically designed to reach those people?

Probably very few. Land line telephones are getting increasingly expensive. Musk's Starlink is a whole lot cheaper.

Also, our socialist government is giving chosen big companies wheelbarrow loads of money to put in fiber.

because human nature is rotten to the core. it is because a critical mass of ignorant, mean and stupid people insist on simple answers to complex problems and are perfectly willing to let a bully tell them what to do and how to do it, because they don't want the bother of actually having to think for themselves.

I have to make a direct point here about the American political structure. It’s all about screaming “freedom of speech!” and “freedom this, freedom that!” But here’s the catch — freedom of speech doesn’t guarantee the freedom to be heard.

That’s where everything starts to fall apart.

Everyone’s shouting — YouTube, X, Facebook, and a dozen other platforms are filled with people yelling at walls, not having conversations. Nobody’s really listening. It’s not about dialogue anymore; it’s a contest of noise.

At the heart of it all are beliefs. People don’t just hold them — they cling to them. And that’s dangerous, because a belief isn’t the same thing as an idea.

Ideas can grow. You can question an idea, reshape it, or even throw it away when something better comes along.
But a belief? That’s buried deep. It resists change. The more it’s challenged, the harder it digs in.

And that’s why we’re stuck endlessly looping through the same arguments. We’re not exchanging ideas anymore; we’re defending belief systems and desperately trying to get everyone else to switch sides.

The right screams “woke” and “fascism”
The left screams “patriarchy” and “fascism”
Both are locked in the same exhausted cycle, certain the other is the problem.

At this stage in history, it feels like there’s no real room left for new ideas. Just repetition belief defending belief, until the whole structure eventually wears itself out.

Ideas and beliefs.

The way you describe them makes me think ideas are like molding clay or a disposable yet recyclable item or how a hermit crab changes from a shell getting too small to a bigger shell that fits just right while beliefs are basically a tick that bites into your skin til it finds a blood vein and starts sucking, but it's not blood a person loses, it's love, hope, and joy until that person is nothing but an angry, hateful, spiteful shell of who they once were.

That’s a sharp way to put it. I wouldn’t have used the same imagery, but the meaning’s on point — ideas move, beliefs feed. One gives you room to breathe, the other tightens its grip the more you fight it.

The real danger is when people stop realising which one they’re holding. They think they’re defending an idea when really it’s the belief doing the defending — and draining them in the process. That’s when conversation dies, and all that’s left is shouting.

If you really think about it, the right is built almost entirely on belief — politics through the lens of religion. It’s faith repackaged as ideology. There’s no room for question because questioning it feels like heresy.

And then you’ve got the media feeding into it all — not just the right, but the whole system. You turn on the news and it’s the same cycle: war, death, famine, pestilence. It’s like background noise now, constant and numbing. People stop thinking critically because they’re overloaded, overstimulated, and too tired to separate truth from noise. People start looking to things like youtube for answers where they get opinionated white noise of a different kind from everyday people talking to a camera.

The result? Everyone doubles down on their beliefs instead of challenging them. It’s not enlightenment — it’s indoctrination disguised as information.

Why is it happening? It's because of the proverbial "old white men", and I thought once they died off, that would be the end of it. But no, they had to teach their kids and grandkids about how wonderful the 1950s were, and how if we don't go back to doing things the way they were done back in the "good ol' days", then "America is lost forever".

The whole “good ol’ days” narrative is one of the most dangerous lies societies tell itself. It’s a myth built on selective memory — a nostalgia that sanitises cruelty and paints oppression as tradition. It romanticises a time that was only “good” for a select few, while ignoring the countless people who suffered under its unspoken rules. This kind of nostalgia isn’t about preserving values or protecting heritage. It’s about control. It’s about turning fear of change into moral superiority — the comfort of pretending the past was pure, even when it was built on exclusion.
The truth is, the 1950s weren’t some moral paradise. They were a decade of rigid conformity, of smiling faces hiding quiet despair. Segregation was the law of the land; women who had just proven their strength during the war were shoved back into kitchens and told that their worth ended at the front door. Queer people were criminalised, psychiatric institutions were used as punishment for being different, and anyone who questioned the status quo risked being labelled a communist or traitor. The supposed “family values” of the era were enforced through silence and fear. It wasn’t freedom — it was a polished cage, gilded with television smiles and suburban fences.
What the 1950s really represented was a cultural fascism — an invisible hand that dictated what it meant to be “normal.” There were no jackboots on the streets, but there was conformity so deep it became self-policing. Instead of open dictatorship, there was social shame; instead of concentration camps, there were suburban cul-de-sacs where individuality went to die. Propaganda didn’t come from the state — it came from advertising, from Hollywood, from churches that preached comfort over compassion. The message was simple: obey the image, not your soul.
That’s the world many want to return to — not because it was just, but because it was predictable. Power wore a suit and tie back then. It didn’t need to shout; it only needed to smile. The illusion of moral order made people feel safe, even as it quietly suffocated anyone who didn’t fit the mold.
But the world doesn’t move backwards. Trying to force it to is how authoritarianism begins — not through tanks or coups, but through nostalgia. Fascism doesn’t rise on promises of the future; it rises on the lies of the past. It sells memory, not progress. It feeds on the ache for a world that never truly existed. And every time people start to believe that freedom lies in submission to old hierarchies, the cycle begins again.
The people who keep teaching the myth of the “good ol’ days” aren’t preserving culture — they’re preserving power. They’re defending a hierarchy that should have died with the century that created it. The real test of a society’s morality isn’t how well it clings to its past, but how bravely it faces the truth: that progress is uncomfortable, freedom is messy, and equality demands letting go of comforting illusions.
Because the “good ol’ days” weren’t good. They were quiet — and in that silence, a million voices went unheard.
3 Eraseras Ago.

Bigots have always gotten mad as minorities get human rights and as more immigrants come in. US was founded on immigration. Black people were brought here through slavery so that is why they're here. Then we got Trump and he got elected by bigots. Of course many of them will never admit it because they don't see themselves as racist or white suprimist. They will say s**t like "I dont mind immigrants if they come here legally." Like what is legally? Theyre totally okay with what ICE is doing and the fact Trump revoked legal statuses from immigrants and will revoke US citizenship from immigrants. They're okay with that too so I'm not buying they're okay with immigrants coming here legally. What is mind boggling us, thise who say how long it took them to become US citizens but get they lack critical thinking about they were here illegally as well under Trump administration and if they still had been waiting to get it with him in office, they would have been deported. You can't make this up.

And former Trump supporters saying "he said ge only wanted to get out the violent criminals" and are shocked it included them as US citizens because they weren't white, it included their neighbors, their friends, their business owner, etc. And were surprised they got detained. Yes, people are really this ignorant when it was very obvious he was being a racist s**t head and he wanted all immigrants gone. He doesn't care some US citizens got detained too. Oh well, don't be brown.

It would take something akin to the Cultural Revolution to purge Trumpism out of public life.

When someone says, “it would take a Cultural Revolution to purge Trumpism,” it really shows how deep the political divide has become. That kind of language isn’t about democracy or dialogue — it’s about erasing anyone who disagrees, which is exactly how societies lose the ability to grow or find common ground.
You’ve got three more years of this political tension ahead, but honestly, who’s to say the next administration will be any better? Every time one side wins, the other side starts complaining, vowing to undo everything the last government did. It’s a cycle that’s been repeating for decades — outrage, reversal, outrage again — while the real issues, the ones that affect ordinary people’s lives, keep getting ignored.
Maybe it’s time to stop treating politics like a sport with teams and winners, and start treating it like a shared responsibility. Leaders come and go, but the problems remain. Instead of tearing down whoever holds power, maybe the focus should be on holding all of them accountable to the people they claim to represent. Because if nothing changes in that cycle, it won’t matter who the next president is — the division will still be there, just wearing a different face.
This is how liberty dies — not with force or fire, but with marching feet and thunderous applause for the very systems that divide us.

The zero sum game mentality is going to be very hard to break. If the next administration is progressive they are going to feel they have to be as if not more authoritarian then the Trump administration otherwise it would be like fighting guns with knives.

Can you cite a single racist thing Trump has done?

Called Mexicans "drug dealers and rapists"

Banned Muslims from certain countries from entering the US

Referred to selected African and Latin American countries as "sh*tholes"

Called people "vermin" who were "poisoning the blood of America"

The family separations of 2018

Association with people who believe in the "Great Replacement Theory"

Claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH were "eating dogs and cats".

Ending DEI programs

ICE Raids of 2025

Sending, or planning to send, the National Guard and the military to cities such as Chicago, Memphis, and Baltimore--all of which are predominantly Black.

Frequent use of conspiracy theories involving George Soros, most of which are anti-semitic in nature

Obsession with the Central Park Five case from 1989, despite the innocence of the accused.

Politicizing murders of young white women (Laken Riley, Mollie Tibbetts, etc.) who were killed by migrants/non-whites.

I'm sure there are more.

You’re absolutely right — the zero-sum mentality is the real disease underneath all of this. Every administration seems to inherit not just the office, but the bitterness of the last one. If the next government swings progressive, there will be pressure to overcorrect, to “match” the previous administration’s force with their own version of control. It’s a dangerous feedback loop — each side justifies its excesses by pointing to the other’s.
But that’s exactly how democracy decays: when the goal stops being better governance and becomes winning the next round. Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive with slogans and salutes; sometimes it creeps in through “good intentions” — the belief that only my side can be trusted with power. The only real way out of the zero-sum mindset is to break the idea that political strength equals dominance. It should mean restraint, accountability, and a willingness to coexist, even with people you disagree with. Otherwise, it’s just a quieter kind of war.