Trump

I know it sounds extreme but I find it difficult not to equate voting for Trump with voting for Hitler.
No. I am not suggesting that he is Hitler. He at least had a platform and was relatively coherent in presenting it.
And I am not really that concerned with Trump's economic plans. I think the system has enough checks and balances both within the government and outside of it in the form of bond and equity markets to temper his actions.
I am however seriously concerned with his social agenda.
Trump has unleashed strains in the USA which are definitely proto-fascist. He has not distanced himself from the KKK or the Alt-Right neo-Nazis. Indeed he has chosen the ringleader of this mishmash of white Christian supremacists, Steve Bannon, to be his Chief of Staff thus ushering him directly into the corridors of power.
So I have to ask myself how did the Republican Party become the vehicle of Mr Trump.
I think the answer is two fold.
On the one side stand educated white men making short-term, selfish decisions focused solely on their desire for even more power and influence. Hollow captains of industry willingly selling their souls in a Faustian pact.
Standing right next to them is the disaffected white working class, left to fend for itself, easy prey to populist exhortations that their's is the kingdom and that they will be returned to the land of milk and honey.
Put these two together and you have the perfect storm of national populism, which is just one step away from its sister national socialism.
Just as with Hitler there is the hope that the institutions of constitutional democracy will tame him and his bark will be much worse than his bite.
I could say this is because Trump contradicts himself so consistently that one could pretend that he doesn't mean half of what he says- but that begs the question which half.
He certainly said all the right things to the white supremacists and their potential storm troopers the WWC. He said the right things to the educated Captains of Industry who chose to sell their souls.
Last week he tried to show the same lip service to the other half of America personified by some editors, columnists and reporters at the New York Times. In a meeting, despite a campaign of relentlessly bashing the NY Times he suddenly flipped to trying to flatter them, telling them of his "tremendous respect for the New York Times" and that is was"a great American jewel".
His exhortations to "White America" on the one hand and to the NY Times on the other are mutually exclusive.
The Americans who believe in a constitutional democracy, who believe in a multi-ethnic liberal society didn't vote for Trump.
That leaves the National Populists.