It's time to spell it out.  Any of these sound familiar?

1) Cult of Personality

2) Promise to recapture a lost mythic past ("Make America Great Again")

3) Drawing lines, usually racial, then promising to protect us from "the other".  Call for "law and order".

4) Exaggerating the threats to country from both without and within.

5) Flattering the alleged wisdom and traditional values of the common folk, while stirring up resentment against intellectual elite and nonconformists.

6) Pretending to be for the working man, while actually being for the rich.

7) Superpatriotism ("America First!") and bellicosity.

8) Hostility to the media.

9) Admiration for other authoritarian dictators (like Putin).

This is the Fascism playbook.  This is how Trump has campaigned.  He's an instinctual Fascist, not a political scholar, but he knows what he is doing.  And if he stays true to form, here's what we would get from the Amerikan Fuehrer:

War.  Suppression of dissent.  One-party rule.  Tax cuts for the rich.  Elimination of the minimum wage.  Also the safety net.  Attacks on organized labor.  Alienation of allies and abrogation of treaties, including Geneva Conventions.

I don't know if the preceding sounds bad enough.  The question is, how bad would each of these be?  Will Der Fuehrer preside over nuclear armageddon, of just pick unnecessary fights all over the world?  Will he sic his rabble on critics, "lock them up", or even have them mysteriously eliminated?  Will the economy only serve the economic elite, or will it collapse completely?  Will increased contempt for internationalism, even for foreigners, result in more global chaos?  Without good international relations, will we get the good intel we need to fight ISIS?

People need to go into this with their eyes wide open.  If you vote for Herr Trump, do so knowing and fully consenting that you no longer want Democracy-- you want authoritarian dictatorship.  You want Fascism.  And please have the decency to rename it the Fascist Party (Truth in Labeling).  The once proud Republican Party, ailing from ultra-rightism for over half a century, bereft of progressivism for a full century, is finally dead.

Sincerely,

Stephen Van Eck

Rushville, PA