Lance Morrow some 30 years ago was a readable columnist for TIME, and I read his essays often. Flash forward and the man appears to have lost all sense of rational bearings, especially since he joined the hacks on the WSJ op-ed pages. I already noted, for example, another moronic WSJ column he did, e.g.
We can rightly question his journalist op-ed creds, but more relevant perhaps is how he's cashed in on his old TIME rep to peddle bunkum for the reactionary right on the WSJ op-ed pages. As I wrote in my previous critique:
"Once again we see the WSJ's 'gig a week' misfit, Lance Morrow, pulling every conceivable strawman out of his hack's hat to try to assert voters' choice in 2020 is between Trump's lies and Progressive fantasies. But oh, what fantasies, making Dotard's lies look like a mythic truth by comparison.....After all, Trump 'works with the flashy superlatives of a car salesman."
In the current manifestation (WSJ, Sept. 6, p. A17, 'The Left Gets Fascism Backward' ) Morrow wants to try to convince his already gullible WSJ fans that it is the "left" who are the real enemies of freedom and the fascists - while the Trumpkins are its defenders. This is a representative excerpt from his twaddle:
"Mr. Trump
and his followers, believe it or not, are essentially antifascists: They want
the state to stand aside, to impose the least possible interference and
allow market forces and entrepreneurial energies to work. Freedom isn’t
fascism. Mr. Biden and his vast tribe are essentially enemies of freedom,
although most of them haven’t thought the matter through. Freedom, the
essential American value, isn’t on their minds. They desire maximum—that is,
total—state or party control of all aspects of American life, including what
people say and think. Seventy-four years after George Orwell wrote “1984,”
such control (by way of surveillance cameras, social-media companies and the
Internal Revenue Service, now to be shockingly augmented by 87,000 new
employees) is entirely feasible. The left yearns for power and authoritarian
order. It is Faust’s bargain; freedom is forfeit.
Mr. Trump,
the canniest showman in the White House since Franklin D. Roosevelt, introduced
into 21st-century politics what seemed to be new idioms of hatred, a freestyle
candor of the id. Doing so, he provoked his enemies—and finally Mr. Biden—to
respond in kind: a big mistake. In the early 1950s, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy
was loose in the land, and roughly half the country supported his anticommunist
inquisition, President Eisenhower wisely decided, “I will not get into the
gutter with this guy.” It took a while for McCarthy to implode."
"The left yearns for power and authoritarian order."? Huh? Me thinks Morrow's synapses have taken in an overload of toxins, or maybe he lapsed into a fantasy haze induced by a combo of shrooms and MJ candies. Because it seems he was months on 'snooze' while the Trump MAGA minions carried out the following:
Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist 'Unite the Right' March in August, 2017
Attacks on minority groups, such as at the Squirrel Hill Synagogue, by Robert Bowers - slaughtering 11 Jews- the largest Jewish massacre in U.S. history.
Attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 by order of Trump
Promoted baseless conspiracy after baseless conspiracy across a range topics from school shootings, to Covid 19, to California wild fires to border control
Circulated vicious racial replacement theories - nightly, courtesy of Fox News
Defended the Jan. 6th insurrectionists as "patriots" merely out there to "express their misgivings about the election"
And then on Monday the deranged action of Trump Toady judge Aileen Cannon, which gave the finger to settled law by letting Trump have his way with a bogus "special master" ruling i.e.
A rare legal consensus: The special master ruling is a mess
Last but not least, it seems the delusional Morrow missed the spectacle of Trump honoring a Hitler Junior at his Pennsylvania rally, where we learned on ALL In last night:
"Of all people
to highlight at his weekend Pennsylvania rally, former President Donald Trump gave stage time for a single Jan. 6
rioter from New Jersey who dressed like Adolf
Hitler and told co-workers that the Führer “should have finished the job,” according to
investigators.
Convicted insurrectionist Timothy Hale-Cusanelli’s aunt, Cynthia Hughes, pleaded for sympathy for her nephew from the stage at Trump’s rally Saturday in Wilkes-Barre. Tim went to the nation’s capitol to hear his president speak last year," Hughes told the crowd"
Why did Trump at his Pennsylvania rally give 'stage time' to a Hitler Junior like Cusinelli if - as Morrow claims - he's an anti-fascist? It makes no sense. Unless it is Morrow himself who gets facts wrong, and he has. Including about Ike in 1952 and anti-commie zealot freak Sen.Eugene McCarthy. In David Corn's Mother Jones (Sept.-Oct.) piece ('The Elephant in the Room') on the devolution of the GOP into Trumpism he notes that in October, 1952 Ike was campaigning "along side the nation's Number 1 Red Baiter" in Wisconsin. Eisenhower was taken in by the screwball Senator's approval numbers and felt he had no choice other than to appear with him. He remained basically in the McCarthy camp until he beheld the shameless extremist worm going after his long time friend Gen. George C. Marshall - creator of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II.
Morrow also spins hype and fear about 87,000 possible IRS personnel, making them into a present day 'Gestapo', almost like Trump's MAGA mutts (including Lauren Boebert) have tried to paint the FBI. But any American operating with even half a brain knows that this is all fear mongering and plain old horse manure. Those 87,000 IRS workers are in fact needed to get the agency's phone and income tax filing response system back in shape. Not to mention dealing with a year's backlog of tax returns being processed using computers more like the 1984 Commodore - rather than an ACER like mine, or Apple like Janice's.
As for Biden and his "tribe" being the real "enemies of freedom" who the hell are the ones now enabling "trigger laws" to go into effect to prosecute women for abortions? It is the Reep MAGA run red states, and they intend to even go after women in their states who try to get abortion in blue states - where it's allowed. No, I'm not making this stuff up, check for yourselves. THAT is the real threat of "state control of all aspects of American life" especially - if they should win in the midterms - they also attempt to take their abortion bans nationwide. Is that "imposing the least amount of interference" in citizens' lives? I don't believe so, and I can't believe Morrow does unless he's senile.
I would strongly suggest here Morrow check the definition of fascism in the American Heritage Dictionary:
"A system of
government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with
belligerent nationalism."
Which fits Trump
and his Reep reprobates to a tee, given they are the ones dedicated to making voting as
difficult as possible in their respective red states, as well as setting up
bogus “certifiers” to nix votes from the Dem side should they get too
numerous. Especially if too many incensed women, irate at the SC Dobbs decision,
now register to vote Dem - and then actually DO vote! The Reeps have no choice really, other than voter suppression, given their backward policies, e.g., against voting rights, against Medicare, Social Security, not to mention near total opposition to abortion rights. With the latter the ultimate signifier of self-governance over Repuke authoritarian domination.
If these political reprobates and MAGA extremists won't even allow a woman dominion over her own body, why should we believe anything Morrow says about Trump and the MAGA crowd being the real defenders of freedom? We can't.
This twit doesn't even recognize Trump's 'poster boy' Hitler wannabe for the fascist he is or yearns to be. One female WSJ commenter ('Aline') nailed Morrow for the poseur he is, writing:
"Lance
Morrow must have been laughing out loud when he wrote this. The women of
America now understand that the Republicans don't actually want the state
"to stand aside" when it comes our ability to control our own bodies.
Ron DiSantis wants the state to tell you what you can read to your own children
and when--after you get his approval, that is.
The GOP displays all 14 characteristics of fascism. Lance Morrow spins a nice story but it's a complete fable".
As for those 14 characteristics of fascism she references, see:
Excerpt:
It had been little over a week since President Joe Biden called Donald Trump and his supporters "semi-fascist" when a Trump-appointed judge, Aileen Cannon of Florida, proved Biden's point. While most Americans were too busy enjoying Labor Day cookouts to pay much attention to the news, Cannon let loose with a decision breathtaking in its disregard for both the law and the judicial branch's legitimacy.
In one sense, it's not a surprise that Cannon, a judge who Trump selected precisely because he knew how corrupt she was, eagerly issued a ruling slowing down the Department of Justice's (DOJ) efforts to investigate Trump's theft of hundreds of classified documents from the U.S. government. But even though she had already taken the highly unusual action of signaling her intention to do her crony this favor, the most cynical observers of Trump's shady judicial appointees were surprised at how far she took it. Cannon not only threw a bunch of wrenches in the DOJ's ability to investigate a former president, undergirding her decision with the same logic of the Big Lie and the January 6 insurrection, but she extended a nearly unlimited right to Trump to break the law. As national security legal expert Bradley Moss noted on Twitter, this ruling "is meant for Trump and Trump alone," giving him special rights not enjoyed by any other person in the country, including the actual president. All of this, even though Trump is a private citizen and not the president at all.
And:
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