the definition of ‘Nazi’ seems to have expanded to anyone who believes in any form of border control.
For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen the word used that way. But—the standard disclaimer—my left-leaning Facebook friends are not your left-leaning Facebook friends, unless there’s some purely coincidental overlap, and yours may be more Nazi-accusation-happier than mine.
Either they are correct, in which case that is obviously a cause for concern, or they are wrong and a lot of very smart people [...] are utterly mindkilled.
Or both, of course :-). More seriously, I think your observations are adequately explained by the hypothesis that (1) Trump and his administration are much more unusual than Bush and his administration, (2) they are in fact distinctly more likely than Bush was (though still not very likely) to do serious damage to the US’s democratic institutions, and (3) a lot of very smart people are somewhat mindkilled. I think #1 is obviously true, #2 is probably true, and #3 would be entirely unsurprising (much less surprising than all those people being utterly mindkilled).
Incidentally, I do remember some not-otherwise-obviously-crazy people speculating that Bush would simply refuse to leave office after 8 years and that somehow the Republican-controlled Congress would help make it so. So end-of-democracy hysteria isn’t so very new.
Er, FDR was elected for a third term before there were term limits for US presidents. The (stupid and not widespread) speculation was that GWB would cling to power by some means less legitimate than that.
For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen the word used that way. But—the standard disclaimer—my left-leaning Facebook friends are not your left-leaning Facebook friends, unless there’s some purely coincidental overlap, and yours may be more Nazi-accusation-happier than mine.
Or both, of course :-). More seriously, I think your observations are adequately explained by the hypothesis that (1) Trump and his administration are much more unusual than Bush and his administration, (2) they are in fact distinctly more likely than Bush was (though still not very likely) to do serious damage to the US’s democratic institutions, and (3) a lot of very smart people are somewhat mindkilled. I think #1 is obviously true, #2 is probably true, and #3 would be entirely unsurprising (much less surprising than all those people being utterly mindkilled).
Incidentally, I do remember some not-otherwise-obviously-crazy people speculating that Bush would simply refuse to leave office after 8 years and that somehow the Republican-controlled Congress would help make it so. So end-of-democracy hysteria isn’t so very new.
You mean like FDR actually did? Except that he wasn’t a Republican.
Er, FDR was elected for a third term before there were term limits for US presidents. The (stupid and not widespread) speculation was that GWB would cling to power by some means less legitimate than that.