Yeah it’s the media’s unfailing ability to find the most ambiguous wording possible for every headline.

I’m good with the media constantly reminding people how old he is. He was always dim, and he’s getting dimmer.

And now Trump has understood it for half a day. Being the way he is, this is a “Nobody knew…” moment.

Bil Essayli, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has filed charges against Martinez for resisting the work of federal employees. Essayli accuses the detainee of punching one of the Border Patrol officers in the face, something that is not shown on video and is not included in the indictment.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported Thursday that it has detected a 500% increase in cases of harassment of police officers in charge of carrying out operations against undocumented immigrants. “Just this week, an ICE officer was dragged 50 yards by a car while arresting an illegal alien sex offender,” said Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the DHS.

The official accused Democratic politicians, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, of inciting hatred against the officers. “From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi Gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of these sanctuary politicians is despicable. This violence against ICE must end,” she said.

Fuck this whole fascist culture of abusers painting themselves as victims. Fuck this business of them declaring people to be criminals with no evidence and no trial. We know who the violent ones are here. We know who the masked thugs are. It’s shameful how these people lie so brazenly and so readily.

It’s a case of what Upton Sinclair observed:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Very brave of them. I too used to stand up to school bullies privately, at home, in my mind.

I’m not saying we should tolerate fascists, or expend all our energies trying to understand why a hateful person is hateful. But we have to recognize that they’re not monsters or subhumans, they’re people. Cruel and hateful people, but people like us. Those tendencies are in us all, but in some people they become totally dominant and in other people they shrink until they’re almost not there. But they’re there.

They are worthless animals not fit to be called humans

That’s the kind of attitude towards fascists that leads to complacency and a belief that it couldn’t happen here or we’re better than that. The most important thing to understand about a fascist is that they’re a person like you. No one is immune to the risk of falling into it. All it takes is the right circumstances to incentivize a person, and there’s a decent chance they will take up fascism.

If we hold that Nazis were monsters, or subhumans, or some other kind of beast entirely unlike us, we will never dig deep to understand what makes fascism appealing or what needs it serves, and we will miss the warning signs in ourselves and those around us should we start sliding towards it. I think most Americans missed their own country’s capacity for fascism until it was right on top of them, because they had spent decades imagining the Nazis as some special kind of inhuman monster. That attitude is dangerous. Fascists are ordinary people like us.