Trump is openly flirting with fascism, but Americans only care about gas prices

I'm kind of tired of writing about Trump. But I still keep doing it because, like it or not, he is the driving force of our times, the single individual generating most of the worldwide news (almost all of it bad) in these weird times we live in.

Trump's popularity in the USA, the metric by which he measures himself, is at an all-time low. (His popularity in the rest of the world has always been at an all-time low, but doesn't really care about that.) So, does this mean that America is finally waking up from an embarrassing - and extremely consequential - trance?

Er, probably not.

See, here's the thing. Despite the fact that Trump has spent the last year and change converting the US into a fully-functional fascist state, the thing that is finally causing Americans to snap out from under his spell is actually something as mundane as ... gas prices.

Think about that. It gives a good indication of just where American priorities lie. 

Trump has presided over the establishment of a vicious paramilitary force tasked with oppressing the American people and forcefully abducting specific segments of the population based on racist ideology. He has co-opted the highest legal court in the land by installing compliant judges willing to put ideological bias before sound legal judgement. He has wilfully demonized political opponents, and weakened insititutional trust. He has pursued an aggressive policy of imperialistic expansionism, in words and sometimes in actions. He has deliberately taken actions to undermine democratic norms and protections, and has openly flirted with extreme authoritarianism. He has attempted to suppress free speech where it implies criticism of his actions and policies. He, his family, and members of his administration have all enriched themselves on the back of his policies, at the expense of the working stiff. He no longer feels constrained by international norms or domestic institutions, but is happy to let power speak, whatever the ethical implications. Truth is now optional in official circles.

This, it has been widely argued, is fascism. But many Americans have stood idly by and watched all this happen (I'm talking here about the republican/conservative half of this dismally divided country - Democrats have always opposed Trump, even if not as loudly as they might have.) Land of the free? Cradle of democracy? Pshaw. Over-rated.

What has actually - finally - galvanized opposition to Trump and his policies is the threat to their profitability and financial ease. America has always been a country obsessed with money and wealth, to a degree unmatched by any other state. When Trump's disastrous trade policies and, particularly, his ill-advised invasion of Iran (and the oil price chaos that, predictably, followed) finally started to hit their proverbial pocketbooks, even Republicans have started to wake from their deplorable sleepwalk.