Certainly as you define "fascism"
...the country is there. It's my understanding that among historians and political scientists the definition is considerably more nuanced and complex. A few years into the Cheney Shogunate, when our tighty-righties were pushing the notion of Islamofascism (I believe that the late Christopher Hitchens was particularly taken with this meme), the noontime NPR chat show did an hour on the subject, and the two guests agreed that, however unattractive Wahhabism might appear to liberal western sensibilities, it did not rise to the proper definition of fascism. A caller then raised the point, "Forget Islam, I say we've got fascism right here in the US of A." One of the guests (a countryman of yours, I believe), somewhat exasperated, told the caller he hadn't been listening. "You do not at present have fascism in this country. You have what I call an Oligarchic Authoritarian System."
Which is not to say we haven't grown ourselves a proper police state. Back in the early/mid 1980s I was at a fish & chips joint in Berkeley. As I waited for my order the proprietress and the single other customer, both English, were lamenting some lager lout-related outrage at a football match, and deploring how bad this was making Old Blighty look in the world's eyes. They agreed that the solution would be the application of some good old-fashioned American policing methods. The brutality of U.S. police methods, they agreed, was well-known, and putting a bit of the boot to these hooligans would go a long way toward restoring public order. Ah, to see ourselves as others see us! But most Americans have had the "freest nation in the world" line fed to us on an intravenous drip the diameter of a fire hose from infancy forward, and cognitive disconnect comes easily to us.
I do not mean by any of this to suggest that we may not drift, or permit ourselves to be pushed, or even march outright into conditions that would meet a more rigorous definition of "fascism," and we are indeed far closer to that undesirable abstract today than I ever expected to find us, but if the compromised/violated liberties of Obama's America in 2014 are "fascism," however shall we refer to today's conditions, what vocabulary may we deploy, to distinguish these from the presumably much harsher political climate to be endured, let us say, eight years hence under President Ted Cruz?
cordially,
Which is not to say we haven't grown ourselves a proper police state. Back in the early/mid 1980s I was at a fish & chips joint in Berkeley. As I waited for my order the proprietress and the single other customer, both English, were lamenting some lager lout-related outrage at a football match, and deploring how bad this was making Old Blighty look in the world's eyes. They agreed that the solution would be the application of some good old-fashioned American policing methods. The brutality of U.S. police methods, they agreed, was well-known, and putting a bit of the boot to these hooligans would go a long way toward restoring public order. Ah, to see ourselves as others see us! But most Americans have had the "freest nation in the world" line fed to us on an intravenous drip the diameter of a fire hose from infancy forward, and cognitive disconnect comes easily to us.
I do not mean by any of this to suggest that we may not drift, or permit ourselves to be pushed, or even march outright into conditions that would meet a more rigorous definition of "fascism," and we are indeed far closer to that undesirable abstract today than I ever expected to find us, but if the compromised/violated liberties of Obama's America in 2014 are "fascism," however shall we refer to today's conditions, what vocabulary may we deploy, to distinguish these from the presumably much harsher political climate to be endured, let us say, eight years hence under President Ted Cruz?
cordially,