Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote

Who should have the power to make that decision?

Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?

Or maybe have something like an electoral college?

Or the army coups, if things get too far?

The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.

Hold your ponies. The US is very much still a democracy, if a flawed one in many ways. The US has always been a country run by the wealthy elites, as are most countries in the world.

Buying politicians works, especially in the US, regardless of party. Democrats and Republicans are both the parties of big business and capital interests.

Besides laws around spending money for political purposes, the media landscape has revolutionized over the last 20 years. The role social media has played in Trump‘s ascendancy can’t be overstated. Trump spent less than Kamala Harris in this election and still won, because of his exceptional way to use media to his advantage.

This very liberal use of Nazi and fascist as a epithet has devalued its meaning.

Hate is not enough. The Nazis did far more than spread hate. National-Socialism was much more coherent and thought through ideology than Trumpism/MAGA is today.

Nazi might be useful as an expression of anger and resentment, but it’s not conducive to serious analysis or discourse regarding the situation.

It’s not a full on Nazi salute as the words „Heil“, „Heil Hitler“, or „Sieg Heil“ aren’t used. However, it is a full on salute in its tradition. A right wing oligarch holding a victory speech espousing conservative revolution and a glorious future are in the vein of the fascism of old.

Trumpism doesn’t need to even express itself as fully fascist. The popular support, the support of the tycoons of industry, institutional acquiescence, lack of organized resistance, means he doesn’t need to go full authoritarian.

The ideological flexibility of Trumpism is enormous. Allegiance to Trump and MAGA is pretty much it. The rest of the ideology is dynamically formed by sycophants looking for Trump‘s favor. The post ironic attitude means immunity to value based criticism.

Elon Musk is a mix of minister for propaganda and court jester at the same time.

My heart goes out to you is the fig leaf Elon used for plausible deniability. He probably thinks he was terribly clever. Which, as it turns out, he was. Elon will get away with this and pushed the envelope of what’s possible. Others will imitate him.

This has all the elements for a softer fascist salute, where the words aren’t „Sieg Heil!“ or „Duce!“, but simply „my heart!“. A salute with the hand moving from heart to extension while saying firmly „my heart!“ works well to be visually striking.