Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic, “Yes, It’s Fascism” (gift link):

Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s. [...]

When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

Rauch goes on to describe that constellation clearly and copiously, with evidence. I agree, wholeheartedly, with his conclusion that “If, however, Trump is a fascist president, that does not mean that America is a fascist country.” The shoe fits, however tightly.

But there’s a problem that’s been gnawing at me ever since the 2.0 Trump Administration began. The entire premise of Rauch’s essay — the issue he changed his mind about — is that it’s contentious to describe people, let alone an entire political party or government, as “fascist” or “Nazi”. With only the most extremist exceptions, it’s a broad cultural value — a shared global value, not merely an American or western one — that the Nazis and Fascists were abominable. Also, they were losers, and their complete and total destruction was celebrated around the world. Hitler shot himself, hiding in a dingy filthy bunker. Mussolini was summarily executed and his body strung up in a public square in Milan. Hirohito surrendered unconditionally and lived his remaining days in quiet shame and infamy. No matter how apt the definition of fascist fits the Trump regime, they themselves reject the term, as they do not see themselves as being on the wrong side, and the definition of fascism is that it’s wrong. And they (exemplified by Trump himself) have a deep-seated psychological aversion to being seen as losers, even when it is as plain to see as the sun that they have lost — and no one denies that the Fascists and Nazis lost, bigly.

We call Benito Mussolini’s regime “fascist” because he coined the term. His political movement was literally named the Fascist Party. There was no debate whether Hitler and his regime were Nazis because that was their name. “Fascist” and “Nazi” weren’t slurs that were applied to them by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves, and their names became universally recognized slurs because the actions and beliefs of the Fascists and Nazis were universally recognized as reprehensible and evil. And because they lost.

Our goal should not be to make fascist or Nazi apply to Trump’s movement, no matter how well those rhetorical gloves fit his short-fingered disgustingly bruised hands. Don’t call Trump “Hitler”. Instead, work until “Trump” becomes a new end state of Godwin’s Law.

The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make the names they call themselves universally acknowledged slurs.

“MAGA” and “Trumpist”, for sure. “Republican”, perhaps. Make those names shameful, deservedly, now, and there will be no need to apply the shameful names of hateful anti-democratic illiberal failed nationalist movements from a century ago. We need to assert this rhetoric with urgency, make their names shameful, lest the slur become our name — “American”.

Om Malik:

That’s why we get all our information as memes. The meme has become the metastory, the layer where meaning is carried. You don’t need to read the thing; you just need the gist, compressed and passed along in a sentence, an image, or a joke. It has taken the role of the headline. The machine accelerates this dynamic. It demands constant material; stop feeding it and the whole structure shakes. The point of the internet now is mostly to hook attention and push it toward commerce, to keep the engine running. Anyone can get their cut. [...]

We built machines that prize acceleration and then act puzzled that everything feels rushed and slightly manic.

Crackerjack essay. Malik is focused here on the ways we’ve changed media and how those changes to media have changed us — as a society, and as individuals. But I think explains how the Trump 2.0 administration has been so effective (such that it can be said to be effective). They recognize that velocity is authority and are moving as fast as they can. It’s an adaptation to a new media age.

Link: om.co/2026/01/21/velocity-is-the-new-authority-heres-why/

Another great video from Quinn Nelson. If your dumb cousin who knows you’re an Apple nerd approaches you on Christmas and says “*Hey what’s going on at Apple, Bloomberg says it’s rats leaving a sinking ship over there?” and you don’t feel like explaining, just tell him to watch this video. Just the perfect explanation.

Benjamin Mayo, on X:

The Tinted glass option generally has a relatively subdued impact inside apps, making bars a bit frostier. But on the lock screen, it transforms all the notifications into grey opaque blobs. I would never choose this mode because that effect is just too ugly.

Now that I think about it, this is almost entirely why I don’t prefer the new “Tinted” option for Liquid Glass in iOS 26.1 — notifications look orthopedic, like an extra-high-contrast accessibility option for the vision impaired. Here’s a good side-by-side comparison in a post on Reddit. But as the top Reddit commenter points out, this severe over-correction from iOS 26.0 (where “Clear” was effectively the only option) is only with Light mode — in Dark mode, notifications in iOS 26.1 look good with the Tinted option.

Hannah Knowles, writing for The Washington Post (via Taegan Goddard):

Mamdani won two-thirds of voters under 45 in preliminary exit polls, while Cuomo led him by 10 points with voters 45 and older. The polls also showed an education divide: College graduates backed Mamdani by 55 percent, while voters without college degrees narrowly favored Cuomo.

“By 55 percent” is horrendously unclear writing. It could be misread to suggest that Mamdani won amongst college grads by a 55-point margin. He did not. CNN’s exit poll — the link cited by Knowles above — show Mamdani garnering 57 percent of the vote from college graduates, with Cuomo at 38, and Sliwa 5. Amongst voters without a college degree, it was Cuomo 47, Mamdani 42, and Sliwa 11.

Mandani cruised to an easy win while losing amongst voters without a degree because in New York City, 59 percent of voters yesterday had college degrees.

That level of education in the electorate is not representative of the United States as a whole. In last year’s presidential election (for consistency’s sake, I’m citing exit poll data from CNN), only 43 percent of voters nationwide had college degrees. Kamala Harris beat Trump 56–42 amongst those voters. Amongst the 57 percent of voters without a college degree, Trump won by almost the exact reverse split, 56–43.

Democrats, nationwide, don’t need to make gains with college-educated voters. They need to make gains amongst voters without college degrees. There’s no other demographic gap that is more crucial for Democrats to address. Education trumps race, gender, income, and age. In 2020, Biden won college grads 55–43, and Trump won non-college-grads by a mere 50–48.

Banger of a post by “tarltontarlton” on Reddit:

That same process is happening now with stupid people. They’re transcending their individual limitations, finding each other and becoming out-and-proud Stupid-Americans. [...]

How individual stupid Americans are becoming the collective, self-aware group of Stupid-Americans is a great idea for a lot of very fancy journalism I’m sure. It’s probably got something to do with the internet, where stupid people can find and repeat stupid things to each other over and over and over again.

I believe it has a lot to do with the Internet, which has functioned as a terribly efficient sorting machine. It used to be that there were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. Both political parties were, effectively, shades of purple. Now we’ve sorted ourselves, and the result is the palpable increase in polarization. Low-IQ stupidity might still be spread across both sides of the political aisle, but willful ignorance — the dogmatic cultish belief that loudmouths’ opinions are on equal ground with facts and evidence presented by informed experts — is the entire basis of the MAGA movement. A regular stupid person might say, “Well, I don’t know anything about vaccines, so I better listen to my doctor, who is highly educated and well-informed on the subject.” An out-and-proud Stupid-American says “I don’t know anything about vaccines either, so I’m going to listen to a kook who admits that a worm ate part of his brain, because I can’t understand the science but I can understand conspiracy theories.”

If written language survives the next six weeks, we’ll be writing about Donald Trump for a thousand years. But whatever else there is to say, the most important thing about Donald Trump, the thing that is obvious from watching him speak for just 14 seconds, is that he is profoundly stupid. Whatever it is that he might be talking about or doing at any given moment, it’s clear that while he has a reptilian instinct for reading and stoking conflict, he has no real idea what’s going on and he doesn’t really care to. Stupid is what he is and where he comes from. It is his mind and his soul. Catholic was what JFK was. Gay was what Harvey Milk was. Stupid is who Donald Trump is.

And that’s what they love most, the Stupid-American voters.

Remember that sentence you heard at the beginning of all this in 2016? “He’s just saying what everybody is thinking.”

But see, not everybody was thinking that Hillary Clinton was an alien, that global warming was a Chinese hoax and that what America needed most of all was a plywood wall stretching from Texas to California. Only the stupid people were. And suddenly, in an instant, the most powerful man on earth was thinking just like them. With his clueless smirk and unstoppable rise, he turned people whose stupidity made them feel like nobody into people who felt like everybody.

That’s why he’ll never lose them. Because it was never about what he did or didn’t do. All that stuff is very confusing and the Stupid-American community isn’t interested in the details. They love him for who he is, which is one of them, and because he shows them every day that Stupid-Americans can reach the social mountaintop.

(Via Kottke.)