In trying to assess what I'm feeling in this final month before the election, I come back to the difference between fear and anger, and how today's GOP fundamentally fails to appreciate the distinction.

All their insults about "triggering," all the delight they express in making vulnerable people upset, betrays this misunderstanding. I was seeing it from the gun nutters for years before Trump came into the picture. Here's their mistake:

They think "triggered" people are simply terrfiied. Which can happen. But the instinct triggered by trauma isn't necessarily fear. Remember? It's FIGHT or flight.

Much of the time, people who are threatened, abused, or assaulted become very, very, very angry.

Looking at the small number of people in power who are now giddily forcing through policy and law that run counter to the values of the majority of Americans, you have to ask, are we any different from other societies that have succumbed to authoritarianism or fascism?

Fascism takes a certain amount of buy-in, but it also relies on fear. Autocracies use fear and force to control the greater numbers of people that are harmed by the small number of powerful people. They need their subjects frightened and impotent at all times.