Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The question in this blog headline crossed my mind the other day when I was walking around the golf course.

So, today, I posit the answer.

This:  Trump is an avowed fascist.

I wasn’t sure what fascism meant, though I knew that Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy before I was born, was one – a fascist.  So, I looked up the term.

Here is what it means:  Fascism is a far-right form of government in which most of the country’s power is held by one ruler or a small group, under a single party.  Fascist governments are usually totalitarian and authoritarian one-party states.

Trump wants to be THE LEADER in America. 

Not the president for all citizens.  But THE LEADER, more in the form of a dictator than a president.

And he has said that, if he wins election, he will set out to injure or kill those who oppose him, even if it means the U.S. military is directed to do his bidding pursuant to his role as commander in chief.

He wants everyone to do his bidding because, you know, he is always the smartest person in any room, facts to the contrary.

When General Mark Milley was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he told New York Times reporter Bob Woodward:  “President Donald Trump is a danger to the nation.   We have got to stop him!

“He is the most dangerous person ever.  I had suspicions about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist.  He is the most dangerous person to this country.  A fascist to the core!”

For his part, Atlantic Magazine writer Tom Nichols, who interviewed Miller, added this:

“I have long resisted the use of the word fascist to describe Trump.  But almost a year ago, I came to agree with Milley that Trump is through-and-through a fascist.  He is not only unhinged in his narcissistic self-obsessions, a problem which itself renders him unfit for office; he is also an aspiring dictator who demands that all political life centers on him.

“He identifies his fellow Americans as ‘enemies’ because they are of a different race, national origin, or political view.  And he has threatened to use the powerful machinery of the state and its military forces to inflict brutality on those fellow citizens.

“All of this raises the question, once again, of what it will take, what will be enough, to rouse the last undecided or less engaged American voters and bring them to the ballot box to defend their own freedoms.”

I wonder the same thing.

What will it take for Americans to avoid voting for a fascist – Trump?