Sam Harris

But let's just linger on patrimonialism because it's certainly bad enough, right?

This has taken us to a place, you know, if he were merely a patrimonialist, he's taken us to a place that we don't want to be or at least shouldn't want to be, despite the fact that half the country still seems to be cheering.

So when you talk about patrimonialism as an approach to governance, in this case, where the state and it's where America, let's not speak so generically, America and her policies, her institutions, everything is considered effectively Trump's personal property to be sold off

for personal advantage, and we've seen him do that with the tariff policy.

You know, he slaps a 46% tariff on Vietnam, and how does Vietnam try to get that tariff removed?

They greenlight a $1.5 billion resort deal for the Trump family.

There are now scores of examples like this, and the Trump family has enriched itself to the tune of at least

one, two, or three billion dollars, depending on which account you favor.

But there's probably more than that that's happened.

I mean, this is all just absolutely despicable and destructive of our standing in the world.

And yet,

This was a stop on the train before we reached fascism.

I just wanted to emphasize that, you know, whether or not someone agrees that you're naming this correctly, we shouldn't lose sight of, you know, all the ground our country has lost and is losing under this president.

So there's a difference and you acknowledge this difference in your piece between having a leader and his enablers who are fascists or aspiring fascists or, you know, fascistic to whatever degree and having the full capture of government and society.

by a regime that is in fact fascist.

And you wouldn't say we have succumbed in that final sense, nor do I think you think we're likely to succumb.

And so this is not going to look like Hitler's Germany, even in the worst case scenario.

So to be clear, what you seem to think now is that calling Trump and his enablers, and many of whom are far more ideological than he shows any sign of being, calling them fascist is more or less unavoidable at this point.

Well, so I pulled up a definition of fascism.

As you point out, this is a term that is pretty loosely defined and you can, you know, it has blurry borders.