CONSERVATIVES THINK WE SHOULD BE DELIGHTED BECAUSE TRUMP ISN'T EXACTLY HITLER

There's a post by David French today at National Review's Corner with the headline "FBI Confirms It’s Investigating Possible Links Between Trump Campaign and Russia - Why This Is Good News." French was once an opponent of the president, but now sees him as a useful means of obtaining significant right-wing change. So why does French think an investigation of the president's possible collusion with Russia is good news? Here's one reason:

... since the Trump administration’s DOJ authorized this announcement, it is a sign to all Americans that its system is still working as intended. This announcement is not helpful to the administration, but the DOJ authorized it anyway.

Oh, goody! We're not living in a totalitarian dictatorship yet! Excuse me while I do a dance of joy at the news that our government still clears this very low bar.

That's also the message of an entire column by the New York Post's Kyle Smith:

Trump’s first two months prove he’s anything but a fascist

When Donald Trump moved into the White House, were you under the impression it was tantamount to either Fifth Avenue Moses coming in to part the filthy waters of the Swamp, or MussoHitler about to bring down the mighty hammer of neo-fascism upon the US?

If so, the joke’s on you....

Gulliver-like, Trump finds himself tied down by a thousand tiny strings, paralyzed by micro-people he can barely detect. Because of their combined power, he can’t do much of anything. If it’s the system vs. Trump, the system is winning, bigly....

Thanks to two judges ... Trump’s latest executive order restricting immigration from six countries with major terrorism problems is on hold.

Even with his party in control of both houses in Congress, Trump is finding major limits to what he can do legislatively. The American Health Care Act is not going to pass (without major changes)....

Passing a budget? Hey, guess what? The president can’t spend a dime without Congress....

Liberals should have had more respect for our national institutions than to think that one man could simply have trashed them all.

In fact, one man probably could have trashed all our national institutions, and Trump conceivably might do so yet -- but he doesn't seem to have a sufficient understanding of how those institutions work, so he's never truly focused his attention on subverting them. It's easy to imagine a leader who could do that -- someone with Trump's appeal to a large bloc voters and, say, Steve Bannon or Stephen Miller's contempt for American values -- but in the government as currently configured, the man at the top doesn't seem capable of consolidating power with a true fascist's ruthlessness.

So I guess we merely have to worry about treason, widespread self-dealing, destruction of the social safety net, targeted totalitarianism (directed at the undocumented, directed at Muslims), an understaffed government in which everyone attacks everyone else every day, covert and overt encouragement of white supremacism, and an ignorant leader who watches TV all day and might get us into a nuclear war with a bellicose tweet.

But no full-scale fascism for now! Yippee!