If You Scratch a Fascist Do You Find a Catholic?

No, not necessarily, but you might find an Irishman. What you find is a loser. Someone I talked to thought fascism was a Catholic thing but fascists are, more fundamentally, losers. Fascists feel humiliated and small. They feel impotent, disrespected and left behind. They surrender their individualism and compromise their humanity because there wasn't enough humanity there in the first place.

Still, that was their choice. They lacked character. They feel they are lesser beings, often because of tribal allegiance to fellow losers. They turn to tribalism for a remedy, band together for power and use it to denigrate others. They persecute, insult and belittle others. They want to lord it over others. They are bullies and it validates their own weakness. They validate and confirm their loser status.

They can cause enormous harm. Americans find fascism hard to understand and detect, making us vulnerable. We weren't losers. Americans were too fortunate, especially the greatest generation, to understand grudges and multigenerational enmities--tribal, irrational, irreducible and consuming resentment. We were heroes and the unsullied victors in a seemingly moral war. But there are losers among us. 

Somebody lost a war. Somebody got invaded and saw their culture destroyed.

Southerners were crushed in the Civil War. Irishmen were subjugated by the English. These humiliations survive for generations, causing persecutions which create more grudges, the injury propagating itself by aggression. The retributive imperative arose after civil rights, among southerners newly empowered by greedy Yankees. The hillbillies were being used but their hatred was underestimated and misunderstood, as was their cunning.

These fascists--Republicans--seek to destroy the federal government, the institution which ensures the rights of individuals against hate and corporate hegemony. 

Irishmen and many others, some with personal--not tribal--scores to settle, piled in on the bandwagon of hate. They are all losers. The Irish, like Hannity and O'Reilly, typically for the Irish, are losers among the losers, less excellent and effective at hate--overbearing, smug, bombastic fascists. The real killers are the Confederates. They follow in the footsteps of Lee Atwater--punks like Mitch McConnell, Trey Gowdy, Tom Cotton and Jeff Sessions.
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The Irish are pussies by comparison. Mick Mulvaney is a rare hybrid of Irish Catholic moral degeneracy and implacable southern resentment, race-baiting depravity and vindictiveness--a leprechaun from hell--AND he's from South Carolina, the primal home of secessionist urges. Trump is a typical fascist hero and commander, a monumental loser who tries to convince himself he's not by dominating, degrading and demeaning everyone he can. 

Authority problems and daddy issues define these Republican leaders. They are caught in a futile struggle to measure up. Mostly the Irish are amateurs on the Atwater scale of evil. Catholics have, however, proved useful as cannon fodder in the culture wars--the idiots--schooled in blind submission and unquestioning allegiance to authority by the Church. Thus, there is an imperfect association between fascism and Catholicism.