I am reliably told by virtually everyone that mentioning fascism is off the menu and that we need to only talk about kitchen table issues. But Jeff Sharlet makes a good point about how we have also decided to oppose Trump nominees on matters of character rather than ideology which doesn’t seem to be working: Problems with Pete Hegseth ranked from very bad to way, way worse: 6. drunkenness (common); 5. incompetence (common); 4. corruption (common); 3. raving bigotry (common); 2. alleged rape (less common); 1. Proposing military attack on US cities to exterminate all enemies. (That’s a new one). And yet focus has been winnowed down to drunkenness and incompetence, which probably describes a good 1/4 of cabinet secretaries in history. It’s framed as outrage—“he’s a drunk!”—but it functions as normalization. Not normalization via some insidious media plot to sanewash fascism. Rather, a much broader subconscious desire to frame problems in a fashion that lets us belittle actual threats. Just a dumb drunk. Ha, ha, incompetent. Not existential risk. When Hegseth was first announced there was a flurry of attention paid to the wildly violent fascist statements in his books; but that got pushed aside for his personal failings. Which are profound. But that provided fascism a very old path forward… Hegseth’s defenders could deal with drunkenness and even alleged rape with the old story of “I was lost, now I’m found.” Some us noticed that story began for Hegseth after the allegations; and that his “found” involved far…