"Trump and the Rise of 21st Century Fascism" by Adele M. Stan, published in The American Prospect on August 27, 2018, substantiates the principle behind Emerson's quote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

If Stan is going to quote from Al Gore's 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth in the third paragraph, we all know she has bundled up a Clinton Foundation-sized pack of lies based upon a foolish consistency.

Let us offer some examples of Gore's ten-year predictions that didn't come true even 12 years after his film first raised its hobgoblin head: rising sea levels, increased tornadoes, a new ice age in Europe, the South Sahara drying up, massive flooding in China and India, a melting Arctic, polar bear extinction, severe temperature increases due to CO2, Katrina a foreshadow of the future...  The Earth would be in a "True Planetary Emergency" within a decade unless drastic action was taken to reduce greenhouse gasses.

Say you were 12 years old, and Mommy and Daddy wouldn't let you pierce your belly-button.  You might read The Outsiders and decide that living without parents offers an unblemished path to Adolescent Nirvana.  That's fair enough; you're 12.  Now you're 24, again living in Mommy's and Daddy's house and eating their Oreos after they dropped 250 grand into that intersectional studies degree you carry around in your back pocket.  Are you still buying into that parentless paradise myth?  If you are, welcome to the "Liberal Mind of the Eternal Hobgoblin Consistency," an ugly world most leftists have chosen to occupy.

Don't sweat it; you've got a neighbor in Adele and a block full of chuckleheads over at The American Prospect to keep you company.  Citing and relying upon verifiably false narratives works well in the age of silencing conservative thought.  That is, in fact, a real example of 21st-century fascism.

Check out the rueful adolescent groupthink use of "we" in the first two paragraphs: "When Donald Trump, enemy of the U.S. Constitution, first came to power, we were advised by the sages not to throw that 'F' word around – you know the one I mean, the one that ends with an 'ism.'  We'd never be taken seriously if we used it to describe him and his regime[.]"

Friend of the U.S. Constitution Trump won the electoral vote in a landslide.  Only the true enemies of our Constitution stand around denying that truth while nurturing fables of faux wounds and crimes.

The rest is on par with Al Gore's cinematography: conjecture posing as fact.  Do you know anybody who could be termed "Alt-Right" outside Adele's night terrors?  How about "white supremacists" – got any of those wandering around under your bed?  Did you know that Trump sends them coded messages?  That Tucker Carlson is the conduit through which Trump plans to...I don't know...corner the Oreos market in a plot to deprive the adolescent "we" of their most prized essential?

Why didn't the "sages" warn us that we would one day be engulfed in a stream of pubescent effluence posing as thoughtful opinion? 

Go ahead, Adele – Mommy and Daddy give you permission to use the F-word, as long as you apply it to those nice friends of yours who wear masks, block traffic, smash windows, and punch out people wearing MAGA hats.  Meanwhile, try to assure us that there is an American prospect of you growing up.