I see no constructive point to this article. While the author, in my view, nicely articulates a list of current socio-economic ills, is he advocating for marxist-style populism or claiming somehow Trump has ushered us to a point of marxist revolution, or just what? His point seems muddled to me.

From my vantage point, a couple of points need to be recognized. Fascism, which we are seeing doing its darnedest to take over in the U.S. and parts of Europe right now, is not an economic policy system; rather, it is a cynical, machiavellian tactic for using populist appeal to dupe the public into giving up their democratic voices to a strong-man political leader.

Secondly, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Regardless of the economic system that appears dominant in a society, the tendency is for those with more economic and political power to seize ever more for themselves. This is as true for Putin and his oligarch cronies as for Trump and his billionaire elites.

The only antidote is for there to be some kind of accountability. While Putin literally murders any opposition that might challenge him democratically, the U.S. Republican Party of the past 40 years has been doing all it can to twist and corrupt the democratic system to allow their actual minority to hold onto levers of power that they numerically do not rightfully possess. Voter suppression tactics, big money in politics, a prolonged assault on basic and higher education so that our electorate remain as uneducated and uninformed as possible, and perhaps most relevant to this forum--cynical exploitation of religion to dupe the masses into voting AGAINST their own economic self-interest and then blame their worsening problems on scapegoated disenfranchised social groups, all that adds of up lack of government accountability that is destroying this nation's ability to govern itself.

Even though capitalism is worshiped here and in Russia the promises of a powerful central state somehow taking care of everyone in a communistic sense reads more popularly to much of the populace, the results are strangely similar--neither government is currently looking after the well-being of the majority of the population.

On a slight side-note, it routinely seems to be ignored that capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive systems that never co-exist. It is not either-or. On the contrary, just try to name any sizable modern society that does NOT have at least some elements of both in it. You can't. It is not a matter of which economic model a nation adopts; it is rather where the balance between the two falls that varies among nations. It may be easier to think in categorical absolutes, but that is not reality.

The bottom line goes back to the problem of power corrupting and lack of accountability of the powerful. Somehow, electorates need to be educated enough to be able to discern what their leaders are trying to get away with. Jefferson was right; still is: Education is essential to democracy. In this age of attacks on the free press as FAKE NEWS and actual fake news--Fox--propaganda being passed off as factual, while educational institutions continue to be eroded, democracy is in trouble. We are too distracted by being "infotained" instead of informed to know what we are actually voting for We end up unable to decipher policy point distinctions among candidates and parties and end up voting on gut feeling about high profile personalities rather than the policies those candidates actually champion. What a disaster!

At a distance Marxism and Leninism are tough to distinguish from what is really going and that is Fascism. the writer seems to miss this point.