“Proud Boys, Stand Back and Stand By.”

Now that the Trumps and a growing number of high-level Republicans have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, this seems like old news already. But yes, I will still pile on. Donald Trump is a fascist. He is a Proud Boy, an Oath Keeper, a Patriot Prayer guy, Three Percenter and all of it, because they are his blackshirts, his cossacks, his storm troopers.

Joe Biden showed up for a debate at a Fox News interview by Chris Wallace; and when Biden mentioned the Proud Boys while Wallace asked if the president would condemn white supremacy, Trump demurred, answering, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

Another month of pandemic lockdown and here we are into the Fall. Disorder is the landscape. Our president doesn’t know what white supremacy means, doesn’t know who the Proud Boys are after having waved the bloody shirt of Proud Boy Aaron “Jay” Danielson for the better part of a month and having told them himself in a broadcast debate just the night before in front of the whole world to “stand by.” So, of course, Joe Biden is the one in cognitive decline and requiring drug tests to “debate” Donald Trump. The bullshit piles up so high these days you need wings to stay above it.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said in response to the challenge by debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News. “But I’ll tell you what…