One thing I will grant to the fascism skeptics is that America rarely sustains collective impulses longer than periods of brief hysteria, wanting to merge with a mass is much less powerful here than wanting to shut others out, self-sacrifice always yields to commerce.

things atomize and splinter fast here; the cradle of the American far right is libertarianism and it will always be tempting to return to the comforts of curmudgeonly isolation when it fails to gain popular purchase

A lot of people on the American far right get there by extending libertarian principles of self-seeking to the collective subject of the race or nation, this reaction doesn't really seem to achieve critical mass

Both left and right just may not be able to overcome American atomization