Is it fascism yet?

Somewhere in the bowels of the New York Times—which I have to assume is all bowels at this point—hard work goes into coming up with headlines like this:

How do you avoid being outraged that Donald Trump has proposed the greatest act of state-sponsored horror in this century so he can build a new golf course on graves he helped create? Simple enough. Concentrate on how removing nearly two million people from their land, over 50% of whom are children, and turning it into Mar-a-Lago Middle East might run into a few roadblocks.

It's not "Trump's Gaza plan." It's a war crime. It's a crime against humanity. It's ethnic cleansing.

If Trump carries out this despicable act, it will displace more people than the Long Walk of the Navajo, the Trail of Tears, and the conquest of Texas combined. It will exceed the number of Uyghurs displaced or detained by China. It will rank with the worst of the atrocities committed during the darkest hours of World War II; Except that we will be doing it openly, with the whole world as a witness.

If it happens, this act alone will make the United States into a pariah state, rightly held in greater contempt than Xi's China or Putin's Russia. Think North Korea writ larger and viewed with even greater contempt.

Following such an act, it would be completely understandable for the United Nations to withdraw from New York and set up shop in some nation where the rule of law still applies. A dissolution of the existing charter and reinstitution of the UN under rules that don't give hypocritical bully states a veto over their every action is entirely possible. Republicans would, of course, cheer this development.

A day earlier, in an action that's been overshadowed by his surprise announcement that we. would be taking over Gaza, Trump pulled the United States from the UN Human Rights Council. That order included a very special second feature: it stopped funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provided food and medical assistance to Palestinians. After all, it's much easier to get people to move if you cut off the supply of food to their children.

But gosh, it sure would be a shame if someone slowed down the process of leveraging ethnic cleansing via starvation. Thanks for focusing on the most important point, crack journalists of the nation's leading newspaper.

In just three weeks, we've had: Nazi salutes, overt racism made into a requirement of government hiring and contracting, a concentration camp under construction, and now a proud embrace of ethnic cleansing on a huge scale.

So ... is it fascism yet?

Here's a little checklist from Keene State College in New Hampshire which, I swear to you, predates Trump taking office.

If the items on this list seem familiar, it's because they're not only on the list visible near the entrance of the Holocaust Museum they're the definition of fascism going back decades.

The ways in which Trump has ticked off the first 14 items on this list are legion. And he's made 15 and 16 the priorities of this administration. What Trump wants to do with Gaza (and with Panama, Greenland, and Canada) is a prime example of how using force to gain territory. The fact that Hitler was seeking more territory out of vainglorious ego and Trump wants to plant hotels doesn't make any difference to the people on the ground. And it doesn't make Trump any less a fascist.

Hamas isn't likely to create much of a problem for Trump. Neither are shaken fingers from European leaders who rival Susan Collins in their ability to be very, very disappointed. Unless something far more serious happens, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu will see the last Palestinian out of both Gaza and the West Bank, slam the door, and pretend that Israel has always been just one big happy real estate venture.

Pretty much the only thing that might create a problem for Trump is if the American people start objecting and pushing back against his efforts to turn our military into an instrument of his real estate corporation. And for that to happen, American media outlets need to start using their words.

Words like coup. Words like purge. Words like genocide.

This nation is confronting the greatest threat in its nearly 250-year history. Maybe it's not time to devote the front page to apartment prices on the West Side or how to make the best toasted tofu. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to reflect the seriousness of the situation in both the text and the headlines. Maybe it's even time to pull out some of that Big Type that's been gathering dust since Hillary Clinton dared write an email.

Please—media outlets, pundits, and politicians—please stop worrying about whether or not something Donald Trump says or does is important or "just a distraction." There are no distractions. And please stop going into brain-sweat to find some alternative phrase that allows you to dance around the facts.

Use your words. You know the ones.