“This is 1936 Spain”
Your post is bang on! Each observation points to our nearing what I call our “Calvo Moment”. The brutal murder of Jose Calvo Sotelo by socialists in 1936 was the last straw in the political/social conflict between Nationalists & Republicans. The result was a very nasty civil war.
Perhaps not relevant to Spain-1936, my novice view is that some majority of our news media is complicit in failing it’s watch-dog” role of government. While ethically for sure, one might even say criminally so.
I doubt we’ll have such a moment (since the right had, besides the army & police, conservative militias in the Carlists and Falange). Until we form those, nobody on the government payroll (read: military & police) will do a thing.
The media is a government agency at this point (as it was for the Bolsheviks); during Mussolini’s rise to power he repeatedly burned the offices of the left-wing rags because they operated in the same manner...
When the IRS scandal was uncovered (in which conservative groups were effectively muzzled by having their non-profit status denied/delayed during the 2012 election cycle), it was reminiscent of one of the leftists’ first moves when they came to power in 1936 - they openly outlawed the opposition (the Falange) and when the war started they executed its jailed leader.
The European dictators of the 1920s and 1930s rightly understood one of the most basic flaws of democracy, one that cost Romney his election bid: When you simply promise enough people the property of the rest, you will win every election (individual rights be damned). Franco never allowed elections during his tenure because the government against which the army revolted in 1936 was lawfully elected; he never forgot that.
If you haven’t read “The Last Crusade” I’d strongly recommend it; it tells the other side of the story (while our media, including the Humphrey Bogart movie “Sahara” and “The Guns of Navarrone”, continued to push the myth that Franco was synonymous with Hitler...). Also, if you have a chance to find a speech given by Franco when he agreed to let the US open bases in Spain during the Cold War (after he was isolated into the 1950s); it is very touching. He laments the fact that only so late did the Americans understand what he and his allies were fighting against 20 years before in Spain.