America really sucks at being an authoritarian state. People trash Trump all day and are not hauled off to prison. Protesters get in the faces of armored federal agents and are not mowed down in the streets. No gulags for comedians, no late-night host purges, no Kent State-scale bloodletting in half a century. We do have a huge prison population, which is its own longstanding authoritarian stain, but the “instant fascism” rhetoric still feels wildly overstated.