Is America already fascist?

Published on New York Times blog, in response to news article, “The 50th anniversary of the Chile coup in photos,” September 11, 2023:

The US is a principal cause. Fascism results as the wealthy will ultimately use any means needed to maintain their wealth and power: suppressing free speech and democracy, imprisonment, torture, killings. Their precious "freedom" is the power to get what they want. Now, the threat of openly fascist government is imminent in the US. Which not only has in it powerful fascist factions, such as attacked the capitol in 2021, but strong fascist tendencies, rarely recognized for what they really are, called "conservatives" and taken for normal, considered a legitimate faction. They prefer to rule by election and constitutionally, but every time jettison that if they must. Their leading media outlets and candidates have been destroying public discourse by blatantly, and relentlessly, uttering falsehoods and making it clear that "the 'truth' is what we say it is." Thus, public discourse itself is denied any legitimacy, with the aim that nothing can be contested because, ideally, nothing true can even be publicly said. In this way at least, in the US far-right fascism has achieved, using its media dominance, an extreme that is almost unparalleled historically. While a floating state of emergency has been in place since 9/11 allowing indefinite detention without charge. Colonialist violence always comes home and is used against the imperialist power's own people. The truth is the nation's own "people" ultimately don't matter either.