“We’re living through the ongoing fascist collapse of the United States but I still gotta clean the kitchen and go to work tomorrow” sure is the mood right now, huh.
Okay, had some thoughts, slept on it, had more thoughts. Woke up this morning and there are some (understandably) very worried folks in my notes/DMs, asking if this is the End end. As ever, I am but an old gay academic on the internet. My opinion is not more special or more insightful than anyone else’s. But if you want my thoughts, here they are.
First: the U.S. isn’t in the “imminent” or “approaching” stages of fascism. At least as far as the president and the ruling junta are concerned, and in regard to what they’re trying to do, this is full-out, blood-and-soil, grab-people-off-the-streets-to-send-to-concentration-camps-without-trial fascism. The reason they have not been able to do everything they planned is due to a) considerable and vigorous resistance from multiple levels of American society, and b) federal judges. Everyone say Thank You, Federal Judges. They are the only thing keeping the Turd Reich in check right now, because the GOP-controlled Congress is waving handkerchiefs and cheering all the way. If Trump and the withered skinsuit of white supremacist evil known as Stephen Miller were able to do what they wanted with genuinely no interference from the courts, this would be unspeakably bad. And y'know. It’s already bad.
I am not here to tell anyone to Pollyanna it out or just think happy thoughts or whatever else. This is very bad. We have to acknowledge the badness of it and to understand that this is what happens when you voluntarily give power back to a miserable reactionary fascist regime that repeatedly announced its intentions to do exactly this. Except too many Americans went “lol that’s funny he’s such a joker” and voted for him anyway. I’m very curious how the Both Parties Are The Same crowd would like to explain the fact that literally none of this was happening at the same time last year, when Democrats still held the White House and Senate, but that’s another post and I’m tired of arguing with their anti-reality doomster Horseshoe Theory vortex of stupidity. So. Moving along. It’s done now, it happened. What next?
Here’s the important thing which you have to understand: this hysterical overreaction – National Guard, trampling on state sovereignty, Marines in the streets, declaring open war on LA and wherever else the ICE Gestapo is being sent – is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of a weak, failing, and flailing psychopathic old dementia patient who has realized that destroying American democracy on behalf of his Kremlin paymasters and alt-right tech bros (though too bad, so sad, #Trumpsk ended in Pride Month!) is going to be a hell of a lot harder than he thought. Trump just spent the week getting mocked, ridiculed, emasculated, and made to look weak and stupid. Musk turned on him and blew up the Big Beautiful Bill, which was already having a hard time in the Senate. Judges are almost automatically ruling against him at this point. He was even forced to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the US from the Salvadoran gulag and get Fascist Barbie Bondi to concoct some other BS charges to try him on. The point is, TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. He is weak, he’s failing, people keep fighting him and winning, he just got major-league embarrassed by his Ex Bestie, and his stupid budget bill just got a lot harder to pass. So what do you do, if you’re Donald Trump? You lash out at your favorite target, That Dadgum Gay Liberal Commie Immigrant Refuge, California.
This is what fascists do when cornered, thwarted, and made to look stupid: they try to do the only thing they can do, which is an overwhelming show of brute force. Please remember that this is also happening because said withered skinsuit of white supremacist evil, Stephen Miller, is upset that they haven’t managed to “cleanse” the country of every single immigrant yet. It is also openly admitted by Orange Hitler’s Favorite Special Little Boy that a big part of their plan is to cause enough terror to force immigrants to self-deport, or just voluntarily pack up and leave because they think this well-oiled terror machine will come for them next. Now. Listen. I have zero, ZERO right to tell any non-citizen living in the US right now what to do or how to feel. If you just want to get out before you do have to risk going through that, it is completely and utterly valid.
However.
This is your home too. You belong here. If you decide that if they want you out, they’ll have to fight you the whole way, then you could and should do that. Those of us who are U.S. citizens have a right to stand up with you, not least since the Turd Reich is already musing about finding ways to do the same things to us. Nobody is safe. This is way past the “first they came for” lines of the poem; they want to get everyone if they can, for the tiniest and most minute infractions against Donald of House Putin, First Of His Name. See above: we’re in the full-blown fascism stage. I am not minimizing or ignoring that.
But still.
If you do the usual Doomer Leftist Edgelord Internet Thing and go “lol well guess Trump is a dictator for life now and there will be no more elections and we live in Gilead forever,” often with barely-disguised glee that at least those stupid liberals are getting punished, you’re, well, also a fascist. You’re accepting and glorifying fascist narratives, you’re exalting fascist power, you are once more making the fascists look cool and inevitable and like there’s no point at all in fighting. Nota Bene: This does not refer to the people who are genuinely terrified and despairing and thinking that this is in fact the end and there’s no more point in fighting. You’re scared. I’m scared too. I see that and I feel it and I know, I know, I know. But you can still control what you say and how you react and the messages that you spread in response. If you’re just reblogging a lot of unsourced screenshots and panic-mongering posts: maybe don’t do that. Think about what you’re putting out there and how you’re reacting. If you don’t feel like you can do that, get off the internet, stop looking at the news (which also has a vested interest in making everything look apocalyptic) and take a breath. It will still be there tomorrow.
At times like these, all we can do is hold onto each other and take some comfort in the fact that time still creeps in a petty pace from day to day. The Terrible Future still will not happen all at once and in a giant blob of awful and with no chance to change it. Nothing is predetermined and nothing is inevitable. Everything will still happen one day at a time, and that means we have to use the time as best we can. If you feel like this is in fact the End for you and you need to get out, well, go ahead and make those preparations if you can. But also recognize that everyone is in fight-or-flight mode right now, that is a screaming panic response, and while you shouldn’t downplay the danger, you also shouldn’t up and run because your scared animal brain thinks that is the only thing left to do. We are still here. You are still here. I am still here. We can still do something as we choose.
I hate the fact that we have to quote Gandalf like, all the goddamn time right now, but it’s still true. All you have to do is choose what to do with the time that is given to you, etc. You still have a life. You still have a choice. You still have time. It is not done, it is not the end, and goodness knows the world isn’t over now because Donald Trump got mad again and threw a hissy fit because he had a really sucky week and got publicly dumped by Elon Fucking Musk (again, lololololol). Things are very bad, but the point of my original post above was that even when you’re living through an awful historical event (yet again, I hate this timeline), ordinary life still goes on. You have to focus on what you control and do what you can with it. It’s not about hope so much as confounded stubbornness. If those idiot weaksauce fascist losers want to get you, make it as hard as fucking possible for them, and part of that IS just refusing to accept that they have that power, or any power. You can think whatever you want, but if you just say out loud, “Fuck you. This is stupid. You are going to fail because you’re failures and you can’t make me afraid,” weirdly, it really does help.
Hugs.
The other thing to remember is this: fascism always fails.
It takes a long time coming and usually a relatively short time collapsing. Why?
Because fascist regimes prioritize loyalty in their underlings and members of their government. They do NOT prize things like…um, competence, and knowing how to do things. Of this we have daily proof.
When all you care about is whether the people who work for you kiss the ring or not, the systems that you barely knew you relied on tend to get majorly fucked up because nobody is qualified to run anything and nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing. Again, we have daily proof of this.
There can and will be damage done. It may last less or more time than we think. What comes after may not be all THAT much better, not at first. I’m not saying “it gets better” here but…usually, it does.
I wonder what will happen to friendly fascism after this, even when Trump inevitably makes one screwup too many and his classical fascism falls, what will come of the unholy abomination that is the government-business complex that has developed since WW2? The tech bros? What about the Democrats, will they do the usual spineless ‘only undoing like 60% of what the Republicans did when they were in power’ thing? What about the limits Trump pushed? Will the next republican president use them? Or perhaps will there be a seismic shift? Will this be the one thing that the ever integrating establishment simply cannot adapt itself to?
The republican party has essentially become the fascist party, there is no undoing that, and in a two party electoral system, you can’t really vote them out of parliament or whatever, so how will the US American public put a stop to them? Things are so uncertain and you can only really fight as much as you can and hope that the best random possibility comes true while preparing for the worst, just in case.