We Had A Good Run
[From November 27, 2024, prior to the arrival of The Monsters; slightly edited.]
I've noticed a binary spectrum developing -- with friends; commentors and analysts in the media -- about the arrival of the nazis in January. It's one perspective, or another; there's not much middle ground.
One Perspective: Things won't be as bad as you think. "You got a lot of hyperbole going, there -- and and and and; y'know, that kind of thinking is; well it's just not helpful, that thinking. You're frightening people, you're scaring people. You know that? Scaring them. And no matter how much you hate the Trump people, don't call them nazis. That's an incorrect use of the term -- and why don't you capitalize 'nazi', as a Noun? Thought you knew better. Look: You're being a downer. It's a difficult time; if you can't be supportive, just shut up. Shut up."
The Other Perspective: It is exactly as bad as you think (a group that includes Mary Trump, who is in a position to know whether her uncle is a fascist and dead serious, or not). It's tough, playing Cassandra in a room full of people who want any reason to feel less afraid. And, Things could be even worse than you imagine.
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Down But Not Out
So, I'll just say it: The United States of America we know is past, but not gone. It's in transition -- we don't know where we will end up, or when; but the United States which existed between 1945 and January 20th, 2017, is absolutely over. Our place as the arbiter of the World Order is over. In the past eleven months, our horizons about America have been pulled back to the limit of our own borders -- and ultimately that's not only good but necessary.
The long, persistent idea of The American Nation still exists -- the one backed by the Constitution, that we studied in school; chronicled by Ken Burns in so many films; the place where we and our families were born, lived; the nation we volunteered (or were drafted) to serve; the place we counted on to be there every morning when we woke up -- because here, there were rules. Most of us were Safe.
But, 'Safe' depends upon your race, gender, economics; choices; your place in the pecking order of society. George Floyd was not safe. Matthew Shepard, Jazzlyn Johnson, Pauly Likens were not safe. The children at Sandy Hook were not safe.
The children abused by the team doctor at Ohio State, or in Catholic churches across America, were not safe. The families of Flint, Michigan (still) drinking lead-tainted water were not safe. And the families evicted from homes they could no longer afford in the 2008 Crash, or Covid twelve years later, were not Safe.
Even so -- in other societies, other countries, there might be armed troops in the streets; identification checkpoints. The press may be censored, muzzled. Mail and communications, monitored. Warrantless searches or raids on homes; arrest and imprisonment, or worse, for opposing the government.
But in America, we had a Constitution. Our history rested on being a nation of laws. Until, we weren't.
Mistah Kurtz, He Crazy
We've always had crazy politicians -- but they were fringe, cartoonish characters, creeping around in the margins. The people we elected to keep America on an even keel (and stay out of our hair) spouted typical Democratic or Republican nonsense.
But they would never allow The United States to become unstable and unpredictable, like those dreck countries in Asia or Africa, or dictatorships like Russia or China; North Korea.
This was the United States of America, for fuck's sake; we're better than that. Until, we weren't.
49% of people casting a ballot in the 2024 election voted for a demagogue. A fascist.
He told everyone during the campaign
what he would do, and showed everyone (as if the previous nine years weren't already proof)
who he is. People voted for him with full knowledge:
This is what Trump is, and they did it anyway.
49% of the United States put a gun to our collective head -- grinning a manic grin, shouting MAGA !!! MY LIFE FOR YOUUUUUUU !!!! -- and pulled the trigger.
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Pass The Last Of The Schadenfreude, Please
As you sit down with family and friends over the holidays -- consider all the other people in past history who suspected they were on the edge of ... something -- catastrophe, collapse; war; oppression; penury; mass suffering: Peasants of Europe before the Hundred Years' or Thirty Years' wars; the Irish before the Famine; the French before financial collapse and Revolution; the Weimar Germans on Christmas Eve and over Hannukah in December, 1932. They gathered together anyway.
And now, We, The People. Us. On the edge of... we don't yet know.
Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 20th, in 1941. On the 26th, by proclamation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
Eleven days later, Japanese carriers reached their designated positions northwest of the Hawaiian Islands and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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"Trumplandia, 'Tis For Thee"
So, our country, with its long and fabled history, much bad and some good, has come to the end of this phase in our national story. That America did not exist after Noon on January 20th, 2025. "The United States" in future is just a label.
Its new Owners should call it Trumplandia, because its government doesn't stand for anything but the twisted, unquenchable greed, violent misogyny and narcissism which will run our lives, until it doesn't.
Someone once noted that the American Story is one cliffhanger episode after another. The Great Depression was an example: the worst financial collapse in U.S. history. It could have been the end of our Constitutional Republic -- but, at the last minute, we got FDR. It was the New Deal, and a global war, which lifted America out of it.
So, Our Story remains: How will they get out of this one? And, What next?
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Leave The Hopeism At Home, Yo
We have never had a dictator become President, not to mention controlling both Houses of Congress and a majority of That Court, before. Never in America have our politics -- our very lives -- been so openly and cynically manipulated by technology. Never have so few arrogant theocrats and technocrats spent billions of dollars so openly, to force their desires on so many.
Democrats, the political Left, are pushing back. Citizens will fight. It may be possible that this is a terrible, four-year, seminal period which America will emerge from battered but wiser -- as if struck with a terrible disease and surviving. It may be that We, The People, endure, fucked over as usual by wealth and power, but that in the end We Get Out Of This One. Maybe.
We seem to have so much stacked against Us, The People. One thing is true: The shared idea of a nation we've had to carry us this far is going to have to fundamentally change when and if we come through this. That is the transition I mentioned earlier. We can't be what we were before; so what will America become?
The bullying, the lying and violent greed of the Right needs to be kicked to the curb -- but Neoliberal Happytalk and Hopeism on the Left won't work, either.
When you have this very technocratic, 'Third Way' neoliberal approach, and sprinkle in some anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism... then you're a rudderless ship. You're not communicating what you are about -- and when you don't have a North Star every single person can point to and say, 'this is what the party is about', then your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.
America can't be ruled by a dictatorship -- whether by an individual, or the Proletariat. It isn't the way in our Culture-- as opposed to our Society, which changes more rapidly and dynamically.
Perhaps we need to experience a cruel and vicious politics, the lawless application of brute force from the faceless ICE and CBP thugs. Perhaps we need the experience of feeling unsafe in our own land, so that We, The People will reject it -- now, and ever again.
Yesterday, they were ruffians / Today, they control our lives /
Tomorrow, they will be the keepers of the public lavatories.
-- Juvenal
Trump and his toadies, the pack of Billionaire tech Bros, do not care about you, or me, or anyone but themselves. America is their social engineering laboratory, now -- and they are literally drunk, gibbering with delight at their power. Americans, as Eeelon said, will "endure hardships". Oh, they can't wait.
I've been rereading various histories of France under the Occupation. I'd recommend it.
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It reminds me of the 1993 film from a Steven King novel, Needful Things: The devil (Max von Sydow) comes to Castle Rock, Maine, opens an antiques / curios shop, and in selling various enchanted items to town residents, sets them murderously against each other. It ends in chaos, flames; madness and death. "Hey," Lucifer tells J. T. Walsh, who calls to confess he's just killed his wife, "These things happen."
There's a scene where von Sydow, his face a manic grin, grips his hands together -- shaking with glee as he literally feeds on the energy of the evil he's set in motion; 'Ave Maria' plays in the background. A few townspeople, including the police chief (Ed Harris), fight back. Castle Rock is ravaged; people are dead, shaken, the damage done; but the devil is finally forced to leave.
Von Sydow's Satan -- Looking Very Much Like Good Ol' Fred Trump
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Shaking with glee at their perceived power: We are standing at the precipice of a possible war in South America. Trump and his lackeys keep telegraphing that they want an excuse to broadly crack down against the hated Libs, the People of Color, the immigrant and the stranger. The No Kings rallies, the results of the November elections, polling results show the majority of Americans reject Trump, reject Maga.
Perhaps at this moment, Trump deteriorating in front of the cameras and determined to grip power with a bruised claw of a hand, is the Zenith of The Right's power -- that it all begins to fall apart for them from here. There's no way we can avoid what they intend to do.
The seeds of their eventual failure may be sowed now; it can be a comforting prospect. Earlier today, I heard Mary Trump telling Molly Jong-Fast, "We'll get through this". Maybe.
Lee Miller's photo of a local nazi leader and family, having committed suicide, 1945;
One can only hope this is the future of our Fabled Leaders
We'll see.
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