Revere Them As Royalty, As Gods
(A version of this was originally posted on June 10, 2025.)
National Guard Troops, Los Angeles Civic Center, Federal Building
June 9, 2025 (Daniel Terna / NYT)
"How did you go bankrupt?"
"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
-- Ernest Hemingway; The Sun Also Rises (1929)
When things happen, they come in a waterfall, a cascade, a torrent. If you haven't been paying attention, they will seem to appear as if by magic, out of nowhere. But they never do.
What's unfolding is not a surprise. It's not hyperbole, or an exaggeration. The Leader wants a blood sacrifice on the altar of his madness. His Orcs are working, Sir Sir Sir, yes Sir, to manufacture it.
Every passing day, a new outrage, murder, scandal. Every day an increased possibility of a red line being crossed which can't be walked back. Ultimately, it's what they want.
SFPD Faces Off Against Anti-ICE / Deportation Protesters,
San Francisco Mission District, June 9, 2025 (Lauren Elliot / NYT)
The Past Is Present, Tense
Even with everything that's happened since January 20, 2025; even with No Kings rallies, all major polling organizations showing Trump and Republican numbers flashing red -- even with shooting after corrupt grifting in the open, even after The War The War The War The War -- people are going along as if everything will magically reset after November 3rd.
Convincing people to believe that we're deep into a fascist coup, and that the election results might just be ignored because the fascists say so is hard. And we've had nearly a decade to understand -- where we are, right now, is no surprise. It's the realization of a right-wing dream.
"The right-wing ... [has] a single concrete objective—taking absolute power in the U.S. as soon and as definitively as possible. And [they] even seemingly want, to destroy the social fabric of the country [in taking power] ...
"Discrediting government ... has been a component of the GOP game plan .. and Democrats have reinforced [that] in their own way. ...Four decades of retrenchment and privatization ... steadily increasing economic inequality and government’s failure to address it in any meaningful way [fuels a] lack of confidence, distrust, and hostility toward government ... and eventually even the idea of the public itself. And [Right-wing billionaires who] bankroll the ultraright have taken advantage of that, [stoking] frustration and rage into a dangerously authoritarian political force."
Campaign Commercial For Every Maga Rethug Candidate In 2026
(Los Angeles Civic Center, June 8, 2025)
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I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties. I believed, naive and bred-to-be-hopeful as I was, in our long national Narrative of America. We're an imperfect country, always trying to Do Better, on a constant upward (and so, of course, liberal) arc into an inevitable future. Even after experiencing the disneyland E-Ticket ride of Southeast Asia, I still believed it.
That this dream of a future looked identical to the post-WW2 economic boom enjoyed by white male straight 'christian' Americans, and may not have been good for other humans, in other places, took time for me to learn.
National Guardsmen On The Streets Of Newark, NJ; April, 1967
In that national Narrative, Watergate, Vietnam; riots every Summer in major American cities, and the National Guard in the streets; Nixon, Reagan, Bush; Clinton and Obama's neoliberalism; Forever War -- all could be seen as tragedies, regrettable episodes.
And, so was the political Right. They were Birchers, Bow-Tie Daddies. They were all a Fringe, on the wrong side of history. The future would belong to a moderate, Liberal culture: always upwards.
Of course it would.
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I'll Take 'White Nationalist Political Narratives' For A Thousand, Alex
In 2021, author George Packer noted in The Atlantic that America's national narrative, Our Story, is a string of crises -- all leading to 'how we got out of it'. How we overcame and went on to even greater triumph: Upwards, always upwards.
But, Packer said, we don't have one unified Story of America -- we have four. The one chosen by the religious and political Right is that of a beautiful America, stolen from its people by immigrants, noisy and uppity People of Color, Women, Liberals, Socialists; LGBTQ+, and (the Base is saying openly, now) Jews.
The issues Trump had campaigned on waxed and waned ...What remained was the dark energy he unleashed... Trump’s people still talked about freedom, but they meant blood and soil. Their nationalism was like the ethno-nationalisms on the rise in Europe ... Trump abused every American institution ... and his people cheered. Nothing excited them like owning the libs.
The beautiful America can only return when these demon-possessed culture-despoilers are destroyed. When our Blood and Land is cleansed and purified. Then all will be good again.
America's Right has been told to prepare, and plan, for a confrontation -- final, bloody, retributive; like battle on the plains of Armageddon.. Trump's core sycophants are using this narrative like a blueprint. It's the logical culmination of forty years of victimhood propaganda and hatred.
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The Leader, During The 2024 Campaign
The lies and hatred broadcast for forty years by Limbaugh, by the Murdochs and their hand-picked talking heads, are in the "historical record". But the Right thinks: we're Owning The Libs. They are all about the naked use of power, and using that power to enrich themselves. Every day, Trump and his weasels create a new provocation, crossing another red line.
The situation is like a madman with a gun, who keeps walking towards you, while screaming, Don't get any closer!! I'm warnin' ya!! I told ya -- stop comin' at me!! Finally, he shoots you, shouting, See what you did?? You Libs made me do it!! Told ya!! Told ya!!
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This Will Be On The Exam
54 years after crowds chanted Nixon's The One ! Four More years !!, the children and grandchildren of the Silent Majority, the Birchers and the Klan, are back.
They're bully-mean in their MAGA caps and January 6, 2021 - Civil War T-Shirts. They see the world through small, piggish eyes, and they hate you.
The Leader, Riding Out To Play Golf On January 7th, 2021:
The Rioters Had Attempted A Coup -- For That
They hate Colored People and Foreigners, and Eggy-heads, and Libs and Gays and Trans People; and them Eee-leets, weak and soft. They think vaccines and science are evil. They love god; yes they do (somebody's god, anyway), and America. But they hate you, and want you to die.
America's Owners are delusional, and rich. Very, very rich. They don't like Trump, or the Base, or anyone who isn't part of their class. But they believe in keeping control. Trump -- the Leader they paid for -- and his weasels control both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Trump is an imperial President; he has more power than any U.S. chief executive in modern history.
The Billionaire businessmen (Koch; Uihline; Coors; Addelson; Diamon, the Murdochs, etc.), the new fascist ideologues (Leo, Vought; Dans, et al.); the Tech Bro Billionaires dreaming of a new feudalism; evangelical "christian" white supremacists and their militias, dreaming of a Gilead-like theocracy -- all of them are closer to regaining control of American society than they have since 1934.
These persons believe they are destined to seize that control. They expect not only that People fear them, but revere them, like royalty; like gods. As close as they are to realizing their dream... do you really think they'll allow that chance to be stolen by ... an election ?
Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo
In Middle Of Cassandraizing Blog Rant
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Even in the face of open corruption and misuse of presidential authority -- even with Trump and the Republicans' pushing an illegal war -- the Democratic Left has been splintered. Democratic leadership is divided, and with few exceptions, Jeffries and Schumer seem to focus on how the Right will be judged in the historical record. They send sternly worded letters, and make focus-tested remarks on PBS.
That worked during Trump's first term, but this is Crazy Donny 2.0. American democracy is a store that's being looted right in front of us. The DNC Gerontocracy is not capable of fighting back against a fascist takeover because they don't understand that is what's happening.
They can't believe Trump is, like Noah Cross in Chinatown, capable of anything. For someone who is literally accused of raping children, how far do you think Trump might go?
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Part of Trump's power lies in attracting people who are fundamentally unhappy with America's political system. They know in their bones that System is rigged in favor of wealth and lineage. They're pissed off at being lied to and fucked, over and over, by the same people, for generations.
Some on the Left understand that these specific voters want change -- fascist, Democrat; Socialist; it almost doesn't matter. If the Left can communicate a coherent, realistic promise -- a new New Deal -- come together around a popular candidate, who can articulate the promise, give voice to people's experience and hopes -- then the death grip Trump and Trumpism has on our future can be broken.
Democratic Socialists are not just calling out Crazy Donny and his Lieutenants, defining why we're standing up for democracy -- they're describing a future vision that doesn't include the Neoliberal shuck-and-jive of the Clinton and Obama years, which the current Democratic leadership embodies: No More Business As Usual.
No more business as usual.
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