I don’t expect Many Trump supporters to ever take responsibility for their role in all of this. But I keep hearing that some of them will have some regrets and they’ll start to speak out against it. Well, that would be great, wouldn’t it? I would really like that. Not out of some sort of personal gratification but because all of this illegal and pseudo-legal and just plain insane stuff happening right now is only made possible because tens of millions of people are willing to believe in the nonsense coming out of the Republican party. There’s an argument that they were conned, that they didn’t actually want this, and that they will eventually realize that and turn on the Republicans. I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Sure, most of them don’t realize that this leads to America joining a global kleptocracy, or neo-fascist order, or whatever you want to call it. But I do think that many of them voted to tear down the existing system and felt emboldened to marginalize groups of their fellow Americans. So, in that sense, they are willing participants who just don’t realize that this fire they’re throwing gasoline on will eventually burn them too. Insert leopards eating faces joke here. Actually, don’t. While I’ll admit that I’m pissed that they joined a cult, I’ll still welcome any of them that want out and are willing to help stop what’s coming.
And that’s the question. Now that it’s all getting serious, what will it take for them to wake up? They don’t seem to understand what Trump just did to Zelenskyy or how we just betrayed our most trusted allies. Or how that makes our world a much more dangerous place. Will something closer to home make them understand? Or is the propaganda apparatus just too strong, and they’ll follow it wherever it leads? That’s what we’re about to find out, aren’t we? Let’s do a quick status report.
If the MAGA movement succeeds, then we’re going to witness the dismantlement of most of the gains of the 20th century. I’m talking about environmental protection, human rights, equal rights, labor rights, all of that stuff we’ve spent the past one hundred years fighting to build and improve upon. Who have we been fighting? The same type of people that are winning today, just with new people and different names. The Elon Musks of the world, the Heratige Foundations, the oil companies, the Silicon Valleys, all of the forces that never wanted any of the stuff that we enjoy today to have ever happened in the first place. So much winning.
Now, it’s important to recognize that the desire to destroy these hard-fought gains is a global phenomenon, but the role the United States will play in installing a fascist global order is key to the whole project. After all, we have the biggest, baddest military, and we’re a close second in nukes. Without us, fascism wouldn’t stand a chance. But unfortunately, our government has been captured by fascists, so we are now on the wrong side of this fight. And the key for our American fascists to maintain control of our government is keeping tens of millions of our fellow citizens believing in coo coo for cocoa puffs batshit crazy bullshit. And they’ve done a great job of that.
Now, I probably lost a few people by using the “F” word, but let’s be adults. This isn’t our first rodeo with being a fascist regime. We were fascist before it even had a name. Mussolini—whose movement popularized the term—said that fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. See, as it turns out, capitalism works quite well in a fascist state where not enough people can influence their government through the ballot box to get the rights they deserve. So, their only option is to take to the streets and do battle with the state. Oh, shit, I just described America in the early 1900s didn’t I? The same America that Hitler had studied to come up with ideas for societal control. The same America that prompted millions of people to rise up and demand better living conditions. Oops, I did it again. I just described our own history. Yeah, well not enough people remember that, and that’s how the Republican, or now MAGA, propaganda apparatus has been able to brainwash so many of our fellow citizens—to the demise of not just us, but likely democracy everywhere if they succeed. So if calling them fascists is offputting or confusing to some, I’m sorry, but I think it offers clarity. If you prefer, feel free to call them autocrats, or illiberal, or whatever softer term you prefer. In any case, their goal is to bring us back to the days of the Robber Barons.
Quick side note, though. Some pro-Democracy force could take us out in a fight, even with our military. Sure, we have the biggest, most expensive war machine in the history of the planet, but it hasn’t won a war in quite a while, has it? Food for thought.
And that brings me to the so-called Deep State. Or should we call it the D.E.I. State? You know, where all the queers and black people live. It really drives me nuts that the right-wing propaganda apparatus can just sprinkle a little gay dust on something, and it pretty much guarantees that the MAGA base will immediately be against it. But it works, and it’s why many of them voted for this.
Anyway, the Deep State, this is the test we’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? It’s terrifying that Trump supporters can not only accept that these government employees are being fired for no reason but that they can also accept how these people are being fired. Having their jobs threatened by midnight emails, being locked out as they show up for work, and being treated as if they did something criminal for just doing their job. Jobs that we need done, jobs that were created by lawmakers that we voted for, jobs that were deemed to be necessary, that had oversight and accountability. Jobs that are the result of a century of people taking to the streets and the courts to win us much-needed protections. Protections that are crucial to building a middle class and living our lives with dignity. And now some asshole billionaire and a bunch of snot-nosed little twerps are allowed to just willy-nilly treat the people who took these jobs as though they were criminals? And Trump supporters are okay with this? I could almost understand the USAID and Immigrants thing; that was too far removed for a lot of people. But government workers who do the day-in and day-out busy work to keep our society functioning? Really? It was that easy to turn those people into an enemy? Even when a third of that workforce are veterans? Think of the hold something has to have on you to accept this. To believe this nonsense and to see your fellow citizens being treated like this and somehow think it’s justified.
So now that it’s going to be tens of thousands of people, or even hundreds of thousands of people, being mistreated, will some Trump supporters start to see how this affects them? You know, like I keep hearing will eventually happen. If they see their friends, or family members, or neighbors being treated this way, will they be outraged? Or have they allowed these workers to be so dehumanized in their psyche that they’ll look the other way, even with people they care about? They’ve already allowed immigrants to be dehumanized. People who identify as transgender to be dehumanized. So now the question is, will they accept government workers who are their neighbors and are safeguarding their water and food, maintaining our national parks, taking care of our veterans, catching tax cheats, minimizing predatory banking practices, making sure our workplaces are safe and fair? All the stuff we’ve spent a century putting in place. If they can accept them being mistreated, then who’s next? Who will they not accept this to happen to?
And that is the slippery slope we are sliding down, frighteningly fast, I might add. I see a lot of Trump supporters in Illinois making fun of Governor Pritzker. I often wonder how many of them are on Obamacare or benefit from any of the other things he has put in place to help the middle class. That’s how out of touch they are about how everything works, they can’t even tell who’s trying to help them and who’s stabbing them in the back. But here in reality world, he’s one of the good guys, and he sees all of this very clearly. This is what he said at the State of the State Address in February.
“I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next?”
Well, we’re about to find out if some of these MAGA folk are going to wake up and start to speak out, as I hear so many people say will definitely happen. I’m not so sure, but I also hope that I’m wrong. They might not wake up until they lose their health care, or when they can’t trust the meat in the grocery store anymore, or when the stream behind their house is on fire and there’s no fire department to put it out. But by then, it’ll be too late.
Pritzker went on to say:
“It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”
He’s right. We all have to grab a bucket, and maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised and see some Trump voters standing beside us. We’ll know soon enough.