The United States Approaches The Abyss
I did nazi that coming.
When I read a news story yesterday that many voters had no idea Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race . . . perhaps I should have seen that as an early harbinger of doom.
In thinking that Kamala Harris would become the first female president-elect, I perhaps let my guard down and allowed some unwarranted optimism to dilute my default mode of pessimism. I certainly greatly underestimated the wide, deep, and roiling currents of racism, sexism, and xenophobia that courses through the veins of the United States.
And so a majority of Americans have chosen a “fascist to the core” whose main objective will be exacting revenge (which he has said includes execution) against his “enemies”, a man who has admired Adolf Hitler for decades, a convicted felon (34 times over; he’s due to be sentenced on November 26), an adjudicated rapist ordered to pay $83 million (+ constantly-accruing interest) for defaming his victim, a man who oversaw a 15-year tax fraud scheme resulting in 17 guilty verdicts for criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records, a deeply-flawed narcissist currently experiencing (in the professional judgment of at least 255 psychologists and psychiatrists) significant cognitive decline, phonetic aphasia, and dementia — a man whose entire campaign can be reduced to ten words he spoke in Las Vegas, Nevada, on June 9, 2024. On that 110-degree-Sunday afternoon, more than twenty people needed medical attention and six required hospitalization. He told the crowd: “I don’t care about you, I just want your vote.”
Now that the election has been decided, the masks have come off — and Republicans are celebrating the chance to unleash the myriad dystopian, apocalyptic, and fascisitic policies of Project 2025 on the American populace.
Mike Davis, a possible attorney general in the second Trump administration, posted his current feelings about getting revenge on Democrats:
Here’s my current mood. I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)
Of course. It’s a joke. Ha ha ha . . .
Medhi Hasan (of Zeteo, formerly of MSNBC) has remained well ahead of the curve in documenting the serious dangers of Trump and his fascist beliefs. He tweeted this late last night:
People — including top US journalists, perhaps especially top US journalists — don’t quite get how bad it’s going to be. How beyond term one it’ll be. How bad the Musks and RFKs will be. I don’t think even I fully accept how bad it’s going to be and I have been shouting how bad it’s going to be for years.
Seth Abramson (Proof) has written five large books on the Trump years and knows more about the January 6 Insurrection (in its totality) than any man alive. His 35-tweet statement is so unrelentingly bleak, the natural inclination would be to think he’s spouting nonsense, exaggerating for effect. I desperately want to believe that — even as I know some of what he says definitely will come to pass — but the US is heading into truly unprecedented territory . . .
There are not just no guardrails now. The American people have just told the two worst men in the United States—Trump and Musk—that the world is their oyster and they can do whatever they like. . . . tonight should be regarded as one of the most disgraceful nights in the history of the United States. . . . The Supreme Court will be ultra-conservative for decades—likely the rest of all our natural lives. . . . We’re now a failed democracy in which everything is contingent. . . . There will be no rules in politics. Bomb threats, false flags orchestrated by the president himself—as he did tonight in MI and PA—all normalized. All Trump’s criminal cases are gone now. . . . Do not expect the right to assemble, right to petition your government, or freedom of speech to look the same in 2025 as it did in 2024 or for the first 250 years of our nation. . . . This is the worst day in America since Pearl Harbor. . . . Our media worked for its own profit and the career advancement of those working in it. We *never* treated Trump like an emergency. *Ever*. . . . I can’t honestly tell you I see a way back for us right now. Certainly not in the short term and not in the medium term. Trump will come out tonight/tomorrow and seem vaguely gracious(ish)—and when January comes, a f*cking nightmare will descend on all of us. . . . Expect January 6 insurrectionists to be freed. Expect massive inflation. Expect a market crash. Expect unemployment to rise dramatically. Expect camps. Expect protesters getting shot. Expect bribes, corruption, chaos abroad—an end to the America you knew.
In another tweet, Abramson stated: “Donald Trump is a historic national emergency, and should be treated as a historic national emergency. And America is quite simply not the country some of us thought it was for having elected him.”