Trump with his mark on his hands and forehead (obviously photoshopped, for effect).
This Battle can only be Won by Voting
The unfortunate and inexcusable assassination attempt notwithstanding, Trump is still Trump. We must stop him decisively at the ballot box. Until then, we must fight the good fight, the fight of ideas, with everything we have. We must continue to speak out to stop what has become the inevitability of another Trump presidency this November.
A Possible Dystopia
And if Trump wins, after some period of mourning, we are going to have to find a way to accept that we will no longer be living in the democracy our parents fought to protect. We will watch with awe and dread as society crumbles incrementally, as he systematically erodes our faith in our once trusted institutions, as our rights are one by one stripped away, some so gradually as to escape notice. The onslaught of one crisis after another will overwhelm our ability to process and understand what is happening, much like it was during Covid, but much, much worse. Greed, deceit, bribery, abuse and corruption will become the norm, just business as usual, Trump’s model for winning. Survival of the fittest will become the defacto law of the land. We will become a giant Pottersville.
Many of my decent friends and fellow citizens on the right who supported Trump will be happy in this brave new world, at least at first. But eventually they will come to realize their grand revolution was never really about them. Of course, at this point it will be too late. Those not lucky enough to be among the ever shrinking group of Trump loyalists will awaken to what they have done. At first they will blame the usual suspects, the immigrants, the blacks, China, women, liberals, scientists, teachers, intellectuals. But slowly it will dawn on them that the endless, ever growing list of scapegoats never really were the enemy, even as they stand by and watch in horror as each are rounded up and eliminated.
Beacon of Hope
How Could this Happen?
With Trump’s new found immunity, compliments of the Supreme Court, and no guardrails to stop him, he intends to reclassify federal employees as political appointees and replace key executive branch bureaucrats with loyalists. He will make the DOJ his political arm to crush dissent and go after his “enemies.” After he guts key departments like education and homeland security he has openly boasted that he will invoke the
Alien Enemies Act to round up illegal immigrants in an unprecedented mass deportation, which will most certainly create huge disruptions and mass unrest. This will inevitably lead him to declare Marshall Law, causing an implosion of the governing systems and mass chaos.
Some of us will step up to help the marginalized and forgotten, who are trying to navigate this new, hostile world. Many of us will try not to be bitter or vindictive; We will have to remain silent, as dissent will no longer be tolerated and we have our families to consider.
Saturn Devouring His Young
At some point, his supporters will begin to realize it was Trump himself who was trumping up these problems in the first place. But he will continue blaming all the terrible things to come, projecting them onto others who will also need to be eliminated. It turns out Illegal immigrants weren’t raping our women, they were picking our crops, taking care of our children and providing cheap labor. The fact is immigrants commit about the same number of crimes as does the rest of the population. But facts such as these will have long become moot by then.
Remembering
It will become clear that not fixing any of these made-up problems was baked into his plan. That as long as he created more and bigger problems he could keep distracting us from the original “problems,” sowing more danger and more chaos. We will come to realize this was the true genius of Trump. That out of this controlled chaos Trump and his oligarchs will have been able to siphon more control and more wealth for themselves. People will discover that states’ rights and the pro life movement were merely lightning rods, which he used to distract us from his real purpose. History will realize, it was always his only purpose to satisfy his bottomless desire for control without limits. This grand revolution was just a feature of his sociopathy.
And as we enter the long, artless winter of resignation and futility, Trump’s successors will make certain that ONLY our most basic needs are met. We will teach ourselves to be satisfied with that. That is how he and his successors will maintain control for decades. We will settle into a rhythm of distracting ourselves with petty fights over football, cereal brands and an array of meaningless domestic disputes. We will still hold elections but everyone will know they are a sham, the first casualty of a second Trump presidency. Everyone will keep their heads down and mind their own business, while a handful of trump’s corporate oligarchs will bask in the American Dream
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