Thread by @JYSexton

AMERICAN RULE is now out in the world, and I want to talk about why I wrote it.

The myth of American Exceptionalism empowers fascism and white supremacy and represents an existential threat to our freedom and safety.

We're in grave danger.

1/

penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

These reports from these prisons where immigrants are being held, where they're being brutalized and experimented on, they're ghastly and terrible, but this is part of a long and sordid American history of white supremacy and fascism.

We have to deal with it. Now.

2/

American Exceptionalism isn't a slogan. It's a weapon, a nationalistic, religious myth that hides and supports white supremacy behind benevolence.

It's an alternate reality meant to scrub America clean of its worst ills and worst deeds.

It is fascistic and dangerous.

3/

Trumpism is the weaponized denial of reality, a fascistic movement that idealizes a fictional past that never existed, a return to the myth of American Exceptionalism.

Like all fascist movements, it's about controlling reality through violence and oppression.

4/

To defeat Trump and Trumpism, we have to understand where we've been and what we've done. To fight it within the realm of American Exceptionalism is impossible, because that alternate reality is controlled and designed by fascists for the purposes of power and profit.

5/

There's a reason Trump is now touting "patriotic education."

It's propaganda, the forcible reeducation of Americans who recognize that this country is flawed and needs reformed. That we deserve better and that a fairer, more human future is not only possible but necessary.

6/

In Trumpism, you must accept this America we have, this cruel, vacuous, racist, sexist place where human dignity is non-existent and you should just shut up and accept that you're being lied to and manipulated and used.

That is fascism and authoritarianism.

Reject it.

7/

Before I wrote AMERICAN RULE, I thought I understood history. I didn't. I only knew the propaganda, the weaponized myth.

My understanding of what is happening now, in this moment of crisis, only stems from the fact that I went back and reeducated myself and found the truth.

8/

People ask me all the time: is there hope?

There is.

The antidotes to Trumpism and fascism are knowledge, solidarity, and love. We must undo the toxic brainwashing the powerful have given us, find the truth, and then find each other.

9/

It is not patriotic to hold up America as an infallible, perfect nation. It's fascism. It's a religious myth.

This country has done terrible, terrible things, and American Exceptionalism was the means with which it was covered up, laundered, hidden.

10/

To know America is to know a history of slavery, of genocide, of oppression, of fascistic movements.

It's to understand we were ideologically linked to Nazi Germany, that we shared a philosophy with Hitler, that we have been on the precipice of fascism multiple times.

11/

The reason so many live in denial that Donald Trump poses an existential threat is because they are lost in the myth of American Exceptionalism.

They want to believe it can't happen here, but it already has. And it's happening now.

That delusion endangers us.

12/

America has been lost in a dream that was designed to keep us powerless, that was designed to keep us from asking for more, for equality, for basic human dignity.

It's a weapon and we must dismantle it before it seals our fate once and for all.

These are the stakes.

13/

I say this with no hyperbole: America is failing. It offers nothing but violence now. No respite from disease or disasters. No answers. No support.

Nothing but violence for those who question why this nation no longer serves its people.

Violence to shut us up.

14/

The myth of American Exceptionalism has allowed our resources to be stolen from us while inspiring widespread and systematic violence and murder.

It's a cover for white supremacy and disgusting hypercapitalism. We're in a late-stage now, and we have to escape.

15/

Make no mistake. Trumpism is fascism. It follows the same route, the same philosophy. It clings to these dying myths with violent denial.

It will drag us into the abyss if we let it, and the only means we have of defeating it is recognizing the truth and finding one another

16/

Only by knowing our disgusting past can we work to make this a society we can be proud of, where our rights are real and we're treated with basic human dignity.

The alternative is too dark to even fathom, but we have to understand the stakes are very, very real.

17/

We are at a moment of reckoning. Not just with the election, not just with Trump. This entire thing is rotten, and if we don't act with courage, conviction, and immediacy, we may never have the chance again.

We are on the precipice, and we have to find something good.

18/

We can't live in denial of what this country is and what it's been. We have to stare the plague of white patriarchal supremacy in the face, name it, reject it, and find something new and real and human.

The time to worship this country as divine is over.

19/

I'm incredibly proud of AMERICAN RULE. I hope it serves as a very small part of the necessary destruction of this fascistic movement.

Like you, I'm nervous about the state of affairs, this existential, political, social crisis, but I remain hopeful.

I have to be hopeful.

20/20