The choice isn’t just between candidates. It’s between a society where facts and laws matter and human beings have basic dignity or a purposefully decaying country where fascists keep us imprisoned in conspiracy theories and petty, murderous feuds while plundering everything.
This moment with Trump, these past few years, have been disastrously bad with countless incompetencies and cruelties and unnecessary tragedies.
But it’s only going to get worse if we don’t reject this madness and get to the hard and necessary work beyond Trump.
I keep trying to warn people. Reality is malleable and for Trumpism to continue, whether by victory or plunder, is to dedicate this country to a murderous and self-ruinous alternate reality.
Yes, Trump and his base peddle obvious lies. But this election is about making them real
Make no mistake. This election is the beginning of a bigger fight. Defeating Trump doesn’t fix the problems he embodies. But it’s a choice between fighting the infection and embracing it in totality and allowing it to wash over us.
A win, legitimate or otherwise, is a surrender.
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Donald Trump's victory in 2016 was made possible through a variety of factors, but it was the culmination of a generation-long project by the Republican Party to reestablish white aristocratic supremacy.
It was a rewinding of the clock and inherently fascist.
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The disturbing truth we must wrestle with is that American history has been manipulated, edited, and weaponized.
Trumpism is an attempt to roll back time to hidden white aristocratic supremacy and if he wins we might be trapped forever.
This moment, this attack on democratic institutions, the theft of the Supreme Court and a possible stolen election, is a result of generations’ worth of lies, manipulations, and an anti-democratic project.
If we’re going to escape it, we must learn how we arrived here.
Hope is not lost.
History teaches us that once we separate truth from fiction, when we organize and act in unison, we can overcome great injustices.
The truth is that this feeling of powerlessness is by design. Read AMERICAN RULE. We’ve been here before and we can still win.
It’s a false choice to say you have to choose between getting the pandemic under control and saving the economy.
Republicans and their wealthy constituency are unwilling to try anything because to even cede an inch would mean admitting our economic order is intentionally unfair.
The powerful in this country know our economy, with its cruelty and vast inequality, is a fragile order in their favor and to even attempt to address the pandemic or people’s suffering might topple that rigged game.
It’s really very simple.
The wealthy and powerful value their wealth and power more than your life, your family’s lives, and the lives of every other American. They’ll sacrifice millions without blinking.
Tell you what, for such a big strong, tough president it sure seems like Donald Trump is as thin-skinned and as pitiable as they come.
It's almost like MAGA and Trumpism are masculine overcompensations that are actually more about weakness than they are strength.
And it's almost like these phenomenons are just masks being worn by insecure, terrified men.
And it's almost like our entire conception of what fascism is, that it relies on "strongmen" is completely wrong and off-base and that we've been misunderstanding masculine insecurity and deadly overcompensation.
This appeal that Trump is now using everywhere that Biden will "take away your guns and your god" has a basis in the fascistic conspiracy theories that have led to mass slaughter and killings, including in America.
Every poll, internal or public, shows that Trump has a narrowing chance of victory, and as that window closes he's going to try more and more dangerous techniques to hold onto power.
What we're talking about is fascistic appeals that regularly inspire terrorism.
Hillbilly Elegy is Right Wing propaganda that actively promotes Reaganomics, the poor as deserving of their suffering, and intentionally obscures racism and white supremacy as major factors in America’s decline.
Also, Hillbilly Elegy became a bestseller because the media needed a Middle American Poverty For Dummies to help explain Trumpism because they had all but ignored suffering outside of their bubbles. It laundered Trumpism, continues stereotyped, and was Right Wing propaganda.
For what it’s worth, most of us who grew up in rural poverty recognize Hillbilly Elegy as a destructive and bad-faith propaganda piece that was championed by people who had no idea what they were talking about and were hopelessly lost in their own privilege.