Thread by @JYSexton

All right. We have to talk about how Trump's openly calling for elections to be canceled and stolen and this incredibly dangerous misconception that everything is fine and fixed now that he's slated to leave office.

He's a symptom of a much larger disease.

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This is a much, MUCH bigger conversation that needs to happen, and I'm trying to work through it on here, but I'm really concerned about how short our memories are, how eager we are to be rid of Trump and Trumpism, and how that's going to make things so much worse.

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I've gone on the record now for awhile, that I thought the coup was both a real attempt to steal the election and also a grift, and that I think we're probably to the point where we might ALMOST be out of the woods in regards to this election.

But that's only one chapter.

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Right now, as the President of the United States is openly urging Republicans to steal an election and consolidate power, people are already talking about whether us critics who told you this would happen were alarmists.

Because he failed. Not because it didn't happen.

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Meanwhile, for four years we lived in a state of constant cruelty, grift, and fascistic terrorism. Already, because Trump was beat at the ballot and because his coup attempt is failing, people are pretending like it wasn't so bad.

Because. It. Failed.

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Well, Trump didn't fail. He had four years of disrupting every institution, injecting more and more fascism into the bloodstream of the country and corruption into the halls of power.

And the GOP lapped it up with a smile on their faces. This thing is only beginning.

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The Republican Party is a fascistic movement with no principles beyond the consolidation of power and profit.

That they are standing by while Trump pushes this conspiracy theory AND are actively using it for fundraising and electoral appeals tells you everything.

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Just because Trump will leave the White House in January doesn't mean this will stop, and people's desire to move beyond him at any and all costs is going to allow this thing to grow and fester ever more than it already has.

I get relief. But we're not safe by any means.

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I'm thinking a lot about how we move beyond trauma, or at least swallow it down and pretend like it's past, only for it to consume us later.

It feels like that's what's happening with Trump, as well as this moment with coronavirus and growing fascism.

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This country has done itself a disservice by chopping our political lives into seasons moving from one major election to another.

It shortens our memory and eradicates planning and context. To think that Trumpism will just disappear isn't just irrational it's dangerous

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The relationship between Trump and his base, a dysfunctional dependency that is both fascistic and a common grift, has exposed long festering problems within our system that are poised to destroy us if we don't fix our problems.

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I just have a hard time grasping how we all just went through these past four years, witnessed all of this, suffered this, and got so close, and now people are pretending like it wasn't that bad or that it didn't reveal much larger problems that extend beyond Trump.

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It's becoming obvious to me, and to others I'm talking to who follow this, that Trump is a precursor to something much larger and more sinister.

Nothing is solved. If anything, we're bleeding from a gaping wound and telling everyone we're totally fine.

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Beating Trump at the ballot gave us a moment to breathe, one more shot at trying to avoid collapse and a more overt, effective fascism.

Pretending like we dodged a bullet and that there aren't MANY more in the chamber is only going to doom us to a really awful outcome.

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