11/09/2024
ORANGE DAWN
On Tuesday last, the decades long strategy by the Republican party to divide the left, to demagogue their own constituents, and to drive the nation towards an authoritarian fascism that verges on outright white supremacy succeeded. The nation into which I was born, about which I felt so much (wounded) pride, and to which I have genuinely dedicated my life in an effort to make better, will not be there in 2026 when it should have been celebrating its 250th birthday.
The USA as we used to know it will not make it to the celebration of that amazing milestone. History would have told us it was improbable, and I guess the US wasn't nearly as exceptional as I once believed. It was, ultimately, the delusions of vain American exceptionalists that drove us into the ditch. And if Americans insist on succumbing to fascism, who would I be to try and save them, right? Human beings just don't impress often enough, do they? Never have, never will, I suppose.
Was it nice while it lasted? This nation that we all love to hate so much - was it good to participate in it at all during its final tortured death throws? You are the fool of all fools if you're a Democrat waking up this morning and looking yourself in the mirror and - you poor, wretched, weak-minded softy - try to figure what YOU did wrong or what our party did wrong more broadly. You're as badly brainwashed as the know-nothing right.
How can any of us be expected to fight until there's no fight left? How to fight the relentless wave of American fascism without it taking over one's entire life? Who in the hell ever promised us happiness anyway? What was available to us more than its pursuit? And what now...? How to pursue one's right to happiness while awash in an ocean of blood red?
Tell me if this sounds familiar, all you small-town, redneck, asinine, know-nothing, wannabe fascists: Donald Trump will never be my President. To the ignorant, addled, supine legion of his supporters: You will never appear victorious in my sight. All the pain and all the suffering and all the horror that you insist on subjecting the rest of us to - it could never change my opinion. I have known you all this time. I have watched, I have listened, I learned your foul precepts at the knee of conservatives just as addled as you are.
AND I REJECT ALL OF YOUR KNOW-NOTHING LIES.
At the end of the day, just like it didn't matter if anyone else agreed with me in high school when I had to defend the concept of evolution against an attempt by a Christian-pastor-science-teacher to mislead the entire classroom about the existence of dinosaurs (proposing to the class that maybe God put their bones in the ground to test our faith).
I fought the law and the law won? Not American law. American jurisprudence got trashed this decade. Everyone who put their faith in the justice system to deal once and for all with a crime-spreeing politician like Trump, got betrayed by the slow-walking. Now it's too late to impress me with who you are, dear country, as much as I would have liked to believe.
If you inspire me again, it will be with your rebirth and - just as the history of baseball statistics must be forever scarred by the criminal activities of its players and owners - the years of Trump 2.0 will have to carry an asterisk mark. I'm not going too far when I tell you that, it's quite possible they could succeed in certain constitutional amendment efforts over the course of the next four years, and then the old country will be well and truly gone.
I told my fellow Dems this cycle, we are the new conservatives, and I meant it. Still true, to the extent there remains a Democratic party. Social Democrats - If you were one of the people in your ranks who walked away from the obligation to defend democracy in 2024 by casting your vote AGAINST the flaming, fooking, tomcatting fascist, I count you no better than a MAGA-voter who rudely turns their back on their fellow citizens at every possible hour of need. I will NEVER forget about you.
Democrats of the old order: We had the chance to crack the Republican party in half. To send it reeling into the dustbin of history FOR REAL; to leave the MAGA movement a fractured, cast off remnant of know-nothingism, permanently consigned to the so-called dustbin of history. But unfortunately, we have more than a few left-wing know-nothings on our side as well. I'm listening to the same punditry as you, and I'm hearing the multitude of fair explanations for how this came to be and, goddamn right I've got my own opinion on the subject. Here's how I'd put it:
WHEN YOUR ENEMY TELLS YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM
We didn't want it to be a civil war, but they told us it was a civil war, so that meant it WAS a civil war and we had to actually treat it like one. Because so many on the left wanted to deny the existence of this real, actual, sometimes even bloody civil war already taking place in our midst, we generaled it like McClellan instead of Grant. We forget to throw in a Sherman, unfortunately, to raze the south properly and, sure enough, all kinds of election chicanery unfolded. The winner of the final contest between MAGA and 'mocracy will have internalized the lessons of that antique war more fully.
You will stop entreating with your enemies as if they are all 'well-meaning people' and understand that Machiavelli and Sun Tzu make better sense of how to interact with a know-nothing. If they never display the signs of know-nothingism then you will never have to treat them like the enemy, but if they show the signs, you know you're in the presence of a fascist. Now you do, at least. At least, I hope. Is everyone ready to treat it like war, now that we're on the eve of surrender?
I love the Democratic Party and I'm damn sure not planning to leave it short of deporting myself, but I wish to God that those of you with full-time jobs, those of you with intact families, those of you who already own houses had much less sway than you really do. God help me, just like I keep tabs on walkaways, I'm watching other people's reactions to the orange curtain that's about to fall. We have best practices to follow in this regard as well, so let the re-education begin.
- Darth Wolverine
