One week ago, millions of Americans took to the streets in every corner of the nation to declare a simple idea. America doesn’t tolerate kings. Unless they’re drag kings, of course. We’re quite okay with those little darlings in all their fabulous variety. Otherwise, no thank you. Our country was founded on the idea that we won’t be ruled by fiat or fist. We designed a system inherently at odds with itself to ensure our chance at evolving beyond our dysfunction.
While it hasn’t been easy or pretty, downright horrific and tragic for many, this system of checks and balances has kept us moving in a generally progressive direction for nearly 250 years. The last couple decades has seen even more growth with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion for all those marginalized demographics still left behind. What we couldn’t have known until Obama was elected was a deep-rooted illness still existed within our body politic. The Tea Party craziness emerged from that dark heart and metastasized into MAGA within eight short years. We’ve all endured the pain and suffering of that cancer growing in our midst.
We’re nearly ten years into that insane detour. We’ve suffered a global pandemic that took more than a million lives in the US alone, mostly due to a botched federal response that preferred platitudes and conspiracy theories over tried and true public health strategies and tactics. This led to a very predictable recession and economic meltdown that was barely averted by an incoming Democratic president left to cleanup the Republican mess. Again. The American voter promptly forgot what normal feels like and decided to bring back the naked emperor for another go, along with a GOP-dominant Congress.
However bad we thought it would be, the truth has been infinitely worse. The very day this insane asshole took office, he pardoned all of the January 6th insurrectionists convicted of crimes against the United States and serving federal prison sentences for their violent acts that day. It was clear that normal citizens didn’t have a sufficiently warped imagination to guess how bad it was really going to get. That pardon was followed by a flurry of blatantly illegal executive orders targeting transgender and nonbinary citizens, universities and large law firms. He also penned executive orders to reshape the government.
The worst vendetta started by the racists in the White House was the absolutely unhinged warfare being waged against our immigrant communities, both legal and otherwise. Almost immediately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents spread out across the country to start rounding up mostly innocent people to make it seem like they were delivering on the campaign promise of mass deportations of “violent” criminals. Snatched off American streets by masked thugs without identification or warrants led to deportation to an El Salvadorian gulag.
All of these nefarious moves were predicted well before the election as laid out in the dystopian blueprint for a white Christian nationalist America outlined by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. A conservative-packed Supreme Court has made that project a lot easier to implement, but there have been roadblocks in lower courts with the high court making a couple of rulings that slowed down our march toward fascism. Didn’t stop it, of course, but slowed it down enough for We The People to get off our dead asses and take to the streets in unprecedented numbers culminating in the No Kings protests.
As I write this, we’re learning of an American airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities a week after Israel started an aggressive war of drone and missile attacks on the Islamic state, many in the capitol city of Tehran. An already fragile region has just been indiscriminately kicked like an angry hive of wasps. Iran’s response is likely to be asymmetrical and unpredictable but deadly accurate in targeting our weaknesses in the area and beyond. We are far more vulnerable than our “leaders” would ever admit. There will be a price to pay that is far higher than what most Americans are willing to accept without massive pushback.
No telling where we go from here, but the fact remains we are a midterm election away from anything resembling Congressional oversight of this insane regime. In the meantime, the average American citizen across the political spectrum (not including the cultish MAGA goons) will need to keep speaking out. Keep demanding justice. Keep saying no. I’m confident we’ll get through this crisis like so many that came before it, stronger and more resolute, but the horror will likely get worse before it gets better.
