Remember and Resist

So let’s take a step back and consider what the long game here is.

Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves have launched their Blitzkrieg against the American republic and are rapidly careening through the Fascist playbook toward absolute dictatorship. In the last week or so we’ve seen multiple assertions of power he does not legally possess, daring patriots to push back against him. We’ve seen purges, not only in the federal government in general but in law enforcement in particular. He’s nominated a bizarre slate of suck-ups, fuck-ups, incompetents, and assholes for key government positions, some of them Cabinet level and some of them not, creatures wholly dependent on his whim and possessing no other qualification than a deep and callous willingness to inflict cruelty on command. We’ve seen the deliberate targeting for extinction of entire groups of vulnerable Americans – and if you’ve ever wondered how the Holocaust happened, by the way, this is it. He’s antagonized our allies, launched utterly stupid trade wars that he’s already lost even though he’s claimed victory because he’s too stupid to see past the next fifteen minutes, threatened military invasions, exacted petty revenge against anyone who has ever crossed him, and generally demonstrated exactly why every thinking human being on the planet was screaming at the American electorate to shitcan this halfwit.

Yeah, the American electorate can be stupid. It’s a gift.

It can be hard to keep up with it all, as noted earlier in this space. But in a very real sense that’s the point of it.

Very little of what he’s done so far has been designed to stick. He’s simply testing to see what he can get away with.

Violating the Separation of Powers? Not yet. Maybe next time. The spineless lickspittles that make up the GOP majority in Congress don’t seem to mind being sidelined out of their Constitutional roles and certainly don’t have the gumption to impeach him as the Constitution already requires.

Installing a blind drunk loyalist at the top of the US military? Accomplished. The US military is trained to refuse unlawful orders, but when they come from the SecDef that distinction might be hard to make so it’s going to get interesting when (not if) Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump decides to unleash lethal force against American citizens for the crime of not being part of his minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves.

And so on.

The point of a Gish Gallop is to overwhelm, demoralize, and distract.

Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump does not want you to see that he is systematically gutting the federal government, turning it into an instrument of his own aggrandizement and removing the guardrails that the Founding Fathers installed to protect the republic from tyranny.

Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump does not want you to see how he has handed over day-to-day policy decision-making to Co-President Elon “Seig Heil” Musk, who has already demanded that federal employees resign en masse and infiltrated the US Treasury’s payments system to shut off federal funds to anyone not subject to Co-President Elon “Seig Heil” Musk’s approval, which is pretty good for a guy who should have been deported decades ago.

Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump does not want you to see that once he’s finished destroying the people you hate he’s going to come after you because that’s just how Fascism works.

You’re supposed to be distracted. You’re supposed to be demoralized. You’re supposed to be overwhelmed.

But forewarned is forearmed, after all, and once you know what the magician knows it isn’t magic anymore. We know what his strategy is, and therefore we can take it into account and respond appropriately.

Do not obey in advance.

Do not forget that Fascism requires submission from more people than can be controlled.

We are Americans. We are perhaps the most stubborn, ungovernable bastards on earth. If we do not wish to be ruled by Fascists, we do not have to be ruled by Fascists.

Remember that in the coming chaos. Remember the larger picture amid the flurry of assaults on all that is worthwhile and sacred.

Remember, and resist.