this is a trap-- it is also a test of the american people
Donald John Trump is not an American President. When we tell the story of him as a president, we mischaracterize the choices coming out of the Executive Branch as “incompetence” and “recklessness.” This sane-washes his actions and gives him the cover he needs to continue to commit crimes.
To characterize Trump in this way encourages people to see him as a failing politician who will be wrecked during midterms— when, in truth, he’s a dying mobster, with no affinity or loyalty to this country, who is paying off his debts.
He is, first and foremost, a Russian asset, and he is (through misdirection) waging a proxy war on the people of the United States, the US military, and all federal US agencies— with the express intent of collapsing the United States as we know it.
This, in turn, allows him to pay off the backers who ensured he’d ascend to the presidency in 2024: the white South African techno-fascists (and JD Vance), who are gobbling up public resources like vultures, readying themselves for a time when US currency and democracy have collapsed so that they can take a sledgehammer to our country and remodel it into a network of “freedom cities” (another word for “the company store”).
Trump is also paying off debts to the white nationalist militias who stormed the Capitol on January 6th (the muscle of the techno-fascists), who now make more money and have more power than any federal agency in the United States— while also existing above the law to the extent that they can murder people in this country, citizen or not, with impunity. These same men are working in concentration camps, where they are sexually assaulting women and children, denying people medical care, and taking bets on which of our imprisoned neighbors will commit suicide next.
Finally, he owes a debt to the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society, both fronts for the homegrown white Christian nationalists who want to wage a “holy war” to bring about the “end times,” while subjecting women, queer people, trans people, disabled people, and Black and brown people to inhumane repression, criminalization, sexual violence, and domestic terror.
There’s a reason each of these techno-fascists have islands and bunkers to insulate themselves from this matryoshka doll of fuckery, in which you and I, and everyone we love, are directly in the crosshairs.
The situation we are in is frightening, infuriating, and crazy-making. But we are not without agency. The answer to the poly-crises we must confront is simple (but not easy): we must build parallel systems of support and give to each other everything this treasonous orange carcass and his Russian-backed, child-raping, billionaire cabal have stolen from us.
It is very important that we begin this work now, because, where there are power vacuums, violence enters. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught in a crisis without a hyper-local, neighborhood-level response. If we aren’t able to organize ourselves, chaos will ensue (as designed), and that (orchestrated) disorder will be used as pretext for further repression (flock cameras, drone surveillance, digital ID, political prisoners, theft of our constitutional rights, invasions of our neighbors’ sovereignty, and so forth).
We must test ourselves in this moment by relearning what it means to be a patriot and what it means to be an engaged neighbor.
Capitalism, a literal invention from the bowels of chattel slavery, has kept many of us atomized, isolated, and steeped in learned helplessness. If we want to prevail, we must move around and outside the white supremacist, settler-colonial systems that have been designed (since the invasion of Turtle Island) to keep us chained to vulture capitalists— who have only ever gotten ahead through murder, theft, threats, fraud, and enslavement.
a note on midterm elections
When I say Midterm elections won’t save us, I am not saying “don’t vote.” PLEASE DO VOTE. It’s still important for us to see and feel the election tampering and invalidation, with our own eyes, so that we stop pretending this can all be fixed through institutional means.
These fascist f***s are wrecking the very institutions that once provided us a means for remedy. We are going to have to organize around and outside the systems we’ve relied on for decades (if not centuries), and it is important for that work to start now, because it is imperative that we have a response to any electoral skullduggery.
When I talk about the imperative for a response to any attempt to invalidate the people’s vote, I don’t mean another goddamn No Kings protest. Look. I’m just as inspired to see all of our numbers you are, but it is simply not enough to show up with signs.
We need to take those impressive numbers and move into formation— in our neighborhoods— to organize parallel systems of support that prevent these child-raping treasonous a******s from putting their boots further on our necks.
Symbolic protests are important, up to a point. But when you don’t take those numbers and give people something concrete to DO to move the socio-political dial, you’re just wasting everyone’s time. Also, these concentrated rallies make democracy-protectors soft target during a time in which— thanks to these treasonous fascists and their illegal war— retaliatory terror attacks are on the rise in the US.
Right now, we don’t need a concentrated show of numbers. We already know we have millions on the side of democracy. That’s excellent news, but these are not democracy times, where one can expect to march the streets every other month and assume that people who are not abiding by Democracy’s script will somehow, inexplicably, bend to our will.
We need to disperse our numbers into hyper-local formation and to do the necessary work to keep each other and the flame of our democracy alive.
references from my video essay
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