Did we just survive fascism?
Thoughts from the first few days of Trump's second term.
“And a dark shadow descended over America, stretching from the feet of Lincoln, over the great Colorado River, and finally to the peak of the newly renamed Mt. McKinley.”
If you’re considering writing a post-apocalyptic fiction based on the second Trump presidency, you’re welcome to use that as an opening line.
According to the ‘always correct’ Left, we’ve already had four years of fascism during his first term, and according to the man himself, he was only going to be a dictator for one day. My review of the first few days of a fascist dictatorship? Not so bad.
You’d think it would be worse. Like the only music that will now be played is Lee Greenwood and Kid Rock. A Complete Unknown is pulled from theaters because it’s too jewish, and rivers would run red with the blood of our enemies — or all strategic water reserves would be replaced with Diet Coke. I know plenty of white women who would give up suffrage in order to secure a lifetime supply of the aspartame-laced acerbic beverage.
Obviously, America isn’t a full-fledged dictatorship, but it’s worth saying that it looks less like a democratic representative republic all the time. At this point, I’m not sure what Congress is even doing except grooming future podcast hosts and presidential candidates and harboring the stars of eventual sexual assault allegations. Congress infrequently passes major bills that affect actual domestic policy and seems to be in perpetual threat of shutting down because they can’t agree on how big of a raise they all deserve.
You don’t even need the legislature for war. No one voted on whether we should put troops in Syria (yes, please!) or whether NATO should pursue a policy of Russian provocation. Plenty of billions of dollars were shipped to Ukraine with and without the consent of elected representatives.
We don’t elect politicians who are subject to the demands of their constituency or the stipulations of bargaining with the opposition. These people, more often than not, like to put on little shows with whoever is the object of their ire at any given moment — Hunter Biden, Mark Zuckerberg, Brett Kavanaugh, etc., etc. While these unimpressive individuals struggle to put enough syllables together to go viral for an hour, laws are being made elsewhere: in the brutalist buildings of unelected bureaucrats and, most obviously, on the desk of the Oval Office.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the first few days of a modern presidency.
In Joe Biden’s remarkably bad four years in office, he signed 160 executive orders. Within the first 24 hours of Trump’s return, 67 of them (42%) have already been rescinded by the incoming President. If he keeps going at that rate, he’ll be able to convince the American public that it’s 2021 and a Biden-Harris administration was only a figment of our imaginations.
We just peaceably exchange tyrants every four to eight years. The fates of Bush’s, Obama’s, Trump’s, and Biden’s orders are almost all identical; any that have continuous effects or end dates that extend into the new term are excised from the public record.
The challenge for lawmakers in the 21st century is not to establish thoughtful, sustainable policies for decades to come but to institute laws that are popular with the electorate—i.e., printing money. If it turns out their popularity couldn’t persist past one term, then it’s a good thing we’ve got that control-alt-delete button lying around.
We may live in a quasi-dictatorship these days, but holy smokes, at least it’s not a theocracy.
The Catholic Church, in its infinite wisdom, has weighed in on American immigration policy. Both the Pope and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops have derided Trump’s stance on the border. Pope Francis questioned the president's Christianity when he tried to first build a border wall between the US and Mexico almost a decade ago.
Now, the guy in the funny hat is calling Trump’s deportation plan ‘a disgrace.’
It’s awful funny coming from a man who lives in a literal walled city that punishes people for illegally entering. A decree issued last month from the Vatican strengthened the Holy See’s security and established penalties for those who violate their sacred borders — fines up to $25,000 and prison sentences(!) up to four years.
Turns out all that ‘welcoming the stranger’ nonsense was up to user discretion.
The Pope seems uniquely focused on the perceived indiscretions of America instead of, oh, I don’t know, the execution of women in Iran. He’s been hesitant to overtly criticize the Iranian government for their constant human rights violations and was even nice enough to send his condolences when one heroic helicopter killed the Butcher of Tehran.
I don’t want to single out the guy, but he started it. Francis has never publicly condemned China’s treatment of the Uyghur people but routinely finds the time to critique matters of American national security. Fortunately for the rest of us, papal infallibility doesn’t pertain to sovereign nations’ domestic policies.
The task for the Trump-Vance Administration for the next four years is to make no unforced errors. The right-of-center brain trust coalescing in DC has two years to convince the American public they made the right decision in time for the midterms and two more years to persuade them to continue the project.
As a country, we have a pitiful memory, and we’re terrible at holding political grudges. Remember the Afghanistan withdrawal? Remember covid? Of course, you do. It’s just that we don’t.
That’s the job: make it impossible for US citizens to forget how calamitous the Biden-Harris Administration was.
Don’t use the money printer. Don’t incentivize long, expensive foreign conflicts. Don’t take countless vacations. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t go missing.
I would’ve added ‘don’t blanket pardon every Jan. 6th protestor’ to that list, but he’s already done it. Were a lot of the 1500 or so demonstrators peaceful? Sure. Did some of them assault police officers? Sure. Would it be that hard to separate them?
Also, I’d ask to keep Denali as is. The story of America includes the native population, the French, the Spanish, and more, not everything has to sound like ‘apple pie.’ McKinley’s claim to fame was that he was assassinated by an anarchist in Buffalo, New York. Does he deserve America’s tallest mountain to be named after him? Probably not.
I understand that Mt. McKinley was named that for many years until, under the Obama Administration, it was renamed to Denali, a native American word for ‘the big one.’ Of course, it was called ‘Denali’ long before names like McKinley got off the boat at Ellis Island.
It doesn’t make sense on principle. Tennessee is derived from a native word. So is Mississippi. Should we change those too? New state flags will be in order for the Republic of Dolly Parton and Swampy Kudzu Land.
A gold prospector called Denali ‘Mt. McKinley’ after the American politician, who was only a presidential candidate at the time, and it’s not as if respect and decorum obligate us to honor his creative impulse.
Call it Denali. It’s not ours. It’s ours.
Fascism is a blend of nationalism and corporatism. There were times in the Biden Administration, particularly during covid, when the government and its compliant corporate arms, Twitter, Facebook, Pharma, etc., were either subtly or overtly fascistic.
Over the last several years, financial and industrial powerhouses have shifted their monetary and verbal support to the Left pitting American citizens against gigantism of industry and government. It seemed obvious who the more likely fascists were.
However, accusations of 21st-century right-wing fascism are hard to deny when you have a billionaire president and a multi-millionaire vice president parading around with Elon Musk while the likes of Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg gleefully applaud.
It’s not that there has to be something inherently wrong with this picture, but, you know, watch this space. What you resemble and what you are aren’t always perfectly aligned, so it might be helpful to take a gander in the mirror every once in a while.
On a different note altogether:
Thank god for the return of three more hostages from their waking nightmare. There are not strong enough words to condemn the men who hide behind the lives of women and children. Let the images of their release be a reminder that for every day they spent in captivity, there were celebrities, students, politicians, and other useful idiots advocating for their captors.
There remain over one hundred hostages in Gaza, some of whom are American citizens. The current administration now has the opportunity to do what its predecessor could not: bring them home.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA
Fortunately for all of us, Papal Infallibility doesn’t apply to anything Pope Francis has said.
I for one would like to hear what the new names for states like Tennessee and Mississippi would be before rejecting renaming them outright. Coca-Cola Presents: Football State and Bible-Opoly have a nice ring to them.