Without a doubt, the last few months have been depressing, to say the least. First came the Delta resurgence, which hit many places – even ones that were here to fore considered “safe.” Then, it was made worse in states like Florida and Texas, where their governments just turned a blind eye to the pandemic, pretending that it either was not happening or, worse yet, going out of their way to ally with the anti-vaxxers in a craven effort to appeal to the Fox News set.
The results were nothing short of deliberate murder:
Then came 2016.
2016 was a disaster of manifest proportions for the United States
And the jury is still out as to whether the country will actually survive it – or that we will face an even greater descent into political hell in the next few years.
Emboldened, these forces will try again, whether under the leadership of the dictator or not, and I am far from the only one who thinks they will be much better organized next time. In fact, they are already laying the quasi-legal groundwork in many “red states” to nullify election results in 2022 and 2024 that are not to their liking.
So, what comes next after this terminal crisis? Not having prophetic powers, there is no way I can say. I do feel safe in saying, with the late Leonard Cohen, that no one with any decency is going to like it — and not a few “indecent” folks won’t care for it, either. In the same way, I was one of the “alarmists” who foresaw a mortal threat to the American republic, along with massive loss of life, from the dictator’s election in November 2016. We were mocked and scorned at the time. There was no way that I or anybody else could have foreseen the exact form events would take — the fact that the mass death we have endured over the past year and a half has been the result of a plague the dictator denied was even happening, a denial his followers “doubled down on,” as the annoying catchphrase has it. Nevertheless, we who sounded the alarm were right that the future was grim. I am sorry to say it is even grimmer now, even after the temporary and shaky restoration of the ancien regime, the U.S. republic, in the person of Joe Biden.
No, we cannot say now precisely what horrors await the formerly United States. We can specify some visions that almost certainly will not materialize.
The benefit of being my age is that I have been lucky enough to have seen the different United States and, more importantly, the workings of other nations that actually provide far better for their citizens than we ever will.
When I think of what might have happened, what could have been possible, what should have been done legislatively and socially in this country, it stirs in me white-hot anger. One that only has grown stronger as time has passed. There are some people – my classmates included – who say I have no right to be angry. But, I tell them repeatedly, they are wrong. Their apathy and refusal to speak out make them complicit with the horrible crime that is being perpetrated. We as a country deserved far better.
Even Chunky Bobo realizes it:
The decline of the Whining States of America did not have to happen. It was not inevitable. It could have been avoided. I have the right to be angry that it did not. As Mr. Pierce explains:
There is no longer any reason to try to “understand” these people. Nor should there be any compunction about doing whatever we can to read them out of American politics, because they clearly have opted out on their own. They should be considered anathema, as should the entire Republican Party and the modern conservative movement that animates it. Anything that can be done without including them should be done for the good—to say nothing of the sanity—of the country. Raw political power should be used to push through whatever of this administration’s policy priorities can be passed without any Republican help whatsoever. Majoritarianism should be invoked without mercy, and by whatever legitimate means necessary, and the window of opportunity to do that is closing fast.
It doesn’t matter if 53 percent of them say they believe the former president* is still the president* because they actually believe it, or they say it because it makes them one of The Elect. The effect on democracy is the same. They are poison in the bloodstream. And they’re proud of it.
This is beyond the beyond. There is no compromise with this. There is no common ground. There is no deal to be struck. Millions of our fellow citizens are lost in rebellion against reality, and the only solution for the common good is to isolate them from decision-making and hope enough of them find their way back to make the country governable again.
And for those of us who pledged to work for the ideals, we once thought America could achieve – we have more than earned the right to speak out in our anger.