It Happens Fast

I was talking with my wife the other day about the state of things–well, we do that pretty much every day–when we started talking about the reason why things are the way they are. I think if you're here you can probably agree to some degree or another that we stand at the end of the world as we know it due to capitalism and white supremacy, yes? We, and the literal planet, are being bled of worth until we can no longer stand it anymore.

But, couldn't this have been done better? Couldn't the capitalists see that it would be easier to treat us a little bit better, so that we'd go quietly into the dark? The conclusion my wife came to is that, unfortunately, the cruelty is the point. We are descending into fascism, but it's important to remember that this isn't happening because our country is doing so poorly that it's collapsing; it's because the rich are bleeding the rest of us dry, creating a kind of artificial collapse. It's the rich, the 1%, that are effectively forcing us into this death spiral. The capitalist class is in charge, after all–the fascism is how they maintain capitalism when any alternative becomes more appealing.

I was thinking about this–about how our fates are tied with these people for whom we are just a byproduct, not even the product itself–and about how the people doing the actual work of ruling us are not especially good at it. The rich govern our government with money, but the government governs us with violence. It directs its ire at vulnerable subsets of the population, gins up rhetoric, and says "they're doing this to you." When of course nothing could be further from the truth, and the subtext, legible for the masses or not, is "the boots could be coming for you next."

We look back on history as a living document filled with people who knew what they were doing because, looking back, it may appear as if things could only go that way or were engineered to do so. But I don't think that's always true. I know it's not true today. The truth today is that the most powerful people in the world don't care about you, their lackeys don't know what to do, and the result is millions, if not billions, of lives hang in the balance*. With that framing, apathy and ineptitude become irrelevant. The fuel has been spilled, matches are at the ready.

*This is, as always, the case mostly for those in the global South. I do not expect millions of people to die in the United States short of a nuclear war. The government will, however, kill millions of people around the globe by withholding aid or exacerbating climate change.

Next Phases

Where my metaphor ceases to be a metaphor is in the ever-expanding number of cities in which Trump is insisting the US military and ICE be deployed. In these cities, and in areas where ICE is pushing and the people are pushing back, we are at risk of creating real conflict. I do not, emphatically, say this to make us hesitate. We should be pushing back. But this is how the new era we are in really begins to show its teeth.

ICE, or the Guard, kill someone at a protest. We, in turn, riot. Someone on their side gets hurt, or killed. We take territory and keep it, maybe surround an ICE detention center and effectively lay siege to it. Trump calls in the Marines. Someone on our side–or not on our side–opens fire. There is a bloodbath. I hope you don't find this far-fetched.

This could be how it all starts. A clampdown by the fascists, resistance from our side. Anywhere you put the two sides at such opportunity for friction, you risk the spark. But it's going to be weird, I suspect. It's becoming clearer that Trump is deeply unpopular, that his administration is deeply unpopular. He's building a ballroom for the White House and gilding everything in reach in gold when we are on the verge of a deep recession, and prices for everything are rising. This is not how you get a population to submit to authoritarianism.

War and Collapse

With this weak foundation, I am again thinking about modern civil conflict. Balkanized regions of the US, most–if not all–fighting against the yoke Trump is trying to throw on them. It will be messy, and hard, and weird. Civil wars tend to happen in countries that have weak governance, whether fascistic or no, and it feels like Trump's power is slipping, even as he is holding harder onto what he has. His military might is all projection, with Hegseth, as I write this, laying the groundwork for kicking everyone who isn't a white man out of the armed forces. That's roughly a third of all service members at a time when they should be trying to hold on to everyone they can.

Whether or not we are faced with the whole of the US's military might or not, we're in for a hard time. While I take heart in the possibility that we won't be living in anything more than a collapsing state with a wallpapered veneer of Mussolini-esque fascism, this does not mean that it won't become harder for most of us simply to get by. A nation at war with itself is not going to respond well to disasters, not going to have stable infrastructure, and not going to put the welfare of its citizens first. Even if you were to live in some utopian Cascadia-sort of enclave, you would find yourself having a harder time doing things that, until recently, were relatively easy. Like getting a cup of coffee. I'm gonna miss the hell out of coffee.