Grief and fear, apathy and outrage, cynicism and hope, resignation and bewilderment all boil together in an iron cauldron hanging by weak chains above a nation on fire. No sharp, clean Sword of Damocles either. Just a rusty cauldron full of boiling toxic slop. Metaphors of lamentation, these terrible words.
Nearly half of my fellow citizens who voted in the November 2024 Presidential Elections voted for MAGA cult leaders Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and their acolytes. The Far, Far Right thus completed its hijacking of the Republican GOP. This odd MAGA movement, a decentralized yet loyal movement that’s an odd mix of mafia familial mindsets, fascism, libertarianism, and Christian nationalism, has kicked out the “regular” Republicans of Lincoln and Reagan. MAGA gave the dirty boot to both he TradCons and the NeoCons. They forced out common sense, pro-business, low tax, pro-strong defense (but not necessarily pro-war) blocs. They antagonized Evangelical and Mormon Christian blocs. All the anti-Trumper GOP factions ridiculed and dismissed the old school Republicans as RINOs, Republicans In Name Only. Those RINOS were so dismayed and felt so abused by the Trump cult many of them held their noses and voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as well as for other Democrats in the 2024 Elections. Many choose not to vote at all, at least not for president.
Evidence has emerged one of the primary reasons Trump legally won election this time is the Republican push to disenfranchise nearly 4 million Americans of their voting rights in the so-called Battleground States. Most of this disenfranchisement was allegedly over “stupid stuff’’ such as misspelled names and addresses, sloppy writing with illegible signatures, people moving without timely notification of address changes, fear for their safety, and confusion with various misunderstandings among those for whom English wasn’t yet their primary language. This strategic push targeted poorer people, often of color, with less education. Migrants were also among those targeted, even legal immigrants. This push is nothing more than ugly voter suppression. Voter suppression is a direct and dire threat to any democratic republic.
Now Trump and Vance along with super-oligarch Elon Musk are blowing up the world order, abandoning and betraying Allies, waging trade wars on our closest trade partners, and threatening conquest of much of the rest of North America. In a stunning return to 18th and 19th Century imperialism, Trump and his allies have at various times proposed annexations, invasions, and conquests of all or parts of Mexico, Canada, Panama, Greenland, Faroe Islands, and even Iceland and Cuba. Now add in … Gaza. Trumps wants America to cozy up to warlords and dictators. Nothing makes any damn sense.
The GOP has taken a wrecking ball to American institutions they badmouth. They display a grotesque, arrogant ignorance and stunning stupidity towards their blatant, careless misunderstanding of bureaucracy, tariffs, taxes, the federal deficit, trade agreements, pollution, climate change, energy, finance, technology, veteran affairs, homelessness, immigration, social security, and national security. It’s beyond disrespect to just plain dangerous. Sometimes Trump, Vance, and Musk seem intent on deliberately hollowing out the Federal government in order to hasten its collapse so the vampires of industry can get their bloody fangs into these public corpses to reanimate them with privatization. Then those suckers will profit at the public trough while the public starves.
Critics right and left cry, “Fascism!” and “Nazis!” True, and then again Trump is not ideological. He’s not a natural Fascist ideologue. What Trump is, however, is the political equivalent of a Mafia mob boss. Vance is ideological, and Musk seems to be as well. Musk in particular is more of a post-fascist, future-fascist technocrat driven by ubercapitalistic, neofeudal, entrepreneurial corporatocratism. Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, and Mao were ideological. Stalin, not so much. Ditto for Putin. Stalin arose from the bureaucracy during a time of revolution and civil war. His power was rooted in the bureaucracy that functions from one regime to the next as it accrues more and more “deep state” power. China’s Xi, however, is ideological. Even put out his Communist equivalent to Mao’s infamous Little Red Book. Then again, after the Nazis and Communists took over their respective countries, underneath the ideology being paraded around the Mafia mob boss mentality took over and the predators preyed like hunting spiders upon the wealth of the countries they plundered.
But I grieve. I cry. I fret. My prayers ramble on and peter out. I feel paralyzed at times and don’t know quite what to do next. Plus I’m nearly 66 at the time of this writing and struggling with health issues and the financial losses of the Great Recession, still, and the Covid Pandemic.
How much longer can we Americans keep on kicking the can of civil war down the road? There probably isn’t much road left to keep on kicking that can. Has anyone else thought of such matters? Anyone?
America is at a crossroads. And we citizens cannot wait two years for the midterms or for the rest of Trump’s four years to bring in relief. After all, there’s J.D. Vance and a cult of MAGA maggots waiting in the wings. And Trump fancies aloud, with some GOP support, for a third presidential term.
The United States, which has always been an empire of sorts, an odd empire that likes to hide its imperialism in shame, may be about to embark on a proud, open neoimperial expansion. It has moved from the creeping, intermittent, back and forth quasi-dictatorships from Nixon’s imperial presidency onwards towards a full authoritarian despotism. We may well collide with other regional and world powers in a world war of sorts.
We citizens have choices. We may join in and celebrate the new dictatorship of the president who seeks to become a king. Or we fight, flee, freeze, or fawn.
Postscript:
Felt so glum about my country I didn’t post this to my website. So I sat on it. Participated in the last two No Kings Day demonstrations. Been quietly preparing for … what, we’re not certain. We dread civil war with collapse of our energy grip and fragmentation into regional warlordism and revenge killings. We dread a world war with a thermonuclear exchange even more. My wife and I considered moving to a number of different countries, and we chose to stay and fight despite our age and health issues. Plus, challenges with new careers, post-retirement finances, and learning languages in a move abroad proved significant. She’s Deaf, and I’m Hard-of-Hearing with severe ADHD and Dyscalculia. Learning new languages feels overwhelming now. Plus our friends and family members chose to stay, for the most part.
Well, I do turn 67 years old in ten more days. Life goes on. The truth, however, is even tho I stay active, I’m exhausted. And my wife, a decade behind me in age, comes home from work so worn out she has little energy left for much beyond contemplating life from the comfort of our couch.
Elon Musk and his DOGE are now gone from our government, although Musk is still a rabid supporter of Trump. He’s a stand for White supremacy, making lots of babies, moving one-way to Mars, and for extreme corporatocratic capitalism everywhere. Otherwise my sentiments from over a year ago still stand as true during these days of more and more war, political and social turmoil, and economic distress. America has always had more than its share of ugly histories and bitter problems, but its promise and potential has outshone its wickedness more often than not. Our constitutional democratic republic is broken, however, and the world heads towards increasing violence and turmoil as climate conditions worsen. Who knows what any runaway AI will do with us immature, self-destructive humans? Sigh. I lament the reality of my nation today.
William Dudley Bass
Thursday 13 March 2025
Saturday 18 April 2026
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sources for 2025:
Common Dreams: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/voter-suppression-2024-election
FactCheck: https://www.factcheck.org/2024/11/trump-won-the-popular-vote-contrary-to-claims-online/
The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint: https://sdvoice.info/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won-here-are-the-numbers/
Copyright © 2025 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.