The Road Ahead

Biden's going to win and Trump's going to attempt a coup and that means a lot of people who have been very flippant about him need to learn very quickly how this works. Trump will almost certainly not succeed at a coup (for a variety of reasons) but he will try his best and it will not be a funny or pathetic thing to witness.

Trump is not a petulant child. He's not throwing a tantrum by refusing to concede.

Trump is a billionaire president with 70 million fascist sympathizers armed and ready to go, probably a good 20% (if not more) of whom are ready to die for him.

Tantrums are impotent and powerless. Trump is powerful and vicious. The last 4 years have been dominated by people trying to understand politics through the only lens they have - their own interpersonal experiences.

So you hear people say things like "He's gaslighting us!" or "He's a big baby!" or "He's a sore loser!"

None of those things are true. Those are all things that only make sense when you're talking about regular people and interpersonal reactions.

What people call gaslighting is fascist propaganda and it's not aimed at you nor were you ever gaslighted by him. Trump saying that Democrats are trying to steal your windows never made you question your own reality - it's not gaslighting when a president lies to the public in obvious ways, it's using the bully pulpit stoke rage against his enemies by adlibbing emotional truths to people who don't care about material truths (which, by the way, is exactly what Obama did and does to liberals - he was materially a bad president and is materially a bad human being, but that doesn't feel emotionally true; he speaks in emotional truths because that's what works when you're trying to distract from material conditions).

What people call “being a baby” or a “sore loser” are in fact fascist power grabs. It’s not petulance to call election results fraudulent, it’s staging a coup. Trump is a powerful and dangerously effective and competent fascist. Remember: Hitler was a stone cold moron with fantastical plans that no one took seriously whose advisors were constantly having to reign him in from his weird flights of fancy.

Trump is not a smart man or a skilled man or insightful man or a deliberate man. But he doesn't need to be any of those things to stage a coup. He just needs to be cruel and lucky and have enough institutional backing to succeed.

I do not believe he has the backing. I don't believe he has the institutional support anymore to pull this off. But that does not mean the next two months will go smoothly and it is incredibly dangerous and frankly naïve to pretend like Trump is merely an upset toddler throwing a fit because you took away his toys. That's not what's happening. That's not how power works and that's not how politics works.

It is more important now than it has been at any point in the last four years to understand that you cannot talk about or view politics through an interpersonal lens. Trump is not your coworker or your friend or that guy in college you hated. Trump is a billionaire demagogue with fascist aspirations and 50-70 million people who want nothing more than to see him become president for life. You have no frame of reference for that in your own life so stop trying to approach it that way and start accepting that this is something different.

I spend most of my political energy focusing on Democrats because that is the only political institution worth going after. Republicans and Trump are tautologically the enemy. Critiquing the enemy doesn't make sense - "Can you believe he did this?!?" Yes, I can, because he's the enemy. You wouldn't say "Can you believe the Nazis did something cruel?!?" so there is no reason to say the same about McConnell or Trump or the Republicans. Lava is hot. I'm not going to spend my time and energy going "Oh my god did you see that lava is hot??? The lava is still hot today! Can you believe that the lava burned things?!?" The lack of time and energy spent talking about Trump is not a reflection on his importance or threat, it’s a strategic decision to be proactive not reactive in dealing with very real enemies and dangers.

I would hope that the brunch liberals and people who didn't start giving a shit about politics until 4 years ago go back to being quiet because they have been unhelpful at best and actively harmful at worst in the ways that they misunderstand power and misinterpret political conflict. But assuming that people who are excited for Biden so they can "go back to not thinking about politics" have any sort of moral or practical investment in fighting fascism, it is going to be necessary that they quickly come to terms with what fascism is and what it isn't. You cannot vote out fascism. That is not what we've done here. We bought ourselves breathing room and that is something to celebrate and be grateful for. But the fight is far from over and Trump is far from being irrelevant.

Part of the path ahead is being unflinching and uncompromising about what has happened and what's happening and not allowing all of this to get white washed the way so many have done and are trying to do with Bush. I fully expect that half the people on here who have been decrying Trump for 4 years will begin rehabilitating him and the Republicans almost immediately. I fully expect for there to be calls for civility and unity and coming together from people who have been calling Trump orange Hitler. I fully expect that the desire for stability and comfort will draw people toward pretending everything is fine and back to normal the moment Biden is declared winner.

That is not how fascism works nor is that how power works and there cannot be any equivocating about the problems we still face and the reality that there is a small but very loud and very serious minority of people in this country who deeply hunger for fascism and who have a billionaire leader who is all too happy to fill that role.

Lastly, Russia isn't behind this and that shit needs to stop now.

It was an indulgence that was always causing harm but it's been too difficult to dissuade people from believing that nonsense to make it worthwhile to make that the top priority. But it's gone on too long - it's a convenient narrative that absolves your friends and family and fellow citizens and leaders from their choices and values. "Democrats didn't fail, it was Russians!" "My uncle isn't a fascist, it's Russians!" No, it wasn't. Mitch McConnell doesn't give two shits about Russia and peddling this bullshit just makes everyone's work harder. It's confusing shared power interests with conspiracy. Sometimes the Russian government has interests that align with those in US power. Sometimes not. The US and Russia worked together a ton under Obama and also had conflicts. Same under Trump.

This notion that Trump and Putin are special buddies is so utterly at odds with reality and history it's not worth spending another day indulging in good faith - this is nonsense drummed up by Democratic institutions to protect their reputation and deflect responsibility for their failures and malice. It's not that the Russian government has no interest in US politics, it's that that interest is no greater or more influential with Trump than it's ever been before and the red-scare cold war fear mongering is mostly a benefit to morally derelict Democrats who are all too happy to watch people spin in circles yelling about Putin and Moscow and ignoring the actual influential and powerful people within the Democratic party who are failing the people.