Of Fascists Fucking Around and Finding Out

I realize now that I have been remiss in not sharing here my genuine and honest thoughts about what is happening in this country right now. I’ve held back some of my thoughts that I have shared privately, but haven’t put to page. It took Kim’s post yesterday, Watching Is Not Prevention, and reader reaction, for me to realize that I had not really leveled with you all. My comment on that post got so lenthy that it became clear it should be a post.

First, you really should go and read Kim’s post, if you haven’t already. People were responding to her and this won’t entirely make sense without that context.

Here are a few of the comments on her post I was responding to.

The first that stuck me broadly was by Blog mainstay and good buddy Sharpie:

Nationwide, statewide, and locally, Dems’ strategy seems to be “let MAGA overplay its hand, while we lay low and win the midterms”.

Meanwhile, American’s are being murdered in the streets, shot in the FACE, denied medical care while they bleed out, by illiterate, racist, fascist thugs being given 50K bonuses of taxpayer money, families are being torn apart, innocent lives ruined, businesses destroyed along with the jobs they provide.

If you’re a Dem and you’re not on in the streets EVERY DAY demanding an end to ICE and the release of all the Epstein files, I hope you get primaried back into anonymity and spend the rest of your pitiful life praying you can make rent AND buy food, and spend your final days wishing you’d have fought for single payer every time you sneeze.

If you’re a lawmaker we pay you to represent us and I don’t see many Dems doing their job.

I don’t care what you did yesterday or last year or if you cured cancer, if you’re not fighting for decency every day then fuck you.

Maybe do something before PedoPOTUS fires up the Insurrection Act, cancels the election, and we all look back a year from now and say Gosh, how did we not see that coming, he only said he’d do it about a million fucking times”.

Followed by Kim’s response to Sharpie:

“Lay low” only works against opponents who respect time, norms, and elections. Authoritarians don’t wait it out. They use the waiting period to finish the job.

By the way, turning rage on people on our own side is not accountability. It’s a loyalty test and it’s emotional arson. It burns allies, not fascists.

If we can’t tell the difference between strategic disagreement and moral failure, authoritarianism won’t have to finish the job. We’ll do it for them.

and finally, Lee’s comment:

I couldn’t agree more! While I don’t have the expertise or experience in what Tucson can do to prevent ICE from being deployed here and engaging in its routinely illegal actions, I strongly believe that our Governor, Attorney General, and our Mayors should ALL have a meeting to discuss precisely what should be put in place to protect Arizona and Tucson from the Hitleresque ICE scenarios being played out in other cities and states.

That’s when I realized I needed to weigh in, replied to Lee, and soon realized I had a post’s worth of words. Here’s my unvarnished thougt, lightly edited and with a few embellishments:

You are assuming they don’t and haven’t. I assure you they have, and they will continue to do so. Planning state insurrections against federal enforcement agents is not something you do openly. Those conversations are happening – they are just not being broadcast.

I understand all of your skepticism of our Democratic leaders willingness to take risky steps. But events will force their hands eventually, unfortunately. Just look at what Walz in doing in MN, like calling up the Guard. There is a reason he dropped re-election; it is a psychological commitment device, not political cowardice. It’s bravest fucking thing I have seen any politician do in recent history: he dropped his bid so that he could remain absolutely committed to this fight without any regard for his political future. He and others are writing, battletesting, and sharing the playbook of how to resist and prevent the abuses of an unhinged and Constitionally unbound and illegitimate federal government.

We Dems have a clear handicap, however, we have to remain inside the law, while they couldn’t give a fuck about norms, laws, civil rights, or even the Constitution itself. We can’t give this Regime the excuses it needs to use the Insurrection Act and have it stand up to Article 3 scrutiny. This Regime has not completely broken with Article 3 branch yet, because they believe -maybe rightly – that they own it. We’ll see. We Dems are fighting with one hand behind our backs. We have to remain non-violent and still totally disrupt the systems by which the Trump Regime projects and abuses power; that’s a hard and long road and a lot of learning by doing has to be done.

We can NEVER escalate any armed conflict, because the fascist Regime has the means and capacity to excalate, to and beyond, any levels we can using our own actual armed fucking forces. Don’t kid yourself, there are a lot of partisans in the ranks, too, who are itching to aim a gun (or drone, or missle) at those fellow Americans who they see as pinko baby-eaters. There WILL be soliders willing to carry out such illegal orders. Sen. Kelly’s reminder was not without purpose and urgency – HE KNOWS. Many of our Democratic leaders recognize what is happening and are taking steps.

I don’t blame our Democratic officials for being cautious, incremental, and quiet about their plans and defenses against Trump’s personal ICE militias (let’s not mince words about what they functionally are now): we are absolutely off the map constitutionally. This Regime is breaking the law, flagrantly violating citizens civil rights, and violating our Constitution with (thus far) total impunity. Their ICE militias are told they have absolute immunity, effectively unlimited budgets, and zero accountability; this Regime has their backs, even when one of them openly murders a civilian citizen for no goodamn reason. NOBODY in this country has a fucking playbook for any this.

We are going to have to help ourselves, our neighbors, and our communities to get through this, and we are only now looking for and absorbing lessons from all those shit-hole countries where the law and governance has broken down. We ARE the shit-hole country now. What else can you call what Trump has made of us? It’s a fucking nighmare come to life, and many are slow to realize this fact, but they will get there.

Unfortunately, getting there WILL claim more lives of more martyrs like Rene Goode before everyone gets there and the massive revolt this will eventually engender begins. We are complancent, lazy, comfortable and coddled as a people, it will take a lot of rude shocks before most average Americans realize that all of this threatens THEM directly.

When they do, there will be a motherfucker of bill to pay, and these fascist fucks haven’t a clue what a can of whoop-ass they are opening for themselves. They haven’t seen any real consequences from our system thus far, so why not keep pressing?

They don’t realize that the reckoning will come from OUTSIDE the system, not within it. Americans value their freedom, and they WILL die for it – the fascist Regime don’t believe they have anything to fear from the average American: they are SOOOO disastrously wrong and historically pig fucking ignorant. They are fucking around, and they are GOING to find out. There are wannabe empires now in their graves as a result of the spirit of liberty living in average Americans’ hearts.

Someday – and I hope it is soon – a democratically legitimate and law abiding government will be building monuments to the martyrs who will soon die defending our freedom: Rene Goode will likely be just the first.

I would just add to this a simple idea that I hope will resonate with some of you. The great American socialist leader Eugene Debs wrote, “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” And, of course the immortal poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

I would add to these humanistic and deeply practical lines one absolutely central to our current fascist foes: while there is despised and persecuted minority facing destruction and strife, I am the persecuted and I am destroyed. When they came for my undocumented neighbor, I did not speak out, because I was not an immigrant.

Our immigrant communities, regardless of their legal statuses – even including now our naturalized citizens – are under direct and daily assault. They are all our neighbors, our friends, our families – what harms them, harms all of us. Soon, more Americans will intimately come to know that they are themselves being harmed.

Fascists never STOP at their initial scapegoats; they eventually eat even their own. Because fascism cannot live without an enemy, and they will continue to name scapegoats until no one is left to blame for their failures. And they ALWAYS fail, because they do not – and cannot – deal with reality: they create their own in the minds of their cult-like followers, and then struggle with their own fictions.

We cannot let the greatest nation on Earth descend into this nightmare. It’s up to each of us to take personal responsibility for our freedom and that of every person in this great nation, and for the preservation of our way of life – democracy, freedom, an open society, open and fair markets, civil rights that ensure our lives, liberties, and our pursuit of happiness. None of it is possible without the rule of law and basic justice, and respect for law as the means to justice is the only guarentor of the law.

These are the stakes now. Help those around you realize this fact. Far more important than calling your elected officials and complaining, THIS is the most important work everyone can do right now. So for those who want instructions on what concrete steps they might take next, take this one: talk to your families, to your neighbors, to your congregation, to your work colleagues – your entire social universe. YOU are the ONLY one who can do that work, and everyone CAN do this work.

This is not a fight that will be won or lost in the halls of power, or by the high and mighty; it is a fight that will be won or lost in the minds and hearts of your fellow Americans. ONLY with the support of the vast majority of our people does ANYONE holding office have any hope of leading the resistance to this fascist movement and fascist government.

The civil war has already began. You are called to fight – answer the call. Don’t be the Sunshine Patriot; be the Winter Soldier, for winter has come.