The Mango Mussolini is back. And it is possible to say
that the comeback of Donald Trump is both
shocking and a quintessentially American
phenomenon. We can hold both of these things
at once. And over the coming four years, or
however long the would-be fascist dictator’s
reign lasts, we are going to go through some
things.
Many people will provide their assessment of the loss of
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to Trump and his
creepy elitist hillbilly sidekick, JD Vance.
Perhaps nothing could have stopped the Trump
train this time around. Others would suggest
it was the Democrats’ election to lose, and
they lost it in a kamikaze mission, unless it
was stolen.
Only in America can someone like Trump stage a coup, then
run for president again and win, all without
consequence or prison time. This is what it
means to be rich, guilty and white in the land
of the free. In other countries, such a former
president would be exiled to a distant land,
much less barred from holding office again.
But America produces such arrogance and
caucasity - those who are born of privilege,
move about the world with impunity, and never
face accountability for their criminal
wrongdoing.
The success of Trump and the GOP rests in their ability to
promise white America (and a number of
white-adjacent people of color) a return to
the good ol’ days when the white man was
standing on top of the mountain, women were
barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and
Black folks were invisible except when working
in the field or in the Big House in the
service of white folks. Trump will give the
white poor and working people absolutely
nothing, no material or economic benefits, but
an invitation to stand one rung on the ladder
above the Black and Brown folks. As James
Baldwin said, “at least they are not Black.”
And Trump, with all his psychopathy and sociopathy,
narcissism and toxic white masculinity,
represents what the United States always has
represented.
Republicans will have their people punch down at
marginalized people - folks of color,
immigrants, transgender and nonbinary people
with they/them pronouns as the scapegoats -
the imaginary source of their problems, rather
than the real culprits, the ultra-wealthy
whose interests the GOP represents. A class
war is afoot, and these people are engaged in
a bait-and-switch game of culture wars.
If the Republican Party is a fascist party serving the
interests of capital and white supremacy, the
Democrats are a corporate party serving the
interests of neoliberalism and empire, and the
white moderates that Dr. King said are “more
devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” Failing
to address the needs of working and low income
people, Harris and the Democrats had a
quixotic dream where they prioritized grocery
prices over genocide, chased suburban
Republicans whose votes they will never get,
and hit the campaign trail with the Cheneys
and other Bush-era Republicans who lack a
constituency.
Democrats are a delivery system and receptacle for
lobbyist money. A corporate party that will
not bring true societal transformation because
it would mess with their money, the Dems have
chosen to ignore climate change. They have
neglected young people short of arresting them
on college campuses for protesting the
genocide in Gaza. Young
people call this country a “dying empire run by bad
people,” and they’re right.
There’s no talk of eradicating poverty, and only helping a
middle class that no longer exists. And
Democrats right now seem devoid of any values
or vision short of ignoring the wishes of
their base and supplying Israel with weapons
to genocide Palestinians and now Lebanese. The
Democrats played in the faces of Muslim-,
Arab- and Palestinian-American voters who
demanded that Biden and Harris stop
slaughtering their families after a full year,
and then wonder why these voters didn’t
support them. It doesn’t have to be like that,
it didn’t have to be, and perhaps that’s why
Harris-Walz lost, along with racism, sexism
and all the other things.
Ultimately, the majority of white voters chose fascism and
the interests of the billionaire class and
oligarchic tech bros. Trump is as bought and
paid for as anyone else. Millions of people
are now at risk, including the white folks who
voted for the pain. Black folks who have
endured slavery and Jim Crow, and Indigenous
people who suffered genocide on this land know
what American fascism is all about. Now the
whole country will come to know it well.
And history tells us the concentration camps will not only
warehouse the so-called “illegals.”
We must mourn the loss of a democracy that never existed,
breathe, rest, then return to organize and do
the hard work.
