I’m trying to navigate my newfound celebrity. For whatever algorithmic reason, my Instagram account has exploded. At this writing I have over 62 thousand people following and over 3 million views in the last 30 days. That includes a certain star of Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club. I’ve gone viral! My 90-second takes on the state of political crisis are generating a vibrant dialogue from people around the world who are concerned about the fate of American democracy.
And it’s also brought out the trolls.
It’s shouldn’t be surprising that right-wing trolls target my masculinity. They call me “gay,” “beta,” and “cuck.” It’s the same language of the schoolyard bullies who called me “fag” and “pussy.” One troll said, “I bet he can’t even do 20 push ups.” (I immediately got on the floor to make sure that I could.) Somehow they associate caring about democracy with being feminine and they associate being feminine with being weak. These “alpha men” must not know any actual women. And their AI girlfriends don’t count.
I’ve written endless words in this blog about the ginned up “mansophere,” the booming world of performative masculinity that is there for boys and men who can’t navigate the social changes that include seeing girls and women as human beings. These are the fragile fellas that rally for Trump and rail against all things DEI, that think the man should be the king of his castle. They love MMA and rapists like Andrew Tate because they mourn the loss of the myth of unrestrained male id, to fight and fuck whoever they want. Trump allowed them to escape 4chan and take over Washington. Pete Hegseth is the Incel god.
The fragile troll boys aren’t much of an issue for me. I learned how to deal with them in high school. Redan High had a notorious bully named Ted who one day during lunch, unprompted, said, “Blazak, you’re a pussy.” I shot back, “Well, Ted, I guess you are what you eat, you dick.” I escaped while he tried to figure out what I had just said. These guys are never too smart. They can’t argue policy. They only have ad hominem attacks on how much you’re not like their avatar on Grand Theft Auto V.
Where the danger is in how these “alpha men” treat women and how they vote. The gender gap among the youth is widening. According to a recent NBC poll, only 24% of young women approve of Trump’s performance, but 45% of young men approve of Trump’s shit show. I see this in my college students. There are young men, including men of color, who see the MAGA movement as “preserving” a world where men had status over others. The idea of sharing power cripples them with fear. Trump, the sexual assaulter, with the porn star wife, is their redemption.
So they come after me as a “soy boy libtard.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Their hollow macho fantasies of fascism will ultimately bite them in the ass. This isn’t their imagined Roman Empire and it was never meant to be. But trying to beat them down only triggers their fight response. We need to learn how to talk to these boys and men to bring them into the family of man and woman. Alpha Men might just need a hug.
A hundred bucks says Donald Trump has never read the U.S. Constitution. Or The Bible. Or a book. His latest blather about running for a third term is either an overt telegraphing that he’s going to pull a Putin and declare himself “President for Life” or it’s another distraction from that fact that he and Musk are crashing the system so they can scoop up the pieces.
Either way, America is screwed.
I’ve written ad nauseam about the elements of the Trump movement that map directly on to the rise of fascism, starting back in 2015. The parallels this time around are even more stark, including hollowing out America’s system of checks and balances (starting with firing inspector generals), alienating our long term allies (Blame Canada?), flaunting the rule of law, especially due process, and the vision of expanding empire. Leave Greenland alone.
In 70 insane days, Trump has transformed the United States from a democracy to an anocracy. Anocracies are hybrids of democracy and authoritarianism. Russia has elections, but they are Putin-controlled cosplay. Trump is playing by Putin’s playbook, step by step, where a democracy is transformed into a dictatorship, with the support of the loyal oligarchs. And when your favorite oligarch is the richest man on the planet it’s that much easier.
The damage Elon Musk is doing to America may be irreparable. The 2400 Americans that Musk fired from the CDC today will have ripple effects across the world, but especially in communities that voted for Trump who require federal support in disease prevention. But, hey, MAGA got to own those liberal scientists! America is unravelling. Our safety net is being shredded. Social security is next. Our national security is already splayed open on the Signal app. The nation collapsing. And it’s not in slow motion.
Trump, his drunk frat boy sycophants, and the crafty billionaires that cleverly steer the President of the United States have a plan, to remake America into Russia, a feudal state where the landed gentry collect the wealth and the rest of us pay the interest on our debt to them. Trump going after DEI, civil rights protections, and vote by mail is all part of the race to autocracy. All that was great about 20th Century America is being erased before our eyes.
But in a moment straight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we’re not dead yet. We still have time to jump off the corpse wagon.
The natives are restless. Protests are growing all over the country, including in red states. Americans are waking up to the threat. Sociologist C. Wright Mills called it the sociological imagination. When you are aware of your values and those values are under threat, the crisis moves you to develop a wider analysis. If you value American democracy, this is a fucking crisis. And the irony is that it will be disaffected Republicans who tip this thing into a national surge against Trumpism. Yeah, Idiocracy requires idiots and there will always be MAGA cultists who will follow their orange god off a cliff, but we can do this without them. We need Reagan Republicans and the ghost of John McCain. (Eighties Me can’t believed I just typed that, but this is an emergency!)
This is go time, America. It’s time for old baby boomers and young Gen Alphas to make noise, monkey wrench, flood the courts, take to the streets, sit in, stand up, and stop this madness. Or there will be a point when we can no longer claim to be free.
These first two weeks have been dizzying. Trump and his billionaire bros have attacked multiple aspects of our democracy. They have ripped the guardrails off while Democrats have stood there, dazed and confused. The flurry of bias-motivated executive actions, appointments of merit-less droogs hell-bent on dismantling the imagined “deep state,” inflation driving tariffs, saber-rattling at our allies, and the pardoning of violent criminals who, in 2021, tried stop democracy in its tracks. It’s all too much.
The chaos of Trump, ripped from the pages of Project 2025, is the intent. In a normal world, each action would occupy a few weeks in the news cycle, but there’s a dozen actions a day. The chaos is the point. The opposition is playing Wack-a-Mole to each insane impulse from the orange madmen who is declaring war on our allies with one hand and canceling Black History Month celebrations with other. He’s throwing countless federal employees into economic crisis (as well as those, like me, who are employed by federal grants), while blaming the airline crashes on Obama and dwarves. It’s like being punched in the face over and over again with no chance to land a counterpunch.
Trump didn’t invent this strategy. Bush used it to destroy Iraq in 2003. Twenty-two years ago, they called it “Shock and Awe.” Use the military might of the United States to overwhelm Iraq and out of the chaos, create a machine that would profit post-war contractors. Just Google: Halliburton, Iraq, and Profit. This “shock doctrine” (as Naomi Klein called in her 2007 book) has a history of effectiveness. The disaster capitalism employed in nations like Chile was utilized to generate billions in profits for war contractors in Iraq. This week, as witnessed by the plunging of markets after Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, Trump has brought disaster capitalism to the homeland and he and his billionaire bros stand to take home all the money.
The shock doctrine relies on chaos to shake up markets and political organization. Not only is the opposition stuck on the back foot trying to respond to each affront, economic destabilization paralyzes the working class who is more worried about inflation and holding on to their jobs than developing a strategy to fight back. Meanwhile, oligarchs are positioned to swoop in and calmly reassemble the pieces in a way that permanently protects their power and profit. This happened in Russia in the 1990s and it’s happening here now. It’s like that scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when there’s a run on the banks and George Bailey tries to calm the panic, saying, “Don’t you see what’s happening? Potter isn’t selling. Potter’s buying! And why? Because we’re panicky and he’s not.”
Trump, unregistered foreign agent Elon Musk, and their army of gangster capitalists are crashing the economy on purpose. Shipping migrant labor across the border, ludicrous tariffs, rampant deregulation, and appointing insanely unqualified loyalists are all meant to tank financial stability. Trump no longer needs his MAGA troops who were told he would lower the price of groceries on “Day 1.” They served their purpose of installing him back in the White House. They will suffer at the checkout line along with the rest of us. But at least they got to “own the libs.” Musk, now with the keys to the U.S. Treasury, can let the air out of America’s tires and jack up his global banking portfolio and Trump’s voters will have no idea what happened.
Like Mr. Potter, Trump’s billionaire bros will come in to “manage” the economic crisis. The German National Socialist Party did this when the Great Depression hit Germany. They consolidated power with the promise of affordable eggs. And now, when we look for the storied institutions of democracy to prevent an authoritarian takeover in the United States, including a free press, an independent judiciary, and a non-partisan Department of Justice, we will find they have been hollowed out during MAGA’s war of the “deep state.” Trump’s vow to purge the FBI of agents and analysts who investigated January 6th should be all the warning Americans need.
It’s easy to draw on the rise of Hitler as a historical parallel. And even though Melania has claimed that Trump kept Mein Kampf on his nightstand, Donald probably isn’t going back 90 years for a playbook. The rise of Putin and the rule of Russian oligarchs provide the formula. Just read Garry Kasparov’s 2015 book, Winter is Coming. Putin used economic calamity and the fear of Chechen terrorists to dismantle Russian democracy, making him President for Life. Dissidents get poisoned or sent to a Siberian gulag. Trump using the federal government to go after his political enemies is a page out of his comrade’s manifesto.
So what do we do?
We’ve have three weeks of the worst assault on American democracy in our lifetime. We’re all in shock that it’s really this bad. And it’s going to get worse. We can’t depend on Chuck Schumer and the corporate toadies of the Democratic Party save us. Many of them are in line to profit from the consolidation of power by the billionaire class. The Democrats who stand against them need to make themselves known now (or hang separately, as Ben Franklin said). But this is about us first. Us who are battered and defeated by the task at hand. Do we retreat into Netflix binges, or is there a path forward?
This is great opportunity to remember the practices of mindfulness. We’re all in reaction mode right now. Personally, I’ve had to resist the desire to punch someone, especially fellow working class people who think DEI is their enemy while their egg prices skyrocket. This is time to stop. Take a pause and breathe. Then we can start planning. There’s a great device popular in AA circles called “HALT.” Does this situation make me “Hungry Angry Lonely or Tired”? If so, just stop and take stock. So slowing the freakout roll is key.
Swiss sociologist Jennifer Walter offers a simple strategy to re-enage with solutions. First, focus on a few key issues you care about instead of being overwhelmed by the tsunami of fires that need to be put out (to mix metaphors). Second, find trusted sources of information who can do the work of providing needed facts and analysis. Third, if their goal is to overwhelm you, take mental health breaks. Meditation is a favorite “self gift” of mine. Next, Walter suggests taking 48 hours to respond to a news story to let your emotions subside and sort out what’s important. And lastly, build community to share the load. My faculty union president sent out an email last week, entitled, “What to Do in a Burning House,” asking faculty not disengage but step forward. I immediately joined a union committee.
Progressives, real patriots, and those who just care about the price of heat this winter, have been knocked to their knees by the Trump/Musk war on the buttresses of American democracy. But it’s time to stand back up. A lot of the heavy lifting is going to be done by lawyers who still have access to the courts to stop Trump’s actions, many of which are illegal and/or unconstitutional. The rest of us who are not the uber rich have a role, whether it’s monkey-wrenching the shock doctrine or building a viable alternative to Trump’s fear-fueled vision of America. Take a breath. We will do this.
Watching Trump dismantle the very fabric of America is soul crushing. This is the final nail in the coffin of the American Century. Every day another pillar of democracy is attacked by a petulant man with deep-seated inadequacy issues. I fear for the America my daughter will inherit. But if Trump has is way of striking down the 14th Amendment, she may not even be an American.
On day one, Trump ended federal spending on DEI programs, a favorite bogeyman of some straight white men who see efforts for equality as “reverse racism” and a bunch of other complete b.s. that is viewed as threatening their “God-given” right to sit in the privileged seat at the top of the heap. The federal government now has the right to discriminate. I’ve worked in the DEI field for over 15 years and I’ve seen these men whine and whine. As one of those very privileged men, I’ve tried to talk to them, bro to bro, about how embracing the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion makes their own lives better, even more profitable.
But then they got the most insecure bully in the land as their “defender.”
The Trump chaos hits me on a personal level. Besides the fact that all my federal DEI work was just cancelled (so much for affording groceries), much of my work to make workplaces safer spaces for others, including women and people with disabilities, is unraveling. The racist attack on DEI mirrors the racist attack on Affirmative Action in years past. White men fear their hold on power is slipping, and it is. (It should be pointed out that the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action have been white women and white men who are veterans.)
I could write a dissertation about how Donald Trump is taking a big steaming dump on the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. but let me make just two important points about DEI.
DEI programs make workplaces safer and more productive. A famous study in the 2000s found that when employees felt respected for their identities, they were 4.4 times more productive. That means that instead of spending energy dealing with Racist Johnny, Sexist Carl, or Islamophobic Betty, they put that energy towards getting the task at hand done. DEI programs can educate around issues like implicit bias and micro-aggressions that suck the energy out of employees who are members of marginalized groups. Instead of spending time negotiating the minefield of co-worker bias, they can focus on the work, which increases profit.
And these workplaces are more safe. Not just emotionally but literally. I did some work in the local construction field after black construction workers were harassed (including a noose being hung on a construction site). If I was a black worker who had been hazed by fellow white workers, do you think I’m going to concerned about white workers’ safety? Hey, if Cleatus looks like he’s about to step off a third story girder, I might just think, “Oh, let’s just see what happens.” Workers who value inclusion look out for each other. As they say in the military, you’re only as strong as your weakest link. There is great benefit in creating safety by creating equity.
Secondly, DEI programs can help creating workforces and leadership that reflects the population being served. “Merit” is a myth. This fable that skill required should be the only criteria applied ignores the, not decades, but centuries of discrimination that have kept millions of Americans, including straight white men with disabilities, out of career paths that allow them to create intergenerational wealth. As much as it makes MAGA soil their Depends, America is no longer a country for old white men. The piece of the pie that looks like the father on Father Knows Best is rapidly shrinking. There are now more women in the workplace than men (so men better know how to see them as co-workers and not “girls.”). My incredibly diverse Gen Z students don’t even know what the acronym “WASP” stands for. No amount of ICE raids (starring Dr. Phil) will change the changing face of America. Trump can try to kick trans people out of the military, but the American rainbow genie is out of the lamp. DEI programs can help facilitate these welcome changes in a way that sees Americans for who they are, not force them to hide in the attic to allow fragile white men imagine they are in control.
On Inauguration Day, which was also MLK Day, Trump dared to mention Dr. King’s dream. If Trump was a scholar instead of a buffoon, he would know that King believed that his envisioned “symphony of brotherhood” would not be achieved until the institutional levers of oppression were dismantled. DEI programs are a vital tool in getting us there, as part of our broad civil rights goals. My great hope is that Trump, Musk, and the other white men of privilege who have decided to wage war on American diversity, the vital need for equity, and the great cultural and financial benefit of inclusion, are met by a much larger movement that burns their ideology of hate in the ash heap of history. If not, making America the 19th century again will end the promise of American greatness.
I’m trying to stay away from my lizard brain today, unlike the rage I surrendered to on Election Day. I’m trying to not focus on how Donald Trump used his first address as our 47th president to crap on Native Americans (Denali will not be renamed Mt. McKinley) and further marginalize trans Americans (although I did say a small prayer that Barron Trump is transgender). I’m not focusing on how the CBP One app, created so asylum seekers can enter this country legally, has already been shut down by Trump officials. I’m not going to talk about how Trump’s inauguration, surrounded by, not the red hat MAGA supporters but his Billionaire Bros, is the dawn of a new Dark Ages.
This is Martin Luther King Jr. Day so the focus is on the work. We are entering an age of disinformation that will require extra effort from us to do what we have done successfully in the past, organize. Trump’s ultra-wealthy handlers, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the rest, will work to divide us and deflate our hope. Trump will give more tax breaks to the gilded class while the people who voted for him continue to suffer with lack of adequate health care coverage. They may be the newest recruits to the much chided “woke left.”
The work will require radical honesty about how Democrats have failed working class people, including new immigrants and queer people. The work will require radical honesty about how the “mainstream media” is the corporate media. The work will require radical honesty about how Neo-liberal economic policies have torn apart the safety and security of unionized labor in this country. And the work will require that the opposition party put up candidates in 2026 that will fight, without capitulation, for the issues real Americans face, including health care for all.
Most importantly, this work is going to require us to get off our phones and organize. And some of that organizing is going to be uncomfortable. Farm owners, who rely on undocumented workers, should be at the table. So should law enforcement officers and other first responders, who are as much a part of the service economy as baristas and vegan restaurant servers. Evangelicals, who recognize Christ’s attention to the poor and marginalized, can also be reached out to as well. Instead of falling into our little gangs of angry Americans, it’s time to build a massive coalition to save America from the broligarchy that Trump welcomed into our nation’s Capitol. We are a people who, at our core, value diversity, equity, and inclusion of our neighbors. We can control the narrative not him.
To date, Americans have spent 10 trillion dollars on the War on Terror, that replaced the Taliban in Afghanistan with the Taliban and enriched a lot of companies doing business with the Pentagon. We can debate if that price tag is required to keep the nation safe from 9/11-type attacks, but I’m betting that $10 trillion could have made our nation safe in other ways, including free health care and affordable housing for all Americans. These are things that affect all of us, including the millions of Americans who voted for Trump. Before Americans are completely overwhelmed by the chaos of the pathological liar in the White House and drugged with disinformation, coming from Chinese apps, Musk, Meta, and elsewhere, let’s reach out with reason. We have one last window. There are 650 days until the mid-term elections. Breathe today and work tomorrow.
I don’t want to pull rank, but I’ve been actively studying the fascist movements since the first Reagan administration. I spent a large chunk of my life from late 1988 to early 1995 imbedded in extremist right-wing groups while working on my Masters Degree and doctorate on the subject. I’ve published widely on the topic including a chapter in the new book, Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in New Times(Lexington Books). So I feel pretty qualified in identifying what is “fascist,” and, conversely, what is not “communist.”
Donald Trump and his MAGA movement have the core elements of fascism and they are weeks away from upending the two and a half centuries of American democracy.
Trump’s insane assertion that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are gobbling up local pets for dinner has unleashed a wave of terror in the small town as MAGA-loyalists phone in repeated bomb threats to the city. But that’s just one factor in the many-sided fascist tactical campaign by the former president and current felon. I’m just going to run through some of the well-agreed upon tenants of fascism that have Trump’s tiny fingers all over them.
Opposition to Marxism
Historians will tell you the first target of Hitler in 1930s Germany was not the Jews, but German communists. Trump has suddenly become fond of calling all his political opposition “communists,” including “Comrade Kamala,” and his followers have fallen suit. My guess is that Donald and the MAGA rank-and-file couldn’t define communism, or be able to tell Karl Marx from Richard Marx, if you paid them. Harris is far from a Marxist, and her proposed $50,000 tax break for small businesses marks her as pretty damn pro-capitalist. Over 200 Bush, McCain, and Romney former staffers (and Dick Cheney) have endorsed her. It’s hard to imagine these legions of Republicans going to bat for a Marxist. Goldman-Sachs, not exactly a communist institution, has publicly declared that a Harris election would be better for the U.S. economy than a Trump victory.
But Trump throwing out terms like “communist” and “Marxist” to his poorly educated base is sure to motivate those who think Harris is a threat to freedom. A similar trend emerged in the the late 1940s, when the America First Committee, rooted in some of the most vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, birthed Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, entering the country into a dark period of political witch hunts. Trump has promised much of the same for his return to power.
Opposition to Parliamentary Democracy
There was never a greater threat to our parliamentary democracy than the mob Trump sicced on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Their goal was to prevent the constitutional transfer of power and they almost succeeded. Their bloodlust to hang VP Mike Pence and “find” Speaker Pelosi had been ginned up by Trump in the preceding weeks, who repeatedly told them that “his” victory had been stolen. He continues to push this lie, stating that Democrats are trying to steal the 2024 election “again.”
Added to this has been Trump’s pledge to arrest and try his political opponents, including Pelosi, if elected. He’s posted memes, on his Truth Social, of Obama, Fauci, and others being subject to military tribunals. This weekend he threatened election workers with retribution if he reclaims the White House. “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” he wrote. We saw how in 2020 Georgia election workers faced death threats from Trump supporters and election officials have stated that threats against poll workers have only escalated in 2024.
Threats to the voting process and threatening to transform courts and federal departments into agents of his transactional whims completely destabilizes the balance of power and crashes the very fabric of a democratic system based on the rule of law. Due process, congressional oversight, and the influence of voters are all erased for will of one man. That Trump cited Hungarian dictator Vicktor Orban as his character witness in this week’s debate is evidence that he sees dismantling democratic structures as a sign of “strength.”
Opposition to Political and Cultural Liberalism
Like Orbán, Trump sees himself at war with the “cultural left,” made up of various movements for social equity. This includes his obsession with transgender athletes who, somewhere, are beating up women in the boxing ring. Trump sees all things “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) as upsetting the natural order of straight white cis-gender men (i.e., him). Feminists, like Taylor Swift, Gay Pride, Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, or anything that attempts to shine light on the history of oppression and methods to make “all men are created equal” an actual reality are framed as “destroying America.” There’s no room in MAGA for queer folks, women who are, you know, people, and racial minorities who aren’t willing to prop up the basic tenants of white supremacy.
Anyone to the left of Trump are considered “communists.” This includes traditional Republicans who are labeled, “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only). If Ronald Reagan were to be reanimated in 2024, Trump and his cult would brand him a “commie” for his (now) relatively liberal policy positions. Trump’s world is divided in to “us” (all who love Trump) and “them” (libtards).
Totalitarian Ambitions
Other than weaponizing the federal government to jail his political enemies, Trump has joked about wanting to be a dictator on “Day 1” and the end of elections after he’s voted in to power. He admiration for Obán, Putin, Kim Jong Un, and other dictators is even starker in contrast to his complete lack of admiration of leaders of democratic movements and nations. (Although, he occasionally compares himself to MLK.)
Trump is transactional, devoid of any shared values. He cares about what serves him. Witness his recent ping pong positions on abortion. History as shown that today’s Trump allies are likely to be tomorrow’s Trump enemies. He surrounds himself with the “best people” until they no longer serve his interests and then they are deemed to be turncoats. If the former first lady is to be believed, the one book Trump has kept close by is not The Bible, but Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and it shows.
Conservative Economic Programs
As someone who has waded through the 887 pages of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, authored by some of Trump’s more notorious staffers, it’s clear what Trump’s second term will deliver; price raising tariffs, cutting Obamacare, education, environmental regulations and civil rights protections, and giving handouts to billionaires and big business. It reads like Reaganomics on methamphetamine. We saw the impact on the economy during Trump 1.0. Trump 2.0 will turn the wealth gap in America into something we see in third world, where a small group of wealthy oligarchs rule the peasant masses. Say goodby to the middle class as unions are busted and worker protections are rolled back.
Corporatism
The hallmark of fascism in Italy and Germany was corporatism, where private industry joined with authoritarian regimes to bring union labor unions under government control and reconfigure private/public entities to maximize profits. In Trump 1.0, we saw him leverage is status as a “billionaire” (we still haven’t seen his tax returns) to the massive benefit of corporations under his 2017 tax law. When Trump invited right-wing corporatist Elon Musk to play a role in Trump 2.0., anti-fascist scholars saw a giant red flag (and not the kind you see on May Day). Musk, who has been busy re-platforming neo-Nazi (I’m sorry, I mean “free speech”) activists on X/Twitter, has bragged about firing striking workers, to which Trump has shown great admiration. Installing Musk as a federal “auditor” would be a page right out of Mussolini’s playbook. Any federal regulations on economic protection, worker rights and safety, civil rights, and protections for the free market would be struck down as “government waste.”
Hyper-masculinity and Violence
I’ve written countless words in this blog since 2015 about how the pear-shaped billionaire, who never got his hands dirty in the real world of labor, presents himself as a macho fighter for the “little guy,” playing into the fragile anxieties of men in a rapidly changing society. In right-wing memes, he’s barrel chested, with Rambo muscles, carrying an AR-15, standing on a tank. (I doubt if the plump country club lizard has ever fired a gun.) Trump’s public persona routinely advocates for violence. Last weekend, he said of undocumented immigrants who recross the border after being deported, “If you come back you will be executed. You will be killed immediately. It’s not going to be easy, but we’ll do it.” Strong men don’t abide by weak ideas, like due process.
The result of Trump’s macho man talk was on full display on January 6, when Trump told his well armed crowd, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he sent them to the Capitol, telling them, “ I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.” Of course, he then went back to watch the carnage from the safety of the White House. Since then he has routinely referred to the well over 12,000 Americans arrested as “patriots” and promised to “free them” when elected.
In 2024, the violent rhetoric of an anti-government insurgency has been turned up to eleven in support of Trump. In the federally funded anti-political violence project I work on, Cure-PNW, I monitor rightwing social media sites, like Gab, Rumble, and Trump’s Truth Social. The calls for violence, especially if Trump loses, are clarion and specific. Trump supporters are urged to arm up, stockpile ammo, and invest in trauma aid kits for when the “globalists” (i.e. the Jews) fire back. A popular meme states, “There will come a time when none of them will be able to walk down the street.” Fantasies of cvil war include executing anyone left of Trump, including “RINOs.”
Racism and Xenophobia
Most Americans, when asked to describe to Hitler’s reign of terror, would comment on the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism that fueled it. It certainly was a guiding principle of the Third Reich, and their “final solution.” That plan of mass extermination swept in many other groups, including Poles, Romani (“gypsies”), homosexuals, and children with disabilities. My 2022 trip to Auschwitz brought me to my knees when I saw the meticulous scope of the Nazi’s genocidal operations.
Trump, who is sweet on right-wing nutjob Laura Loomer, has leaned heavily on racist conspiracies made popular my modern Nazis, including the lies that Venezuelan gangs have taken over “entire sections” of Colorado and that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are stealing pets and eating them. Now, not surprisingly, immigrants in these states have become the target of threats of violence from Trump supporters stupid enough to believe these claims to be true. President Trump’s Muslim ban and reference to African nations as “shit hole countries” wasn’t a surprise given his (and his father’s) long history of racism before he entered public office. Now, on the campaign trail, he’s ramped up the fear mongering of “migrant crime” to full volume. The fact that violent crime has dropped dramatically since he left office, and is significantly lower among immigrant communities (especially if they are undocumented), is completely erased by a rumor that a black Haitian ate somebody’s cat.
What to Do
This analysis could easily be as long as Project 2025. When we add Christian Nationalism to the mix, 2024 is a doppelganger of 1934. Obviously, the first line of defense is a resounding rebuke of Trump at the polls in November. Harris has to win by a clear margin. But even if pulled a landslide, like Reagan did in 1984, Trump and his droogs will still claim the election was stolen by “them” and call for violent retribution. The defeat of Hitler in 1945 didn’t end Nazism in Germany (as Rachel Maddow’s excellent podcast, Ultra, details). What ended it was a collective revulsion over how fascism only serves the self-appointed strong man and sycophantic club of corporatists.
The way through this is to pull back the curtain of the Wizard of Mar-a-Lago. Behind it is a very small, self-serving man and the potential destruction of a great nation.
The first epic film was D.W. Griffith’s 1915 opus, The Birth of the Nation. The 193 minute-long silent black & white classic is based on the novel, The Clansman, which glorified the birth of the Ku Klux Klan after the defeat of the South in the Civil War. A central character is Silas Lynch, a mulatto who Reconstructionists elect lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Lynch, who lusts for a white congressman’s daughter, attempts to reign in the KKK, who ride to a violent victory in the end of the movie.
The word “mulatto” has fallen out of favor but has become relevant again with Donald Trump’s inability to define Kamala Harris’s racial identity,
The term mulatto was originated by Spanish and Portuguese slave traders to identify the children of African slaves who had been raped by Europeans and served to blur the color line between white and black. American slave states popularized terms like “quadroon” and “octoroon” to identify slaves that had a white grandparent or great grandparent. In 1910, Tennessee adopted the “One Drop” rule that dictated that if an individual was 1/32 black, they were legally a “negro.” The original 1859 Oregon constitution contained references to mulattos, including an 1849 exclusion clause that stated, “Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon that it shall not be lawful for any negro or mulatto to enter into, or reside within the limits of this Territory.”
So what’s the problem with mulattos?
Yesterday’s mulatto is today’s bi-racial person, which includes a massive percentage of the human race, including my daughter. But in the slave days this designation was essential as all non-European people were defined as less-than human after Pope Nicholas V signed the Dum Divervas in 1452. The decree paved the way for four centuries of chattel slavery. The dehumanization of non-whites also meant the offspring of white and non-white unions were not fully human, even if they looked white. And by looking white, these half-human beasts could sneak into white civilization. So the need to maintain the white/not white color line became the prime directive of white supremacy. They believed then, as they do now, that miscegenation (“race mixing!”) would destroy the white race and, therefore, their God-given domain over non-white subhumans.
This is why Silas Lynch is the villain of The Birth of a Nation. His whiteness gets him access to the halls of power and his blackness brands him a “savage” with his sights set on planting his seed in white women and oppressing white men. Once the color-line is destroyed, white supremacists no longer can tell who is on their side and who is the enemy. Much of this narrative was revised when bi-racial Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008. Racists argued his whiteness would get him elected and then he would unleash blackness on white America. “He’s firing white people from their jobs,” a racist skinhead told me shortly after the election. “He hasn’t even been sworn in yet and we’re in a massive recession. Everybody is getting fired!” I told him.
Next to the fear of non-whites “passing” as white is the need to maintain a simple us vs. them color line. Race is a human invention so it’s always been challenging to maintain racial boundaries. One hundred years ago, the Irish were not considered “white,” and Irish immigrants were the target of the 1920s KKK. Most people who call themselves “white” are multiracial mutts. I’m Slavic on my father’s side and Anglo-Saxon on my mothers side (and, according to 23 and Me, 0.2 Middle Eastern!). We’re all “mulatto.” Among those who identify as African-American, 18 percent have identifiable white ancestors and a whole bunch of white supremacists of have black branches in their family tree. But the myth of racial purity continues to fuel racist ideologies over who is more “human.”
But there’s a certain brain type that can’t handle the complexity of our racial identities. They need people people to fit into one box or the other. They ask people of color, “What are you?” The many shades of gray explode their brains. “Are you Asian or Mexican?” “Um, I’m Filipino.” Their world is divided into good vs. evil, right vs. left, and white vs. black. “Context” is a liberal concept and non-duality is some foreign Buddhist mumbo jumbo. “You’re either my version of Christian or you are an agent of Satan.”
This is where Donald Trump’s buffoonery comes in. While speaking to a convention of black journalists last week, in one of his more unhinged word salads, Trump mused on when Kamala Harris “turned black.” “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” he said. Trump’s binary brain can’t understand that she is both, Indian and Black. “You can’t be both! That’s not allowed!” Tell that to anyone who defines themselves as Scotch-Irish. Unlike millions of Americans, Trump’s never had to choose which box to check on a form when more than one apply. And he’s never had anyone stare at his face and ask, “What are you?”
Trump’s limited cognitive ability is reflected in his knuckle-dragging MAGA base, who immediately went to work attacking Harris’ racial identity. One Trumpie on my social media feed posted, “She’s not African-American, her father is Jamaican!” I had to give him a brief lesson on the African diaspora. He agreed that Bob Marley was black, so I took it as a win. The MAGA narrative that Harris is a “ho” and a “DEI hire,” is in line with their core values of racism and misogyny and their need fit human beings into handy categories. The 33.8 million Americans who identified as multiracial in the 2020 census have heard the “What are you?” question too many times and are just about done with trying to fit in a box for the comfort of white people. Their box routine allows them to define you. Shattering the box allows you to define yourself and that’s exactly what Kamala Harris is doing.
Kamala Harris is a successful woman, who is the daughter of immigrants. She has a complex racial identity and has a husband who actually loves her. And she loves America. You can see why that confuses Donald Trump and his base.
One of the most depressing things about the 2020 election was seeing more white women move into the Trump voting pool. While only 47 percent of white women voted Republican in 2016, 53 percent voted for the GOP in 2020, according to Pew Research. While women of color largely remained Democratic voters, the “soccer moms” seemed to be falling for Trump. Those Republican women were rewarded in June 2022 when the Supreme Court took away their reproductive rights in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. Dobbs woke many of those Republican women up. That fall, conservative women in redder than red Kansas voted, en masse, against a proposed state abortion ban. Was the sleeping giant waking?
Dissertations are being written on why so many white women support a convicted felon, who brags about wanting to date his daughter and grabbing women by the genitals. “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said. A man who was found, by a jury of his peers, liable for sexual assault, in a case the judge equated with rape. Why would white women support this pig? What woman would tell their daughter that, “This is a good man and should be our president”? My theory is that their racism trumps his sexism. They see themselves as white first and women second.
Now, of all possible running mates, Trump has picked first term Ohio senator J.D. Vance to be his wingman. While it’s not surprising Trump picked a white male MAGA loyalist (who won’t stray like that Constitution-abiding Mike Pence), it is a little surprising that Trump would pick someone as anti-woman as Vance. Vance opposes no-fault divorce and wants a national ban on all abortion, even if a girl is raped by her father. (As J.D. says, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”) You’d think forced government birth for rape victims would not be a good look for the G.O.P., who should be trying to lure female voters back after Dobbs. But there is no G.O.P. anymore. There is only Trump, a party of one. In high school, I learned this was called “fascism.”
So the Trump-Vance ticket is the most misogynistic ticket of this century. And, suddenly, they are up against, not Old Man Biden, but Vice President Kamala Harris, who has also been a successful senator, state attorney general, and prosecutor of the same crimes for which Trump has been convicted. Sunday, after Biden’s announcement, I dove into right wing social media and charted the avalanche of racism and sexism that was being unleashed by the white men of MAGA. Then I took the shower.
Accusations that Harris is “incompetent,” “slept her way to the top,” and is a “DEI hire,” should be familiar to every single woman who has tried to find equity in the workplace. This includes Republican women – the ones in the workplace, not the ones homeschooling their kids. That women have to work twice as hard and get half as much is a lived reality known to all working women (and people of color). These are the women that belt out the line from the Taylor Swift song, “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.” But the fact that this avalanche of “women are not qualified” misogyny is coming from the supporters of Trump-Vance may work in Harris favor.
Kathleen Blee’s pioneering 2008 book, Women of the Klan, found that women joined racist hate groups with their racist men, not on their own, and were challenged by the sexism that went hand in hand with the racism. Trump women who fawned over Trump at the RNC, with fake bandages on their right ears, may start to fall away when they hear the uncheck anti-woman rhetoric coming from their men, especially when they start to understand Harris has their back.
I’ve already witnessed this. Don’t tell anyone, but I belong to a Gen X Swiftie Facebook page. (Not all Taylor Swift fans are 9-year-old girls, like my daughter.) Swift is a strong feminist and has come out as a Democratic supporter. The 2020 documentary Miss Americana tells the powerful story of her political coming out. Taylor’s epic break-up song, “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which is an updating of Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” contains the line, “And you were tossing me the the car keys, ‘Fuck the Patriarchy’ keychain on the ground.” Of course, being a feminist Swiftie over fifty, I went straight to Amazon and bought a “Fuck the Patriarchy” key chain.
After the Republican convention last week, which was the pinnacle of patriarchal bullshit, I posted a picture of my keychain on Gen X Swifties, with the tag, “Current mood.” I got hundreds of likes but some anger from a few Swifties that felt I had introduced politics into their “safe space.”
Then something amazing happened.
The other women on Gen X Swifties started a conversation with the “no politics” women. Not a “You’re stupid!” shouting match but a calm conversation that clearly stated, Taylor is political and so being a Taylor Swift fan is political. That Taylor has strongly come out for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights and against politicians who oppose those civil rights and you can’t separate these things. To be for Taylor is to be for women’s and queer rights and the taking of a strong stance against those that would suppress those rights is in line with Swift’s values of equality. People began posting memes of friendship bracelets that said, “In our Kamala era,” and repurposing Swift lyrics, like, “Kamala’s a relaxing thought.” And those “no politics” women didn’t bail. They stayed and listened.
I’d like to make a prediction. Swift’s Eras tour returns to the United States in October. As boyfriend Travis Kelce joined her onstage in London, there will be night when the vice president takes the stage. Preferably it will be during “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift’s brilliant anti-homophobia anthem, and Harris will do her famous Kamala dance. Swift will wink and that will be that. No words will be said and the massive Swift voting block will be activated.
So let Trump-Vance and their MAGA droogs unleash their pathetic misogynistic attacks. It’s like water off of Kamala’s back. She’s heard it all before. It can only work to peel those coveted white women, formerly known as soccer moms, away from the Trump cesspool and into the Harris camp. They may tell their men that they are voting for Trump, but in the privacy of the voting booth they’ll pull the lever for the prosecutor, not the felon. And when Taylor Swift sings, “Screaming, crying, perfect storms, I can make the tables turn. Rose garden full of thorns, keep you second guessing, like ‘Oh, my God, who is she?” They can sing along and say, “Yeah, that was me.”
I was reading recently how four Republican legislators in Florida, Dennis Baxley, Keith Truenow, Taylor Yarkosky and Stan McClain, were threatening the Florida town of Mount Dora (population 14,516) with “all legislative, legal and executive options available.” Mount Dora’s offense? A city-supported program that allowed local businesses to put “Safe Space” stickers in their windows, letting local LGBTQ citizens know they have a place to turn to if they feel threatened. The letter that Baxley, Truenow, Yarkosky, and McClain (their names should be known) sent Mount Dora is part of Governor Ron DeSantis’ “war on woke,” that has amped up the institutional marginalization of queer and BIPOC folks in Florida.
Let’s put aside the fact that the vast majority (all?) of the people who are hostile to “wokeness” couldn’t tell you what wokeness is, even if you offered to pay them in Trump Steaks. I would argue that caring about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI!) regarding historically marginalized communities is a good thing. Dismantling bigotry has generally been celebrated as a reflection of truth, justice, and the American way. But there is an army of powerful (mainly straight, white cisgender male) voices who are beating the drum, that woke is fundamentally transforming America and robbing people like them (straight, white cisgender males) of their God-given privilege. They want to make America Jm Crow again, when gay people were back in the closet, where guitarist Carlos Santana recently said they should remain.
I could give you a long lecture about how people respond to rapid social change, about internalized bias, or about how people are attracted to overly simplistic ideologies when they feel they have no personal efficacy. Instead I’d like briefly discuss a place where woke is dead as a doornail. No, it’s not in Ron DeSantis’ wet dreams. It’s in Mauritania, a country in western Africa.
First of all, anytime you start talking shit about a country in Africa, you MUST acknowledge the majority of that shit is the result of centuries of colonialism that have savaged the continent. So many of Africa’s problems are a direct result how those in the Northern Hemisphere have carved up the 12 million square miles and pillaged the land and exploited its people. Having said that, Mauritania has banished woke and become one of the planet’s most violent human rights abusers.
America is finally celebrating Juneteen (well, some of us are) to commemorate June 19, 1865, when the last slaves were finally freed. We can save the discussion for the loophole in the 13th amendment that allows for slavery in prison, but we generally agree that slavery in the United States ended 158 years ago. Slavery is alive and well in Mauritania.
Mauritania was the last country on earth to ban the practice (1981) and didn’t actually criminalize slave ownership until 2007, but the practice is still widespread. Contemporary slavery is rooted in the racist ideology learned from its European colonizers, with “white Moors” enslaving thousands of “black Moors,” as ethnic groups are ranked by skin tone and ethnic affiliation. The social caste system has led to between 10 and 20% of population living and working as slaves, according to a 2013 report. (About 10.3% of Americans were enslaved in 1860.) Now let’s talk about the Confederate flags flying in Florida.
On top of that, Mauritania is one of four African countries (along with Nigeria, Uganda, and Somalia) where being an LGBTQ person warrants the death penalty. (Several other African nations give long/life prison sentences for being queer.) Penalties for homosexuality are based on a strict interpretation of Sharia law, as religion is the primary weapon in the oppression of LGBTQ people in both Mauritania and the United States. While there have been no recent reports of gay or trans people being stoned to death in the African nation, there was a widely circulated 2020 story about 8 men who were arrested at a birthday party and imprisoned for “acting like women.”
In 2023, the president of Uganda. Yoweri Museveni, signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act that mandates the death penalty for homosexuals. It should be mentioned that Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz condemned the act, saying “Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque and an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.” There have been many cases of gay men being executed for engaging in homosexual sex in Saudi Arabia, a country controlled by the same religious law as Mauritania.
The arrest, imprisonment, and torture of political opponents has made Mauritania one of the world’s great human rights offenders. The sadistic abuse of those who have opposed the national government have been well documented by Amnesty International (2008), the U.S. Department of State (2014), and the United Nations (2016). Not dissimilar from the book banning happening in Florida, citizens in Mauritania are prohibited from accessing literature that counters state doctrine. Gender-based violence is also viewed as a cultural norm in Mauritania. (The domestic violence rate in Florida is 37.9%, compared to the national average of 29%.)
When A Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, author Margaret Attwood said that her fictional novel was based on the reality of events under religious and authoritarian regimes. “I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress… So all of those things are real, and therefore the amount of pure invention is close to nil,” she said. In one form, Attwood’s fictional Gilead exists in Mauritania. Is it coming to America (or at least Florida)?
Watching the “war on woke” that seeks to make Florida (and America) more like Mauritania (and Gilead) should shake every freedom-loving American who cares about all off us, not just the exalted straight, white cis-gender men in the nation. In Florida, women have less rights they did two years ago (before Dobbs). Seeing DEI programs, rainbow flags, and black history classes being banned in the state may be DeSantis’s agenda to make Florida 1950 again, but I have to think that the majority of Americans are awake to what that looks like. If not, there are some gay black Moors in Mauritania that can wake them up. And for those who are so emphatic that “wokeism” must be stopped, I would beg you to stop and clearly define what you mean by “woke.” Woke might be something you actually believe in.
Either way, you know the establishment in Mauritania, who supports the death penalty for queer people and allows slavery continue, sees the “war on woke” as a vindication of their values. And, without a doubt, both Florida and Mauritania have redeeming qualities. Sandy beaches? But they don’t reflect the basic value of respecting the whole person and that’s the slippery slope.
Note: If you interested in helping LGBTQ people get the F out of Mauritania and other countries where they face state repression, please support the Rainbow Underground. Bring them here, where they are free to buy Bud Light at Target. For more information, CLICK HERE.
Watching the Wheels 