I’m beyond despondent and that’s why I haven’t been writing.   Watching the only country I ever knew collapse into fascism before my eyes is like watching a beloved friend or family member die a horrible, painful, death and being helpless to do anything about it.  It’s horrible.

Did anyone watch any of the Republican National Convention?  I saw clips from it and was disgusted and chilled.  It wasn’t like anything I associate with America or American values.   It was basically a glittery, drawn out version of those awful events where they go around a conference table and all Trump’s sycophants and enablers blather on about how perfect and wonderful Dear Leader is while he sits there gloating and soaking it all in.  And when Trump wasn’t being venerated, Democrats and liberals (most who want only to return to democracy and make it better) were being hatefully excoriated as villains and monsters who want to force socialism or even communism on everyone.  It was nauseating.

I don’t have the energy or motivation to write much else, but the article below I’ve posted a link to says everything I’m thinking and feeling, and is written from the perspective of someone who lived through the horrors of authoritarianism.  This may be one of the last times I can freely express how much I despise this sociopathic regime, because our First Amendment rights are being eroded in plain sight.  It’s every bit as bad (or will soon become as bad) as Nazi Germany, Assad’s Syria, Saddam’s Iraq, Pinochet’s Chile, Erdogan’s Turkey, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, or the Taliban in Afghanistan.  At best, at BEST(!) we will become like Putin’s Russia.  I wish that were hyperbole.  I don’t think it is.

I no longer see any way civil war can be avoided.   Trump’s brownshirts and paramilitaries and ignorant cult members are itching for war.  They HATE us.  They gaslight us, dismiss our very real fears as Trump Derangement Syndrome, and constantly project their own wrongdoings onto us. We have been dehumanized, other‘d.  Peaceful protesters are now called terrorists and anarchists, but a 17 year old punk kid inspired by Trump’s “rough them up” rhetoric mowed down two protesters with a weapon of war and is being defended and protected by the Right because they think he’s a patriot.   These people aren’t going to compromise or give up their delusion that Trump is some kind of holy warrior or savior who is going to “make America great again.”   They aren’t going to suddenly grow empathy and start to care about the rights of people who aren’t just like themselves.

We have moved, as a nation, so far to the far right, that now American values such as democracy, freedom, and justice for all are now dismissed by Trump and his minions as socialism, or even communism. Communism!   We are a police state now, and it’s fast becoming normalized.

Living in America feels exactly like being trapped in an abusive marriage or inescapable family situation.   This is narcissistic abuse writ large.   But you can’t go No Contact, unless you are one of the fortunate ones who have the means to leave the country.

Yes, America has become one of those countries people want to leave.    But because of the out of control pandemic this regime refuses to do anything about because they hate scientists and experts, other countries have closed off their borders to us.   Trump got his wall, only the wall is being paid for by the rest of the world.

We must stop sugarcoating what is actually happening here.  None of this is normal.  Early in Trump’s first term, the German magazine Der Spiegel published an article warning us that Trump was a new Hitlerlike figure, an authoritarian fascist, and would establish an “illiberal democracy” (a euphemism for an authoritarian state or dictatorship).  They knew because they’ve been there.   We didn’t listen.  Now it may be too late to avoid such a fate.   I think there’s a chance we can still wriggle out of this mess, but it’s up to us now.   No one is coming to save us.

Facing the ugly and horrifying truth that America is now being ruled by fascists is our only hope.

Fascism.  SAY IT.

And VOTE FOR BIDEN.

PLEASE!

We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Harder America Is Dying