A smog-shrouded theocracy

When America resoundingly failed its second civics test since 2016, it ushered in what will probably be the most destructive American government of all time.

The fault lies only partly with the hard core of believers who somehow manage to embrace every statement without choking on the paradoxes. The real blame lies with voters who either voted for nonviable candidates or didn't vote at all.

Didn't vote at all? Really? Decided to sit this one out because you didn't like either side? You were going to show that you weren't going to settle for the lesser of two evils by sitting back and letting the greater of the evils secure complete control of the most dangerous country on earth.

Nihilism surely played a role. Scroll social media for more than a few minutes and you're bound to find someone posting longingly for a giant meteor to wipe out all life on earth, just because they themselves have decided that their own beef with life reflects the value of life itself. You want to give up? Go ahead. There are mental health counselors and compassionate bystanders waiting to tell you why you shouldn't, but ultimately the choice does rest with you. Just leave the rest of us out of your suicidal fantasies.

Political protest surely played a role. The current administration didn't slam the brakes on Israel's genocide of the Palestinians, which should have been an easy, almost instantaneous act. Yeah. The Middle East is that simple. Personally, I feel like a region steeped in war for thousands of years is a poor investment for any outsider, but here we are. The cultures that sprung from there have had nothing nice to say about each other as far back as we have written records. The equation 3X(One True God)=Bloodshed has been calculated and recalculated for more than two thousand years. It has extended far beyond the sacred dirt they all insist on owning, and dragged in other deities and their believers.

"We believe in peace and love and we're ready to kick your ass to prove it."

Christ himself, according to the story, refused to break with principle. He took the beating and the gruesome execution, and called upon God to forgive the assholes who either took part or just stood there slack-jawed and watched. Martyrdom became very fashionable for a while, until the political church realized that it was hurting attendance and income.

A life lived according to strict Christian principles would be nasty, saintly, and short. Through generations of rationalization for the sake of extending and enjoying this mortal existence, we have evolved the prosperity gospel, megachurches, and Bible Belters who embrace their firearms with loving arms, and prepare for the final battle with anyone who differs. It could start today, or it could remain a future threat for as long as anyone can profit from it. 

We've already seen how an institution can lose control of dangerous elements it had been wielding as a political weapon. The Republican Party was devoured by its beast in 2015. The evolved Democratic Party, post 1960, never had such a beast at its command. Instead it has repeatedly lost control of factional elements in its untidy coalition. None of them could ever take over a party that has been focused on realistic and sustainable levels of individual liberty.

"Realistic and sustainable levels of individual liberty." See, that right there is the problem. It's not a simple "God, Guns, and General Motors" kind of slogan. It's an honest statement using long words. They're not complex and difficult words, but they don't have the punch of most right wing rhetoric. The right wing fantasy is that everyone can be heavily armed, excessively fertile, and comfortably rich if we can just get rid of all these eggheads pimping science and raising taxes to give to poor people.

Except for the fantasy of universal tax-free wealth, it's true that the collapse of civilization would free up the survivors to fight and fuck with joyous abandon. Infant mortality would jump back up to pre-vaccine-era levels, requiring plenty of replacements to ensure that a sufficient number reach adulthood. As local chieftains gathered their forces, anyone interested in a warrior's life would find plenty of employment. Ambitious types interested in being chieftains would ravage the countryside, culling the weaker players. Would anyone seize and use what was left of nuclear arsenals? Since the whole premise relies on stupidity to collapse civilization in the first place, no doubt someone would give it a shot.

No one can be sure how the conflict between science and superstition would play out. Destroying many modern conveniences would not magically restore the human species exactly to pre-industrial or early industrial parameters. We know what we know. But we're getting far ahead of ourselves anyway.

The problem with post-apocalyptic fantasies is that they tend to skip over the horrors and misery of the collapse itself. That's fine for a fictional diversion, but we're on the wrong side of that sequence. We get to experience the destruction while probably everyone alive today will be dead long before things settle into a new equilibrium.

Space explorers plan "generation ships" in which whole eras of humans will live and die before reaching a habitable planet on which to land and start messing things up again. Or maybe they never arrive. The planet turns out not to be as good as it looked from our far vantage point, or it gets destroyed by something else before the mad, inbred survivors of the generation ship crash onto it. But don't worry. By screwing up our own planet, we turn it into a generation ship. The people we create now will sire generation after generation hurtling through space, hoping to find conditions that support intelligent life.

The smog-shrouded theocracy craved by the winners of the 2024 election is only the first step toward tearing it all down. Maybe that initiative will fail. Hard to say. Elon Musk and other proponents of the destruction of earth to drive enthusiasm toward colonizing other planets want you all to hate it here, so that going there -- wherever there turns out to be -- will look like a better alternative. It's exactly the way consumer goods manufacturers of addictive technology like automobiles, computers, and phones do their best to make sure that you hate your devices just after the warranty period runs out. Ideally, you loved it up to the point that it tragically failed. So you run right out and get a new one of the same thing, even though it's just going to screw you like the last one did, when the time comes. Sounds just like a corporately owned politician.

We may have a chance to wrest back some power and hope in the midterms in 2026. We may have a chance after that to yank the steering wheel completely away from the oligarchs in 2028. But we face the full power of their media machine, far beyond mere legacy media, pounding incessantly on susceptible minds. They did a great job steering voters in this most recent election. They will only get stronger and more active going forward.

No one knows the order in which things will go bad, or how bad they'll get. The administration could start with a big jolt or just teeter and wobble for days, weeks, or months, like an armload of fragile packages falling from your arms.

Arm yourselves!

 A lot of people are talking about arming themselves against the unrest they fear will engulf our relatively safe country. I mean people who weren't already arming themselves and preparing to live in their little fantasy forts when everything collapses. That's fine as far as it goes, but if the apocalypticists get their wish, the period of violence and shortages will outlast the supplies of nearly everyone. The best-prepared of the extremely wealthy will be warlords. Everyone else will live tenuous lives, trying to find a place in their service or a fugitive life avoiding them.

Conflict resolution is difficult at the best of times, and we're definitely not entering the best of times. A slim majority of American voters decided that they're completely finished accommodating anyone they don't like. Some of the voters choosing the dictator cared so little for any of the other branches of government that they didn't bother to fill in any selection below the top spot. They can't wait for that big hammer to fall on everyone that they view as a nail.

Eradication of opposing viewpoints is tempting. Who hasn't had a momentary -- or longer -- flash of rage and imagined carpet bombing an imaginary gathering of opponents in a glorious fireball? There! That'll teach 'em! It might, for a while. But the treatment must be applied frequently. It can get out of control. So we use economic pressure instead. Deny employment and housing to "undesirables" and to people who have failed to thrive in the existing system. As a country, we do use military force and the threat of it. As individuals, armed citizens use the threat of death to stifle disagreement. This is the world they think they want to live in. How soon before shootouts become everyday occurrences? I know they already are, but they're not everywhere yet. How long before we bring back dueling? So many things wrong with that, but it's a natural outgrowth of a society structured on cruelty and force.

Violence can be inserted into society in a number of ways. I'm sure that the people eager to initiate it imagine specific scenes in which they prevail over their clearly inferior foes. When it comes to deadly force, you want to dish it out, not take it. Look at the evolution of warfare: armaments were developed to inflict damage on opponents while receiving as little as possible in return. The ideal battle ends in extermination or rapid surrender by one side. It's not a game. It's pest control.

You might get away with a threat display, but if that fails then what? Your threat is less effective if you yell it from behind a protective object. And that assumes that the object you might hide behind will actually stop a bullet.

Your best defense is often to run like hell. In an unstructured confrontation, it's all variables. Can you run? Where can you run? What can you hide behind? How are you armed? Do you have enough ammunition? Is your adrenaline making you shaky? Are you not as ready as you thought you would be? How can you really be ready for someone trying to kill you?

Whether our country survives this crisis and returns to therapy in search of sanity, or just degenerates the rest of the way, we might consider setting up recreational death facilities where consenting adults can try out deadly confrontation on willing foes in a sealed environment. Forget wussy paintball. The blood is real. Flesh is torn, bone is shattered. Losers die. Even winners might die, depending on how ferocious the exchange was. Whoever draws the last breath is the victor. Just leave everyone else out of your personal drama. But who are we kidding? Dragging in helpless bystanders is part of the fun, isn't it?

Initiators of violence love the power trip. They take control of the lives of everyone around them. Maybe they don't have perfect control of the outcome, but for as long as they present a threat, everyone has to react to them. If they aren't as good at it as they thought, their moment is brief. Just because you start something doesn't mean you will be able to finish it.

Even if you plan to act only defensively, you need to practice, practice, practice, with live rounds, so that your muscle memory is as ingrained as possible with the actual weight and recoil. You need to shoot in different positions and situations, at least some of the time without hearing protection, so you're ready for the actual volume of sound. Or maybe you will get lucky, whip off just the shot you need when you need it, and scamper away to run another day.

Civilization is nice. It's comfortable. Only a fucking idiot looks forward to its collapse and the hell that follows. Tough guys of all genders like to growl that anyone who gives up liberty for safety will have neither. That's one of those logic trails that leads to a scorched landscape of constant killing, as we do nothing to restrain murderous impulses because doing so would mean giving up the freedom to indulge our wrath. Freedom in that case belongs only to anyone ruthless, powerful, well-armed, and skillful for exactly as long as it takes for their luck to run out anyway.

The military forces that defend our very own Land of the Free begin their careers by giving up their freedom. It's a very rule-bound life. Freedom of religion means that believers get to give up their personal freedom for the sake of satisfying the rules of their faith. We give up freedom all the time, for very sensible and grownup reasons. You might say it's fine if it's voluntary, but once you're in it it's coercive. The military has disciplinary options including imprisonment and , in extreme cases, death. Religions dangle the threat of eternal damnation over you if you stray. You can resign from the service or be dishonorably discharged. You can serve your hitch and take a regular discharge. You can quit your religion and take your chances with the eternal damnation, or sidestep over to another religion which will curtail your freedom. Point is, if you participate in a society of any kind, you will face restraints.

Even if you're in the militia of your favorite post-apocalyptic warlord you can only engage your enemies in specific ways. Go rogue and you might make your boss nervous. You get no job security when you work for a warlord who doubts your loyalty.

Compassion Deficit

Although New Hampshire went for Harris in the recent election, her opponent enjoys considerable support from people who have flown his banners continuously since 2015. Because the state population is predominantly white and conservative, with a deep puritanical tradition, most of the residents will feel only the generic ill effects of the incoming administration's economic policies, rather than the targeted persecution promised by the winning party's campaign. Hard to say whether anyone in the protected majority right around here will bother to lash out at marginalized people. I expect few serious personal attacks and atrocities, just slurs and shoves.

Legislatively it's a different story. With a Republican governor and legislative majority, and MAGA still controlling the national Republican brand, women's freedom and health remain at risk, education funding is in peril, and the future of federal funding the state has relied on to keep its parsimonious tax system on life support is questionable. The tourism economy depends on at least the appearance of a clean natural environment, but with the economy likely burning down nationwide, who will have the money to be a tourist? And the ski industry is clearly doomed by the abandonment of any efforts to slow climate change.

We always have our wealthy summer residents. They are buying up more and more of the quaint towns and villages they treasure as theme parks of family memory, which stimulates the incomes of building contractors and maintenance staff to keep everything nice for them in the off season. Anyone outside of these bubbles will be struggling, but then they always have. It's a point of pride to work long hours at a brutal job like logging, and vote against anything that might make your life more comfortable. The risk is too great that it might make someone else's life more comfortable, someone who doesn't deserve it. And that is the root of the compassion deficit that fuels MAGA.

Compassion deficit underlies all conservative political philosophy, but MAGA concentrates it to a high potency drug. If a conservative person isn't experiencing difficulties, anyone else who experiences those difficulties brought it on themselves. Difficulties are a sign of poor character. If your unusual circumstances make you a target for hardship, quit being unusual! Being normal isn't so hard. Just be normal!

If your norm is based on being a white male or a white female under the protection of a white male, how do you expect someone of a darker hue or not in a safe, subservient relationship to normalize themselves to your satisfaction? The country was built on incurable disparities. Slave labor built the Southern economy, and much of the early infrastructure of the federal government. The abolition of slavery didn't miraculously transform the freed population into acceptable citizens. The conflicts of the 1840s and '50s continue today. And the country's embrace of immigrants has added more unrest.

The Statue of Liberty will probably be melted down now to make ammunition for the Border Patrol.

A progressive attitude depends on people who realize that our entire species will do better once we make it a priority to help our entire species do better. You can't keep exporting your problems, putting dirty industries in seemingly distant lands. Their smokestacks belch poison into the same atmosphere we all use. You can't exploit labor in countries far away and not expect to pay for it in some other way. You can't ignore massacres because no one happens to be massacring you at the moment. If you make your country good for yourselves, expect displaced people from the ruined lands to want to get in here. If you isolate yourselves from the world, your nation still has to hold its place among rivals all too happy to close in if you let your guard down. The alliances with dictators that led to the installation of the one we are going to coronate on January 20, 2025 obligate our dictator to those other ruthless powers. Our dictator is not a fighter. His counselors are not fighters. They're sleazy quislings who will deal away the lives of ordinary citizens to preserve their own comforts in the hateful world they helped create.

We have a few chances to pull the country back from complete submission to the will of tyrants. It's not tyranny when your old racist jokes aren't funny anymore, and people abandon bigoted attitudes. It's not tyranny to tax businesses and individuals that have grown fat on, among other things, government contracts funded by taxpayer dollars. It's not tyranny to release women from second-class citizenship. It's not tyranny to release health care from the grip of insurance and pharmaceutical profiteers. It's tyrannical to deny these things and to codify a tiered society in which some people are more equal than others. That's about to happen.

Cynics will say that we already live in that society, and they're not entirely wrong. However, we still had mechanisms to exert our own leverage, if we had been able to gather enough voters to weigh that plank down. The beneficiaries of our ignorance and distrust have dumped enormous bags of money on the other end of it. They fund all of the information channels that keep us apart. The mechanisms survive, but barely. Mostly dead isn't the same thing as completely dead. But we do have to survive a couple of years, minimum, of whatever chaos the incoming government unleashes on us in their greedy bumbling.

Somehow, we have to get people who don't already understand it to believe that caring about other people and promoting their acceptance doesn't cost most of us a thing. It will undoubtedly chip away portions of the obscene fortunes of a few individuals. That is not a bad thing in the least. Every person alive is a stakeholder in the planet. The few have their fortunes. All we will ever have is each other. We won't agree on everything. We shouldn't agree on everything. But if we don't resuscitate democracy we will lose even the faintest chance to participate in government rather than just submitting to our rulers. Restore the checks and balances. Suffer through the boring slog of learning how government works and why we need one. No one's liberty is absolute, but we can improve everyone's average if we try.