My country is fascist
On January 26, 2017, I wrote a story called My President is a Fascist. Donald Trump had just come to power. I was angry and I was afraid.
Looking at the list of atrocities I believed the Trump presidency would commit, I am ashamed of the glaring omissions, my blind spots from three years ago. My list was by no means meant to be exhaustive, but my prioritization was clearly self-centered. Over the past three years I’ve worked very hard to read more, learn more, listen more, and speak up more. I’ve tried to do the thing I think is right, even if it makes me uncomfortable. I’m still working on it. I’m still pretty bad at it. But Donald Trump was the boiling point. He wasn’t the beginning of fascism in the USA. The atrocities he is committing aren’t unique, or new, or caused by him. Donald Trump is a product of the United States of America. Since our founding, we have been a shit country. Over the years, we’ve done things to be less shit, but at our core, we are rotten. We are elitist, we are hateful, we are hypocritical, we are violent, and we are bigots.
My country is fascist.
And that’s why we elected Donald Trump.
The knee jerk reaction here is to say, “but that’s not true!” and give me a reason why we should be proud of this country, or why only one segment, or one problem, or one law, is the reason why Trump exists. Why white nationalists march freely. Why people armed with semi-automatics can take over state capitols. Why demanding hair cuts and nail appointments and suntans opened up our beaches during a global pandemic. Why we’ve protested, and rioted, for years over police brutality and the deaths of Black citizens, and almost never see justice for those crimes. Why women can stand in front of Congress and detail rapes and assaults and politicians and Supreme Court Justices are still elected and appointed as a matter of course.
I do not stand for anarchy when I say I want to burn our justice system to the ground. There is a wide swath of rational options between the system we currently live under and anarchy, and the leap from one to another happens because we are so entrenched in our indoctrination that we cannot see the forest for the trees. The chant “all cops are bastards” will make people recoil as much as me saying “the United States of America is fascist” but that does not make either statement untrue. And, yes, there are, as we all so desperately need to hear, “good” people in the USA, and in police forces, but really, do we? Am I good? Because if you are part of a corrupt and violent system, and the system itself is unjust and systemically broken, then the system must be remade for the safety of our communities and to fix the pervasive and total corruption beneath. And as such, anyone part of that system, even if as an individual they are “good”, is complicit.
Yes, I believe our system of policing is beyond reform. Why are the people who serve us over noise complaints the same people who serve us when someone is stabbed or shot? Why do we spend so much time training doctors, and lawyers, and hold them to extremely rigorous standards of care, and we do not give the same education and training to those who are supposed to serve and protect us? Why do we not uphold that same exacting standard of care and demand perfection for the safety of the community?
We should, but we do not, and we will not.
Our march into fascism has been years in the making, and Trump’s election may have hastened it, but it also may have not. Without him, these systemic problems would still have occurred. I have no doubt that with President Hillary Clinton, George Floyd still would have died. It’s foolish to think otherwise. With President Hillary Clinton, we probably would have heard the more comfortable political platitudes and seen the more familiar displays of atonement, of grief, of “reaching across the aisle” — but nothing, systemically, would have changed. In 2014, I looked on in horror as Ferguson protested. Nothing, systemically, changed in the intervening 6 years. Today, we have leaders, and a system, that is free to be more open in its hatred, racism, and fascism, and we have more high resolution cameras and more networks to distribute what is happening, to communicate, to organize, to fight back.
I am not thankful to Donald Trump and others who have risen to power and are now exacerbating the violence that is spreading across our country, but their overt fascists acts do shine a light on the undeniable rot that has been a core part of America’s existence for a very, very long time — in my opinion, since its founding. In 2017, I vowed to fight, and not stop fighting, and I haven’t. I also promised to learn, and read, and listen more — and I’ve done that — but in this instance, I want to be another voice in the growing swell that reiterates This Is Not Normal and These Are Bad People and Our Justice System Is Racist and Our Police Force Is Corrupt and Black Lives Matter.
Fight. Read. Learn. Listen. Talk. When you see fascism and injustice, record it. Step in and fight it. Shout the truth from the rooftops. Demand more. Demand better. Do not believe that small changes are all we can achieve. Burn down the systems and institutions that are corrupt and rotten. Have the hard conversation with your best friend, your mother, your father, your co-worker when confronted with racist rhetoric. Now is not the time to look away. Now was never the time to look away, but so many of us did, for so long. Now is the time for us all to say “my life is not worth more than those who have been dying for decades, and I will risk my life to give them a better chance to live.”
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