“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart and all they can do is stare blankly. It’s not the shattering itself that breaks you—it’s the silence that follows, the quiet space where you realize there is nothing left to salvage. And in that moment, you know that you’ll never be the same again. You’ll build something new, perhaps, but it will never be what you lost.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY
Since I learned that the democratic republic I was born in had chosen to become a fascist autocracy, I often wake up feeling dread and isolation. On such days, the routine, mundane comforts I once relied on for emotional uplift in a world that can be overly demanding and needlessly cruel have stopped working. I cannot forget that my fellow Americans have elected fascist rule, of their own free will. No military coup, no beerhall putsch, no foreign conquest or bloody revolution killed our democracy. The people have spoken. Adolf Hitler maneuvered his way into power after getting one-third of the German popular vote, in a shaky republic that had undergone constant crises during its thirteen-year existence. Donald Trump’s fascism won a free and fair election in a usually stable republic that had been practicing self-government for over two-hundred years. This staggering sense of permanent loss is hard to shake.
Though Trump and his neofascist backers and toadies do not know me, hopeless depression is exactly what they want me, and everyone else opposed to Trump, to feel. People who feel hopeless are easy to keep under control. l know I am not alone in my shock and despair. All us who feel the same must do something to preserve or regain sanity. How can we change the mood? Obviously, we need to promote optimism and happiness at every opportunity. We need huge doses of the medicine of laughter. But the overall challenge is how to find useful strategies to withstand the oppression we know is coming, knowing what fascists do. The news of my country’s chosen condition is similar to learning that someone close has been diagnosed with a horrific and deadly illness—then receiving the same diagnosis for myself. We are in a fight that others started, with extremely high stakes. We have to fight back, and fight together. We cannot simply shrug off fascism and go on our way, living the rest of our lives in vapid ignorance. Nor will we be left alone, even if we try.
Since I first voted in 1970, I have never felt absolutely happy with any election. People who seek electoral office, being human, are far from perfect, as are the people who elect them. We can only choose from people who are actually willing to endure the rigors of electoral politics—all that nonstop glad-handing, hobnobbing, and backslapping. The fatigue, stress, politically necessary insincerity, and constant hustle sensibly warn most of us to stay out. Politics disrupt business, family, and anything else even remotely related to a normal life. One has to be at least slightly abnormal to undergo the endurance tests of running for election. And one can always lose. Our leaders come from a small pool of willing, fallible human beings. But in previous elections, whether my favorite lesser evils won or lost, everyone understood that our democratic system was intact, and we could look forward to another fair election. I no longer feel that certainty.
Donald Trump made it clear that he was running to end democracy, though he lied about his intentions when reporters seriously questioned his relation to Project 2025—as politicians tend to do, when they get into tight spots. His entire campaign program was about rejecting the Constitution, eliminating voting, getting revenge, and being a dictator. If he stood even remotely for any principle in his campaign, he did so by blaming too much democracy for the country’s problems, and promoting fascism as the price we must pay to solve them. Trump ran for president (his first government job) as a no-nonsense businessman, despite common knowledge that his business dealings are dishonest, even criminal, yet still notoriously unsuccessful. He was elected again, as a businessman-president. Although anyone who works for a paycheck understands that business is not based on democratic principles, Trump was elected to be the nation’s CEO. He promised to be a genuinely imperial president, immune to Constitutional interferences as he changes the nation into what he says will benefit “real” Americans. Fascism promises to “get things done,” and voters in 2024 bought the line.
The Republican Party has been pitching business-minded governance, which inevitably becomes corporate government (defined as “fascism” by Mussolini) in order to prevent the threat of “socialism.” Republicans believe socialism is any form of government help given to common people, or any government effort that otherwise restricts corporate profits. Rightwing elites and their propagandists equate democratic socialism with Soviet communism. Therefore they believe that letting food rot while people starve is better for humanity than having the government do anything about hunger. Their credo holds that providing government help for the needy destroys initiative and inevitably causes the rise of concentration camps—another Gulag Archipelago. To prevent a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” they will install a corporate dictatorship. Trump’s vows of revenge reveal the rightwing oligarchs’ ambition to set up an American-style Gulag for those who oppose corporate, top-down rule. They will use any means necessary and available to preserve “liberty,” which they narrowly define as their freedom to keep and increase their profits.
The oligarchs backing Trump intend to entrench plutocracy by eliminating all opposition to their corporatism, and eliminating democracy to keep opposition from popping up again. Trump does not hide his intention to imprison whomever he deems “enemies of the people,” including feminists, LGBTQ’s, ethnic minorities, and reporters who tell the truth instead of rightwing “alternative facts.” We must fight back, but alone we stand no chance. Power-mad people are desperately paranoid; they never run out of foes. Sooner or later, perhaps after they have come for everyone else, they will come for us, even if we avoid showing open opposition.
Trump has already proved the Constitution, which protects our rights to speak, worship and assemble as we see fit, is nothing but a ladies’ and gentlemen’s agreement. By electing people who are not ladies or gentlemen to power, Americans have rendered that long-revered document useless. Oligarchs, with half the country’s approval, intend to establish absolute power over us. If we who still value our “inalienable” rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness do not unite to preserve them, we can look forward to our neighbors’ ratting us out to be kidnapped, probably at night, and disappeared into some American version of Gulag. I hope I am wrong, but I know what fascists do.
To have a chance of avoiding the worst consequences of our country’s choice, we must fight together. I prefer to end a story with hope—without hope we are finished—but our still untested hope lies within us all. We can defend ourselves by defending each other against impending authoritarianism. We could meet some interesting people in a new Gulag, but I would rather avoid political prison if possible. Our hope for staying out depends on our working together to prevent others from going in. If we can withstand the oppression, we might rebuild our democratic republic. Our only safety is in numbers.