But it didn’t work out that way. They are sliding back into poverty, their kids will never do as well as they did, and their bosses are laughing all the way to the bank. College has become too expensive to get their kids that office job, and even if they do get it, it has no benefits or pension or security, and the working conditions are rapidly devolving to Gilded Age Robber Baron Capitalism..

So they’re pissed, and they’re looking for someone to blame their bad luck on. They can’t pick the bosses or the rich, because that’s the people they want to become, so they pick on the poor, the blacks, the Mexicans, the Muslims, and all those smarty-pants Liberals and intellectuals who tried to tell them for years they were being conned and that their luck was running out.

These are the people who can be talked into fascism, its the same people that brought fascism to Italy, Germany, Spain and half of South America. Fascism is the dictatorship of the middle class, or at least, those people in the middle class who suddenly realize that a time of prosperity which benefited them enormously is now coming to an end. They are looking for scapegoats, and there is always someone around who is willing to provide them. Its not about masks and social distancing, its just that the cult they belong to told them the virus was a left wing hoax, and they can’t afford not to believe that. If the Fuhrer is wrong about the Jews masks, he just might be wrong about other things too.

America, indeed, the Free World, since the end of WWII has been on a rising spiral of prosperity. That arc peaked around 1980, and now its on the way down. And consumer, corporate and government debt can no longer postpone the coming crash. That’s why it isn’t just happening here, its happening all over the planet, all over the Western Democracies.

Defeating Trump was a small victory. Our civilization is running on battery power.

But Trump is not normal. And neither are most of his cult followers. Most are angry, cranky old white dudes (who look like me) but have no functioning bullshit filter. I don’t doubt we have MORE than another generation of Trumpian style madness in our politics.

If they go bankrupt from medical bills and mom and dad die of covid, that doesn’t mean they made a bad decision by voting for Trump… nope, it only means that others must suffer far worse in order to make their sacrifice worth it.

They will happily inflict any atrocity you can imagine, rather than admit they were fools that were conned.

Fascism IS coming eventually- I don’t see a way to avoid it. Almost certainly in my lifetime
It’s inevitability, however, does not mean we should accept it and let it happen without a fight. If you do, then you ensure that fascism will be victorious over YOU personally- in the end, THAT is the only victory or defeat within your control.

73,787,948 Americans have already chosen to eagerly surrender…

Trump felt the growing economy he’d inherited from Obama was his strongest point. The measures required to fight the virus would have a negative effect on that economy, so he simply refused to see it as a threat. You can call it wishful thinking, confirmation bias, or cognitive dissonance, or just plain having your head up your ass, but that’s the long and short of it.

But to be fair, other countries, like Sweden, made the same calculation and are now paying the same price. But there’s one thing you can’t blame Trump for; its that 48% of the population that had their collective heads up his ass.

Trump will be gone soon, even if he succeeds in pulling off his coup, he’s a sick old man with a lot of enemies, even in his own party. But the rest of those people, and those who’ve built careers telling them what they want to hear will be here for another generation. That’s not good news for the rest of us.

Thankfully 80 million Americans said an emphatic NO.