Lately my mental cope regarding the current political situation has been to think of it as “the horribleness” and then do my best to briefly forget about it and go about my life. A few times a day Kia and I will yell horrible headlines from our respective home offices and agree on how horrible they are. Not very functional, admittedly. Definitely not resistance, which I aspire to.
I know there’s more I could be doing. And I’m gearing up to it. But the first step is trying to understand what happened (and is happening) to our country.
My current model of reality looks something like this: Trump and his ilk won not only because of their tried-and-true strategy of blaming economic problems on immigrants (along with a big dose of fear-mongering and race-baiting), not only because they probably rigged vote-counting machines in key counties, but also because Democrats failed to sufficiently emphasize economic issues, focused too much on identity politics, and basically ignored the crisis in Gaza. That, and many U.S. voters get the “ick” when they think of Democrats and progressives because of performative virtue signaling and cultural elitism.
So that covers what happened, more or less. Trump didn’t win because half the country is terribly racist, hates women, or likes the idea of a dictator/king president. While I still think Trump voters were deeply misled and deeply wrong, I can at least understand why many of them voted that way. I blame Russian and Facebook disinformation as much as I blame any individual Trump voter.
As for what is happening, that’s been harder to wrap my head around. There’s a plan, Project 2025, and they’re trying to roll it out as quickly as possible. But what’s the real goal, the end game? Save the US taxpayer money? Destroy the state apparatus and replace it with a corporate structure where the CEO/dictator/king has absolute power? “Take back” the national identity so that white Anglo Christian culture is completely dominant and unopposed? Destroy the welfare state (and probably the middle class along with it), once and for all? Become actual Nazis/fascists and put all their enemies in camps? Invade Canada? Invade Greenland? All of the above?