Even though I've bailed on Uncle Elroy's Phantasmagorical Hellscape of Incel Nazis and Rapey Transphobes, I keep my ear to the social media wall over on BlueSky and Threads. And one thing that's bubbled up lately amid the shitting-oneself despair about the incoming Trump administration is a vague sense of hope because of the not really well-named "MAGA Civil War" over visas for foreign workers. It's a battle between the racist capitalists and racist isolationists over who is the better racist, the fight America deserves. Some are wondering if this will hinder Trump's agenda, which is really just "cause as much chaos to take as much money as possible until we die or are chased out of office."
Now, I'm not saying it's not well-named because we haven't gotten any fields covered with the corpses of MAGA foot soldiers, however gratifying that may be. I'm saying that because it doesn't matter what the MAGA freaks outside the administration want. Trump won. It's over. There is no war to be fought on any meaningful level until the 2026 midterms. Yes, everyone can position themselves in anticipation, but nothing anyone says will stop Trump from getting into office. But we're human, and we like to hope. We like to think that Trump will die in prison. We liked to think that Bob Mueller or Jack Smith or Kamala Harris would save us. We really wanna see Democrats throw a 14th Amendment Hail Mary pass. Perhaps we even need to think and believe that in order to keep going. I've said recently that we need to fight lost causes for that very reason. Today's lost cause can become tomorrow's victory.
I wanna offer an alternative idea here: Stop hoping for that miracle. That doesn't mean don't have a goal or a dream or whatever. But stop hoping that some magical deus ex machina is going to swing in and wave a stick and make it all go away. Stop hoping that past precedent shows us the future, as in "Well, in 1975, this happened so, obviously, it will happen to Trump." Stop hoping that Democrats in Congress will be able to slow down Trump's rolling meat grinder from leaving minced bits of the Constitution and tradition and everything else in the broken streets of America. Stop hoping that Trump and the Republicans will be a clusterfuck of dysfunction. Stop hoping that the courts will do something to mitigate the wreckage. When you stop hoping, you can clear your head and get to fucking work.
What's coming is a fucking nightmare. That's how I'm starting 2025. It's going to suck in ways that we can't even anticipate it sucking. I said in 2016 and I'll say now: It will be worse than you can imagine. And that's because I think that everything we're seeing shows that not only are the guardrails off, but that no one will be able to even find guardrails.
Trump is going to wield like a bloodstained hammer the Supreme Court's decision that anything the president does in his "official" duties is totally cool, even if it's something we might quaintly call a "crime." I believe wholeheartedly that when the courts step in to put a stop to whatever fuckery is afoot, Trump will ignore them and use the SCOTUS free pass as justification. That's not even to mention that it's likely that if a case makes it to the Supreme Court itself, the savage dicks in the majority will side with Trump.
And you can hope for process and law to save us here, but that's foolish, too. You can say, as some have, that the SCOTUS only gave Trump immunity, not everyone else who would carry out whatever criming he wants to do. So? Trump can pardon them from any federal charges. Hell, since preemptive pardons are all the rage, he can do that before they start to drag people out of their houses and lock them up without any due process. And if you think that due process is going to be followed, if you think that a "massive immigration court backlog" will slow them down, well, what do you think the camps will be for? To hold migrants until whatever kangaroo justice system is set up tosses them out. As for the states stepping in to somehow outmaneuver a Department of Homeland Security, Trump's "border czar" (one of many completely made-up roles Trump's created) said, "Either you help us or get the hell out of the way, because ICE is going to do their job." That promises a confrontation which might involve the military. Like I said, worse than you can imagine.
I'm not saying you should despair. I'm saying you should be ready for despair, be ready for what might happen, and use that shit to figure out where your energy for fighting can be used, whatever your income or general ability levels are. Start local. I joke around about there not being any future elections, but I don't think that's true, if only because states run them. Making elections secure from the ways Trump and the GOP can fuck with them is one of the most important things we can do, and that means organizing to toss out the assholes in your state legislatures who are making voting harder for some groups. Join organizations that are advocating for more state constitutional amendments on abortion rights. Get decent school board members elected. And find and support progressive media outlets because CNN and the rest of corporate media can get fucked. If things go full fascist at the federal level, any bulwark will at least slow shit down.
Right after the election, I texted a buddy, "I'm so exhausted by hoping." Hoping set me up too often for the almost inevitable failure of hope to win. But I'm never too tired to kick some ass. Too drunk, maybe. But never too tired. Fuck the new year. At best, it'll be a wash. But let's set shit up for the years beyond.
(Note: Because caveats are necessary in this oversensitive age, I'm not saying you can't hope and work. I'm saying you can work better without the way I'm defining "hope" here. It's like if you get into an argument with your partner and think, "Well, when this is over, I know we'll have hot sex." That's gonna color how you argue, and you will find your unfucked ass out on the sidewalk.)
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