Assuming you are old enough, you will never forget where you were and what you were doing when certain turning points in history occurred. The 9-11 attack. The assassination of JFK. The Great March on Washington. Pivotal moments that altered America and the world forever. And now we have another one to insert into the history books: the re-election of the Orange Menace as President of the United States.
This victory is much more momentous than his first. This time, he’s spent four years plotting and seething. This time, he’s dismantled all the guardrails, and has the backing of Project 2025, which will replace conscientious government officials with an army of handpicked subservient drones. This time he’ll arrive with a long list of enemies to begin targeting, for a variety of imagined injuries, as soon as he plops his butt behind his desk. And perhaps most significantly, this was not merely a triumph in the Electoral College; a clear majority of American voters checked his box, eager to submit their necks to the glorious yoke of fascism.
The consequences, both short term and long term, will be dire, both for the nation and the whole world. White supremacy will be seated at the head of the table. Fundamentalist Christian doctrine will dictate the law of the land. Billionaires will plunder the pockets of the masses. Schoolchildren will be indoctrinated to accept right-wing fantasy as unquestionable fact. Women will be shuffled to the rear of the pack, and reproductive choice will be criminalized in the most draconian terms. LGBTQ individuals will be stuffed into the deepest and darkest of closets. Courts will be packed within an inch of their lives. Immigrants will be chased down, jailed, abused, and ripped apart from their families. (They’ll be treated like “cockroaches”, to use just one MAGA term.) The few media outlets that are not already complicit will be bullied into submission. Dissenters and political opponents will be threatened, harassed and locked up. January 6 insurrectionists will be freed, pardoned and lionized. Climate change and environmental impact will be ignored. The ACA will be terminated, and Social Security and Medicare will be eliminated if at all possible.
Wait, isn’t this all just a bunch of wild-eyed hyperbole? On the contrary, this is exactly what they have pledged and vowed – and what they have shown every intent to carry out. Indeed, it’s what they’ve already begun doing to some extent. With unlimited power, there will be nothing to stop them. This was not a normal election. These are not normal people.
Tony Kushner, writing in Angels in America, commented that “the world only spins forward”. Which is true, sort of. If we take the long view of history, we can build a solid case for optimism; overall, we’ve kept making progress, despite the occasional step backward. But maybe we’ve just been lucky. The human race was a centimeter away from extinction a time or two in the distant past; and the remains of numerous mighty civilizations lie in the soil beneath our feet. And all of this was long before MAGA came along.
Maybe the great American experiment is nearing its final curtain. Maybe civilization as we know it is itself on borrowed time. This is not so far-fetched when you consider that many zealots in the MAGA throng actually want devastation, because they are convinced it will bring them some kind of biblical orgasm. And in general, the MAGA mentality is one that delights in destroying things, even if it brings harm to themselves. With so many people working so hard to make Armageddon happen, the possibility certainly can’t be ruled out.
At the very least, the once-great USA has rounded a huge corner. More likely, it’s plunging off a high cliff. There is no way we can prevent the inevitable now.
We, of course, can continue doing what we’ve always done. We can live the good life and fight the good fight. We can exhibit integrity, compassion and intellectual curiosity, even though such values are out of vogue.
In the meantime the madness will run its course, and we can just be prepared to pick up the pieces.
If there are any.
(For a less fatalistic prognostication, see the piece by Emma Varvaloucas for The Progress Network. I sincerely hope that she is right and I am wrong.)
The Propaganda Professor 
They’ve been teaching right-wing propaganda FOR YEARS. My son graduated from HS in 2011. I remember him coming home when he was in 10th or 11th grade, telling me that he was being taught in his social studies class that Reagan was our “greatest” president. Not Washington, our first president, nor Lincoln, who preserved our country during the Civil War, or FDR who saved this country during the Great Depression & guided it through WWII. RONALD REAGAN.
Consider that my son is now 31 years old. Consider that he was just one student of hundreds being taught this. Consider that the school he went to was just one of hundreds, if not thousands being taught this. If not at school, then at home by their conservative parents.
It doesn’t take much to see why this generation of young men & women are largely MAGA.
It bothers me that my son & his wife & all their friends all voted for Trump but I wasn’t surprised. Not at all.
I certainly sympathize. Just about all of my relatives are MAGA except my wife, my son and my sister. Thank heavens my son avoided the indoctrination (he was homeschooled, and part of a really cool homeschool community, the same one that Billie Eilish would be involved in a few years later). Facts no longer matter to these people. The law no longer matters. It no longer matters how much damage they do.
This certainly seems like a decent into the 10th circle of hell for those of us who look for objective facts or proven sources of knowledge! Those who question our king Trump might be dismissed as pawns of the deep state, and thus considered evil. It is so dangerous and sad as we watch this country lose its soul! However, I did read your link to the progress network and some of the article is certainly true–at the state and local levels democrats and democracy are still alive and kicking. I just hope Trump doesn’t screw up the entire world and sabotage any peace efforts indefinitely!
I get the points raised in 1984 and Animal Farm, but I never thought I’d live to see them arrive now. And since Trump may even foolishly demand that the media should no longer use the term” climate change,” or “global warming.” He is sabotaging the entire world!