What Happened

 

A friend recently lamented the state of our nation. “We’re all fucked. I never expected it all to end this way.”

 

I don’t think my response cheered him up.

 

What happened to the United States of America? In two words, authoritarianism and greed.

 

The growing darkness under a criminal president and MAGA evil has been painful and draining to witness.

 

Women have lost their reproductive freedom. Regurgitating Trump’s Big Lie about “massive voter fraud” as their justification, Republican states are enacting sweeping voter suppression laws and targeting minority districts for gerrymandering. They know they must cheat to win so they’re doing everything they can to dismantle what we have left of a representative democracy.

 

Out of sheer spite tens of thousands of Americans have been summarily fired from their jobs without cause.

 

Universities, law firms, media corporations, billionaires, and even museums are being bullied, bribed, and blackmailed into submitting to the Criminal President Trump’s dictates.

 

Secret police are unleashed into communities, abducting and incarcerating non-violent immigrants, while terrorizing citizens, non-citizens, and zip-tied children. Even American citizens have been scooped up in their fascist frenzy. Remember their LIE about just going after the “worst of the worst”?

 

Tens of thousands of non-violent immigrants are suffering the severe and intentional cruelties of detention and family separation.

 

The Criminal President is deploying the military to occupy cities over the objections of mayors and governors. They are justifiably concerned that the secret police and troops will be used for election monitoring and voter intimidation.

 

The Criminal President has ordered extra-judicial killings on the open sea, as only dictators would do.

 

The insurrectionist Criminal President follows Hitler’s playbook, demonizing all who oppose him politically or ideologically as “communists” and the “enemy within”.

 

How did this despotism take hold of our country?

 

Some of us have been watching the erosion of our democracy since Ronald Reagan told us, “Government is the problem”. Anarchists, swindlers, corrupt capitalists, oligarchs, and gangsters would agree. He ended the fairness doctrine in media and brought in Rupert Murdoch.

 

Murdoch became the Republicans’ first corporate media propagandist and America’s first foreign oligarch.

 

Their war on truth has been relentless and expanding ever since. They understood from the history of Nazi Germany that Big Lies, fearmongering, and scapegoating works. They never appeal to reason because emotional manipulation is far easier and more effective.

 

Cheney and Bush Jr. proved Americans could be lied into invading a country that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or 9-11. We remember Dick Cheney’s fearmongering just before the 2004 election. “It‘s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today on November 2, we make the right choice, because, if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we‘ll get hit again.”

 

It worked. The Lying President installed by conservatives on the Supreme Court and who invaded Iraq on false pretenses was reelected. The radical Right was now on top of their game.

 

Then the US military got bogged down in the inevitable quagmire of occupation. The American people finally had enough when they saw thousands of Americans returned home in body bags.

 

After Republicans deregulated the insatiable greedy bankers on Wall Street the subprime mortgage crisis trigged the Bush Recession.

 

In 2008 Americans finally voted for change. For just winning, Obama enraged the white Christian nationalists, who proceeded to build their racist Tea Party movement that eventually empowered the Criminal President Trump.

 

The constant firehose of disinformation flooded the country’s TV, radio, and internet as the increasingly fascist Republican propaganda network eventually duped enough Americans once again.

 

Criminals, racists and oligarchs finally rejoiced in their Triumph of the Will. The Biden Presidency was merely a temporary restraint for them. By breaking his promise to serve one term and bungling an important debate, Biden gave them their next opening.

 

In 2016 the American Axis of Evil prevailed by exploiting our flawed and antiquated Electoral College, the undemocratic and unrepresentative Senate, and a gerrymandered House. By 2024 the Republican campaign of disinformation paid off in winning a rare popular vote for president.

 

But America’s “final judgment” was made before the 2024 election. Would justice prevail over a criminal president?

 

No.

 

The six most corrupt and partisan Supreme Court Justices nullified the 14th Amendment that disqualifies the insurrectionist Criminal Trump and granted him unconstitutional and dictatorial “presidential immunity”. This assured the dominance of the Criminal Trump and his military police state over our country. The Court is actively facilitating a Trump dictatorship and Republican one-party rule.

 

And that’s how the American experiment in democracy failed.

 

The ONLY way out, or through this, is for the Criminal President to finally face justice and for enough Americans to wake up and vote Republicans completely out of power for at least the next 12 years. 2026 is the next test. The final test will be 2028.

 

After that, I’ll just be grateful for being old enough to remember when America was at least marginally great.