Thoughts on American Empire, Epilogue: And Another Thing…

“Postscripts that felt a little too extraneous to include in the full blogs.”

Huh, this is unusual (sort of). An extra tack-on to a blog coming the next day? Why, you are surely thinking, wouldn’t I use this post next week to keep a regular rhythm of weekly posts? Why would I waste it on this one-off? Well, this is my blog, isn’t it? I can post as much or as little as I want. Why should I only post once a week? But, at the same time, why should I use a regular weekly slot for material that I willingly cut from previous posts? That’s like turning leftovers into the main course, much like school lunches. And everyone knows school lunches are questionable at best. Indeed, good style and writing practice suggested that there were some things that just didn’t fit in the other posts. That’s the stuff in here. But instead of cutting them, I can just throw them in a pot here, like a cowboy soup. So, then, this is the appendix to those other posts (see: part one, part two, and part three). The bonus content, the lost episodes. The director’s cut clips. The extended universe novelization. The animated TV show to the pre-sequel trilogy. The weird non-canon comic books that only ten people read. The bonus game mode where you play as Tofu. The dog ending. The horse ending. The… you get the idea. The stuff I cut but wanted some evidence of anyway, because I liked what I had written and wanted to share it anyway, but didn’t feel like it deserved a real extra slot, and was also too serious to put anywhere else. That’s what this is.

We aren’t quite back to my regularly-scheduled lighter comedy/travelogue writing yet, but we’re getting there. So, without further ado, here’s the textual equivalent of crusts cut from a child’s sandwich, then taped together into a crude approximation of a human person. Enjoy.

Why I’m Focusing on Working Together

I’ve talked a lot about where to draw the line, and what happens when you cross that line, etc. But I have talked less about why I’m so keen on everyone drawing a line. There must be plenty of people I wouldn’t want on my team, the racists and the misogynists and the incels and the “shitty, shitty people” who voted Trump in. But here’s the thing: if we want this to succeed, we need to cross the aisle on this. We need a rainbow coalition. This part is for the leftists out there who may or may not have bothered to read this far. Yes, there are terrible people who support trump. Literal neonazis and white supremacists. And we should absolutely exclude them from any sort of coalition. But I don’t think the average Trump supporter is like that. And even if they aren’t ideal allies now, people can change for the better, and learn, and grow, and we need to build a political ecosystem where learning, growth, forgiveness, and making amends are not just tolerated, but encouraged. Because otherwise, people just dig their heels in. We need everyone, and I still think the vast majority of people are fundamentally good, and want to do what is best for their fellow person, even if it’s deep down and hidden by a layer of hate. This isn’t to say that people will change within their lifetime, or that you, personally, have to forgive someone who actively wants your family dead, but I think we need to produce a society that allows for that. Somewhere.

But that being said, I want to make something abundantly clear. Despite the fact that I will not reject someone outright for voting for him, I loathe Donald Trump. I think he is one of the worst people on the American cultural and political stage in my living memory, I think his policies are hot trash fire and will be bad for America and the world both culturally and economically, and I think that a vote for Trump is unequivocally a mistake. He is a racist, sexist, fascist, homophobic, xenophobic, repugnant mess of a human being, and he is a sorry excuse for a world leader. If you voted for Trump, I think you made the wrong choice. Sorry, that statement is not up for debate, and no, I will not temper that position. 

However. However. I also reject outright the notion that all 77 million people who voted for him are also racist, sexist, fascist, homophobic, xenophobic repugnant messes of humanity. Certainly, some of them are, perhaps even in the millions of people. But. There is no way 70 million people can all be that awful. I know people, I know family, who voted for Trump, and I know they aren’t all racists. Some of them certainly are; and to family reading this, you know who you are, and more importantly, I know who you are. But I know people who voted for Trump that I would otherwise consider good people. I know people who voted for Trump that I love, and whose opinions I otherwise respect. I will not condemn 70 million people (not a majority but still a huge part of this country’s population), let alone members of my own family, simply because they voted for one of two pretty terrible options. I may disagree with your politics, your opinions, your decisions. I may find your vote to be abhorrent and dangerous, to democracy, to America, to the very well-being of the health of people I love. And I will resent you for that, and I may or may not take you to task on this in my own life, should things truly become dire. But I do not think this vote makes you intrinsically bad people. And I do not think that it makes you stupid. And I do not think this is grounds to cease associating with you. And if you argue that it does? I think that’s missing the point. That’s what the wealthy want. They want division, when we need unity.

On The Democratic Party

We, Americans, face some sort of an inflection point here. For those of you (those of us, myself among them) who voted for the Democrat-ordained Crown Princess Kamala Harris and her empty-promises-center-right policy because the Democrats gave us nothing else, the time has long passed to demand a better option; now we need to decide what to do next, and what to do better, and maybe how to get the Democrats to listen for a change. I’d like to tear the whole damn party down. They’re barely better than the Republicans, Biden and Harris included. Let Bernie run again, damnit. Or someone like him. When they go right, we should be going left. Way left. At least left enough to look like coherent policy. At least left enough to matter. People on the left have been doing this forever, but for those of us (myself included) who were maybe a bit complacent about stuff, we need to get moving if we want a world that isn’t going to fall to fascism again. Organize. Let this be a wakeup call; we can’t trust the wealthy, the powerful, the elite, to do the right thing, regardless of whether they’re democrats or republicans. We have to get over our tribalism and weird attachment to parties like they’re sports teams. We can’t trust them to make it right, so now we have to do it instead. To do the right thing. For everyone.

On Condescension and Saying “Things will get better”

Hmph. Listen to me go on and on about this. I think I’ve gotten away from the point again. Especially if you don’t believe me or don’t agree with me, I probably sound like a pretentious ass. One more liberal in an ivory tower. One more leftwing elitist. Look at me, trying to be magnanimous for “forgiving” my family for making the “wrong” decision, for falling for their tricks and voting for the “wrong guy.” And yes, I do think you voted for the wrong guy, and again, you can’t change my mind on that. But I must come across as so smug about all of this, and that I “know what’s right” and can help people “learn” to “be better.” Gee, I’m so generous for being this forgiving, and so smart for writing this all out. But we all know it’s more complicated than that. I’m sure they/you feel just as strongly that I made the “wrong” decision by not supporting Trump, and that I’m not going to change your mind, and all this writing is just crazy leftist ramblings. I know all my posts have likely sounded pretty condescending, or at least have toed that line a couple of times. Don’t worry, next draft will improve upon that for maximum pathos. But speaking of condescension…

Although just in the same way that this post is, very likely, going to come across as pedantic and condescending (I don’t want it to be, trust me), I also think it’s condescending to say that we should just “wait it out.” That things will “get better.” That what I’m saying here, what I’m alluding to (i.e. fascism, violence, terror, etc.) are all just bad dreams and that I’m going overboard in my predictions. That it actually “won’t be so bad.” It’s worth noting that the road to fascism is paved with people telling you to stop overreacting. The unspoken part of this line of thinking is that, therefore, nothing needs to be done and that people can live as they have, business as usual, and nothing will happen. That nothing can happen because the Rule of Law will prevail. Maybe that’s true. I’m no political expert, so what truth might I have? Maybe things won’t be so bad. I’ll grant you that, there’s certainly just as much a likelihood of “nothing” happening as “something” happening. But this sentiment sure feels condescending. It’s insulting. And it’s especially insulting if its coming from white privileged males, political elites, wealthy bourgeoise, or Europeans. Especially Europeans who get socialized healthcare, free university, and stable governments. Europeans who have never had to live in America and don’t really know what it’s like to grow up under the perpetual background violence of this American life. People who grew up in countries where their government actually works. People who didn’t have to worry about getting shot at school or illegally detained by cops or becoming homeless because you lost your job or getting denied healthcare or being saddled with crippling life-long debt just to get an education or being deported without warning or choking on their drinking water or getting wild cancers from local unregulated pollution or any number of things that are just a normal part of living in America.

And sure, maybe I didn’t experience all those things, either. But I experienced some of them. And if you say to me “things will get better,” you’re saying it to every American, because what Trump does will affect everyone. America is very well off, don’t get me wrong. It is certainly a safer place to be than many other countries, and if you told me to choose any country at all to be born into, America is still high on that list. But that doesn’t mean it is without pressure, without violence, without struggle (especially if you aren’t white, male, educated, citizen, able-bodied, etc.), and the average American is certainly worse off than the average Western European. I, of all people, should know that. I, for one, find it incredibly insulting for someone to insinuate that Trump isn’t that bad or that things aren’t going to be as bad as we think they are, in part because it implies that things were fine before. When the truth is that they absolutely weren’t. Regardless of whether things get really bad under Trump, the fact of the matter is that we shouldn’t want to go back anyway. You wouldn’t tell an African American or an Indigenous person “things have been worse, so there’s no point worrying now,” and then expect them to do nothing, would you?

Sure, yeah, things have been worse, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get back now. “Things will get better” implies also that things are guaranteed to get better, but nothing in this world is guaranteed except for death (taxes aren’t even a guarantee if you’re rich!). Someone has to do the work. Civil rights, labor rights, women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, immigrant rights, Indigenous rights, environmental protections, these things didn’t just pop out of nowhere. They weren’t handed to the American people. Those at the top will never willingly give up anything that could cost them money or power. These things have to be fought for, tooth and nail. Someone has to do the work for it to get better, and whoever it is, many of them don’t have the luxury of assuming things will get better, because the alternative is, in some cases, literally death. Because if everyone felt that things are guaranteed to get better, no one would do anything, and nothing would change. We have to be willing to do the work to make things better. We must build the future we want.

It’s easy to say that the worst “can’t happen here,” or that other countries won’t “let it happen” or that it “isn’t possible” because of the rule of law, of the constitution, what have you. But yes, it could. And yes, they have. And maybe there is some truth to it, most of Trump’s attempted policies haven’t stuck so far. But what has stuck, what he’s still trying to do, will have knock-on effects down the line that are going to make things worse, and for some people, going to make things irreversibly different. But saying it can’t happen here is just a fallacious argument at best and a straight-up lie at worst because, truth is, it’s already happened here. See: slavery, genocide against indigenous peoples, mass incarceration, et cetera. Bad people find ways around things that would stop them. And saying that other countries will stop it from getting bad is, frankly, blind to what other countries want. Most of them would rather be left well enough alone than draw America’s ire. We saw that with Israel, which got to do whatever it wanted, and most western countries didn’t bat an eye, because batting against Israel was batting against the US. What makes you think other countries will risk the economic or military repercussions by antagonizing the US directly (at least unprompted; at least Canada is fighting back)? But sticking your head in the sand to the signs of things to come isn’t going to get us anywhere. Purging civil servants, forcing loyalty, allowing unelected individuals access to private citizen database, increasing development of state media and propaganda, things are pretty damn dismal. What else could this be besides an attempted strangling of American government?

We’re actively seeing hard-won rights (especially women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, immigrant rights, and environmental regulations at this moment, but don’t worry, the rest will come, I’m sure) being stripped away in a matter of weeks, and those in charge show no sign of stopping. Sure, maybe they aren’t very good at it, but these protections are actively under attack, and those in charge hold a lot of power. And to be told “it’ll get better,” or at the very least “it won’t get worse”? As if the government will just magically reverse course? That hurts. These rights are written in blood. People died for these victories, and they’re getting crushed under the force of the political right. How is it going to get better? And what if it doesn’t? This is the same as climate change: there are two possible outcomes. You can prepare for the worst, and hope nothing happens, and then if nothing does happen, you’re fine. But if you assume the best, and assume that “it’ll get better,” and then the worst comes to pass and you aren’t prepared, you’re dead in the water. I find that politics is much like mental health. You cannot assume things will get better unless you put in the effort to make things better. Sometimes, yes, people will do things for you, and you can’t do it without help. But the work has to be done. Someone has to do it. And if we aren’t going to, who will? So, no, I’m not going to say that “things will get better.” Sure. They could. I genuinely hope they do. But what if they don’t? What do you do then? You can fight back now, when the playing field is more even, or you can fight back later when the ball is firmly in their possession. What’s it gonna be?

On Tolerance and Musk’s Nazi Salute

This whole post is largely a message for family (though I think everyone could benefit from it), and again, I don’t think you are (automatically) stupid for voting for Trump. The people in power work hard to misinform, to dissuade, to play the game of control. To tell you want to believe and what to do as long as it benefits them. They’ve been doing it for decades. They will use any tool they can to get you to follow them; religion, poverty, scare tactics, immigration, unemployment, whatever. The game is rigged against everyone who isn’t ultra-wealthy. But that isn’t an excuse to hate people. There’s no get-out-of-jail free card for that one, if you’re racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever. Part of drawing this line in the sand is also about drawing a line within yourself, and recognizing your own biases, prejudices, etc. and actively taking stances against them. It’s crucial that we all work on ourselves too. We are all rough drafts, and every day is a revision process. Only we can make those edits.

Just because I am willing to work with/reach out to people who voted for Trump, however, does not mean I will tolerate hate of any kind. If we’re gonna work together, you still have to be a good person, or start making efforts to be better. You don’t have to be perfect, and we don’t have to agree on everything, but we have to be willing to at least try to be better if we’re gonna work together. A house divided against itself cannot stand, hate has no home here and all that. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we have to agree on a few things, like that all people are born equal and that racism is bad and that Nazis are evil. These used to be things that I took for granted, and now I can’t even assume that the person next to me is anti-Nazi. To be clear, we should all be anti-Nazi. As a matter of fact, there are whole sections of philosophy devoted to the notion that a tolerant society cannot tolerate hate, because allowing hate to fester will eventually end any kind of real tolerance. It’s called the “paradox of intolerance,” and it’s basically just how I described it. And boy howdy, letting Nazis back in sure seems to be running the risk of bumping up against that “intolerance destroys tolerance” idea. Back in the day, we used to have an entire industry about fighting Nazis. Hating Nazis is like the easiest thing to do, other than breathe. And now Elon fucking Musk did a Nazi salute on stage? Are you shitting me? What the hell is going on?

“Oh, It could have been anything.” “It’s a Roman salute, the Nazis co-opted it!” “He’s autistic, he got too excited!” “He’s just trolling! Relax, buddy, ever heard of dark humor? He’s toying with the left!” Absolutely not. Absolutely fucking not. It’s a Nazi salute and you know it. And do not try to excuse this with fucking autism. Autism makes life different for people, but it doesn’t make them Nazis, and it sure as hell doesn’t give you an excuse to be one. If you think it isn’t a Nazi salute, I dare you, triple dog dare you, to go out, in public, in broad daylight, in the middle of your town, and do it yourself. Does that make you uncomfortable? It should! Because it’s a Nazi salute! But whether it’s a Nazi salute or not, don’t defend him! If you are genuinely, meaningfully going to a) defend the wealthiest shithead on the planet (who would just as easily kill your grandma as give you a dime), and b) deny that this hand signal is not very clearly a Sieg Heil, fuck you. The ADL is a load of garbage. Much like pornography, we know it when we see it. You and I know exactly what that hand signal means.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, the best case scenario is that this is a troll. He isn’t actually a Nazi, he just knows he can do whatever the hell he wants, and nothing will happen to him, and he is a fan of the power. Even so, it is wildly, wildly inappropriate and just encourages the most dangerous kinds of people. The kinds of people who actually are Nazis. If you were in a room full of dogs, and knew that a few of them were rabid but didn’t know which ones, would you say “Eh, it’s probably fine to start blowing on this ear-splitting dog whistle,” or would you do everything you can to avoid inciting the rabid dogs? Again, this is a generous interpretation of what Musk meant by his stupid-ass hand signal. The un-generous interpretation is that he is a fucking Nazi and ought to be summarily run off a bridge.

Listen, I am trying to see the best everyone, promoting community and solidarity, wanting people to have second chances, etc. I’m trying to find a balance in advocating for what this country sorely needs: building class consciousness and a unity strong enough to overthrow those in power while not making space for hateful assholes who would kill/maim/erase/deport people I love and care about. To this second point, I do largely feel that my views on murder are pretty much “don’t murder. Everyone, no matter how terrible, deserves to live” (I’ll go into the specifics of that another time). But we cannot make space for those who are still hateful. People like, uh, fucking Nazis? Worse yet, asshole billionaire Nazis? Oh, man, if there was ever a social group to take to the guillotine, they ought to be first in line. Again, not saying that I’m encouraging murder, but my great-grandfather did not go to war to fight Nazis just for America to be run by them. I will gladly punch a Nazi in the face, any time, any where, and frankly, I think everyone should take that stance. We should all be punching Nazis. Don’t test me on that. You will lose that argument, and will probably get a black eye in the process. Yes, sure, whatever, deep down Nazis are people too, and all people can get better, and all people can improve. Yes. I do agree with this. But not for billionaires who control the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. They can get better when they’ve been stripped of their wealth and power. And I’m just saying, sometimes it does take a thorough ass-whooping first before people can see the light. You gotta hit rock bottom before you can climb out again, and sometimes rock bottom is literally a rock. To your head. With extreme force.

By the by, I am certain Musk knows what he did is a Nazi salute. He did it on purpose. Him denying what it is, to me, is the most incriminating thing. And here’s an example of how I know that. In one of my classes at university, one of my professors accidentally made a Nazi salute. We were discussing how radar works, and the science behind radar scatter and wave bounce and stuff like that, and he demonstrated his point by having us imagine there was a satellite radar at the back of the room, shooting beams at the floor. Those radar waves, he said, would bounce off the floor, to his chest, and back out to space, thus allowing the satellite to use radar and perceive where he was. He demonstrated by pointing at the floor, rushing his hand to his chest, and then pointing back at the sky, at a roughly 45-degree angle. He immediately got beet-red, because he realized exactly how that looked. He apologized, made a quick joke about how there were, luckily, very few Germans in the class, or, luckily, he wasn’t teaching in Germany, something along those lines, and we moved on. We all knew he wasn’t a Nazi, and that he wasn’t secretly throwing coded messages out to us, because he knew he had “fucked up.” It was an honest mistake, at any rate, and we all moved on.

Frankly, we probably would have moved on even if he hadn’t drawn attention to it, but the fact that he apologized about it made it absolutely clear he knew what it looked like, and that it wasn’t part of him. Part of this is trust, yes; we trusted that this professor had the best intentions at heart, because he’s never demonstrated anything otherwise. My professor’s accidental salute was easily understood as a coincidence of symbolism because it was in a vastly different context, and he acknowledged it and moved on. What Elon did, however, was in the exact context that a Nazi salute would be expected in, and if it really was an accident, the right thing to do is just apologize and move on. He doesn’t have the benefit of the public’s trust, because he’s demonstrated again and again that he does not care about people’s wellbeing. That’s a situation where it would be even more crucial to try and build some trust by, I don’t know, apologizing, and not just denying it happened or calling those who accuse him “biased”? That was not some off-the-cuff wave. He did the chest-thump and everything. By denying what he did, or by denying what it means, despite evidence very much to the contrary, this demonstrates to me that Musk knows fully well what he did, and what it symbolizes. And he either totally supports it or, as I suspect is more likely, he just doesn’t care about what it means and will do whatever he wants because he can, regardless of potential rabid dogs. Whichever one it is, both options are pretty damning.

In Conclusion

If you’re still reading after this long, you a real one. I know these last few weeks have been a lot of doom and gloom on this blog. And I will leave you with one more doom and gloom, just because that’s how we roll, baby. I want to close this section on a little comparison, just to drive the point home one more time. Immigration raids began in Chicago and other major American cities last month, or so I’ve been told. ICE and police and FBI are targeting, supposedly, illegal immigrants who have committed some sort of felony. But in doing so, they’ve also apparently scooped up just about anybody that seems potentially undocumented, including children. And while America deporting immigrant children is nothing new, it’s clear Trump wanted to start with the immigration thing almost immediately, and make it very, very public. The public part is what’s kind of new. And I guess it’s strategic fascist politics. Give your supporters some sort of common enemy to rally against. Make it nebulous enough that the group can’t really be defined, but also recognizable enough that people might know it “on sight.” And so now Trump has very publicly began rounding up a specific subset of people, typically people of similar ethnicities, in order to deport them to… somewhere. The border? Guantanamo bay? Venezuela? All of the above? The logistics, while maybe nonsensical, are also purposefully obfuscated.

You probably can see where I’m going with this, and some of you, I know, are rolling your eyes. But I want to remind you of that famous quote regarding the procession of events that allowed the Holocaust to happen. I’m paraphrasing for brevity here, but it goes, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.” I don’t want to make a false comparison here. I will say Trump is a fascist, but Trump is not Hitler. I do not think that there will be another Holocaust, though I do think that there is a very real possibility of things getting really, really bad for everyone but especially for minority groups. But here’s the thing: the point of that quote, and the point of me bringing it up, isn’t that “everyone on the Right is Hitler” or that “everyone I disagree with is Hitler,” or even that “Trump is literally Hitler right now.” No, the point of the quote is that you should know when to stop someone before they can become Hitler. The point is to tell people to recognize the warning signs and be brave enough to do something about it. To speak out, to act out, to do something before things can get bad. And as for those warning signs, between everything that’s been going on and everything that I’ve written, how much clearer do I need to make it? Maybe America won’t totally fall to fascism and maybe America won’t start executing civilians, but how willing are you to risk that? They already want to round people up and ship them off to camps. They already want to purge any sort of dissension, and legitimize political violence if it’s in favor of the ruling party. They already started doing Nazi salutes. So where do we make it stop? When do we speak out? Echoing myself one last time, where will you draw the line?

Only you can decide that for yourself. Only you can know when to speak out. And only you can make yourself act. And if you only take one thing away from the 20,000+ words of these blog posts, let it be that. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you again soon.