"Mass resistance can persist even in the face of unimaginable odds" -Henry Giroux

 

The guardrails of democracy have been blasted into dust. The Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity gives presidents free rein to commit crimes as long as they act within their 'constitutional authority'.” Welcome to gangster capitalism. Trump, the convicted felon, white nationalist, white supremacist, and aspiring dictator can rest assured that his dream of unaccountable power will be in place if he is elected in November.

If and when he takes office, all the public services that operate, or are supposed to operate, in the name of truth, justice, and freedom will be largely disabled, just as the most crucial democratic rights will continue to be undermined. Young people will be written out of the script of democracy, staggering levels of inequality will increase mass immiseration, the economy will tumble into a massive recession, and blood will flow in the streets and abroad.

Critical ideas and thinking itself will be under siege as well as any institution capable of producing them. Under Trump and his fascist sycophants, critical thought will disappear from public and higher education, social problems will be criminalized, the oppositional press will be shut down, women will lose control over their reproductive rights, the social state will morph into the punishing state, and the dark cloud of fascism will extinguish the dimming lights of democracy.

Even more tragically for democracy, Trump, if elected, will be able to institute a criminogenic system of law that can be used to assassinate his opponents, kill immigrants, imprison critics, and enact an American version of the Nazi Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler "to issue laws that laid the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society."

This corrupt Supreme Court, filled with bribe-takers, misogynists, and white supremacists, has just put democracy in a coffin. With the collapse of checks and balances that should provide a balance of power in the U.S., we will see a tsunami of barbarism and state violence in America, reminiscent of Fascist Italy, Chile under the ruthless Pinochet, and Nazi Germany. None of these predictions, given the rhetoric of revenge and violence Trump promises to enforce, should appear hypothetical. Fascist politics, which is the endpoint of capitalism and a failed democracy, will no longer be a matter of historical analysis. 

First, it will emerge through a series of statutes outlined in Project 2025. As this project takes place, thousands of immigrants will be detained and put in prisons, dissidents will be rounded up and thrown in jail, and show trials will begin for Trump's most hated enemies, including a range of judges, politicians, and outspoken critics.

Second, every aspect of social life will be militarized. Standing behind this will be the legitimating force of an utterly corrupt Supreme Court majority and a repressive state apparatus composed of the police and various elements of the armed forces. The lights are about to go out in America unless there is a mass uprising of concerned citizens to stop Trump in November.

This is not the country I grew up in because I no longer recognize it. I am not optimistic, but at the same time while hope is diminished, it is not lost.  I will repeat what I said in an earlier post. Mass resistance can persist even in the face of unimaginable odds. To quote James Baldwin "Even the emptiness of America can be overcome." 

-Henry Giroux