As Deeply Unserious As They Seem, Right-Wing Christians Are Not Kidding About the Fascist Part
So much fuckery, so little time.
A lot is going on in the world today, and very little of it is very good!
First off, polls show disgraced former president Donald Trump ahead in a number of swing states. This is the man who took to his social network on May 27 to wish a "Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country” and then went on to complain about his many legal battles.
Class act, that guy.
Should we all be panicking? No, of course not. Panicking does not help anyone or anything. It is literally a waste of energy. But we should certainly be alarmed.
I mean, it’s very possible that Trump, perhaps the most corrupt president in American history (and that’s saying A LOT) could get elected again. Even if the majority of the country, once again, does not want him. At all.
But there are also a lot of voters mad at President Biden. And many of these voters have very good reasons for not liking him.
But you don’t have to like the president. You don’t have to agree with all of their positions. But you can’t divorce who the president is with things like, oh, the Supreme Court — which is supremely fucked up right now, by the way. We literally have justices flying fascist flags at their houses. So, yeah, not great!
Trump and his merry band of fascists have already made very clear what they will do if Trump gets into office again. It is literally not an exaggeration that the democracy we currently have, however imperfect, will be scrapped.
The Supreme Court, already teetering on the edge, will issue rulings even more abhorrent than the overturning of Roe v. Wade (which is working out great for 13-year-old rape victims). Justice Clarence Thomas has already made clear that he thinks the courts should revisit landmark rulings on contraception and marriage equality. And he’s still sour about school segregation.
It’s wild that people don’t think that full blown fascism could happen here. Anyway, yeah, the two parties are not even remotely the same.
As Peter Shamshiri, a lawyer and host of “5-4,” a podcast about the courts, and “If Books Could Kill,” a podcast he co-hosts with journalist Michael Hobbes, recently posted on Bluesky, “The relationship of electoral politics to the Supreme Court is very simple. If someone argues that electing Democrats will not meaningfully impact the Court, that’s a good tell that their politics revolve around animus toward the Democratic Party.”
And, look, there are a lot of very legitimate complaints about the Democratic Party. But, like, not enough to make hating on Democrats your whole personality.
Shamshiri calls it a “tic on the online left where any criticism of Republicans has to be met with related criticism of Democrats.”
Again, lots to criticize! But we’re also burying ourselves in false equivalency.
On May 18, Shamshiri posted, “There’s a powerful set of educated but out-of-touch liberals who still don’t quite grasp (1) how far the conservative base has drifted into radicalism and (2) how close most ‘educated’ conservatives are to that base.”
It’s truly staggering how much benefit of the doubt Republicans are getting.
Elections matter. Republicans have already made it very clear who they are and what they want to do. We can see it on display every day in Republican-led states. They want to ban abortion for any and all reasons, ban gender-affirming care, legislate transgender people out of public life/existence and set all of the library books on fire. Also racism. They want to do unfettered racism. Among other things that would make the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S. a living hell.
I make fun of right-wing lunatics a lot. I mean, it’s really my only power besides voting, but the fact is, when they say things that seem too fantastical to believe, they are deadly serious.
As journalist Erin Biba writes on Bluesky, “One of the most important things you can do as an ally and as a fighter of fascism is stop laughing at evangelical Christians and realize they mean every single word they say. They’re not funny, they’re absolutely terrifying. Take them extremely seriously and act accordingly.”
’Tis the truth.
I mean, there’s certainly truth to the whole “if you don’t laugh you’ll cry” thing. But there has been a lot less to laugh about these days.
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