progress and regress

I’m not sure if this is truly unique to this time but I feel like, despite our having access to all of the information we do, it’s sometimes hard to realize how actually recent a lot of things are.

It really hasn’t been that long, for example, since people pretended HIV/AIDS didn’t exist because they thought it was literally just a “gay disease.” It has not been that long since I would never have gone to school with a black person. It hasn’t been all that long since we firebombed cities full of civilians (which time?) or dropped the only two offensively detonated nuclear weapons in history. And it was about that long since we fought against a surge of authoritarianism and facism.

Sadly, we seem to be on the other side of this one.

Before I go any farther please understand that I know we have never been 100% “the Good Guys.” The US had plenty of fascist and imperial tendencies then and since. But at least in that instance, our interests put us on the right side.¹

Ok so all that said, for a minute there we pretended to be anti-fascist. And I believe that was correct.

Now, on the other hand, it seems like we’re happily participating in the most recent authoritarian surge, and potentially bankrolling it. And hey why not arm it too. And it’s hard to feel like this isn’t an end to pendulum swings, or maybe the last time our boomerang will come back around.

Honestly I’m not sure at this point. On the one hand, I feel like it would be so easy to reverse course on a lot of the worst policies and changes, because so much of it is being done so sloppily that it’s not built to last. On the other hand, there are so many lost and damaged lives already, and some institutional changes that will be harder to undo. And I’m not sure we can heal enough.

Another problem is this: at some point, the Trump administration will end. Even if the worst concerns about the end of elections come to be, he’s just too old, and I don’t really see JD successfully steering the KMS MAGA after the inevitable. At some point, there will be a change in leadership, but unfortunately I can’t even imagine the Democratic Party peeling off the superficial “Department of War” type changes like so much gold leaf, much less undoing anti-trans laws, or getting rid of ICE, or doing anything actually popular like giving people proper health care or not supporting genocide.

So beyond the short term, I think, we have to figure out what to do about that. Step one must always be to oppose the wrong that is already in front of you, but then we must choose where to stand next.