By Curtis Craddock
The good citizens of this country are right to be afraid for its future, for their future, and for their children’s future. The right-wing reactionaries who have taken over the government fully intend to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy that will make The Handmaid’s Tale look like the Summer of Love, and that is truly terrifying.
Yet while that fear is justified, it also distorts our view of the world.
Not to put too fine a point on it, we all hear the cackling villains spouting their hateful plans, and we feel there is nothing we can do about it.
Because we can’t.
Because it hasn’t happened yet.
The inauguration isn’t until January.
Right now we are afraid of everything, every possible evil that the Turd Reich might inflict, including things that ultimately will not happen. That’s right, some of it won’t happen; there aren’t that many devils in Hell. Our problem is there’s no way to tell in advance which terrors won’t come to pass. The foe is all the more terrifying because we cannot yet take their true measure.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t prepare. We must find our place on the battlements and be ready to repel an assault along all fronts, because the enemy has plans to attack every bastion of liberality and they are determined to attack all at once, to overrun us in an orgy of unopposed suppression and violence.
But no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. We must remember this applies to our foes as well. Just as it is a terrible idea to underestimate your opponents it is also a terrible idea to overestimate them; it gives them more power than they deserve.
The cabinet 45 has assembled is dominated by incompetent buffoons none of whom have any real leadership skills and most of whom have never organized anything more complex than a silverware drawer. Some of them are bound to implode on launch. Others will misfire along the way or fall to internecine squabbles. This is not to say the junk drawer cabinet will all fail in their objectives—most of them only exist to wreck things, and that is depressingly easy to do—only that their success is not guaranteed unless their foes throw down their arms and preemptively surrender. The harder and faster their would-be victims resist, the less likely the barbarians are to succeed in sacking the city.
So gird your loins and take your place before the gates. Darkness is on the march, but for all their bluster, the enemy are neither numberless nor omnipotent, and you do not defend the city alone.
P.S. - Between the time I wrote this and the time I published it, Matt Gaetz imploded.
Comments