The Machine is Burning and We Should Have Known it Would Happen Again

January of 2021 felt like a kind of victory.

We survived one Trump administration, and defeated an insurrection seeking to undermine our democratic institutions and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. It seemed as though we might be settling back into the status quo, which is certainly problematic, but problematic in more familiar ways such as the disconnect between economic indicators like the stock markets and the average person's quality of life.

For the briefest moment it seemed we no longer had to worry that a sea of red hatted bigots would try to install their god-king. Even if he did run again, we had surely learned enough the first time to avoid repeating those mistakes.

Yet, here we are again. But this time, we are not only dealing with an administration that has been preparing to retake power for four years, but an executive cabinet now consisting of people who are far more extreme in their policy positions, and willing to aggressively pursue them.  Despite the administration’s tepid disavowal of Project 2025 on the campaign trail, many of its authors are now in the highest positions of our government. Things are worse than many of us believed they would be, and I don’t think they’re going to stop getting worse for a while.

A key part of my understanding of the political landscape of the last decade, especially when it comes to the presidency, is that nobody has “won” a presidential election since 2012. Rather, the past 3 presidential elections were lost by the opposition. 2016 saw Democrats lose after failing to unite their base after it was fractured when Bernie Sanders found unexpected success in his campaign. In 2020, the sitting president had presided over a botched pandemic response that saw a million Americans dead and the entire country in lockdown. 2024 saw a Democratic Party that failed to understand the concerns of average americans and spent way too much time patting itself on the back because the stock market was hitting all time highs, while failing to meaningfully address the cost of living concerns of regular americans.

Even now, Democrats have failed to show up to fight our slide into autocracy with anything beyond appeals to systems of checks and balances that have already proven ineffective. Democrats seem more concerned about fundraising for the next election than they are with the actions of an administration that seems likely to cancel said elections. They could be in the streets with protestors, demanding access to federal agencies so they can monitor what DOGE is doing, or even being far more vocal in the media. Instead we get Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling the American people that Democrats don’t have any leverage before going out on a book tour.

Some of my leftist friends would point out that the system isn’t failing, but instead that it is acting as it was designed to. I don’t fully agree with their critique, but there is an element of truth in their criticism, specifically that capitalism is the root of our problems.

This is the kind of statement that turns off a lot of people but please bear with me. Many of my ideas may be considered “socialist” or “anti-capitalist” by many, and while I certainly don’t mind (and even enjoy) when those labels are applied to me, my thoughts are a bit more nuanced, and will be explored more in depth in future posts.

For now, I want to point out that the place we find our country in isn’t something that surprises me much. I see it as the ultimate outcome of our particular flavor of capitalism. Something that has long seemed like a probable outcome,  though not one that was guaranteed.

America’s economic system has always prioritized capital over people, ensuring that wealth and power concentrates among a few wealthy people who continue to perpetuate the system that enriches and empowers them at the cost of rest of us. This dynamic is easily illustrated by the exponential increase in wealth disparity between the rich and the working class over the last several decades. This did not happen by accident, it is the result of actual decisions made by people over many decades. Leading us to today, when unelected, unvetted tycoons, whose only qualification is their wealth, have effectively taken control of the government.

Last week, I said that we had “blown through” a constitutional crisis. I was very intentional in choosing those words. Despite most others claiming we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis, I believe it was over when the administration started ignoring court orders, and sending the DOGE goons into federal agencies to execute EO’s that were tied up in courts. The checks and balances set forth in the constitution have failed, and it’s not unreasonable to doubt that anything else in the constitution will be ignored to achieve this administration's agenda.

It may not be something we want to admit to ourselves, but we lost this battle. Now the focus should be how we can survive, and even thrive as we work our way through the chaos that is in our immediate future. Live your life in a way that shows there’s an alternative to falling into despair or going along with this administration’s agenda.

Nurture everything you love and carry it within yourself, remember what your values are and find the strength to stand up and fight for them when you can, and quietly nurture hem in private when necessary. We are watching a coup unfold before our eyes, and seeing an autocratic regime consolidate power for itself; terrible as that may be, it’s not sustainable.And once this regime collapses, we need to be ready to build something better and stronger on the ashes of what was.

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