No time wasted in bringing the fasci...I mean, changes

I’m just kidding.

I really did mean to say fascism in the headline.

In case you missed it, Donald Trump wasted absolutely no time showing us who he is and what he will do. Before the “bring me a Diet Coke” button could be reactivated in the Oval Office, the tangerine tyrant was signing horrendous executive orders and hurling the pens into the onlooking audience as priceless souvenirs.

So, let’s see. Just the high points?

Trump will attempt to do away with birthright citizenship based just on “I said so” in an executive order, despite that being in opposition to the actual Constitution (specifically the 14^th Amendment) and I am very doubtful that the Supreme Court will do anything other than bend over backwards to declare his actions perfectly constitutional. He also declared an “emergency” at the border that doesn’t exist, and plans to send ICE to do massive sweeps in mostly democratic stronghold cities that aren’t anywhere near the southern border that he and others declare to be in such “crisis.”

He said the U.S. will only recognize two biological genders. Ignoring the fact that intersexed people exist and all kinds of other chromosomal birth conditions blur the gender line, trans people have existed for millennia. But just like Nazi Germany pinpointed a main group of people to target for elimination...

He took us out of the Paris Climate Agreement yet again, because fuck the environment and keeping the planet livable.

He pardoned or commuted sentences for the January 6 rioters/insurrectionists—like, over 1,500 people total if I recall right.

He’s still on his bullshit of renaming the Gulf of Mexico. I assume somewhere along the line he’ll sign an order declaring the Panama Canal ours, if he hasn’t already done so and I missed it.

Behind him were a few of the richest men in the world, who are either kissing his ring or pulling his puppet strings—maybe both.

Oh, and did I mention that Trump’s buddy Elon Musk did a Nazi salute—twice?

My basic point is, if you thought, “How bad could a second term of Trump be?” remember that this is just the start. Yes, once the dopamine rush and the extra doses of cocaine or Adderall or whatever wears off he will tire of doing heavy work like signing executive orders and will mostly return to golfing, but he’ll still be doing massively horrific things along the way, whether by his own instincts or the directives of billionaires hungry to shape the world for their sole benefit. Fascism, authoritarianism and oligarchy (precise ratios and measurements to be determined later) are the plan. The goal. A goal that can probably easily be reached before the end of a Trump term.

We need to settle into the truth that we will likely be in a dystopian novel for very soon. That doesn’t mean we give up but it does mean we need to be real. We need to stop expecting someone else to save us. We are the only ones who can change things for the better, and the fact is that while Trump and gang have all the institutional power, they don’t have the true support of a majority of Americans. A majority of voters may have put him in office (or maybe not, since Trump himself hinted just the other day that Musk helped him rig voting machines), but that’s because of a host of factors that don’t include actually liking Trump or wanting most of his policies.

They have the institutional power. But we, as a collective, have the true power, and it’s long past time that we started organizing and acting like it. Because our lives depend on it. Not just the lives of undocumented immigrants or transpeople or some other marginalized group. All of us. They came for all women already when Roe v Wade was overturned. None of us are safe. Let’s start behaving like we know that.