Image by Colin Lloyd.
The crushing defeat of the dismal Democratic Party (DDP) by the fascist Republican Party (FRP) across the two elected branches of the United States federal government – the presidency and Congress – ten days ago Tuesday (the fascists already had a super-majority lock on the un-elected Supreme Court atop the third and final branch) has thrown many of the vanquished party’s leaders, spokespersons, and supporters into different parts of what the medical community calls “the seven stages of grief.”
“Nothing Mattered”
+1. Shock: millions of Democrats watched in numb astonishment as the returns came in showing the electoral calamity occur not in some dystopian novel or movie but in real life. Not only can it happen here; it is happening here.
You can get a good sense of the shudder that ran through liberal and moderate hearts and minds from the following sharp reflections from the liberal former Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn:
“In the end, all the glaring evidence that Donald Trump is uniquely, frighteningly unsuited to be returned to the White House didn’t matter:
Not his criminal conviction or the looming federal charges against him for election interference
Not the dire warnings of dozens of people who worked closely with and for him during his first term
Not his boorish, rambling, profane rally speeches and media exposure of the many outright lies they contained
Not his misogyny, racism and fondness for police brutality
Not his embrace of the ludicrous yet frightening Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Not his role in goading on the mob that violently attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and his subsequent promise to pardon those convicted of violently confronting police officers who blocked the effort to overthrow an election
Not the defections of many disgusted lifelong Republicans
Not his insouciant mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic
Not his ludicrous, vaporous and in many cases nonexistent policy proposals
Not his dual impeachments by the United States Congress
Not his manifest fondness for foreign dictators and his hostility to key U.S. alliances
Not views that 55% of those surveyed in exit polls Tuesday said were “too extreme’’
Not memories of the daily chaos and exploding deficits of his first term
Not his threats to prosecute and imprison his critics as “the enemy within”
Not his constant grifting — selling watches and sneakers and Bibles at exorbitant prices — or his record of numerous bankruptcies
None of these negatives — and there are many more — prevented Trump from winning resoundingly in both the national popular vote and the Electoral College in the election that concluded Tuesday.”
If I might add a “negative” that did not matter to more than 74 million voters: his FASCISM.
The election outcome was shocking even to many of us who thought Trump would prevail. I certainly did not expect the wannabe strongman for life to win by sweeping all of the contested states and by nearly five million votes in the national popular count.
“We’re Going to be Okay”
2. “Denial,” Medical News Today reports, “may entail refuting the reality of the loss or any associated feelings.”
I’m seeing a lot of this on the part of Dems from the top down to the many liberals and progressives I see commenting on “social media.” The imperialist butcher and lame duck US president Joe Biden said this after the FRP won:
“For over 200 years, America has carried on the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world — the people vote and choose their own leaders and they do it peacefully and where, in a democracy, the will of the people always prevails…something I hope we can do no matter who you voted for is see each other not as adversaries but as fellow Americans, bring down the temperature…The American experiment endures, and we’re going to be okay…we need to keep the faith… “
There’s a ton of denial as well as stupidity and falsehood in this statement. No, “the will of the people” does NOT “always prevail” in the US, where majority public opinion is routinely defied in the making of policy by a capitalist-imperialist state whose ruling class (a) owns and directs the underlying economic system in accord with its own parasitic imperatives and (b) selects the small group of elected “leaders” who “the people” get to vote for.
No, Joe, we’re NOT “going to be okay.” For f#*k’s sake, fascism has just taken hold of the US national political structure like no time ever. The FRP and its demented Dear Leader are salivating over their coming “biggest mass deportation in American history”! They are chomping at the bit to escalate a climate crisis that is turning the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber! This time, Adolph Trump – accurately described by Noam Chomsky as “the most dangerous criminal in human history” nearly five years ago – will preside over a party and executive branch far more united and determined to conduct the takeover and makeover of US government and society on Christian white nationalist grounds than in 2017-21.
The rolling Trump-fascist coup has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. It has seized full state power. Who needs dystopian political science fiction when a Republi-Nazi nightmare is unfolding in real time. A Brave New Gilead beckons, as is suggested by Trump’s draft executive order to create a special “warrior board” meant to identify and purge “woke” American generals, by Trump’s call for the US Senate to forego its constitutional role of vetting Cabinet nominees before confirming (or refusing to confirm) their appointments, and by Trump’s horrific early Cabinet picks: a white supremacist and male chauvinist FOX News hack to head the US Department of Defense, the bizarre Hindu nationalist and religious cultist Tulsi Gabbard to run the national intelligence network, the sinister accused pedophile and fascist provocateur Matt Gaetz as Attorney General.
While a slew of minimizers and deniers tell us that Trump’s Hitlerian language is just harmless rhetoric we shouldn’t get all “hysterical” about, we can expect significant movement on each of the following horrific policies from the coming new fascist government within its first months: the draconian closing of the southern border; enlistment of the US military in a giant immigrant deportation program under the authority of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act; the imposition of giant inflationary tariffs; the rollback of key environmental protections and the madcap approval of new gas and oil drilling, climate be damned; executive orders targeting transgender rights and “critical race theory;” the granting of pardons to hundreds of January 6 thugs; a draft national abortion ban.
And, no, the American constitutional order is NOT a “great experiment in self-government.” It is a right-tilted Minority Rule regime crafted by slave-owners and other ruling class propertarians for whom popular sovereignty was the ultimate nightmare! The “American experiment” was never and is not about “democracy.” It’s about capitalism, slavery, imperialism, racial oppression, patriarchy, and ecocide.
As for hoping that Adolph Trump will see his political opponents as “fellow Americans” and “not as adversaries,” umm, …seriously? Did Biden not hear Trump say that the Democrats were evil “communists,” that homegrown Marxists might have to be deported, that he wants to be a “dictator for a day,” that he wants to give cops carte blanche to conduct extrajudicial executions in inner city communities, and that the Insurrection Act should be declared to enable the US military to repress those who protest his presidency inside the US? Did Joe not get briefed on the speeches where Trump promised holy retribution against his political foes and referred to them as “the enemy within” and the primary threat to America?
Here’s some good denialism from Kamala Harris in her concession speech last week:
“Earlier today, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power. A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time, in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God.”
Wow. Surely Harris knows that the Hitler-channeling brute she belatedly acknowledged to be a FASCIST with three weeks to go in the campaign just triumphed in the third straight presidential election whose outcome he promised to honor only if he won.
Damn. Never mind that the orange-tinted fascist ogre who beat her mocked her racial identity and family of origin and essentially called her a lazy and stupid whore as well as a “communist” (a supposedly terrible thing to be – I disagree).
Never mind that he is an openly eco-cidal white supremacist and women-hating authoritarian spearheading a movement for the Christian white nationalist takeover and makeover of American government and society.
Never mind that he openly pursues tyranny. Or that the monstrous Hitler fan “and his team” Harris wants to “help with their transition” atop the world’s most lethal nation have a many-sided plan to lock in white supremacist, capitalist, environmentally exterminist and arch-patriarchal rule for the foreseeable future.
Denial is rampant on liberal cable “news” and social media, where I hear Dems and liberals like the buffoonish “presidential historian” John Meacham and the bedraggled emeritus law professor Laurence Tribe bleat on MSNBC about the supposed continuing grand and “inspirational” (Meacham) power of the American liberal tradition and US constitutional “checks and balances.” Tribe is reduced to trumpeting the magnificent potency of “civil society” now that the fascists have seized all three branches of the federal government along with more than half the state governments.
This kind of rhetoric reminds me of a couple of old Monty Python skits: the one where a shopkeeper insists that the dead parrot he sold to a customer is really alive (“e’s just stunned and pining for the fjords!”) and the one where a medieval night fighting King Arthur keeps egging his opponent on even after every one of the knight’s limbs are chopped off by Arthur’s sword (“tis but a scratch, I’m invincible!”).
The denialism is so extreme that I have “social” media “friends” who are going bat-shit conspiratorial, claiming without any evidence that Trump’s victory is “fishy” (stolen). Some of these wishful thinkers are dreaming that Sleepy Joe Biden is going to militarily block Trump’s transition (they are pinin’ for a mythical blue fjord!)
The Blame Game with the System Left Out
3. “Anger. During this stage,” Medical News Today reports, “an individual may direct their anger toward the person who died, doctors, family members, or even religious entities. This replaces the numbness of shock and denial. It is important to address the anger.” We have been seeing Dems and liberals and progressives thrashing around blaming each other and others for their humiliating defeat. The targets are numerous: corporate donors and billionaires and identity politics champions who led the party to “abandon the working class;” Biden’s belatedly acknowledged decrepitude and too-late exit; Kamala Harris’s conservative establishment campaign (with Liz Cheney at her side instead instead of Bernie Sanders and the progressive head of the United Auto Workers); an educational system that helps turn people into clueless morons; stupid workers and men; a polarized and truth smashing information universe; pro-Palestine anti-genocide activists; Green Party candidate Jill Stein (whose vote totals did not come close to tipping the election in a single contested state), and …the list goes on.
What can’t seem to make it properly on to the list is the whole damn US capitalist-imperialist system, with its genocide- and slavery-based constitutional order and its long ongoing history of privileging genocidal imperialism (including the mass slaughter of women and children in the Gaza strip by the US Empire’s indispensable ally and client Israel) over social justice and human decency at home and abroad.
“We’ll Get Back in 2028 or 2032”
4. “Bargaining,” Medical News Today informs us, “involves thoughts such as ‘I will do anything if you take away the pain.’ This stage may come at any point within the grieving process.” Openly fantasizing about Biden poisoning Trump in the White House or Harris preventing the certification of Trump’s Electoral College victory on January 6, 2025 are two of the most extreme ways in which I have seen liberals and Dems try to avoid the pain of confronting the full awfulness of the new fascist trifecta. Less fevered but also problematic are widespread liberal and “progressive” statements of hope in a Democratic electoral comeback in 2028 or 2032. Right, as if:
* we should operate on the highly questionable insane assumption that a decent human future can survive four or eight more years of eco-fascism atop the world’s most powerful and dangerous state.
* the capitalist-imperialist DDP in power would stop the ecocide, war, pandemicide, and fascism that have come to the mutually reinforcing and apocalyptic fore courtesy of the capitalist-imperialist system.
* we can afford to stay stuck in the suicidal quicksand of savagely time-staggered four-year election cycles while the capitalist order cancels hope for a decent human future at a rapid and ever-accelerating pace.
What to Give Up On
5. “Depression. At this stage,” Medical News today reports, “a person may experience feelings of emptiness and intense sadness. They may also withdraw from daily activities and things they once enjoyed.” This is widespread among Dems – centrists, liberals and “progressives” alike – in the wake of the election. Of course.
This is a good time to think about what exactly is most appropriate to be depressed about. In his Vichy-like post-election address, Marshal Biden said that “giving up is unforgivable.”
Well, it depends. Giving up on humanity and social justice and livable ecology and a decent future and a world beyond oppression and exploitation is, yes., shameful and…okay, unforgivable. But giving up on the Democratic Party, the US political system, and capitalism-imperialism is quite forgivable….indeed, it’s necessary and much to be applauded! Not giving up on those things at this stage is a problem, actually.
Come on Down for a Test Drive
6. “Testing,” Medical News Today counsels, “is the process of trying to find solutions that offer a means of dealing with loss.” Okay. We need millions to take revolutionary communism out for a test drive. It starts with learning about communism, old and new.
Accept that the Capitalist System Did This and Needs to be Brought Down
7. “Acceptance. This,” Medical News Today concludes, “is the final stage of the grieving process. Acceptance does not mean people feel OK about a loss. Rather, it means they realize the loss is their new reality. They understand that while life will not continue as it did before, it will go on. This stage may involve reorganizing roles and forming new relationships.”
There’s a lot of truth in that counsel, but here we need some clarity and elaboration on what needs to be accepted and what needs to be rejected. Beyond accepting that white nationalist Amerikaner fascism has been handed the keys to state power across the government of the world’s most lethal empire, we need thousands and then millions of Americans to accept the reality that the US American capitalist-imperialist system, including the DDP – the Democrats (the party other radicals and I call “Weimar” to signify its fascism-appeasing parallels with the late bourgeois-democratic government that handed power to Hitler in 1933 ) – has by its nature created the essential context for the coming fascist takeover of the US government. And no, “acceptance” does not mean accepting this as okay. It means accepting that this has actually occurred – that this is the objective historical reality.
Will “life go on” in the face of this reality? That is not clear. As Chomsky pointed out in January of 2020:
“[Trump] is indeed the most dangerous criminal in human history…Hitler had been perhaps the leading candidate for this honor. His goal was to rid the German-run world of Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other ‘deviants,’ along with tens of millions of Slav ‘Untermenschen.’ But Hitler was not dedicated with fervor to destroying the prospects of organized human life on Earth in the not-distant future (along with millions of other species). [The eco-fascist – P.S.] Trump is.”
It’s quite possible and even probable that the continuance of a life worth living for humanity requires bringing down this new Trumpist-fascist regime and beyond that the system that shit that regime up. Being part of that revolutionary project means letting go of old commitments, roles, and relationships that keep you tied to this parasitic, death-dealing system of savage oppression, exploitation, war, and environmental ruin.
An earlier version of this essay appeared on The Paul Street Report.
