That is clear: A lot of America has voted for a fascist.
If that quick, blunt opening offends your delicate sensibilities, then you definitely, expensive reader, greatest dispense lastly with the saccharine-drenched myths a couple of divided, discordant nation that has elected a fascist as president – once more.
This stays unclear: America’s destiny.
An pressing process faces enlightened Individuals who’ve made plain their admirable opposition to and rejection of each obscene side of a grinning strongman who will precise the comeuppance that has festered in his soul and thoughts like a seething cauldron.
Lengthy earlier than his as soon as closest aides and cupboard ministers took, belatedly, to The New York Instances or CNN to “warn” Individuals that the crude demagogue that they had served with such cloying deference was a bona fide fascist, foolish columnists like me have been elevating alarm after alarm about Donald Trump’s defining autocratic character in column after column since 2016.
However we and, rather more importantly, our blatant, billboard-sized injunctions have been dismissed by the ever-so-polite cognoscenti because the hyperbolic musings of clickbait-seeking polemicists who had little understanding of the true nature of fascism.
So, predictably and irresponsibly, the well mannered cognoscenti remained wedded to their agreeable delusions even after Trump organised and unleashed a violent riot on the supposed citadel of American democracy, the US Capitol, to overturn an election.
The well mannered cognoscenti most popular, in fact, to elucidate away the, by now, incontrovertible fact {that a} breathtaking swath of Individuals have supported a flagrant fascist because the unlucky, but maybe comprehensible, act of indignant “cultists” who share an affinity with Trump’s rank rhetoric and parochial grievances.
This has been the jejune perspective all alongside – to deflect, to qualify, to excuse the apparent: Fascism has gone mainstream in America.
Trump isn’t the chief of a “cult”. He embodies a shared set of values and beliefs that replicate, to his horde of followers all through the expanse of America, an irresistible ideology; an ideology whose foundational rules are cruelty, vengeance and ignorance.
I’ve little question that when Trump takes the oath of workplace early subsequent 12 months and swears on a Bible to uphold the structure, he’ll instantly desecrate it to fulfill the prevailing lust for cruelty, vengeance and ignorance.
The disloyal “enemies from inside” might be persecuted and prosecuted.
The “vermin” immigrants who’ve hollowed out the white soul of America – whether or not they carry citizenship or not – might be rounded up with out due course of and deported, stripped of their jobs and segregated from their households – by egregious pressure, if obligatory.
The fraying remnants of America’s “free press” might be focused with threats, intimidation and retributive sanctions. And the oligarchs who personal the “main” newspapers and TV stations will bow in obeisance.
The civil and authorized rights gained by many years of loud protest and laborious work might be retracted or abolished outright with the completely happy complicity of a supplicant Congress and the Supreme Courtroom.
The onus, the duty, the responsibility to attempt to stall, block, or, if potential, forestall America from “turning again” rests with enlightened America.
Resistance isn’t futile. Fairly, it’s an crucial.
It won’t be simple.
Enlightened America might be seized by worry and despair within the days and weeks forward. That is to be anticipated within the jarring, disorienting face of a broad Republican victory.
When enlightened Individuals emerge from this halting shock – and they’ll – they need to resist the simple temptation to slide into recrimination and blame.
They have to, as a substitute, lock arms in defiance. They have to mobilise and style a formidable pressure with one overarching goal: to be trustworthy to the structure that they bear trustworthy allegiance to and to guard one another, as greatest they will, from the hurt and heartache that’s positive to return.
It may be performed. It have to be performed.
This grave mission would require a steadfast will and dedication; the identical will and dedication that enlightened Individuals have deployed previously to make their beloved house a extra truthful, simply and welcoming place.
This, I repeat, is your obligation and responsibility, enlightened America. You have to a bit of time to lick your uncooked wounds. Then, it’s a must to go in regards to the important enterprise at hand with the information that you’re the bulwark, you might be legion and you might be in the appropriate.
Historical past tells us that, nonetheless ugly and harmful, fascists like Trump can not prevail. In the end, they destroy themselves.
The query is: Will Trump destroy America, too?
Enlightened Individuals will, I’m satisfied, do all they will, with all their may, objective and conviction, to stop the ruination of America.
Will or not it’s sufficient? I don’t know.
However the different is terrible to fathom.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.