You know, I’m almost not sure there’s much to say. I really didn’t think this was going to happen. A lot of people didn’t think this was going to happen again. But it did, and now it has. Donald Trump is going to be the 47th President of the United States. He’s going to be President again, and not only that the Republican Party is going to control both the House and the Senate. It really is 2016 all over again, except this time Trump actually has won the popular vote. At over 71 million votes, this time you really can say “the American people voted for Trump”, almost without qualification. What the fuck is there to say to that?
You could try to say that it’s the fault of those people who refused to vote for a pro-Israel party over another pro-Israel party, and your efforts will be in vain. You could say that this is all the result of public support for the Democrats collapsing, and to be honest I don’t know if that fully explains the situation. After all, while it is true that Trump got just about less votes now than he did in 2020, in doing so he managed to increase support from multiple demographics, including white women and Latino men (yes, despite the Madison Square Garden rally in which his campaign spewed forth blatant racism against Latinos and especially Puerto Ricans). The fact that Trump appears to have won the popular vote this time should raise some serious questions about just how much American society has shifted towards Trumpism, or the extent to which American society is already far more latently reactionary, nationalistic, patriarchal, xenophobic, or even fascistic than it appears to be on the surface. That makes it extremely relevant to start focusing on analysis of reactionary/right-wing or fascist desire, or theory of political desire, because even if the outcome is a matter of turnout depression, the question of desire will ultimately emerge as among the most important: why do Americans still seem to want what Trump sells? Or to put another way, why is it that American men are willing to vote for the people who they were just told will stop them from looking at as much internet pornography as they want? The suggestion of guilt cannot be adequate. Still, maybe we’d rather that people in the media instead ask the other most important question: was it so hard for Kamala Harris to distinguish herself from Joe Biden or even the Republicans on the still unfolding genocide taking place in Palestine (and now also Lebanon)? Or maybe that was asking too much of a party explicitly committed to the political project of Israel. Perhaps we could, and should, also ask questions about the fact that several Republican states have barred federal officials from monitoring elections.
At the same time, it almost doesn’t matter. Because what really matters is what happens next. Realising all or any of the above is one thing. The real question is what Americans who oppose fascism are going to do about it.
Actually, let me correct that. What really matters is, what Americans who oppose fascism prepared to do about it. No room can or should be left for anything else. This is what matters, but this is the terrible thing that everyone is still keeping at bay. The illusions of the supremacy of democratic ideology ought not to be allowed any purchase.
I am already exhausted, at least as of the time of having started writing this. But even more exhausted are rest of the world, and even more exhausted still are the Americans who did not vote for Trump. And I already lack patience for most people saying it is a time for prayer, poetry, or anything high-minded, however nice. The truth is that deep down you already know what time it is, and you know that you can’t say so, because it is so terrible and fearful to you, as will be the consequences of you saying so, but it is the truth. We already know how we got here.
Human life is exhausted from serving as the head of, or the reason for, the universe. To the extent that it becomes this head and this reason, to the extent that it becomes necessary to the universe, it accepts servitude. If it is not free, existence becomes empty or neutral and, if it is free, it is in play. The Earth, as long as it only gave rise to cataclysms, trees, and birds, was a free universe; the fascination of freedom was tarnished when the Earth produced a being who demanded necessity as a law above the universe. Man however has remained free not to respond to any necessity; he is free to resemble everything that is not himself in the universe. He can set aside the thought that it is he or God who keeps the rest of things from being absurd.
Georges Bataille, The Sacred Conspiracy
God is empire, God is the Head, God is the patriarchal man-god wrapped in a star-spangled banner, God is the law the submission to whom has yielded disaster and tyranny again and again, and God must be destroyed. This is the only way that the world can be relieved of its burden. If there is still going to be an election in 2028 (and this is a big “if”), Trump could lose, and it would only be because he makes devastates American conditions so thoroughly (which he most certainly will, far worse than he did the last time he was President), and you will have a reactionary reformist (“centre-right”) liberal ready to replace him, and they in turn will be replaced by a Republican who isn’t so different from Trump (that is, assuming Trump will not somehow seize power illegitimately). The only difference from life in Britain, where we are always going back and forth between Labour and the Tories after they each take their turn making our lives worse, is that there is an immensely powerful Christian Nationalist imperial government on the other side of America’s pendulum, instead of the comparatively sad Tory pantomime at the end of ours. That’s of course assuming that America doesn’t get a Hungarian or even Russian style of “illiberal democracy (meaning a system where you have elections but they’re basically just for show); but even this assumes America still has elections at all. I suppose that’s for billionnaires to decide. But at that rate, I’m frankly convinced that US elections no longer matter. American democracy is unable to prevent itself from being warped from its own basis into open dictatorship or from developing into a form of fascism, and even if not for that, it will always just be right-wing conservative-liberal vs right-wing fascist (all while people continue to perpetuate the illusion that there is a “Left” at stake). No good can come of American democracy, not even the premise that America is “not a real democracy”, except for its dissolution into anarchy.
For a long time, Americans have held fast to one of the most ancient lies of all, which is so fundamental to the dogma of liberal democracy: that political discourse is by itself the fundamental activity of politics. There is always the illusion of peace that comes from this, at least for people privileged enough to enjoy not being brutally and systematically marginalised by almost every aspect of society. Certainly, this grants certain people the ability to act as if they live separately from the violence from which their world is born, and the violence that their whole society brings down upon other peoples. That illusory peace must now be treated as being responsible for the disaster they are about to enter by as many people as possible. Fascists may well be running a dictatorship in two months time, and I really don’t think the Democrats are going to be doing anything to stop it in the two months they have left in office. This means that Americans are going to have to fight fascists. And I don’t mean figuratively. I mean literally. By any means necessary, and by all means available. Even if you truly still believe in democracy as the best path forward, can you really do anything else to preserve it?
What are Americans who oppose fascism prepared to do? The answer to this question is all that matters. It is not a bad thing to think of yourself as being “at war”. Because as long as you are in this crisis there is a fight, there are many battles, and they must not be stopped or abandoned under any circumstances. If there is a hope that means anything, it is this alone. Defeat is not acceptable. Surrender is not acceptable.
Also fuck everyone still trying to launder the “we need more progressive role models for cishet men” discourse as women and LGBTQ+ face a full-scale systematic attack on their freedoms and their very lives. If you want my answer to that, this is all you’re getting:
Aleph's Heretical Domain 
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