This Firehose of Fascism Is Too Much, Too Soon

The last week has been an absolute flurry of activity from the new Trump administration.

From the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico (a Stephen Colbert joke from 2011, and in a satirical bill by Mississippi lawmaker Steve Holland), freeing every Jan 6th insurrectionist, to an outright ban on transgender people in the military, the large, massive hammer to obliterate the Federal infrastructure has come down again and again.

Tonight, Trump froze all Federal grants, a power he technically shouldn’t have but is wielding anyway. Will Stancil on Bluesky explains:

To add to it, Democrats in Congress seem to be far more willing to comply than to oppose and the media is a complete lost cause.

When the SNAP benefit checks and the Social Security money don’t arrive in a week or two, will anyone even report on it? Does Trump’s pause effect those funds? Will the videos be allowed on TikTok and YouTube? These are all questions people are asking but the media doesn’t seem to find very interesting to delve into.

They’re still busy debating whether or not Elon’s Nazi salute was a Nazi salute (spoiler: it was).

As I see it, this goes one of two ways:

1. The populace at large moves on, Congress capitulates fully, Trump suspends the Constitution and the United States as we know it ceases to exist.

2. Too many people get too mad all at once and there is real, actual opposition, protesting, and boycotting.

I wrote a few months ago about the history of strikes and how the power of our wallets and our labor remain in our hands no matter what. I think it was pretty good and I highly suggest you go read it if you haven’t already.

Many people, including me, believe one of the main reasons Trump wanted Hegseth at the Pentagon is because he won’t hesitate to use the military to tamp down protests. It’s a heartbreaking thing to write out, but I do believe it to be the case.

Their hope is that by stoking fear into the populace they can do whatever they want with no resistance and people will keep on living and doing their best to ignore them.

The issue is that these fanatics are so hell-bent on destroying the federal infrastructure that they are now even eager to hurt people in their pocketbooks with wild abandon.

People won’t sit home and watch their Netflix if they can’t afford to do so.

Broke, angry people will lead to civil unrest.

Trump has put sycophants in positions of authority who will likely use violence against large-scale protests, but what will the backlash from that be?

If Americans die in the streets because of these actions, where is the breaking point?

My fear was a slow, plodding list of changes that people could get used to over time. A creeping fascism that was insidious, growing like a fungus beneath the surface. The slow boil that roasts you before you realize the water is too hot.

They seem more interested in a blitzkrieg series of strikes that topples things over too quickly to recover from, and I don’t believe that will work.

People want a life where they feel safe and as though they can ascend if they work hard to achieve something.

When that’s taken from them, brutally, they run out of options.

I think we’re about to find out, definitively, exactly what Americans are made of.