Authoritarianism Is Pushing Us Towards a Dystopian Fever Dream.
--
In the past few years, I have been introduced to exactly what fascism is. They don’t teach you about it in school and I did not pursue degrees having to do with history, so I didn’t encounter it. When I did acquire this knowledge, I wrote a Medium article about it called “Fascism: Made in America.” I could see what was steadily happening at the time, but I had no idea how evergreen this article would be or how far American fascism would flourish.
Just like the election of Barack Obama was in direct response to the debacle that was George W. Bush; the election of Trump was in direct response to Obama being elected and having held office. To about 30 to 35 percent of this country, the United States, as they knew it, had come to an end.
It would never be the same.
Nothing had truly changed, nothing more than the fact that their president no longer looked like them.
For most of them that was a bridge to far.
The thing is that since before this country’s inception, there has been a battle between supremacy and equality.
At first, it was white supremacy versus Black equality.
This was up until women, mostly white women, got a bee in their bonnet and decided, Hey, I would rather not be property anymore. And we should certainly get our rights before Negro men.
Black, formerly enslaved, women agreed wholeheartedly that women should not be property and should have the same rights as men.
And the white women of the time proclaimed, Ain’t nobody talking about you.
And so the battle went on with the formerly enslaved and the indigenous slowly gaining allies in this two-steps-forward-three-steps-back dance towards equality in the United States.
So when Barack Obama became president of the United States, it proved to that 35% that the battle to maintain white supremacy was no longer firmly in their grasp; and it shook them to their core. Although it took some time, they began to respond.
They rooted themselves in powerful and continuous nationalism.
No matter what evidence was provided Obama was either a Muslim, African or not…
