The WTF era
Take a moment and imagine how those yet to come will look back upon us.
Will they scratch their heads and ask "What was wrong with those people?"
Will they wonder how an established democracy, a "world-leader," could get so incredibly fucked up in such a short period of time?
Imagine the future categories of "WTF Courses" universities will offer on politics, sociology, psychology, economics, communications, history, and so many other fields of study. Students will struggle with the questions of how an entire country went off the rails, and why so many people were gullible enough to buy into bugshit insane ideas.
Imagine them wondering: "How did a lunatic fringe capture power?"
A basic truth of politics and war is that, very often, numbers don't matter.
Many historic military battles have been won by the few against the many.
And many seats of power have been seized by a minority.
(In this century, the rise of Republican presidents has been tainted. In 2000, the Supreme Court appointed "President George W. Bush. In 2004, the reelection of the incumbent, George W. Bush, was decided by Ohio, where many "lost," uncounted, and "missing" votes raised questions as to the legitimacy of the election. In 2016, it seems that Russians, Cambridge Analytica, and the combination of voter suppression and gerrymandering put an unstable resident in the White House.)
At this moment, we have an inept, unfit, erratic, uncontrollable, emotional needy, unsteady man in the Oval Office, doing whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it. How will future generations begin to grasp how he came to power and how he gets away with it?
Imagine a future incarnation of the Republican Party attempting to explain how and why the majority of their members sat silently by, watching the destruction of an established system of government.
Imagine future evangelist preachers trying to explain from their pulpits how so many who came before them ended up buying fascism (and a golden calf).
Imagine future racists and neo-Nazis longing for the good old days when they had an understanding ally in the White House.
Then again, imagine that this current crop of ruling fascists manage to hold onto power. It's a possibility, an ugly/horrific one, but one that could come to be.
But assuming a return to some form of "normal," the generations to come will always question how we allowed it to happen. And, I believe, they will always look upon this era as a shameful one in which too many of us sat on the sidelines doing nothing.
History will not be kind to those who collaborated. And perhaps it will view the rest of us, at best, victims.