The Interminable Hell We're In

 We have to start getting used to the idea that Trump and Trumpism are here to stay.

Trump himself, while never of sound mind, and despite his atrocious diet, obvious obesity, and tanning addiction, seems relatively sound of body. Abetted by a compliant Supreme Court, a loyal and entrenched Republican party, and a toothless opposition, there's no reason to think we won't follow through on his signals to stay in office in 2028. Nursed along by the best health care available, it's possible he'll last another 20 years in office, increasingly demented but with lackeys whose power is dependent on his continued figurehead of the MAGA cult.

Having recreated the federal bureaucracy not only to enable authoritarianism but to guide that authoritarian system to support a handful of tech-minded oligarchs, there's no reason to think that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, won't continue to support the regime that continues to support them. And even if one of them decides to depose Trump and install himself as dictator for life (and none of these men is all that old), there's little anyone would be able to do about it, with the federal system designed to avert such a thing as eroded as it already is.

Once power is completely aligned under Trump, which is almost already the case officially the case and clearly the case de facto, even a legal ouster under the 25th Amendment or an extra-legal ouster by other means won't, by themselves, restore democracy. The coup leader, be it JD Vance or someone else—Trump Jr., for example—would simply be installing himself atop an existing authoritarian system, not reforming one. And that would be the point: those in power now haven't gotten there because they have principles or value the popular will.

The idea that all authoritarian systems fall on their own, that they must give way, eventually, to the needs of the people, is specious: witness Spanish fascism, which lasted under Franco for almost forty years. Note that Castro's Cuba chugs along long after the revolutionary's demise. And then there's North Korea, now on its third generation of dynastic rule. Despite its recent transformations, "communist" China is still a repressive, one-party state, nearly eighty years after Mao's rise to power.

None of this is meant as an excuse for pessimism; it's simply meant as a warning: there is no natural end to dictatorship. For every Hitler, Mussolini, Ceaușescu, there are half a dozen others who never paid from their crimes, who, like Stalin, Franco, Castro, died in peaceful slumber, with nary a worry in mind.

Getting rid of dictators is not a political process. Instead, it is a matter of justice, and the failure of the Congress to find Trump guilty when it had two chances through impeachment, the failure of the State of New York and the federal justice system to jail Trump (or offer him exile), the failure that was the Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. USA have all but sealed our fate. With Democratic leadership capitulating to Trump and Republicans repulsively loyal, it's difficult to see any way out, hard to see just who, what leader or popular uprising, will be willing to wield the hammer of justice to nail the coffin shut on Trump, his movement, and all it entails.

But without it, we better get used to living in this hell for the long haul.

On the Limitations of Moral Systems

by EW Wilder

No one “deserves” what they get. We're all struggling with our circumstances and our choices (or lack thereof) the best we know how—and what we learn about how to engage in this struggle is rarely adequate to the circumstances we are dealt. Woe be to the teenager so coddled as to never have been overwhelmed prior to being faced with adulthood.

Perhaps instead of trying to apply a predetermined system of justice on a universe that doesn't recognize its relevance, we should look at the situation a person is in and ask “What is the best way to alleviate suffering for everyone involved?”

I suppose one could argue that even the principle upon which this idea rests—that suffering should be addressed, and, if possible, overcome—implies a system of justice. And perhaps it does. But the point of reducing things to a simple maxim is to avoid wasting time and energy trying to place the blame, to avoid propagating waves of anger and resentment by casting forth punishments and rewards based solely on statute, faith, or opinion.

For all our apparent abundance, we actually have a dearth of resources in personal energy and time, and, increasingly, in physical resources as well: in food, clean water, secure housing. The notion that we have much to spend on doling out holy edicts ignores the desperate realities faced by suffering people and, in the end, circles back on us and dooms even we who have pledged to “help” make the world a better, more prosperous place.

The most we can do for justice is to stop believing we have a monopoly on defining it and to stop imposing its outcomes in ways that reinforce our own sense of superiority.