American Fascism

     I feel like I should have more to say about the fascist takeover of the United States, but I stopped thinking of it as something that could be stopped a long time ago. It was something to be fought, of course, but it wasn't something that could be stopped. Not without addressing the conditions that brought it forth. I didn't know this for a long time, but I don't think that anyone knows what causes fascism. Like pandemics, it just sort of happens, all we can do is try and contain the damage until we find a vaccine. But there's no mechanism in place to make people immune to fascist thoughts, and I'm not sure how you'd find it in the first place. 

     When I was taking accounting in college, my professor told us that each of us had a price at which we'd be willing to commit fraud, and it was important to figure out what that price is. I think that fascism works the same way, that each of us has a point at which we'll fall to fascism. Maybe we seek out the fascists, maybe they seek us, but all of us have a point at which the real world becomes to much, and we have to fight to regain control as best we can. 

    Also, this isn't the point of view of an expert, but when I look at the United States, I see a world where the collective Dreamworld has crumbled. I'm not the first person to notice this, but a lot of people seem to put the blame on one thing that failed us, be it the state, the internet, or the economy. My personal take is that it doesn't matter which order our systems failed in, it was their combined failure that left people without a world they could trust, and therefore believe in. Without that, they clung to the simplest things they could think of, which led to the worst aspects of America coming to the forefront. I'm not discounting the dangers of systemic issues, but to me what makes fascism awful isn't just that it's a collection of all the things we hate about ourselves, it's that its a reminder that we can never defeat evil. We can defeat evil people, but we can't defeat the world that made them, the world that sees evil as nothing more than a choice without context or consequence. It's a reminder that, no matter how often we beg the Universe for a break, we will never be able to stop building our world.