Artemis in Elk: "It's not like if Trump never came along we ..."

I'm not going to say Trump was an inevitability, but I think the US was headed towards a blatantly corrupt kleptocracy propped up by increasing authoritarian control & violence regardless.

Trump was maybe a bit "early", but eventually the oligarchs were going to make a mad scramble for anything left to grab.

Or at least from the perspective of the political elite, he was "early". The Epstein Class seems to have thought it was time.

It's not like if Trump never came along we were going to continue forever, perhaps slowly progressing.

The social/cultural groundwork for fascist takeover was already being laid before Trump declared in 2015. He couldn't have done what he did unless the way was already prepared.

March 10, 2026 at 7:11:20 PM

We might have gotten more dignified fascism, something more buttoned up, more tasteful, but then again, we might not have.

Either way, Trump didn't fucking invent the global rise of fascism nor the frenzied fight for power & control by people who know they are running everything into the ground.

Look at how many people the US incarcerates. You want to tell me that we haven't been normalizing human rights abuses & mass incarceration for decades now? You want to tell me that's completely unrelated to the detention camps we're getting now?

We've been living with "soft fascism" for a long, long time. It was there.

Ask unhoused folks. Ask indigenous folks. Ask anyone who isn't considered an "upstanding citizen" within whiteness.

The cruelty, the abuse, the control, the theft, the murder. It's all fucking there.

Trump is anomalous, sure, but then again, that's how change happens. We're in a new phase with new rules. The world doesn't just go on the same forever.

The consequences of the past create our present, so expecting our present to perfectly mirror the past is absurd. Of course things are different now. Of course this or that is "unprecedented". Change happens. Nothing stays the same forever. Nothing.

Some of us need to stop being astonished & offended that change happens & get more serious about shaping change.

That is to say, things will change whether we want them to or not, so our job is to adapt & try to create the future we want. We can long for "normalcy" all we want, but change always comes eventually.