The Time For Choosing Is Upon Us -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/03/28/the-time-for-choosing-is-soon/

When Donald Trump won the election last November I think those of us who are mercifully immune to the lure of the MAGA cult knew that this second term was going to be bad. If you were following the campaign closely (many people were not) you knew about Project 2025 and you knew that Trump was inexplicably attached at the hip to the weird multi-billionaire Elon Musk. You also knew that he was fixated on starting a tariff war with America’s biggest trading partners and was irrevocably hostile to our long standing allies around the world. But I don’t think any of us could have predicted the exact confluence of atrocities being committed at warp speed from every direction. Shock and awe doesn’t adequately describe it. It is a cataclysmic political earthquake.

. . .

And yet, most of us are still living our lives in more or less normal fashion. Yes, many immigrants, even those in the country legally are now living in a state of abject terror. And vast numbers of workers have abruptly lost their jobs with many more to come. But the vast majority of Americans are still going to work, taking the kids to school, hanging out with their friends, pursuing their hobbies. Life is just going on in the midst of the most serious political crisis of any of our lifetimes and the cognitive dissonance of that is making us feel a little bit crazy.

During the pandemic I binged watched a wonderful series called “A French Village” which chronicled the lives of the people in a small town during the Nazi occupation. It’s not a story about the terror of the Holocaust or even the brave Britons who lived through the blitz in England. This is about living day to day and adapting to fascist oppression as it becomes more and more dangerous and violent. The villagers still had to do business, shop (and later find food), the kids had to go to school, people made love and had babies — and they all had to confront at some point how they were going to deal with the occupiers. Some collaborated, some left, some resisted, some subverted and some just tried to get by. Through it all life went on, even under the Nazis, until it didn’t.

Obviously, we’re not in that situation. It’s only been 68 days since Trump took office and we still have a way to go before it’s clear that the system has completely broken down one way or another. But I think we can all sense that it’s much shakier than we anticipated.

. . .

[skylucy]

1. Kick!