The all-American plummet, courtesy of the willfully blind

Punxsutawney Phil popped his head from his hidey-hole last weekend and prophesied four years of fascism here in the Turd Reich. Millions of Americans are rightly terrified. Some have even emailed me to ask why I’m not sounding the alarm the way I used to, back when I inveighed against Trump as many as five times a week.

My typical response: For eight long years, I tried. Hundreds of times I tried. So many of my political journalism colleagues tried. But what good did it do? In the land of the willfully blind, what’s the use of being clear eyed?

Did I try hard enough? Did I do my part? You be the judge.

“We can’t become so numb to his demagoguery that we can’t recognize the clear and present danger he poses to our democratic values.” (Oct. 2016)

“He has no respect for the peaceful transition of power, in part because he is ruled by his vile temperament and his vengeful impulses; in part because he has no clue about the responsible exercise of power. Shame on us if we take this as normal.” (Oct. 2016)

“An authoritarian sensibility, a strongman cult, a systematic breakdown of our democratic institutions…Yes, it can indeed happen here. That future is down the dark path at the fork in the road. If we take it, we own it.” (Nov. 2016)

“The most dangerous thing that this intemperate, unqualified man-child could possibly do is precisely what he continues to do – alienate the people whose job is to protect our national security.” (Jan. 2017)

“Trump is a clear and present danger to our national security.” (Dec. 2018)

“A demagogue who plunders America’s democratic institutions and aspires to role-model Russian despotism, a stoker of violence, a sociopathic liar who has dodged accountability his whole life…Strip away everything else about the guy, if that were even possible at this point, and his dearth of empathy and decency is more than enough to render him unfit for more power.” (Nov. 2020)

“It’s not uncommon for democracies to be fatally undermined from within – Germany in the early ‘30s, Turkey and Hungary more recently – and we can’t afford to flatter ourselves with the delusion that we’re simply destined to be different.” (Feb. 2021)

“It would be existentially dangerous to deliver the presidency to a 78-year-old whose brain has melted to the consistency of guacamole. He should have medical care, not the nuclear codes.” (Oct. 2024)

One particular dude, way back in 1988, warned in a radio address that it would be nuts to threaten tariffs and engage in economic warfare against our friends. He called it “a cheap form of nationalism…Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends – weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world – all while cynically waving the American flag.”

Thank you, Ronald Reagan. (In today’s MAGA GOP, he’d finish dead last in the Iowa caucuses.)

I’m not the proverbial smartest guy in the room; anyone with eyes and ears and functioning cognition understood the metastasizing MAGA threat prior to the ‘24 balloting, and knew what indeed would happen if the criminal and his conspirators were coronated. But mass denial and willful ignorance won the day and now it’s happening. Now here we are – fated to live as hostages, not citizens – our most treasured financial information having already been stolen.

Fascism in this era is not cattle cars en route to extermination camps. Timothy Snyder, the esteemed scholar of fascism, describes the American version – the digital coup – already in progress:

“A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives…They gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their supreme leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments…In the third decade of the 20th century, power is more digital than physical.”

The big question (now that it’s too late) is how we live with all this, how we cope, and (ideally) how we resist. We of course can entertain ourselves with all manner of transitory distractions – How ‘Bout Dem Eagles, West Wing reruns, sublime sunsets, YouTube videos of ocean surf – but, ultimately, unless the flattened Democrats get off their rears, and unless there’s a critical mass of grassroots pushback (a topic for another day), this nation that we’ve loved will be irrevocably shattered.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]