I haven’t really had the words to talk about politics lately. Not here. Not in depth. I’ve given little one and two-off tweets, but nothing where I could synthesize my thoughts into anything meaningful. I’m still not sure I have that. But with Trump’s last day in office right around the corner, I have some thoughts.

On January 6th, people — Americans — swarmed the Capitol en masse. This was a coup. Many were armed. Those that weren’t armed with traditional weapons improvised. There’s footage of people beating Capitol police with American flags. One officer was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Another was crushed against doors. We got to see him scream for help while blood spurted from his mouth.

This is what people like myself have been warning about since before 2016. We said: if this man was elected president, he would try to install himself as a dictator.

This is what I wrote November 10th:

“I worry about what’s coming next.

I worry because one party has complete control of the house, and that party–Republicans–has proven what they stand for and what kinds of morals and beliefs they have when they backed and supported their presidential candidate.

I worry about freedom of speech–that dissenting speech will begin being targeted. That people who are marginalized or who protest and resist this administration’s goals will be targeted much like they were in the years after the 9/11.

I worry that things will get even worse for PoC–I worry about “special police forces” for those “high crime areas.” After all, Trump said he wanted to run on “law and order.”

I worry about gay marriage rights being rolled back, gay marriages undone.

I worry for people like my wife, who are disabled and rely on medication in order to live and function with a bare minimum of comfort.

Even when I’m not worried about the very real threat of following Germany’s path to a Nazi regime, I worry about the worst and most hateful Republican policies being enacted with little-to-no political resistance because of their overwhelming majority.

I worry about the damage this new Supreme Court will do to our nation in the coming decades as it’s packed with justices from the Tea Party.”

The Aftermath, November 10th, 2016

“The worst case scenario–and it’s looking more likely with every passing day–is that Trump will actually make a move to take over this country. He’s an idiot, but he knows how to exploit things for his own benefit. He’s stacking his staff with family and literal Nazis, already talking about creating a database that Muslims need to register in (which…uh…Hitler did, too), denying the presidential salary (also a Hitler move), and did I mention that actual white supremacist? Not to mention, in spite of his family also running his business, he wants to wiggle his way around anti-nepotism laws, he’s has an horrifyingly close relationship with dictator Putin, and did I mention the white supremacist Nazi that’s his Chief Strategist.”

Dark Times Ahead, November 16th, 2016

I was right to be worried.

They tried to kill the ACA. Trump rammed through two Supreme Court justices — disgusting individuals with hateful, bigoted positions who will use the judiciary to further their morally bankrupt agenda. Trump banned trans folks from the military, instituted a travel ban against (some) Muslim countries. And of course, we did see “special police forces” for “high crime areas.” ICE was emboldened to arrest migrants. Thousands were deported, and worse, separated from their children who were kept in cages. Then, Trump sent militarized police into multiple cities in an effort to crush the protests of black folks tired of being perpetually slaughtered by police.

I had no idea how bad it would get. I couldn’t have foreseen the pandemic that would go ignored, unchecked, and result in 400,000 people dying in the US when it’s been mostly handled in other countries that care about reason, science, and collective action. And while I worried about America’s slide into fascism, it was still horrifying to see thousands of people swarm the Capitol with the intent to kill our elected officials to keep a petty, spoiled rich boy with fascist tendencies in power.

I never thought I’d see people elected into Congress that believe that Democrats are part of a secret cabal of pedophile Satanist cannibals. And yet, we do. Many of them.

I started this post not long after the election, but decided to just enjoy the holidays and let things fly. I figured I’d come back in 2021 refreshed and able to better articulate my thoughts on the state of politics in America. January 6th, 2021 said “Fuck you,” and then kicked me in the dick with steel-toed boots.

Trump is the only US president in history to be impeached twice. And while the Democrats have focused on how he literally stirred the crowd up before siccing them on Congress like a gigantic pack of wild dogs, it bears repeating that Trump has been committing impeachable acts and exploiting his role as president since literally the day he took office. And all along the way, he’s been aided and abetted by Republicans.

I’ve said this repeatedly: most of the GOP doesn’t care about Trump. They’re not loyal to him. They could give a shit about him. If he were on fire, they wouldn’t piss on him to put him out. He was a useful idiot, a demagogue with a cult of personality that they could use as a cudgel to ram through as many hateful policies as they could manage. They could de-regulate environmental protections with reckless abandon, try to defund social programs, destroy safety nets, and grift the American people for millions of dollars before the good times ended. And the GOP knew that the good times would eventually end. They knew, as the saying goes, Trump was here for a good time, not a long time.

Now, of course, there are two fucking things the GOP did immediately after the attack on the Capitol. They distanced themselves from Trump, condemning him and “his followers,” while simultaneously calling for unity, claiming that impeaching Trump would further divide the nation. Their arguments are nonsense, and they don’t actually believe them. They just don’t want to be held accountable for their four years of complicity with this attempt at a fascist coup.

They didn’t care about unity and bipartisanship when they forced the government to shut down repeatedly during Obama’s administration, literally holding the government’s social programs hostage while angling for even more tax cuts for the rich. They didn’t care about unity when they refused to meet to allow Obama’s Supreme Court nomination, instead holding off until Trump was in office so they could force their own nominee through. They didn’t care about unity when RBG died and they rammed a second justice through, this time abandoning the previous argument that court vacancies in the last year should be saved for after the election so that the new president (whomever that may end up being) could fill the seat. No, this time, it was unfair to try to hold off until after the election, that it was Trump’s right to fill that seat.

There aren’t two parties in the US right now. It looks that way on the surface, and it functions that way in practice because the US built our election process around making slave holders happy, but anyone who’s actually honest with themselves and doesn’t try to equivocate and tap dance around the issue will agree that the Republican party is compromised. It’s not a matter of differing on policy. They sided with a would-be dictator who has repeatedly attempted to steal the election, undermining the results and sowing conspiracy until his precious Twitter was finally taken away from him — like taking the empty matchbook away from a three year old when the house has already become a blazing inferno. Any excuses that people may have been able to give Republicans, siding with Donald Trump as he enacted hateful, bigoted policy after hateful, bigoted policy, is inexcusable. They blatantly endorsed and indulged his hate so that they could puppet him around and ram through their own hateful policies. They endorsed him right up until their lives were literally threatened.

Biden is a fascinating exercise in cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, he’s actually doing things that are good, helpful, things that Republicans have resolutely rejected. On the other hand, it’s not enough, he’s not pushing hard enough, and he continually calls for unity and healing — but there can’t be unity and healing without accountability. There are reports that some members of congress actually helped coordinate the mob, providing schematics and tours so that the rioters would know exactly where prominent Democratic figures were. There can be no unity without accountability. After the Civil War, we attempted to heal by not holding the South accountable for its treason. That allowed the South to terrorize black people, institute a new caste system, and literally kill and run out any black representatives who’d been elected in the interim. They undermined the efforts of Reconstruction and began a concerted campaign to rewrite history. The “Lost Cause” bullshit literally comes from the fallout of the Civil War, where the South was able to rewrite why they seceded and pretended it wasn’t all about race and slavery.

And that’s what I fear happening now. I’m afraid of the Democrats rejecting progressive policies and continuing to try to court Trump voters in some misguided attempt to win over Republicans instead of firing up their actual base. I’m afraid that the Republicans that fell in lock step behind Trump will get to reinvent their image and argue they were “just following orders” and bury all of the truly horrendous things they’ve said and done, that justice won’t be served, and that the Democrats will shift further right as they attempt to compromise and act in good faith with a party that has, for at least twelve years, done everything it could to establish themselves as the only party deserving of any power or ruling ability.

Lots of folks — centrists and Republicans of various stripes — have called for folks on the left to be nice to the Trump voters since they’re heartbroken about their loss. Even in the aftermath of the attack in DC, one of the GOP’s arguments for not impeaching Trump was that “75 million voters were understandably upset and scared,” ignoring that 80 million people voted for Biden, but I suppose those people don’t count.

When Republicans win, Democrats are supposed to move toward the right to accommodate folks that voted for Republicans. When Democrats win, they’re supposed to move toward the right to avoid alienating those voters that voted for Republicans.

But Republicans never have to move left. They’re not expected to adopt progressive policies to accommodate the folks on the left. They’re not expected to reconsider their strategies when they lose elections. They’re not expected to act like grown ups or take responsibility for anything they’ve said or done.

Remember how when Hillary lost, Trump voters gleefully shit on the left and Hillary voters?

Remember how Trump’s rallies were full of chants of “Lock her up”?

Remember how they wore shirts that said “Fuck your feelings”?

Remember how people in congress have been running for years with ads that show them literally taking up arms against the left?

They sure don’t want you to remember all that.

Meanwhile, these people that call themselves patriots literally wiped shit in the halls of the Capitol, defaced the statues of civil rights leaders, displayed literal symbols of hate and white supremacy, and planned to kill not just Democrats, but anyone in Congress that didn’t bow to their will. After all, when Trump tweeted about being angry at Pence, the crowd began chanting “Hang Mike Pence” while they hunted for him.

In a beautiful example of the hypocrisy and bad faith that the right uses at every opportunity, when “Hang Mike Pence” began trending on Twitter, right-wing folks acted aghast and tried to spin it as trending because progressives were calling on the execution of the vice president, rather than it trending because their very own supporters were chanting it. In fact, within minutes of the attack being dispersed, conservatives began claiming it was antifa, not Trump supporters but only in disguise, that perpetuated the attack.

Lack of accountability is exactly how we got here in the first place. We haven’t held Republicans accountable for their hypocrisy and lying for decades — this way predates Trump. After all, as much as folks like to remember the humorous doofus that he was portrayed as in the media, George W. Bush and his administration lied to get us into a war so that we could steal another country’s oil. We as a nation committed war crimes. We still have people locked up in Guantanamo Bay over shit from 20 years ago that they had nothing to do with.

But each time a Democrat gets into office, while they fight and scrap to push through the most tepid, mediocre policies, Republicans block every attempt at meaningful change and rewrite the rules so that next time, they keep and stay in power so they can easily undo whatever good the previous Dem could manage.

I’m not a praying man, but I pray to whatever powers may be that the Democrats and the American people will, for once, stand up and hold these people accountable. Send them to jail, expel them from Congress, do not let them slink back into the shadows to lick their wounds and regroup to do this again. Because they will. It’s not just Josh Hawley. It’s not just Ted Cruz. The Republican party has been complicit in laying the foundations of the movement that resulted in domestic terrorists attempting a coup. They should be remembered, by name, for doing so.