The other morning I was especially stirred when I read the previous night’s headlines from the Fractured States of America, so I went on a tear on Bluesky. This is what I wrote:
Look, I hate to say this, but from over here it looks as though the US has turned the corner and entered the emergency zone.
If GOP elected officials are afraid of Trump goon squads, if Musk can threaten advertisers with cancellation of state contracts if they don’t spend enough on X, if Trump can ‘joke’ about being king, if Hitler salutes are now normalised in public (though even Bannon held back a little), if there is no organised, articulated opposition, if Trump can tell blatant falsehoods on mass media (Zelenskyy ‘dictator’, attacked Russia) without being vigorously rebutted by an allegedly free press, if Trump governs by executive orders rather than legislation, if the POTUS and VPOTUS have repudiated their alliance with the liberal democracies of Europe, and thrown in their lot with unabashed tyrants… well, there you are.