I Seen What I Seen

Good evening! It’s been awhile! You look like shit, honestly, but so do I. A constant and overwhelming since of dread is rough on the skin.

I meant to write a version of this post since Elon went uwu Hitler at the inauguration. Without checking my calendar, I believe that was about 37 years ago. But my three year old decided she no longer sleeps, which has really eaten into my writing time.

So anyway, our new oligarch-cum-dictator (he would probably laugh at cum-dictator, but I am better than that) started his reign with two deliberate Hitler salutes—very clearly both sieged and heiled. While most of the ensuing discussion focused on what he did, there was surprisingly less focus on the why. Whether Herr Musk is smart enough to have done this on purpose, he successfully communicated to three audiences.

For the first and I believe smallest audience, his fans, it was a great joke. Can you believe me? The libs are so pwned! Aren’t we just so cheeky?

For we, the angry and terrified, it was a message. He can do obvious Nazi shit in public now and nobody will care. We can trust our lying eyes all we want, but we just seem hysterical.

For the third and largest group, this was a test. Will you believe the aspiring dictator with the Nazi friendly website who retweets his Nazi friends and does Nazi salutes is some sort of Nazi? Sounds over wrought! Group two desperately pleas for group three to do something while group one has a good laugh.

*******

Since the election, our fractured nation has come to agree on one fact. The doomer libs know that this is the age of the groypers. Our billionaires and press elites and marketers and CEOS all know its time to get rid of their diversity statements and kiss the orange man’s sweat flecked ring. The groyper kings, your Elons Musk and Christophers Rufo, have been salivating at the thought of how its their time in the sun.

But I think everyone is operating on a bad assumption. Well, everyone besides me. Trump is in a honeymoon period. This isn’t the dawn of the groyper. It is the peak. During normal political times, the party that wins overreaches and maybe gets over excited about some weird jargon, and people react and swing away. The groyper group painted over a word cloud about integrity, hacked the treasury, and can’t stop crashing airplanes.

The fundamental error at play is that each group is assuming that group one from above is the biggest: they won the election after all. But in actuality, group two, the people who literally cannot believe this shit, are the beating heart of Trumpism and the people who put him in the white house. This truth has big assumptions for where right thinking people need to go from here: we need to convince a critical mass of people what is happening before it’s too late.

The big question then is how. An accurate description of what is happening makes us sound like the left version of those divorced uncles who blamed every notable death on the Clintons for two decades or RFK Jr at his confirmation hearing. (One of the ways I know that I am not insane is that nobody is trying to say Elon is sex trafficking or stealing adrenochrome, so the crazies know this shit is true).

Normally electioneering is about trying to win the biggest group to your party by casting a wide net, but I don’t think that is the best play right now. The dems are shut out of power, which means they are shut out of responsibility and don’t need a platform beyond “look at these mother-fuckers.” Furthermore, normal people aren’t paying that much attention and the liberals who are paying attention right now yearn for a catharsis. Anyone who stood up the Muskovites would become a folk a hero. I don’t think it would take much to push these dweebs around, and if they fight back, imagine the free publicity from a sitting senator being hauled off to jail.

So far the people working the hardest to show the normies how fucked up the goypers are has been the groyperati themselves. The initial reaction to Elon’s salute of everyone from both sides are the same leftists to I am so much smarter than you centrists to my party is fine right-wingers, was to minimize the incident as an accident or whatever, but now basically every media mention of Musk includes that extended arm. The people who barely pay attention are going to start thinking of him as “that one Hitler guy” before summer.

The bigger project will be getting people in power to see what is at stake. I don’t think that any of the institutions that prize themselves on their centrist bent are up to the task. Their whole worldview is that both sides are corrupt in a way that is fun to be condescending about and that nothing bad could ever happen. At least not to anyone important, like their friends and their cocktail circuit. They are powerful and will do more to normalize the actions of the Special KKK in ways they could never do themselves. If you have a good idea here, let me know!

The dems have been pretty disappointing, but I think they are starting to be jolted awake. There is an honest to god filibuster planned for the senate floor, and some senators have started rallying by the Muskovite encampments at the federal buildings.

Ironically, I think that the Republicans are more vulnerable to pressure than they appear. While there are undoubtedly a fair amount of idiots on the right side of the aisle, most of them know damn well that the party is not normal. Political realignment puts them at a disadvantage in the midterms anyway, and if their constituents start to feel embarrassed about the GOP and stay home, or if normies can’t ignore their shit and actually go to the polls in ‘26, they know they are fucked. Furthermore, they can’t stay cordoned off in the oval office and have to go to the cities, almost all of which are blue, in their home states and campaign. It is unpleasant and unnerving when people hate you enough to picket your office and ask probing questions at your townhalls. It is not going to feel good to be them.

Furthermore, Republican governors actually have to make their states run, and may of them face an unfriendly midterm electorate as well. With the expiration of Biden’s covid funding to states, many are already facing a budget crisis and shutting down an unknown number of federal grants means more problems state governments will need to figure out how to solve. If the DoE is cut, they’ll have to decide whether to find their own SpEd funding or to incur the wrath of disabled students’ families. If the matching rate for Medicaid is cut even a few percentage points that is hundreds of millions of dollars the state will have to make up or reduce care or reimbursement rates. They are going to be in a world of hurt and may not have any patience for the adventures of Elon’s incel princelings.

We have a long, ugly road ahead. I am not sure where it will lead or how to choose the right path, but the truth matters and is worth fighting for. Maybe it is the time in the sun for the enemies of our democracy, but these dudes forget that they are a form of mold.