The 2024 U.S. presidential election result is being analyzed by pundits, commentators, journalists, and historians as has been done following every other presidential election. Donald Trump's MAGA fascism has clearly been embraced by a majority of Americans who voted. The Republican Party regained control of the U.S. Senate, and retained its majority control of the House of Representatives. Trump's super-majority hold on the U.S. Supreme Court - thanks to the machinations of out-going Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - means that MAGA fascism is the dominant political ideology of all three branches of U.S. government for the foreseeable future.
It is already clear how MAGA fascism is likely to operate judging from the personnel Trump is nominating to fill key leadership positions. Heather Cox Richardson has written about that in her November 13 edition of Letters From An American.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-13-2024
I agree that John Thune’s election as Senate Majority Leader is a good thing. He is going to be a less subservient politician than Rick Scott, and that less subservient kind of leadership is needed now that Trump has another four-year term for his vicious idiocy to operate on the world.
However, I don’t share HCR’s optimism about how the Senate might be a moderating influence on MAGA politics. Granted, the Senate is, by design, somewhat more immune from populist movements than the House of Representatives and the President because Senators have six-year terms. However, Mitch McConnell enabled MAGA initiatives during Trump’s first term, with John Thune’s assistance. Thune might be slightly less subservient to Trump, but he is not likely to openly defy Trump in many instances, let alone in most.
The truth that must be faced is that MAGA fascism is a disease that has infected all three branches of the American political system. As with any disease, it will run its course unless a vaccine is used. Ordinarily, one would hope that voters would serve as the vaccine. Given how voter suppression efforts enacted after 2020 worked, and considering how white supremacy and patriarchy remain popular among a sizable segment of the electorate, I doubt that voters will counteract MAGA fascism. If Trump’s election showed anything, it was that white supremacy and patriarchy are dominant forces in America. I do not see that changing anytime soon.
Farmers and physicians understand that diseased crops and people do not become healthy unless the sickness that causes the unhealthy crops and people is arrested and cured by effective countermeasures. MAGA fascism is like a disease for the American political system. It has taken root in the minds of enough American voters so that it will not go away until it has either run its course or been rejected. MAGA fascism is based on a kind of shoddy thinking that rejects critical analysis, takes offense at dissenting viewpoints, and fears pluralism, inclusion, and intellectual honesty. That ideological sickness will not produce better thinking, better policies, and better practices no matter how much people like that sickness.
The sickness will worsen until it either destroys the U.S. democracy or is counteracted by strong-minded people who are not afraid to speak truth to power, stand up for what they believe, and shine the light on a better way.
Make no mistake. MAGA fascism will not go away on its own. And MAGA fascism will make life harder for most of the people who voted for Trump. White supremacy, racism, patriarchy, sexism, xenophobia, and free market fundamentalist capitalism have been part of the U.S. political environment across the history of the republic, but have never been unopposed. In the same way that brave and strong-minded people challenged those forces in the past, brave and strong-minded people must challenge them during Trump's next term of office.
In the meantime, let's be honest and admit that things are going to get worse. Diseased crops and people do not get better by taking on more infection, but by receiving vaccines. MAGA fascists do not want a society characterized by pluralism, inclusion, critical thinking, and civil liberty for all people. They will not surrender the power won in the 2024 presidential election. That power will have to be voted from them by people who believe in pluralism, inclusion, critical thinking, and civil liberty for all people.
Let's be the vaccine.
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