Hispanic Fanatic

Yes, I went on vacation while the world burned.

Before you get too judgmental, keep in mind that I rarely take time off, and I had booked this trip months in advance. So there was no way I could have known that the same week I planned to go abroad, the administration’s Gestapo-lite thugs would lay siege to my city of LA, or that the threat of ICE detaining me at the airport would become a distinct possibility. 

Nor could have I predicted that as I snagged a margarita in a foreign land, our illustrious commander in chief would embroil us in a war for vague, ricocheting reasons that grow more disturbing and contradictory by the hour.

In short, I picked a bad week to relax.

But of course, there are no good weeks in Trump’s America, and there is never a decent time to kick back while fascists prance around our nation’s cities.

Having said that, I enjoyed my sojourn to Mexico. I hadn’t been there in 40 years, and it was good to be back.

I highly recommend the country, even though Americans have been led to believe that it is just a sepia-toned wasteland of tattooed gangsters who will murder you for pure amusement. In my experience, it is a vibrant, verdant place where Mexicans work way too hard to keep Americans happy.

On our trip, my son and I swam in the underwater cave that the Mayans believed was the entrance to the underworld, and it was impossible not to feel the weight of history and belief and nature in that beautifully spooky cavern.

The next day, while we marveled at Chichen Itza, an American family joined our tour. The family’s sullen teenagers came to life when the tour guide explained how the Mayan astronomers — sans computers or advanced telescopes — made calculations that were within seconds of our modern observations.

One teen boy turned to the other and said, “Damn, those Mayans were crazy smart.”

Indeed they were, young man. 

But now I’m back in the USA, and instead of looking at ocean waves, tourists with six-pack abs, and plates of delicious food, I look at flickering images on my computer screen of monstrosity, inhumanity, and subjugation, courtesy of a corrupt administration filled with sycophants, goons, and thugs.

Clearly, I need a vacation from all this.

I live in Los Angeles. Let me assure you, it is no war zone.

It will only become an anarchic ruin if a certain xenophobe with authoritarian tendencies gets his way.

You see, LA is over 400 square miles. Right now, the curfew zone is about one square mile of that, and the jostling, shouting, and occasional flaming car you’ve seen on television are contained to an area slightly larger than that.

Yes, more than one LA local has pointed out that our city’s level of mayhem is somewhere between the aftermath of a Dodgers World Series victory and a random Saturday afternoon in the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s parking lot.

There is no anarchy here. There are only people trying to protect their neighbors, bored Marines wondering why they are here, a handful of troublemakers who want to mix it up with the cops, and the gloomy pall of an angry, hate-filled megalomanic whose whole existence at this point is making America suffer.

He is “intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy” in a floundering, heavy-handed, “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism. He is “trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends,” while yelling the word “insurrection” so often that you could turn it into a drinking game.

As we all know, when California “has asked for needed federal help—during the wildfires earlier this year, for example—Trump has begrudged that help and played politics with it.” Yet he is now portraying himself as a great savior and “forcing help that the city and state do not need and do not want, not to restore law but to assert his personal dominance over the normal procedures to enforce the law.”

And do we really have to point out that Mr. Law and Order is fine with people bludgeoning cops, as long as those committing the assault are doing so in his name? The Trumpian philosophy is “Hit a cop, you’re going to jail, unless the president likes the reason you hit a cop, in which case you’re getting a pardon.”

Listen, even an astigmatic child can see that “by militarizing the situation in L.A., Trump is goading Americans more generally to take him on in the streets of their own cities, thus enabling his attacks on their constitutional freedoms.” This is stage one of his pathetically obvious plot to “create a national emergency that will enable him to exercise authoritarian control.”

After all, “mass deportation and large-scale immigration enforcement require nothing less than a police state, and the more of a crackdown you demand, the more obviously it will look and act like a police state.”

This is no doubt fine with the 20 percent of Americans who will support Trump no matter what and most likely love the idea of an authoritarian government. But most of America is not so enamored with the idea of a despotic king.

That is why as the Trump administration flounders and fails at everything it tries, as their “initiatives have stalled and popular opinion is turning against the administration on every issue, the Trump regime is trying to establish a police state.” But just every other project the White House attempts, they fucked this one up, because “in making Los Angeles their flashpoint, they chose a poor place to demonstrate dominance.” They could have rolled into “a smaller, Republican-dominated city whose people might side with the administration,” but in picking a fight with Los Angeles, they tried to conquer “a huge, multicultural city that the federal government does not have the personnel to subdue.”

The best-case scenario is that Trump gets bored with fighting us, withdraws the troops and his government gangsters, and then declares victory when the situation normalizes, thereby continuing his habit of provoking chaos and then claiming a win when total disaster is narrowly avoided.

The worst-case scenario, unfortunately, is that Trump follows “the logic of revolution,” in which aspiring tyrants find its not so easy to vanquish a nation, and after “each obstacle, after each catastrophe, the turn to violence becomes that much swifter, the harsh decisions that much easier.”

The concern, of course, is that “if not stopped.. the Trump revolution will follow that logic too.”

In this case, Los Angeles will just be the beginning.

The Iraq War was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Trump becoming the party’s nominee was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Trump winning the electoral college in 2016 was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then the botched response to Covid was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then the January 6 attack was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Trump winning the nomination again was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then DOGE was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then tariffs was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then…

OK, the point is that we are closing in a dozen death knells, yet here is the Republican Party, in control of all three branches of government and executing its maniacal agenda with incredible speed (although not with incredible efficiency).

Also, this theoretically moribund political movement currently enjoys a higher approval rating than its opposition.

But it hasn’t stopped political commentators from declaring, “This is really it. The death knell of the GOP is coming. We mean it this time.”

Yup, I’m sure this time it will be different.

In truth, the fight between progressives and conservatives will likely go on as long as this country exists. Of course, that might not be for very  much longer, but let’s be bold and optimistic.

There are many reasons to believe that the GOP is doomed in the long run, ranging from the dismal history of xenophobic political parties to the high death rate of the Republican base to the likelihood of right-wing implosion.

But even if the GOP goes the way of the Whigs, there will always be a remnant of lunacy in American culture. There will always be a large contingent of people who feed on fear, hatred, and ignorance. The objects of their scorn and the wars they declare will look different, but there will never be a time when progressives will sit back and say, “Everybody relax. We won.”

Consider that even if Trump literally destroyed America, 20% of the survivors would still worship him. Another 20% would turn on him, but refuse to admit that liberals were right. They would eventually go back to voting Republican (or the equivalent in a post-apocalyptic society that still allowed voting) in the next election. So even in a worst-case scenario, about 40% of Americans would continue to reject liberalism.

Clearly, there will never be a death knell that abruptly finishes off the right-wing mindset.

The fight is permanent and unending.