Trump is the fascism vaccine: He is the figurehead for malevolent forces that have been at work for many many years in the twisty tunnels underneath City America, and are now strong enough to come up onto the regular streets -- but he comes in weakened form. He's enough of a neutered fool to give the system time to learn to recognize the danger, and react accordingly in the future when it comes about for real. If it had been anyone else on January 6th, with competent, prepared execution that any adult who'd spent his career surviving in politics would have done, then all the people in the federal government who'd tried to stand in his way would already be in prison, and US-hosted Lemmy instances would already be required by law to interface with the software that monitored for unpatriotic postings and users. Also Gaza would, I think, be a massive graveyard, a haunting, mostly-empty place that most of the world tried not to think about.

I am 0% joking or exaggerating about any of that. It doesn't mean that Project 2025 is safe by any means, but this is actually the safest possible means and details by which it could come to us, and if we can't deal with this version, then that's on us.