Theory Blog: There’s No Going Back to “Normal”

NinaIllingworth March 13, 2025April 27, 2025 Amerikan Musik, billionaires, blog, capitalism, Christian nationalism, Civil Rights, class war, Climate Crisis, collaborators, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, extractivism, FA1, fascism, GOP, JA5, liberalism, Mini Theory Blog, MP6, neoliberalism, Nina Illingworth, oligarchy, police state, Politics, SCOTUS, Socialism, ST2, Theory, white supremacy

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They Prefer Fascism to Sharing

Speaking truthfully, I must confess that it’s not lost on me that a lot of people don’t want to hear what I’m saying in this infographic. Some of you will read the words “liberal establishment” and think I mean you personally instead of the politicians you vote for, the for-profit media that (selectively) informs your opinions, and the rich people who own both of those groups. Some of you won’t be ready to read what I’ve written here because you’re still operating under polite fictions that conceal what America really is, who it really works for, and how that work is actually accomplished. Finally even some of you who acknowledge what I’m telling you will insist that now is not the time for this discussion, and our entire focus must be on stopping Trump and the fascist America First movement so things can “go back to normal.”

Frankly I’m not really sure I can help the first two groups I mentioned at all; at least in the short term. You folks clearly need to get yourselves a library card and start reading; with a particular focus on American history, class hierarchies in our society, and how capitalism actually functions. It’s probably going to shock the shit out of you to learn that we are not a society of equals under the law and America doesn’t really work the way your middle school civics class told you it did; I do not envy you the mental vertigo that’s going to cause, but I will say that it’s better to understand how the world you live in actually works and how power is exercised, even if it’s horrifying, than to keep pretending things are drastically better and more egalitarian than they actually are. Free market fundamentalism is not a humane ideology, capitalist extraction is facilitated by the threat and application of violence, and a “democracy” where rich people own everything, control our politicians, and dictate the laws we live under while existing far above those laws is not actually “democratic” at all. Those are just the facts, and when you get done yelling at me because you don’t want to believe that, I’ll still be here waiting for you with open arms and a burning desire to make the better world you thought we lived in a reality.

For those of you in the “now is not the time; we have to stop Trump first” camp however, I’d just like to ask you a simple question. Given that well-meaning people just like you and I have been having this same discussion since at least the Nixon administration and “let’s go back to normal” has won out every time in the larger public consciousness, how would you say that strategy is working out for us so far? As Americans we went back to normal after the lurch towards fascism under Nixon, and ended up with free market fundamentalism and the Reagan era. Which was followed by us going back to normal, which got us the Bush-Cheney administration, the imperial presidency, and a mass surveillance-infused police state for our troubles. All of which in turn lead to another period of “going back to normal” before that normal handed a turnkey dictatorship to Trump; twice. All the while, the extraction never stopped, the imperialism never stopped, the police state only grew larger, corporate power and wealth inequality vastly increased, organized labor was decimated, our civil rights were eroded, and oligarchic power crept in to seize control of nearly every aspect of our lives anyone could possibly turn a profit from.

Frankly, apologists and bootlickers can’t even really argue that going back to a liberal capitalist “normal” improved social equality, made our society more democratic, or halted the rise of fascism because we just watched a bunch of billionaires capitalize on the racist, patriarchal, and fundamentalist attitudes of seventy-five or so million of the worst people in America to install a bloviating reality TV show nazi as the de facto King of America. Are you seriously going to tell me that a liberal capitalist “normal” that has resulted in the planet being on fire while billions of lives hang in the balance, politically empowered fascists seizing control of “democracies” all across the Pig Empire, and some ketamine-abusing 4-Chan nazi controlling the political discourse of like half the planet, is working out for labor class people?

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the bipartisan fascist police state that protects oligarchs and projects corporate power is the same fascist police state Trump is using to protect and install a fascist political order. The same racism, marginalization, and callous indifference to human life required to make capitalist extraction possible, is fueling popular support behind the rise of de facto fascist political parties all over the Pig Empire. The same national security state created to fight an endless “war on terror” is now being used to hunt down and silence opposition to Trump’s fascist agenda. The chickens have come home to roost and an unholy union of capitalism, imperialism, and hierarchal class warfare that is all completely “normal” in our society, has given birth to the very same fascist monsters that threaten to destroy everything labor class people care about today. Every time we listen to people who still want “a little” fascism and agree “go back to normal,” the nazis lick their wounds for a while and then come back stronger.

Who is this compromise with liberal capitalists and the “normal” they insist we must return to actually serving? What harm is it actually being prevented or reduced here in anything but the shortest of terms? How does an alliance with capitalist ghouls who pave the road to fascism actually stop fascists? As far as I can tell looking at modern political history: it objectively doesn’t. The fact is that there is no “we” in an alliance with the liberal establishment against Trump because these folks ultimately prefer fascism to sharing, which is why we’re staring down a second Downmarket Mussolini presidency in the first place. Going “back to normal” in America means going back to the free market fundamentalist reality that gave birth to not only Trumpism, but the reactionary billionaire cultists who paid for his rise to power.

So I guess I just have one more question then: aren’t you getting tired of “going back to normal” yet?