Up To Date With Ethan Callender Entry 23: The Black Hole

 Up To Date With Ethan Callender Entry 23: The Black Hole

Ever since January 6th, I have been incredibly worried about American democracy. Most nights, I even wonder whether we've already passed the point of no return. For some, this fear may seem unwarranted, but I feel there are reasons to be worried. For one thing, countries like Russia and Hungary have arguably rebirthed fascism with their less immediately obvious form of authoritarian dictatorship. They took power through the media, manipulating it to their interests and winning elections by misleading the masses. In fact, by most accounts, these two countries have won over their people to a decent extent. Through my experience so far, I can safely say the Republican Party is doing the same in the USA.

 This is in stark contrast to traditional authoritarianism in places like China, where there was never really democracy in the first place. Compare this to America, where democracy is strong on paper but somewhat less so in practice. In the present, this is due to systemic (mostly informal) white supremacy, corporate interests, and one party attacking the very foundations of democracy. If this rings a bell as being familiar to Russia and Hungary on the eves of their transition to soft fascism, you understand my point. Yet, I'll elaborate further, just in case the bell fell silent. 

Some Republicans in this country are going on to Fox News embracing Hungary as a bastion of good governance. To any American informed about Hungary these days, this would be a ludicrous statement. That nation is led by one Viktor Orbán, a political firebrand using Christianity and populist rhetoric to pit the Hungarian citizenry against his enemies. Frequent targets include the media as well as Muslims and other migrants. If this, too, sounds familiar, as if a certain former President did s*** just like this, you would not be mistaken.

The Republicans are also trying to overturn the 2020 election, whether through immediate violence like January 6th, or long-term politicking. For one thing, their constant cries of voter fraud being a threat to democracy are wildly overblown at best, with provable cases being exceedingly rare. They are also going after American history itself through the hysteria surrounding critical race theory. Even if the Democrats have been reinforcing that hysteria through stupid gaffes and the like, it doesn’t change the fact that American history began with colonies. These colonies then committed genocide against the Natives, intentional or not, almost into the 20th Century, with only a small percentage of Indigenous populations surviving by that time. All the while, America was systemically mistreating African-Americans until at least the 1960s, first through slavery and then through segregation.  

To make matters even worse, a lot of Americans have fallen for this pitch. How else did Glenn Youngkin win the Governor’s office in Virginia, a state that voted for Biden a year prior? How was New Jersey's governor's race that tight, with Democrat Phil Murphy barely squeaking out a victory? All of these narratives that have happened, even this month alone, are various effects of the same damn issue. That issue is the fact that the Republican Party is manipulating Americans into a frenzy of hate and fear.

This is why I worry about us having crossed the event horizon, to be sucked into the black hole of fascist dictatorship. Like with a black hole, we wouldn't be immediately aware of it, after all. We slowly be sucked in, our rights and freedoms being ripped apart by the metaphorical atom. We'd only realize it when it's too late to fight back. The status quo may suck, but the black hole of fascism sucks a whole lot more.