America's New Domestic Forever War - Dehumaning the Vulnerable

 ~~ written by BrahmaFear ~~

"...he is only liked by people he hates and hated by the people whose approval he’s desired all his life."

This encompasses Trump's personal pathology pretty well. But the institutional infrastructure he's built and compiled that's now surrounding him like a warm cocoon is the thing that's leaving his would-be political adversaries with mouths agape in those proverbial headlights. That, and their undeniable complicity in assuring that Trump's escalator ride makes a stop at every floor of what's left of this so called society. And not unlike awestruck, defenseless children hoping their parents can somehow make sense of the bizarrely non-sensical, many citizens are even now clinging to the delusional fantasy that the Democratic party can still save us from the scourge of MAGA and this grotesque, malevolent buffoon pulling its chain.

"Maybe things can somehow still be better again."

This is to be a preemptive war. It will be waged against those individuals – James Comey, John Bolton, George Soros and Reid Hoffman – and institutions, including the Democratic Party – which Stephen Miller has labeled a “terrorist organization” – universities and the media, which threaten Trump’s absolute grip on power.

This is not simply a war on the left, which is a marginal and ineffective force in American society, but a war on the remnants of our liberal institutions and those that support them. Once these establishment institutions and their representatives are neutered those of us on the left will be next. -Chris Hedges

https://countercurrents.org/2025/09/trumps-war-on-america/

I'm telling you, you need to understand what's happening. Don't misunderstand what's happening. There's no fight here. You can't fight against the fact that the ship is sinking. That's not a fight situation. that's a survive situation. That's an escape situation. There's no fight to be had in this scenario. And I'm not telling you to flee the country, even though that's what a lot of you are doing...but not everyone is able to do that. So, you need to flee your country even while you're in it...Carve out your own places there. Carve out your own communities...sufficiency zones...I'm not talking about solidarity as a slogan... - Shahid Bolsen

To this day, the part of me holding onto the old world still cringes at the prospect of a Solzhenitsyn citation, but Hedges' use here hits the mark pretty squarely:

“Universal innocence,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago, “also gave rise to the universal failure to act. Maybe they won’t take you? Maybe it will all blow over.”

“The majority sit quietly and dare to hope,” he writes. “Since you aren’t guilty, then how can they arrest you? It’s a mistake!”

“Does hope lend strength or does it weaken a man?” Solzhenitsyn asks. “If the condemned man in every cell had ganged up on the executioners as they came in and choked them, wouldn’t this have ended the executions sooner than appeals to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee? When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?”

“But wasn’t everything foredoomed anyway, from the moment of arrest?” he asks. “Yet all the arrested crawled along the path of hope on their knees, as if their legs had been amputated.”