July 4, 2025

Going forward.

Like almost everyone else alive, and who has ever lived, I want to please people.

So I preface this letter with a hopeful statement that is also true: The fact that they’re still wearing masks is proof that America is fundamentally good and will recover.

What follows is my conscience, which, so help me God, is difficult to please.

fact pattern

One of the best documentaries I’ve seen was made by an American who grew up in a carnival and later directed the hit comedy Wayne’s World.

Her name is Penelope Spheeris and the documentary is called “The Decline of Western Civilization”. It features interviews with punk rock artists and fans as well as footage of shows in Los Angeles in 1979.

One of those interviews is with the French writer Claude Bessy who explains:

I have excellent news for the world. There's no such thing as New Wave. It does not exist. Its a figment of lame cunt's imagination. There was never any such thing as New Wave. It was the polite thing to say when you are trying to explain you were not into the boring old rock-n-roll, but, you didn't dare to say punk because you were afraid to get kicked out of the fucking party and they wouldn't give you coke anymore. There's new music, There's new underground sound. There's noise. There's punk. There's power pop. There's ska. There's rockabilly. But New Wave doesn't mean shit.

I first heard those words on an audio cassette in 1989 and they were as essential to my formation as any dictum from Aquinas or Augustine.

because you were afraid to get kicked out of the fucking party and they wouldn't give you coke anymore

People say untrue things all the time, because they believe it’s in their self-interest. Even when it’s not.

Because they are afraid to be kicked out and to lose the perks, if not safety, of being on the inside.

This is true even for people who have been shut out, and are already lost in the wild.

Like, the late Mr. Bessy, I, too, have excellent news for the world.

There’s no such thing as a centrist.

Anyone who says they’re a centrist is, at best, lying to themselves. On July 4th 2025, in the United States of America, there are heroes and there are cowards. There are fools and there are traitors.

But centrist doesn’t mean shit.

Why don’t we call Terry Nichols a ranch-hand or Jeffrey Dahmer a chocolate factory worker?

A person’s job title is no guarantee of how they will act. Soldiers can betray their armies. Doctors can commit murder.

A criminal can become a politician. A political party can be filled with criminals.

Unlike the ship of Theseus, a political party ceases to be legitimate when it threatens to use violence to override democracy:

"We are not going away. We are here to liberate this city from the burdensome and socialist leadership imposed by this governor and this mayor."¹

As the Germans say:

If you have 10 people and one Nazi sitting at a dinner table and willingly eating together, you have 11 Nazis.

Fascism is not a political movement. Fascism is a culture of moral degeneracy.

Fascism is cruelty.

You can be in favor of deporting every undocumented person in America, and you can be for cruelty.

The former is a policy preference: self-defeating, ahistorical, but defensible as a matter of national policy.

Cruelty, however, is not a policy.

Cruelty is inherently anti-political. It is an expression of war; violence. Cruelty is might makes right.²

It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president's ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. – Adam Serwer

If you countenance a person who repeatedly breaks the law and tells you they intend to continue to break the law, if you express comity towards people who attempt to break the courts and otherwise sabotage the rule of law, you are running cover for a criminal.

If you are sitting with a person who supports cruelty, you are sitting with a fascist.

It is comforting to believe that while emotions may run high, the damage will be contained.

History affords us no such comfort.

One in five Americans surveyed this week believe hunting down immigrants with no criminal records does not go far enough.

Yesterday, ICE became the largest interior law enforcement agency in American history. Already, ICE resists congressional oversight and is led by an administration that refuses to follow court orders.

We have left the realm of policy differences. We are no longer a country wherein two political parties vie for popular support to advance distinct policies.

Climbing back into the House Divided

With utter and complete reverence towards Abraham Lincoln, I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half fascist and half law-abiding.

Americans have been pulled out of a lawful, legitimate political system, through an Overton window, into an already lawless domain. Per one Supreme Court Justice, “no right is safe.”

You will recall seeing the fascist street fighters infiltrating the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

But you probably did not see that you yourself were being pulled out of the legitimate society that building represents when those very same terrorists were pardoned by Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025.

We currently reside in a limbo where cruelty and coercion are often the final “law” of the land because a significant number of Americans are acting in concert to undermine that compact.

This is familiar territory for the United States of America. It is the USA of Jim Crow, as depicted in the photographs above and below.

There was a center then, as well. Was it tenable?

I am not a politician. I am not a political operative.

I do not work to convince people to do the right thing, one vote at a time.

Nor am I a priest. I do not work to persuade people to turn away from evil.

I am but a peer to some very well-educated, very clever people who have convinced themselves that they can call themselves centrists in the hopes that they will not be kicked out of a “happy time” that no longer exists.

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. – Karl Popper

We will either be destroyed by fascism or we will destroy it.

The Republican Party of Arizona this week publicized the libel that immigrants eat pets.

Those who choose to take this claim as a joke, and not a threat, are choosing to sit at the aforementioned table.

More than 22 million people in the United States live in households with at least one undocumented family member.

In Los Angeles County, Independence Day celebrations have been canceled for fear of brutal family separations.

Donald Trump often calls himself the best dealmaker. Many who voted for him hoped he would solve intractable problems.

Instead, Trump has chosen to deny these families a path to normalization. He has further stripped one million persons of legal status. He and his administration remain committed to a solution they say will finally rid America of the “animals” and “scum” that they claim literally invaded America.

Anyone who asks “How far can they go?” is asking the wrong question.

The question is: What can I do to stop them from going any further?