The digital age has turbo-boosted extremism, and analogue democracy is struggling to keep up

Donald Trump’s record of refusal to concede defeat after the last US election should have disqualified him from running in this one. His criminal indictments should have meant banishment from mainstream politics. His campaign rhetoric – a rambling litany of bigotry and spite – should not have carried beyond the paranoid fringe.

But what use are should and shouldn’t against the brute force of can and does? Things that are supposed to be self-evident in a constitutional democracy have ceased to be obvious to millions of Americans. We don’t need to wait for all votes to be counted to wish for a stronger cultural inoculation against tyranny.

Trump says Netanyahu is doing a good job and Biden is holding him back. Even on this issue, Trump is worse

I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them.

While Israel had a right to defend itself against the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, it did not have the right to wage an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people.

To get the most out of play, we should embrace it for what it is, not as way to hone skills or train our brains

A 93-year-old woman sits in a hospital bed. Facing her is a figure in a full hazmat suit, complete with goggles and latex gloves. Between them lie some cards: they are playing a game. It’s July 2020. The older woman, a grandmother, has Covid. She also has Alzheimer’s.

Her move from a nursing home to the isolated ward at the Sahmyook medical centre in Seoul has left her exhausted, confused and lonely. Her only human contact since her arrival has been with the nurses who bring her food and check her vitals.

There’s not much I can do about it, but I still spend a lot of time thinking about what I, and others outside the US, should do if that country ceases to be a democracy. But, it doesn’t seem as if lots of other people are thinking this way. One possibility is that people just don’t want to think about it. Another, though, is that I’ve overestimated the probability of this outcome.

To check on this, I set up a flowchart using a free online program called drawio. Here;s what I came up with

I hope it’s self-explanatory. The bold numbers next to the boxes are the probability of reaching that box. The numbers next to arrows coming out of decision nodes (diamonds) are the probability of that decision.

I also apologize in advance if there are any arithmetic errors – my degree in pure mathematics doesn’t insulate me against them.

If the US were remotely normal, every entry on the left-hand edge ought to be equal to 1. Harris should be a sure winner, Trump shouldn’t find any supporters for a coup, the MAGA Republicans in Congress should be unelectable and the moderate program proposed by Harris should be successful enough that Trumpism would be defeated forever.

But that’s not the case. There are two end points in which US democracy survives, with a total probability (excessively precise) of 0.46, and one where it ends, with a probability of 0.54. By replacing my probabilities at the decision nodes with your own, you can come up with your own numbers. Or you may feel that I’ve missed crucial pathways. I’d be interested in comments on either line.

Note: Any Thälmann-style comments (such as “After Trump, us” or “Dems are social fascists anyway”) will be blocked and deleted.

(Photo adapted from an official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson)

This last week the billionaire owners of both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times prevented their newspaper editorial staffs from endorsing Kamala Harris for President of the United States. The rationale given for these interventions are thin gruel indeed, and belie the reasons that everyone already knows are behind the actions: These billionaire owners know an actual fascist has a reasonable chance of once more becoming president of the United States. This fascist does not care about the First Amendment to the US Constitution, or indeed any part of the US Constitution at all; he wants and intends to be a ruler with unlimited power — and the US Supreme Court, in a ruling this summer that will rank as one of the all-time misbegotten court decisions in the history of the country, has decided that US Presidents effectively have that unlimited power for “official acts.” They cannot rely on this fascist to restrain himself, or for the increasingly compliant courts of this nation to restrain him. Besides, at least one of these billionaires has government contracts.

So they are pulling their punches and hedging their bets. In this, they are cowards, but they are also calculating, and because of those calculations, are being pre-emptively compliant to the fascist. If Harris wins, they will have lost nothing; Harris, they know, is not a fascist, and even if she remembers their cowardice, calculation and compliance, she will do nothing about it. But if the fascist wins, well. They have ready evidence of their fealty. Billionaires are not overly bothered by incipient fascism, after all.

Indeed, it’s already well in evidence that at least a plurality of prominent billionaires would prefer fascism at this point; it’s easier to flatter and bribe than it is to comply with regulations. Their concerns are not the concerns of the millions of Americans whose rights and prospects will be threatened by a fascist in the White House. They never have been. They never will be. A fascist in the White House is all right with them.

Make no mistake: Donald Trump, in his words and actions of this election season and beyond, has shown himself a fascist. The will to power; the anger; the assertion that the “enemy within” (i.e., anyone who does not bow the knee) is a greater threat than the foreign despots he is so cravenly in the pockets of; the desire to use the military to attack and punish American citizens; the contempt for the rule of law; the intent to enforce loyalty to him as a condition of government employment; the almost certain attempt to implement the policies in the Project 2025 playbook; the bald declaration to be a dictator from day one.

Those who worked with him in his first administration openly call him fascist, and they would know better than anyone else; they saw him day to day, restrained only by (some of) his underlings’ dedication to the actual rule of law. Those underlings, the ones so fervently warning us against Trump now, will not be there to dissuade him in a second administration. The guardrails, as they say, are off. At this point, anyone who says that Trump isn’t, by action and intent, a fascist, is either ignorant or complicit, or some combination of the two.

In any other year where Kamala Harris was the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States, she would have my endorsement. She’s an incredibly smart and canny politician with a track record of supporting things that are important to me, a long and thoughtful sheaf of policies that she wants to implement if she gets into office, and someone who, has a prosecutor, attorney general, senator and vice president, has shown herself a good steward of the law of this land, and a dedicated servant of its people. She is, simply put, a no-brainer for the role. She’s not perfect and I don’t expect her to be, and I don’t imagine her tenure as President will be a cakewalk, especially in this current political climate. But at the end of the day it’s difficult to find anyone with a better track record to be president than she already has. In any year, she would likely be the best candidate. In any year, I would be happy to give her my vote.

This isn’t any year. The distinctions between the two candidates could not be any sharper, and the consequences for the future of the country couldn’t be greater. It’s tiring to live in an era which each presidential election is the most important election in the history of our democracy, but here we are, and it is what it is. On one hand you have a lifetime public servant who is dedicated to continuance of American democracy, imperfect as it may be, and to the idea that the US should be a place of opportunity for all of its people. On the other hand you have a convicted felon who wants to rule by fiat, backed by a cadre of authoritarians, starting with a bought-and-paid-for Vice Presidential candidate, who want to detonate a century of social and economic progress, and shove anyone who is not white, straight and male (and, critically, already rich, even if they are white, straight and male) as far down a hole as they can.

Note well that the above is focusing only on what’s best for the United States; for the rest of the world, politically, economically and ecologically, the consequences of this election will be as stark, if not more so. The choice is between stability and the strengthening of alliances, and, bluntly, a plunge into chaos. Whatever place and people you are concerned about, a Trump administration will make their problems much worse; any argument one might have otherwise is either unduly hopeful or tragically naive. The only international beneficiaries of a second Trump administration will be despots. They will be delighted to have him back. A little light flattery, and they can do whatever they want to whomever they like.

I am deeply tired of Donald Trump and everything about his shitty, selfish, criminal and hateful self, a man whose only lasting legacy to this point is encouraging the worst parts of the American public to free themselves of any social bond to their neighbors and to be be just as awful as their idol. Kamala Harris fucking laughs, and seems happy, and actually appears to like people, not just tolerate people she needs something from. It would be too much to say she embodies the better idea of what the US could be — that’s a lot to put on anyone — but I will say that at least when I look at her, I know that there’s a chance that the better idea of what the US could be is possible. I can’t look at Trump at this point and see anything but hate and anger, and the worst of what we are as a nation.

I deserve better than Donald Trump. We all do, even and including the people who will, to me unfathomably, give him their vote once again.

The billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times can hedge their bets about the possibility of a fascist in the White House, unrestrained by the rule of law and the idea that Americans are citizens, not subjects. The rest of us, including me, cannot. I want the United States that Donald Trump can’t, never could, and would never want to, give us all. That United States is one I believe Kamala Harris is working toward, and would continue to work toward as President.

In any year, Kamala Harris would be my choice for President of the United States. In this year, she is the only choice. She has my vote. She should have yours as well.

— JS

Enthusiasm can be a productive force for good, but our culture has rapidly become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living in

About a decade ago, I ventured my opinion that the adult multitudes queueing for superhero movies were potentially an indicator of emotional arrest, which could have worrying political and social implications. Since at that time Brexit, Donald Trump and fascist populism hadn’t happened yet, my evidently crazy diatribe was largely met with outrage from the fan community, some of whom angrily demanded I be extradited to the US and made to stand trial for my crimes against superhumanity – which I felt didn’t necessarily disprove my allegations.

Ten years on, let me make my position clear: I believe that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which that culture ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies. At the same time, I’m sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement. Perhaps this statement still requires some breaking down.