As the clock strikes midnight, there is much to say about the most obscene action of all taken by 47 on the day of the presidential inaugural and the national holiday commemorating the greatest champion of social justice from the 20th century: Martin Luther King, Jr. The obscenity? Issuing pardons to some 1500 coup co-conspirators on January 6, 2021 — which includes several convicted of violent crimes against police officers. This is what fascism looks like: rewriting history, embracing violence, and celebrating an initially failed, but ultimately successful, coup d’etat.
Stoked and actively encouraged by the loser of the 2020 election, Donald Trump, what began as an attack on the Capitol and its elected officials performing their constitutional duty of ratifying a free and fair election, has now resulted in a conquest of fascism over democracy. The four-year coup prevailed, with virtually no consequences for the violent, law-breaking, armed insurrectionists. The 34-count convicted felon, now president, is poised to break every norm and constitutional restraint on his power. Trump is now a soon-to-be-consolidated dictator among other global dictators, backed by the malevolent billionaire class of sociopaths who care for nothing but their bottom line. It took Hitler 53 days to suspend all democratic processes in the Weimar Republic of Germany, in 1933. How long will it take Trump to spin the same fascist consolidation of anti-democratic tyranny?