When they told you it was okay to kill George Floyd over counterfeit 20s, or Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes, did you really think they would condemn the murders of Renee Good or Alex Pretti?

As the regime falters, as the lies are exposed, two things are happening. The base is shrinking, but it’s getting more vocal. It’s getting mad at having to do the mental gymnastics, and it’s taking that anger out on everyone else. This is how systems work.

This isn’t about politics, per se, though we need political solutions.

Our system has always been tenuous, has often forced us into zero-sum, binary assumptions.

But our system has not always yielded such toxic fruit.

You can be skeptical about both major parties but also realize that the President and his closest allies are pushing specific buttons for illiberal, undemocratic reasons.

People in both major parties have always lied, cheated, and stolen. Most humans do. That doesn’t excuse us from saying other true things. That doesn’t mean the specter of actual fascism is something we just live with because both so-called sides are “equally bad.”

The truth is, they aren’t. And I’ll be nuanced: MAGA and Republican aren’t the same thing. At least, they didn’t used to be. George W. Bush created ICE, but he never weaponized it like this. Barack Obama, Democrat, deported more people than Trump could ever dream of, but he didn’t do it like this. I don’t recall suggestions from either of those administrations that ICE could or should operate with complete impunity. I don’t recall either administration begging federal judges to allow warrantless searches. I don’t remember either of those presidents suggesting that someone like Alex Pretti was probably a criminal because he was legally carrying a firearm while helping a woman who’d been assaulted by federal agents.

In a sane time, no one would need bother pointing this out. But, as Wendell Berry said:

To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world
is a holy vision, had we clarity
to see it—a clarity that men
depend on men to make.

That’s frustrating. Heartbreaking. Maddening. Probably true.

I will have missed much in this short post. I’m white, straight, middle class. We now know those things won’t necessarily save me from ICE, but I also know they mean I’m already, by default, safer than many people I love. I may have been too gracious in parsing good-actor Republicans from the red-hatted polloi. Afterall, even many non-MAGA folks have repugnant views and vote in unconscionable ways. I’m also aware that saying we need a whole different system can present as expecting perfection from Democrats, and that’s not helpful, either.

As I write this, much of the country is covered in snow and under Cold Weather Advisory. Dangerous conditions, apt metaphors.