2026: In the Shadow of Mary Chesnut

 

This is an entry I've been avoiding for some time because it will be an emotionally charged exercise for me. After all, it is not an easy thing to anticipate the end of your country.

Ever since the re-election of Donald Trump - after the self-profession of sexual predation to Billy Bush (who laughed like a hyena), after the botched COVID response that killed tens of thousands, after the felony convictions, and after the insurrection that put 130 capitol police in the hospital and almost ended the Republic - I knew America was headed for the precipice because, as the ancients tell us, no society has survived long when its people have lost their political virtue.  The question was only one of time. How long would it take? 

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Now that 2025 has concluded, I can look back and say, yeah, that went as poorly as I expected. Actually, no. It was worse than I expected. I anticipated a repeat of Trump's shambolic first year of his first term: chaotic staff assignments and resignations, floundering policy pursuits, and a blooper reel of unintentionally hilarious statements and behavior from Trump and his architects of the abyss.  And we certainly got that.  But we also got something more sinister: a governing rationale transparently motivated by white Christian nationalist bigotry salted with euro-fascism. Those factors, while present during the first term - remember the muslim travel ban? - were mostly checked by Trump's GOP minders, but those adults in the room have long since been purged and replaced by Molotovian lickspittles. Hence, the evil is now on full display. 

And it is evil, make no mistake.  If there was any doubt about that appellation, such second-guessing should have now been blown away as quickly as ICE stormtrooper Jonathan Ross blew away Renee Good's face with his pistol.  Since then, Trump, at the command of the Witch of the West Wing, Kristi Noem, puppy killer extraordinaire, has unleashed an army of Gestapo (or if you are of Cold War-era vintage like me, East German Stasi thugs) to terrorize the people of Minnesota, where the color of your skin will determine if you need to present your papers, and failure to do so resulting in a beating and a one-way trip to a ICE facility where you may never be seen again.

If the actions of ICE weren't alarming in their own right, we have various government agencies posting memes on social media openly adopted from white supremacists and even the Nazis themselves. For example, recently, the Department of Labor posted "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage,” a thinly veiled allusion to the Nazi propaganda slogan “Ein volk, ein reich, ein führer” (which translates to “One people, one empire, one leader”). They are not even trying to hide the neo-Nazi predilections of Trump and his circle of misfit toys. 

But the madness is compounded!  On a recent tour of a Ford plant, a (rightly) disgruntled worker shouted at Trump, "Pedophile protector!", a reference to Trump's Department of Justice's ongoing cover-up of the infamous "Epstein files" in violation of a bill he signed into law requiring the release of the files.  The president's response? He made an obscene gesture followed by an expletive.  I recall when a certain Joe Biden, in a fit of enthusiasm for the passage of the Affordable Care Act, was caught whispering to Obama, "This is a big fucking deal!" I can still hear the outraged shrieks of the holier-than-thou conservative talk radio jockeys over that "hot mic" faux pas.  But when Trump not only mutters an expletive but also openly insults an American citizen with an obscene gesture, all I hear are crickets from these latter-day Benedict Arnolds. Funny how that works.  

In addition to that, we have a bogus criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve's chairman, Jerome Powell, in an attempt to get him to resign so Trump will have a free hand at unleashing hyperinflation in a desperate bid to gin up a sputtering economy, something resultant from his antediluvian economic polices.  Then there are the thought-crime investigations into Minnesota Governor Walz and Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, for daring to oppose Trump's attempts at an American Kristallnacht in Minneapolis. But perhaps best (worst?) of all is the recent interview given by Brooke Rollins, Trump's hapless Secretary of Agriculture, who suggested that the American people should subsist on a diet of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing," while Trump and his oligarchs feast on the finest delicacies as gold adornments are added daily to the White House, with a 500 million dollar ballroom under construction where the East Wing used to stand. It is only a matter of time until Trump announces his own chain of beryozkas for the elite who are willing to fork over crypto or a suitably prestigious award for access. The rest of us can queue up for our toilet paper and pieces of broccoli.

This is happening inside America. Right now. 

If the domestic situation wasn't alarming enough, we then have this outrageous and, frankly, surreal spectacle of Trump threatening a NATO ally, Denmark, over the fate of Greenland. I am almost at a loss for words to describe how I am struggling to come to grips with the idea that, as I sit here, allies of Denmark, which is to say the allies-turned-sentries against American imperialism, are rushing troops to the world's largest island to fend off any possible military invasion by the United States. How does one process such a scenario? How does somebody such as myself, who grew up during a time when America, for all its flaws, was seen as the protector of international law and order, come to grips with the idea that we are now the bad guys? Even if one believes that this is some sort of high-pressure diplomatic campaign to force Denmark to sell its territory to America - and rest assured, it is not - the mere fact that our negotiating methods have become so ham-handed and so bellicose that our fellow (former?) NATO allies are rushing troops and equipment to the island as a deterrent is an unfathomable development.  Worse, because Denmark refused to give in to Trump's ridiculous demands and enlisted the aid of other NATO members, today Trump has announced a new round of tariffs as punishment, something that has caused Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, to warn of undermining "transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral," rhetoric that once would have been reserved for, say, a provocation by the USSR.

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Early last year, I wrote a blog post entitled, "My Mary Chesnut Moment", in which I vowed to keep a running chronicle of these days under the boot of the Trump administration in much the same way as American Civil War diarist, Mary Boykin Chesnut, kept a journal of a Confederate South's descent into seccession fever and, ultimately, defeat.  Incredibly, I have kept that vow, and continue to do so, but not because of any fortitude on my part, but because of what I predicted in early 2025: "These times will have far-reaching consequences that we haven't seen since 1861 and the start of the American Civil War." 

I just can't look away.

Indeed, as I predicted, Trump voters,  "drunk on patriotism," as Ms. Chesnut wrote so long ago about her slave-holding aristocracy (but I would modify that to read "drunk on jingoism" for modern MAGA voters), chose a course of action that would send a nation spiraling into the abyss.   Just a year after Trump 2.0 took office, America is no longer the same nation; it is objectively worse. John Winthrop's "shining city on a hill" has now become a mansion overgrown by weeds and collapsing into ruin, guarded by a rabid junkyard dog, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, with backwoods squatters who spend their time pulling apart the mansion for kindling as the principal residents.   

Mary Chesnut, my muse, recounted an interesting observation made during a holiday dinner party held at the close of 1864, as the Confederacy was clearly losing the war.  She wrote, "These men speak out their thoughts plainly enough. What they said means 'We are rattling downhill, and nobody to put on the brakes.'" She concluded with the observation of the absurdity of having a cheerful gathering as the darkness closed in on all of them.  "What a blunder to bring us all together here! - a reunion of consumptives to dance and sing until one can almost hear the death-rattle!"

Her observations are just as valid to being an American under the Trump regime as they are to being a Confederate under Jeff Davis.  The sun has now set, and darkness creeps across the land.  This will not end well for any of us, as it didn't for Chesnut and her confederates.  "Isabella still calls me Cassandra, and puts her hands to her ears when I begin to wail," wrote Mary as the final days of the CSA approached. "Well, Cassandra only records what she hears; she does not vouch for it.  For really, one nowadays never feels certain of anything."

The brakes are gone, the sun has set, and the rattle is all that remains. And with that observation, this Cassandra has finished his entry for today. God help us all as we find out what lies at the bottom of the hill.

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