Independent consultant and blogger in Dar es Salaam
The first Trump presidency was so improbable that it had been joked about in The Simpsons. Sadly, The Simpsons is an unusually prophetic animated series. This might help to explain how, despite being the butt of many superficial jokes, and the serious topic of dystopian warning humour, Donald Trump prevailed.
Nobody cracked jokes about the possibility of a second Trump presidency. Post Brexit, living with Covid19, watching Israel commit brutalities in Gaza that have earned memorials in Germany is the grim reality.
It doesn’t lend itself to levity, but rather contemplation. Between 2016, I have tried to get educated on what is going on with America because this empire has nukes, and it has used them before. What might it do with Donald Trump at the helm, again?
Every empire is at least a little bit psychopathic. The history of the United States contains its fair share of every crime against humanity, and then some.
However, for a while there it seemed to be evolving into a progressive society in spite of itself. As an optimist and a believer in the better nature of Woman, I struggled to understand how contemporary Americans were embracing a grifter and his crowds of neo-Nazis. Then I came across Christian Nationalism, aka Christo Fascism.
The saying that “hindsight is 20/20” is funnier if you wear glasses, right my four-eyed compadres? But seriously, in 1985 Margaret Atwood published her acclaimed novel The Handmaid’s Tale.
In a recent interview with the YouTube channel Brief But Spectacular, Atwood said: “...the rule that I set myself for The Handmaid’s Tale was that nothing goes in this that doesn’t have a precedent somewhere in history, or in real life right now.”
She was worried about Christo Fascism forty years ago and wrote a book about it, to shock people into considering that this future was not so far-fetched if people were not vigilant.
Christian readers experiencing distress at the word ‘fascism’: breathe. Like democracies, fascisms in practice are shaped by the culture in which they operate. The Christo Fascism that we are seeing emerging out of the US as a mass movement is unique to them... for now.
There is a document called Project 2025. It is a blueprint of what is to be done to make America great again, according to a very particular Conservative vision of the world.
Some think that it is the How To that could move Atwood’s Gilead from fiction to reality. The American Heritage Foundation is proud to present this to the public. Definitely read about the Heritage Foundation as well.
It is quite the institution. Between these readings and a grasp of the Manifest Destiny mindset, a lot makes sense that goes well beyond mere partisan difference and ‘rhetoric’ about race and class and economy. This reeks of a primal evil.
I imagine that some folks will protest my using the term Christo Fascism so brazenly here, not least my fellow Tanzanians who are proud Trumpeters. I say to them: a rose is a rose by any other name.
Two last things: Crocs have become some of the best-selling shoes in the world. They were chosen years ago by the wardrobe designer of the 2006 film ‘Idiocracy’ because he thought only a severely stupid society would choose them as footwear. Meanwhile, Google recently saw a surge in US ‘red’ states of the search term “is it too late to change my vote?”
We live in times so interesting that they were predicted by cartoons and classical works of science fiction.
Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report.
