I love the Middle Aes, but I don't want to live there

[lunadelcorvo]

I have been reeling in the wake of the constant barrage of insanity from the White House, as I am sure most of us have. I remain convinced, now more than ever, that the Christo-fascists want to create a neo-feudal society, and everything being done now seems to indicate that is not hyperbole.

Forcing farmers out of business while Vance's firm enables wealthy oligarchs here and abroad to buy up that land for pennies on the dollar, while he has deported the large part of the workers who work that land. How will these 'investors' see a return on their new 'manor farms?' By getting peasant serfs to work them, of course. And where will they get a massive workforce who will accept such conditions? All the veterans, low-income workers, unemployed, and the other poor, hungry, and vulnerable whose protections, safety, and education he has been gutting.

When there is nowhere else to go, no other place to work, no other way to eat, those of us who survive that long will be the new peasant class. It's funny, I just taught the Three Orders of Medieval society: Those who fight, those who pray, and those who work. Those who fight are the monied aristocrats, owners of the land, the wealth, and the power. The notion that they actually fight is now obsolete, of course, but they will, as the gluttonous nobles did, lord over their little kingdoms with all the smug superiority of a fat, 9th C duke.

Those who pray, the clergy, the Joel Otseens and the Pat Hagees of this new feudalism will also hold land, wealth, and power. If the excesses of the medieval clerical class in the Middle Ages have shown us nothing else, it is that 'men of god' like to eat fine food and sleep in silk sheets just as much as any noble. Those who are the luminaries of the new Christian Nationalist Regime will stand at ease beside the oligarchs whose rule they endorse.

And those who work. All the rest of us. I have said many times that the wealth inequality in the US today is most closely mirrored by that of the feudal Middle Ages, before the 12th C Renaissance recreated the lost 'skilled, craftsman, or middle class. That inequality has been growing, and under the new regime being crafted before our dumbfounded eyes, it will continue to grow. With healthcare made inaccessible, birth control a distant memory, food insecurity the reality of life for the vast majority of Americans, and education reduced to the bare minimum needed to ensure compliance with basic directives, the new peasant class will be created. Call them proles, serfs, or whatever pseudo-patriotic and paternalistic moniker the oligarchs will craft, a peasant is still a peasant.

If you think this all sounds a bit too much like some tawdry Russian novel, well, I think the recent White House debacle makes clear why that is. Russia has always struggled with democracy, and even at those rare moments when some regime or other had the chance to elevate the peasant class, they have demurred (sometimes in fear for their lives, yes, but still.) If Russia has readily absorbed American Evangelical misogyny and bigotry (as evidenced by their oppression of LGBTQ folks, and the recent decriminalization of wife beating for example), then the US, or a certain red-hatted segment of it, has just as readily embraced the oppressive totalitarianism that would sacrifice its own wellbeing and that of everyone around them in the name of being able to shit on someone they hate more than the ruling class whose favor nd approval they crave.

The time to resist is now, but it is, I think, a window that will close far sooner than most of us think. The damage is being done now, there is no 'waiting it out for four years.' Barring extraordinary upheaval or some meaningful pushback, I genuinely think this reshaping of the American experiment will be fait accomplis by the time spring turns to summer. I know that Godwin's Law exists, as does its corollary, but it would be wise to recall that it took Hitler less than two months to dismantle German democracy. While the true effects of that may not have been evident until a year or two later, the core work was done in only 53 days. Fifty-three days, or one month and three-quarters, or seven weeks; however you phrase it, it is a mind-numbingly short time. 53 days. We are on day 45.

Comments

[cmcmck]

And in Hitler's case we need to remember that he was also legally voted in...............

Sound familiar?

[lunadelcorvo]

And one of his first To-Do-List items was to punish anyone who had opposed or criticized him... Yes, it's all very eerily familiar.

[cmcmck]

And to attack a minority- in his case, the Jews and in Agent Orange's case- well, you know and being a trans woman of both Jewish and Romani blood, you can imagine how that makes me feel......