Call it what it is!

All right. Fangs out. No anesthesia. No polite language. No comforting metaphors. This is scorched-earth!

Let’s stop lying to ourselves. Let’s stop using therapy words and civility words and “both sides” words to describe something that is, at its core, very old and very ugly.

What is happening in America right now is not a policy disagreement.

It is not a cultural misunderstanding.

It is not a pendulum swing.

It is a racial power project.

It is a purity project.

It is a white supremacist authoritarian project, and it is being run by people who believe—literally, ideologically, spiritually—that this country must be cleansed in order to be “saved.”

Donald Trump is not the brain of this operation. He is the horn. The siren. The greasy, grinning carnival barker who makes brutality feel like a block party. The real work is being done by people like Stephen Miller and the ecosystem of ideologues who have spent years bathing their minds in the sewage of books like The Turner Diaries and its ideological relatives—texts that don’t argue for a better America, but for a whiter one. A quieter one. A meaner one. A smaller one.

These people do not believe in democracy. They believe in ownership.

They believe America belongs to a specific kind of person, and everyone else is either a problem to be managed or a mistake to be erased.

And let’s carve this into stone, because too many comfortable people still don’t get it:

This includes you, white liberals.

You are not allies in their eyes. You are not “misguided.” You are not “confused.” You are traitors.

White supremacy is not just about race. It is about obedience. It is about hierarchy. It is about enforcing a single approved version of reality. If you are white but you believe women own their bodies, or LGBTQ people deserve to exist, or history should be taught honestly, or courts should be independent, or votes should matter—then you are an enemy of the project.

And enemies are not debated. They are neutralized.

If you think the end goal here is just deportations and book bans and terrorizing trans kids, you are not paying attention. That is the appetizer. That is the spectacle. That is the crowd entertainment.

The actual goal is a country where power is permanent, dissent is criminal, and citizenship is conditional.

Conditional on loyalty.

Conditional on silence.

Conditional on performing the correct identity.

This is how authoritarianism always works. First, you define “real” people. Then you invent “internal enemies.” Then you rewrite laws to make cruelty look like order. Then you call it restoration. Then you start needing lists.

And Trump’s great contribution to this horror show is that he turned sadism into performance art. He made lying a personality trait. He made humiliation a team sport. He made ignorance a badge of honor. He made the ugliest instincts in the country feel not just acceptable, but patriotic.

But the Millers of the world are not performers. They are architects. They are building machinery. They are designing systems meant to outlast any single election. They are writing policy the way other men write manifestos.

And the lineage matters.

The Turner Diaries is not a trivia fact. It is the sacred text of modern American white terrorism. It inspired Oklahoma City. It echoes through manifesto after manifesto. It sits at the intellectual root of the “great replacement” obsession. It is a fantasy of purging disguised as prophecy.

When people steeped in this worldview are shaping immigration policy, justice policy, education policy, and surveillance policy, you are not watching governance.

You are watching preparation.

Preparation for a country where “undesirable” people don’t just lose rights.

They lose visibility.

They lose voice.

They lose safety.

They lose the right to exist in public life at all.

And here is the part that history screams at us over and over while we politely cover our ears:

Fascist movements do not stop.

They never say, “Okay, that’s enough enemies.”

They always need more.

Today it’s immigrants.

Then Muslims.

Then LGBTQ people.

Then journalists.

Then professors.

Then judges.

Then “disloyal” companies.

Then “degenerate” art.

Then “subversive” books.

Then anyone who didn’t cheer loudly enough.

Then you.

Because you liked the wrong post.

Because you taught the wrong idea.

Because you voted the wrong way.

Because you didn’t pretend hard enough.

Authoritarianism is not a platform. It is an addiction. And like all addictions, it requires escalation.

Trump—vain, hollow, transactional Trump—is the perfect vessel because he doesn’t care what the ideology is as long as it worships him. He will sign anything. Say anything. Burn anything. He is not the author of this future. He is the match.

What is being built right now is not conservatism.

It is not populism.

It is not even reactionary politics.

It is a slow, methodical demolition of the idea that America belongs to all of us.

And the obscenity is that they wrap it in flags and call it patriotism.

There is nothing patriotic about dismantling democracy.

There is nothing patriotic about teaching children to fear their neighbors.

There is nothing patriotic about building a state that decides who counts as a person.

That is not love of country.

That is ownership.

That is domination.

That is the morality of the boot.

If you are waiting for this to become undeniable, you are already behind the curve.

If you are waiting for it to affect you personally, you have misunderstood the schedule.

If you are waiting for institutions to save you, remember: institutions are made of people, and people can be threatened, replaced, or broken.

This is not a moment for decorum.

This is not a moment for “let’s lower the temperature.”

This is not a moment for debating with an ideology that believes some humans are errors.

This is a moment for moral clarity.

Either you believe in a democracy where no one has to earn their humanity—

Or you are quietly consenting to a future where someone else gets to decide whether you deserve it.

And history is ruthless to people who say, “I didn’t think it would go that far,” while it was very obviously, very proudly, very deliberately going exactly that far.