The Battle Against Evil

It’s January 20, 2021, and I hope it’s going to be a good day.

We’re going to get a new president sworn in, and a new vice president. And we’re getting rid of the worst president we ever had, who will hopefully be marched directly to his new cell on Rikers Island, where he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to avoid just punishment for his many crimes.

But of course, despite the valiant efforts of the Japanese schoolgirls in “Cabin in the Woods,” the evil hasn’t been defeated. The Republican Party has, by this point, made it clear that they approve of Trump’s attempted coup and that they would prefer an iron authoritarian dictatorship to any sort of democracy.

And it’s very likely to get worse from there. We can expect more neo-Nazi terrorist attacks, possibly focused on Washington, D.C., Congress, the White House, and national landmarks, possibly not.

With any luck, this will soon work itself out once the insurrectionists realize how unpopular this kind of stuff is. If y’all remember the OKC Bombing back in 1995, the goons in the militia movement were absolutely delighted for the first couple of days after the bombing, joyfully anticipating their much-desired race war and overthrowing the government. And then they realized that no one else was happy about the bombing, and that 99% of the country was good and mad. And the militias shut the fuck up and disappeared into the woodwork for another few years.

Americans love violence — on TV, in movies, and in fiction. When it happens in real life, they’re not so fond of it. When it’s mass violence, and when it’s terrorism, they really don’t like it a bit. And they don’t like the idea of a bunch of Nazi dumbfucks taking over the country and deciding what our system of government is going to be.

So far, Republicans and their allies storming the Capitol are gambling that this’ll be swept down the memory hole, and that their next attack will be more successful. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are gambling they’ll be able to harness these Nazi goons into a new political power base. In both cases, I suspect that’s a bad gamble.

For now, getting Trump off the stage and getting a new president is a good thing. But it doesn’t mean our problems are over.