The moral panic is over, but its rotten fruit have burst, spewing xenophobic, anti-sex, authoritarian poison all over American society. – “New Year’s Eve 2024“
It would be absurd to lay all of the blame for Trump’s reign of terror on the “sex trafficking” moral panic, but it is accurate to point out that Trumpism sprang from the same deep strain of xenophobic authoritarianism which gave rise to both iterations of “sex trafficking” hysteria, the Satanic Panic, two Red scares, the War on Drugs, and innumerable lesser social diseases, and which has permeated American society like a cancer since Plymouth Rock. And furthermore, it is Americans’ collective refusal to recognize this, and to respect the checks, balances, restrictions, and limitations on government power established by the Founders, which has allowed the mad emperor and his henchmen to so quickly demolish every single guardrail designed to make things difficult for tyrants. A sizable minority of the population has convinced itself that the collapse of American norms started with Trump and will end with Trump, but of course this is a fantasy to comfort children; the final Constitutional collapse started 24 years ago, with the sweeping abrogations of its safeguards begun by Bush the Younger to thundering applause from the mob and its soi-disant “leaders”. The “sex trafficking” hysteria and Trumpism are both symptoms of one underlying problem, and the former has now been reduced to a tool of the latter. As I wrote last year,
Trumpists are still vomiting out “sex trafficking” myths in support of their anti-migrant, anti-LGBT, anti-porn, and anti-brown people agendas; cops still use the propaganda to justify raping Asian sex workers; gullible stenographers who dare to call themselves “journalists” still uncritically repeat copaganda; and even those who have finally admitted that the “trafficking” mythology is a load of dingo’s kidneys now label it a “right-wing conspiracy theory” and refuse to admit their own culpability for the society-wide toxic effects of the racist, misogynistic wanking fantasy they helped spread for so long. The ascendance of Trumpism and the re-criminalization of abortion across much of the US are the direct results of that ugly narrative, and both book-burning crusades and the widespread demonization of anything to do with LGBT people are other offshoots of the same noxious root system which, had it been dug out and burned in the Oughts, would have been neither robust enough nor extensive enough to engender such toxic growths.
I no longer have words of consolation. Though I have been predicting the collapse of the American Empire for decades, I did not foresee that the process of collapse would be so rapid and complete, nor that it would happen within my lifetime; I envisioned a slow disintegration over years, not an implosion over a few months. And because of that, I am unable to predict what may happen next, other than that it will involve some form of Balkanization; perhaps by this time next year, I’ll have some inkling. But I’m not counting on it.
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