2025 Fuckin’ Sucked, Eh?

Pretty self-explanatory title/thesis. Funny thing is, one of the events that occasioned this was actually a purely 2026 phenomenon: the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of a sovereign head of state. Granted, the writing was on the wall for that one for most of 2025, so it can be included in this here Annual Wrapup.

How to begin? DOGE? Liberation Day? Roving gangs of unidentified fascist thugs disappearing people in broad daylight? Shit got so bad so fast that even my dumb pessimist ass was surprised. I haven’t been surprised by anything since Russia invaded Ukraine (thought Vladdy was a more rational actor than that, but that was just my 20th Cen. Lib brain screaming as it died–Vladdy had the read of the playing field, turns out). I have been shocked, sure. Like, it’s SHOCKING that Elon Musk was allowed to fuck up the bureaucratic underpinnings of civil society on a ketamine bender. It’s SHOCKING that Pete Hegseth is in charge of the world’s largest employer. It’s SHOCKING that lil Stevie Miller is basically Edith Wilson-ing this shit while a visibly declining Trump shows us his drooping right face. All of this is shocking, to the point of numbing. The human brain is barely evolved to distinguish between the moving image and physical reality. We’re simply not equipped to understand, let alone analyze, everything coming out of this shit-filled firehose. And that is the central truth of the moment.

The Trump 2 admin, if it can be said to be “good” at anything, is “good” at recognizing the total inefficacy of their official political opposition and the total information overload of the general public who’d likely disapprove of their actions. Perhaps it’s not even a conscious recognition. Perhaps it’s a lizard-brained instinct that their prey is weak and ready for reaping. Perhaps it’s a high-minded grand strategy undertaken by dipshits with brains cooked by Paradox games. No matter–distinction without a difference until a legitimate response can be formed–the result is the same: the fascists have flooded the zone, acting maximally and begging us to say anything in response. This is the aspect in which I see the clearest parallels to the OG fascists of the 20th century (you know, other than the pedophilia, amphetamine abuse, and antisemitism).

The Italian Fascists were distinguished initially by their Speed. They were Fast, perhaps one could even say they “moved fast and broke things.” Futurism plus Socialism, essentially: making the new world from the old, emphasizing the mechanical miracles that made Speed possible, attainable. Now, this is inherently linked to one of Eco’s characteristics–the cult of action, even for action’s sake–and that is where we find our doughy little ameriKKKan nazis.

How embarrassing, how “first as history, then as farce,” that our blackshirts and our brownshirts are DOGE and ICE and DHS and some interminable number of alphabet soup fascist agencies. But they are! And they’re winning. The Democrats, bless their cowardly hearts, are incapable or unwilling to organize a physical, street response to this overtly nazi takeover of our streets and the halls of power (again, “distinction without a difference” regarding incapable vs. unwilling).

This is probably a good time to admit that I don’t have any solutions. Their bullshit worked! I’m numb, unsure as to which tactics could even make a dent, let alone a longer term strategy. I’m scared, self-censoring and eyeing the paperwork to renew my Canadian passport. I’m tired, barely registering impeachable offenses under regular administrations with a sigh and an eye roll. And the fucked up thing? I knew this was coming! I saw Hypernomalisation in 2016 like a good little millennial leftist and thought I’d internalized the lessons, the thesis. Nope! Apparently not! Because I literally cannot conceive of a way to make the signal peak out of the noise (to say nothing of the equivalent “flood the zone” mentality of LLM purveyors and how THAT will exacerbate this problem, oy vey).

I’m going to have to end this soon, to stop an interminable ramble on Where We Are Now And What It Means. This was just an initial writing exercise to get my partially-stoned brain to start trying to contextualize what we just saw, what we just experienced. I’m going to post it anyway, because who gives a shit. But: in keeping with the wrap up, I think I figured out What This All Means (2025):

This was the year that calling America fascist went from a partially tongue in cheek term of art or metaphor, to a simple descriptor–a straight up and down, AP Style bare accounting of the information in front of us. We’re the Baddies. And every moment we’re not stopping what’s coming, we’re co-signing it.