This is clear: Much of America has voted for a fascist.
If that short, blunt opening offends your delicate sensibilities, then you, dear reader, best dispense finally with the saccharine-drenched myths about a divided, discordant nation that has elected a fascist as president – again.
This remains unclear: America’s fate.
An urgent task faces enlightened Americans who have made plain their admirable opposition to and rejection of every obscene aspect of a grinning strongman who will exact the comeuppance that has festered in his soul and mind like a seething cauldron.
Long before his once closest aides and cabinet ministers took, belatedly, to The New York Times or CNN to “warn” Americans that the crude demagogue they had served with such cloying deference was a bona fide fascist, silly columnists like me were raising alarm after alarm about Donald Trump’s defining autocratic character in column after column since 2016.
But we and, much more importantly, our blatant, billboard-sized injunctions were dismissed by the ever-so-polite cognoscenti as the hyperbolic musings of clickbait-seeking polemicists who had little understanding of the true nature of fascism.
So, predictably and irresponsibly, the polite cognoscenti remained wedded to their agreeable delusions even after Trump organised and unleashed a violent insurrection on the supposed citadel of American democracy, the US Capitol, to overturn an election.
The polite cognoscenti preferred, of course, to explain away the, by now, indisputable fact that a breathtaking swath of Americans have supported a flagrant fascist as the unfortunate, yet perhaps understandable, act of angry “cultists” who share an affinity with Trump’s rank rhetoric and parochial grievances.
This has been the jejune attitude all along – to deflect, to qualify, to excuse the obvious: Fascism has gone mainstream in America.
Trump is not the leader of a “cult”. He embodies a shared set of values and beliefs that reflect, to his horde of followers throughout the expanse of America, an irresistible ideology; an ideology whose foundational principles are cruelty, vengeance and ignorance.
I have no doubt that when Trump takes the oath of office early next year and swears on a Bible to uphold the constitution, he will immediately desecrate it to satisfy the prevailing lust for cruelty, vengeance and ignorance.
The disloyal “enemies from within” will be persecuted and prosecuted.
The “vermin” immigrants who have hollowed out the white soul of America – whether they carry citizenship or not – will be rounded up without due process and deported, stripped of their jobs and segregated from their families – by egregious force, if necessary.
The fraying remnants of America’s “free press” will be targeted with threats, intimidation and retributive sanctions. And the oligarchs who own the “major” newspapers and TV stations will bow in obeisance.
The civil and legal rights won through decades of loud protest and hard work will be retracted or abolished outright with the happy complicity of a supplicant Congress and the Supreme Court.
The onus, the obligation, the duty to try to stall, block, or, if possible, prevent America from “turning back” rests with enlightened America.
Resistance is not futile. Rather, it is an imperative.
It will not be easy.
Enlightened America will be seized by fear and despair in the days and weeks ahead. This is to be expected in the jarring, disorienting face of a broad Republican victory.
When enlightened Americans emerge from this halting shock – and they will – they must resist the easy temptation to slip into recrimination and blame.
They must, instead, lock arms in defiance. They must mobilise and fashion a formidable force with one overarching aim: to be faithful to the constitution that they bear honest allegiance to and to protect each other, as best they can, from the harm and heartache that is sure to come.
It can be done. It must be done.
This grave mission will require a steadfast will and determination; the same will and determination that enlightened Americans have deployed in the past to make their beloved home a more fair, just and welcoming place.
This, I repeat, is your obligation and duty, enlightened America. You will need a little time to lick your raw wounds. Then, you have to go about the vital business at hand with the knowledge that you are the bulwark, you are legion and you are in the right.
History tells us that, however ugly and destructive, fascists like Trump cannot prevail. Ultimately, they destroy themselves.
The question is: Will Trump destroy America, too?
Enlightened Americans will, I’m convinced, do all they can, with all their might, purpose and conviction, to prevent the ruination of America.
Will it be enough? I don’t know.
But the alternative is awful to fathom.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
