riding the echo down

The thing I want to get across to MAGA right now, more than anything else, is that they are creating a future that they themselves will not want to live in once it gets here. They think it will be wonderful, they think it will be everything they wanted, they think they will be in blissful ecstacy once they have made us shut up and disappear...but once we are gone, once their outrage addiction finally starts to fizzle out and and all they have left is burnout, the only ones who will be left to tear apart will be each other. And they're already doing it. The September 10th shooter is a Groyper, after all. It's already started.

MAGA acted like being politely asked to refer to people by their preferred pronouns, or to please wear a mask in the grocery store, or people suggesting they get a vaccine during the pandemic was tyranny - because they've never actually lived in tyranny. They've never actually lived under a regime that actively represses free speech and personal freedoms. They want to claim that "cancel culture" is no different. But at this rate, they're about to find out just how bad government restriction of free speech is by comparison.

They wanted to compare the threat of "being cancelled" to persecution for "thought crimes" ala the novel 1984, but they're about to find out how much worse actual government persecution for "thought crimes" is about to get under Trump. They're going to find out how much worse it will be than the censure or personal judgement from their liberal acquaintances or family members, or random strangers on the internet.

They think "the libs" will be the only people affected, and they're about to find out how wrong they are about that.

It's like the MAGAs who go to Russia, thinking it's right wing paradise - only to find that all of their speech and activities are monitored 24/7, and oops, Dad just got conscripted! That's the reality that they're creating for themselves over here. They think living under authoritarianism will be awesome, until they're down in it and realizing that it sucks, and they're begging for someone from the civilized world to please come extract them.

It's being sold to them by the same pack of grifters who learned in the aftermath of 9/11/2001 that if they kept the outrage burning, and kept the fear of the Other stoked to appropriate levels, these folks will gladly turn their brains off and buy anything the grifters want to sell them. But there will come a point that the outrage stops doing it for them, and then all that will be left will be misery. And by then they will have willingly ceded away any power that the Constitution granted them to do anything to save themselves. Yes, even their precious Second Amendment. (What, you think they won't willingly hand their guns over to "Daddy Trump," when we already watched them willingly bend over for "Daddy Bush" and the Patriot Act?)

People who have studied the authoritarian playbook can see this coming a mile away.

And there will be no one to "come extract them" by that point. They'll just be stuck in the Authoritarian Hell they created for themselves.