We seem to have gotten some breathing room, but that wasn’t a foregone conclusion, and the people who were on board and helping in the effort to establish fascism in the United States are still around, and still hold power in the GOP, and in the American government. Hell, until January, they still control the U.S. government.

This can happen again. Given how American politics work, it probably will happen again, and if we don’t work hard, it’s likely to eventually succeed. The factors that led to Trump’s election have gone nowhere. It’s entirely likely that without the disastrous response to the pandemic, Trump would have won a second term.

Voting is not enough to maintain a democracy. People need to organize. People need to make a habit of working together with the people who live around them. Humanity’s greatest strength is our ability to communicate and work together. I think we’ve largely forgotten how to use that “muscle”, and we need to re-learn it, practice it, and help others to do the same.

Without a deliberate effort to build and exert collective power, those who already have concentrated power will continue to run the world for their own personal gain, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that that path leads to death and misery.