Day of the Timekeeper, 14th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): As frequently and exhaustively (and exhaustingly) discussed here before, there is an ongoing fascist takeover of the United States. Where we are exactly in the spectrum between a free and functioning democracy (if we were even ever there to begin with) and complete totalitarianism is open to debate, and our position changes day to day, moving ever right.

Both Zen and stoicism tell me there's nothing I can do about external conditions, but I can control my reactions and response to events. The difference between the two is in the means of regulating ourselves - Zen offers the physical and spiritual practice of meditation to observe the mind and know our true selves, while stoicism provides an intellectual and philosophical system of inquiry to identify the wisest course of action. For this person, me, the one writing now, I will need both practices to get through this last decade or so of my life.

I've been looking, reading about, and thinking of other countries that have suffered fascism. Germany is, or I should say was, the poster child for fascist governance. It was horrific, it was painful, and it was deadly, even genocidal, but it also ended. Germany is now a modern, progressive, functioning democracy not without its problems but long past the ones imposed by the Third Reich. Brazil and Argentina and other Latin American countries have experienced military juntas, authoritarian rule, and despots, and yet life goes on, sometimes joyously, sometimes tenuously, but never without potential for improvement.

There are two things I've noticed in my review. First, fascist regimes are never permanent. The charismatic leader eventually dies, or the people rise up and revolt, or another nation intervenes. Something always happens. Impermanence is swift, nothing lasts forever, Ozymandias, and all that. The U.S. will become fascist and will be fascist until we no longer are. 

My second observation is more cautionary. Namely, once a nation "goes fascist," it is at much higher risk of going fascist again. I have to go to Wikipedia to tell me if some Asian and Latin American countries are under a dictatorship right now or not, and my results might be different this time next year. A fascist regime in the U.S. from, say, 2026 until 2032 will make us far more likely to suffer another totalitarian regime sometime later in the 21st Century and beyond.

But these modern times are also more perilous than earlier times. First, there's nukes. The Stable Genius wants to resume nuclear testing. We abandoned the practice in 1992, along with most of the rest of the world other than North Korea (and its been a few years even for them), but the Stable Genius believes, without any evidence, that "other countries are doing it" and so he will authorize commensurate testing. There's no one any longer in his orbit to tell him, no, other nations aren't doing it, and in his delusion and dementia, he's at the point of believing as fact anything he imagines. Resuming nuclear testing makes the world a more dangerous place, not just because of the increase in radioactive fallout, but the exponentially greater likelihood of nuclear war.

Another modern peril is climate change. The Stable Genius believes anthropogenic global warming is a "scam" and a "hoax," and those around him just repeat back to him whatever he says. Scientists tell us we're approaching numerous tipping points beyond which the world will be far less habitable, and we've already passed others. "Less habitable" doesn't mean "human extinction," but it does mean that life will be far harder and less pleasant for the survivors, and we'll go thorough decades or even centuries of flooding, drought, famine, mass migration, disease, resource scarcity, and inevitably war before some sort of equilibrium is again achieved. 

The USA may be a fascist nation with authoritarian rulers for a few years or a decade or even longer. But things will eventually return to "normal" or at least "near normal" and even in the meantime, there will be art and music, there will be poetry, people will fall in love, and children will delight their parents. But the damage to the environment and the climate, and the possibility of catastrophic nuclear war, may be far worse that the loss of freedoms through a dark period of our national history.