I am always told that fascism is coming. It creeps, stalks, and howls in the dark for us to clutch our pearls, always just far enough to remain intimidating. It is the menace that must always be kept on the horizon by voting blue (no matter who!) and engaging in resistance, which is of course best represented by Instagram infographics and lawn signs.

The "good" sort of resistance is never fought with weapons or material criticisms, nor is it fought with unkind words, or so the demand goes. It can't be fought by inconveniencing or engaging in anything the policemen don't carry fondness for. It must be draped in red, white, and blue, and good ol' Americana. It can't bear any resemblances of hope for the foreign, in earnest solidarity for those under the boot. The boot must be complimented, caressed, and you must service it.

Resistance, at least the form which is "acceptable," is always something that — at its most consequential — replaces the puppet in our Senate chamber or in that White House. God forbid we acknowledge the strings which hold the puppet up, or the post by which those strings are connected, or to even suggest that the charading puppet may not actually be the source of our problems, to call out the elephant in the room would be "unstrategic," dare they say, terroristic.

So, fascism is coming! Any comfort afforded to you can be stripped away from you violently if you are not compliant! Nevermind the fact that your neighbor was sent on a plane in shackles to El Salvador yesterday, that your child was arrested for the crime of sitting on a university lawn, that your coworker gets visited by men in blue whenever an unsavory diplomat enters the country, and that your uncle relies on the local church so as to not starve. Let us forget that your income tax goes to surveilling you to verify that you are compliant, and whatever surpluses are left over go towards sending cascades of missiles to kill the Palestinian for daring to do the "unacceptable."

Fascism is surely not here, that would simply be outrageous, we mustn't acknowledge the elephant. Capitalism is surely never in crisis because of its character, it is always something exterior that can't be blamed on its constituent parts, i.e., pandemics or "cronyism." To say fascism has long haunted us, to say that there is a little Hitler and Mussolini in every pavement crack of this country and embedded in the fibers of the flag you pledge allegiance to in Second Grade, is simply unacceptable. We mustn't acknowledge the blood caked into the crevices, the graves that rest just beneath the surface.

Fascism continues to just "come," it continues to creep, stalk, and howl.