MAGA’s Fascist Leaders Should Flee America While They Can

By Jon HochschartnerPhotos: Wikimedia Commons Fascist leaders of the Make America Great Again movement, especially senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration, should flee the country while they still have a chance. Approval ratings for the decrepit, former reality-television host are reaching historic lows. Even his MAGA base, previously assumed to be rock-solid, is fracturing over various issues, like Trump’s support for the Iran war and suppression of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Democrats will soon take over the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. It’s a matter of time. These will not be the same Democrats of years past. Gone are the days in which the liberal base cheered former First Lady Michelle Obama’s dictum, “When they go low, we go high.” Democratic leaders who continue to practice the politics of accommodation will be cast aside. Even ex-neoconservatives such as Bill Kristol are talking like members of Democratic Socialists of America about the need for substantial change to preserve self-government in the United States. Trump and his coterie of gangsters have simply pushed things too far. It won’t be forgotten.In their attempt to establish an authoritarian, nakedly-corrupt order, these fascists have almost broken America irrevocably. Trump has placed Democratic-controlled cities under military occupation. It will take financial experts decades to disentangle all of myriad, self-dealing ways in which he and his allies have profited off the presidency. Imposing severe consequences on these traitors is no longer a question. The rule of law cannot plausibly be said to exist, so long as these figures remain out of prison. The Democratic base should not and will not allow it.Any potential Democratic presidential candidate who doesn’t understand this shouldn’t bother running. The party’s milquetoast congressional leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, have to be replaced. Any of their colleagues who aren’t actively trying to replace them must be assumed to be in favor of their do-nothing posture and should be replaced as well. Democratic politicians, who don’t have the stomach for this fight, who view the legislative branch as a genial retirement community, must do the honorable thing and resign.The anti-fascist coalition has a wide variety of policy goals. For example, as an animal activist I want to see a massive infusion of state and federal funding into cultivated-meat research. If readers are unfamiliar with the term, cultivated meat is grown from livestock cells, without slaughter. Even low adoption rates of the new protein would save billions of fish and land animals from unnecessary suffering and premature death every year. However, none of the political priorities of the anti-fascist coalition can be achieved under the dictatorship Trump is trying and failing to build.For these reasons, it would make sense for fascist leaders to flee the country while that’s still a possibility. Justice is coming. When Democrats return to power, these figures will quickly be thrown in prison. Those who have escaped abroad will be pursued by every legal means available. The anti-fascist coalition will rebuild the United States so the authoritarian takeover attempted by the Make America Great Again movement is never possible again. The first step in this process, before abolishing the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court, is locking up the plotters.Jon Hochschartner lives in Connecticut. He is the author of a number of books, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front. Visit his blog at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substa ck.com.