What happens when power serves only the wealthy and white Christian men.

We are living in a moment when empty rhetoric is no longer enough. The governing class has gone past incompetence into something more dangerous. If we do not name it, we cannot fight it. We must call out what is happening: America under this current regime is sliding toward fascism, powered by ignorance, cruelty, and ideology masquerading as governance.

At the memorial for Charlie Kirk on September 21, 2025, President Trump gave a eulogy that stretched forty minutes, nearly three times as long as he was allocated. What came across was not just tribute but political mobilization, Christian nationalism, and a declaration of enemies. He said, "He did not hate his opponents. That is where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents." (Reuters) This is not metaphor or exaggeration. He declared it in front of thousands, in a setting blending faith, spectacle, and politics. He spoke of "saving Chicago," of answering what he claimed were Kirk's final requests. He gave promises that have no basis in policy detail or evidence (People).

We are seeing ideological infrastructure built in plain sight. When governing is guided by conspiracy riddled think tanks and radical Christian nationalists rather than by expertise and institution, when the court, Congress, and executive act as if they are tools for the few, not for the many, when empathy and humility are dismissed, then the very idea of American democracy is under threat.

The Supreme Court has, in recent years, sided consistently with cases that roll back civil rights: abortion rights, voting rights, separation of church and state. Many justices were selected from shortlists supplied by the Heritage Foundation and aligned conservative legal groups (Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights). These institutions have ceased to be thought brokers. They have become masters of policy, shaping everything from candidate nomination to executive order. This is not balance. This is capture.

The Kirk memorial is more than a funeral. It is a rehearsal for what is to come. At the gathering, officials rallied an ideology that rewards fear of the other, that weaponizes faith, that constructs enemies out of dissent. Christian nationalism's fusion with state power is on display. And because so much energy has gone into consolidating this power, not in imagining how we all can thrive, not in preparing for shared crisis, not in safeguarding institutions, but instead in amplifying grievance and exclusion, the damage may be irreversible for a long time.

Stephen Miller, one of the key architects of Trump’s rhetoric, echoed these themes at the Kirk service. His messaging patterns were not accidental. They are propaganda. We need to be clear about definitions: propaganda is information crafted to influence opinion, often through exaggeration, emotional appeal, and repetition. Misinformation is false or misleading information spread without intent to deceive. Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to manipulate or control. These tactics are not new. They are how regimes mold public sentiment. At the memorial, Miller and others used selective storytelling, enemy construction, and emotional repetition to create a narrative where dissent equals disloyalty. That is propaganda in real time.

There is another engine behind the scenes worth calling out. Wealthy oligarchs and the tech class are not passive donors. They are strategic power brokers with an industrial approach to influence. They fund the legal teams that craft favorable court challenges. They bankroll think tanks that seed policy shops and judicial shortlists. They buy or build media platforms and algorithmic attention systems that can amplify friendly narratives and bury inconvenient facts. They hire former regulators, place them in corporate roles, and then circle back to lobby for rules that lock in advantage. Add to that the raw weaponization of data, surveillance advertising, and platform moderation policies that can silence inconvenient voices, and you have a modern apparatus for shaping public opinion and public policy at scale. This is less conspiracy than structure. It explains why certain policy agendas move so fast and why rollbacks of rights are not isolated events but part of a coherent plan to reconfigure power. If we want to respond, it is not enough to vote. We must dismantle structural capture through antitrust, campaign finance reform, public interest technology, labor organizing, and building institutions that are not for sale.

What makes this moment especially chilling is Trump's executive order labeling Antifa a terrorist organization. On its face, this is a political move dressed up as law and order. In reality, it is the state declaring that anyone who resists fascism can be treated as a terrorist. That label carries consequences far beyond rhetoric. It opens the door for surveillance, detention, and prosecution not for violence but for dissent. It means activists, organizers, or even ordinary citizens who stand against this regime's agenda can be stripped of rights, targeted, and silenced under the pretense of national security.

We have been here before. In the Red Scare, suspected communists were hunted, blacklisted, and destroyed by innuendo. In the War on Terror, whole communities were profiled and treated as enemies of the state for their identity and beliefs. Now, with a single signature, the government has claimed the authority to make "anti-fascist" synonymous with "terrorist." The irony is brutal: those standing against authoritarianism are recast as the threat. This is how fascist regimes consolidate power. They criminalize resistance itself.

The implications are devastating. If Antifa can be branded terrorism, then any protest, any challenge to Christian nationalism or MAGA ideology, can be framed as an attack on the state. The effect is not only legal but cultural. It conditions citizens to see neighbors, teachers, organizers, even family members who dissent as enemies. It emboldens militias and police to treat protesters as combatants. It legitimizes violence from the state and from those who align themselves with it.

Make no mistake: this is not about Antifa. It is about power constructing a permanent permission slip to crush opposition. Today it is anti-fascists. Tomorrow it can be any of us who dare to question the ruling ideology. This is not just policy. It is the infrastructure of tyranny being built in real time.

Globalization is weakening. America's posture is shifting from global leadership to isolationistic posture. Distrust of science, disdain for expertise, elevation of conspiracy theories, all are replacing what once bound us in shared projects. When our foreign policy is being influenced not by diplomatic strategy but by radical ideologues, when trade and alliances are sacrificed to performative nationalism, when internal civic institutions are hollowed out in favor of loyalty tests, that is how regimes lean toward autocracy. And just as the Nazis once built global networks of sympathizers through ideology and propaganda, Trump and the Heritage Foundation are attempting to replicate this playbook, seeding alliances with far-right movements abroad and feeding pockets of global sympathy.

Yes, history tells us this kind of damage is rarely undone in a single election. It often takes decades. Even when courts reverse decisions, when rights are reinstated, the weight of precedent and the erosion of norms stay with us. Laws are only part of the story. Culture, education, institutional memory, once lost, are far harder to restore. Most people do not think of that when they vote or protest. They focus on the immediate. But this is long game territory.

Why this matters to me, born and raised in Texas, black, inheritor of a legacy of struggle, of mothers who trusted ballots, of civil rights fighters who taught me that justice is not a concept. It is daily work. Those women, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, Jasmine Crockett, they left blueprints. Jordan spoke not only of inclusion but of dignity in representation. Richards taught us that wit and truth can disarm destruction. Ivins showed us that to mock the powerful is not disrespect. It is essential to keeping them honest. Crockett today pushes back on normalized cruelty, demanding that empathy still belong in public life.

If we withdraw, if we let fear win, if we let Christian nationalist spectacle drown out the small voices, then the America that promised for all will become an America only promised to the few. To survive we must condition our will. Mental endurance must become a practice. We must organize not only policy by policy, election by election, but relationship by relationship, community by community. We must build our networks, protect our institutions, teach the next generation both the history and the ethics, remind ourselves every day what dignity means, not just for us, for everyone.

Think about what new America has to offer: it can be one where power is accountable, expertise is honored, empathy is not erased, where government does not serve only its donors. But that America does not emerge by default. It demands courage, perseverance, vision.

This is not a liberal rant. It is a warning. It is also a call. If we do not wake up now, the erosion will become irreversible. And yet I believe many of us are already waking. Many hearts are already unsettled. Many minds refusing to comply. Many votes already being cast in defiance of what fear wants.

We have choices. We have consequences. We have each other. If America is to be more than a hollow promise, then we must show up, speak truth, and vote like our dignity depends on it, because it already does.