The Banality of MAGA Authoritarianism

To My Fellow Resister,

I pray my missive reaches you without interception. The once-reliable Postal Service cannot be trusted, what with Dr. Evil Elon’s henchmen gutting it from the inside. Neither can an encrypted email be transmitted in full confidence. I’ve long suspected the bloated dictator in the Orange House sicced his minions upon our once honor-bright NSA. Nor are carrier pigeons reliable, ever since DOGE cuts stemmed their steady suet supply from the Department of Parks and Recreation.

I’m afraid I must rely on an open publication, with sheer hope that no Trumpy Joe stumbles upon it during daily wrongthink sweeps. Good thing MAGA Cro-Magnons read at a first-grade level! My M.A. in multiethnic literature studies with an emphasis on 16th-century Paupin glossolalia from Middlebury College should properly shield this distress signal from autocracy’s prying eye. Consider this communique part samizdat, part survival journal, scribbled in the depths of this Donaldized Dystopia.

As you may know, unless Fox News has hijacked all broadcasting frequencies in the rest of the country, the President, seeking to wrestle ever more authority from “the people,” has illegally declared a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., federalizing law enforcement, press-ganging National Guardsmen to harass, detain, and menace we capital denizens. I say “illegally” because such a move clearly cuts across the Constitution, a document I ordinarily detest out of solidarity with my black brothers and sisters, not to mention the violently displaced aboriginal Americans. But exceptions can be made during states of exception. And if the lickspittle, jackboot-kissing Republicans want to throw that piece of parchment written by a bunch of slave-owners around to deny us universal health care, then I can thumbtack that racist rulebook to their knitted pale brows to show that their martial occupation is unjustified!

The pall of despotic darkness has descended upon our formerly uplit District. Roving bands of stormtroopers march through our streets, snatching the innocent from once anodyne establishments, such as The Hamilton and Kramers Bookstore. I can’t even DoorDash truffle fries from Le Diplomate without enflaming my IBS, so anxious am I that my courier will be whisked away to that El Salvador dungeon I saw featured on Rachel Maddow. I have to pop an extra Lexapro, down another glass of dry Pinot, just to calm my index finger to input the requisite 15% tip.

Everywhere and everyone and everything is in the crosshairs of Trump’s marauding outriders. Our very capital is under siege! It’s like a dreadful diurnal January 6th without an abeyance in sight. All the metaphors apply: lunatics running the asylum, barbarians breaching the gates, Voldemort headmaster at Hogwarts!

I don’t dare venture outside. Many of my colleagues, Bluesky mutuals, and fellow patients at The Sterling Group agree: moving beyond our doors risks brutal internment, especially for the open-minded who embrace diversity and inclusion. I post #liberateDC once an hour on Instagram, accompanying reposts of whatever atrocities descend across my feed. Just a half-hour ago, I shared a frightening Reel someone surreptitiously filmed of a fatigued guardsman pacing aimlessly around Dupont Circle. The clip made my blood run cold! I thought any moment a poor, defenseless gay would be wantonly swept away to some cold, chain-hang gaol. Nobody is impervious, especially the marginalized who make our city such a vibrant tapestry of kaleidoscopic color!

My psychic state was in full collapse, and I was seriously considering putting in for mental-health leave with my Raytheon remote-consultant job, when an extraordinary event rekindled hope within. It started with a martyr, as all rebellions must.

Sean Charles Dunn will be engraved in the immortal annals of history when this siege of our once gentle, cosmopolitan city is through. His courageous stand athwart authoritarianism deserves active adulation. The August Landmesser of our time, he is!

Dunn courageously cast the first stone of dissention in our moral struggle for liberation. A fellow mutineer informs me the subversive fissile was served up on whole-grain—a fitting symbol for our revolt against the gluttinous fascists who act as a virus on our democratic body politic! We are so many Davids fighting a big orange Goliath, though I loathe making that metaphor because anything biblical is inherently bigoted.

The Wasghinton Post, which I normally don’t trust given Jeff Bezos’s sell-out sop to the regime, likens Dunn to a famous molotov-sketch by a street artist I once saw on Etsy. I’m anguished to agree, but I must. The resistance starts now. The streets of Washington are our streets. We must agitate endlessly against this tangelo Gestapo!

The truth of the matter is, this is a coup from within, an overthrow of this town’s idyll modus vivdendi. Right-wing talk-radio keeps insisting the capital is not safe, that our murder rate is higher than New York City. These are abject lies. Propaganda fed to backwards bumpkins who would upchuck concentrated cholesterol at the site of a pedicab piloted by an immigrant. Sure, I’ve been carjacked and mugged a handful of times in my long tenure (six years) in Washington. But what’s life without a bit of hairy risk; and what’s a $7 carnitas street taco without having to hand it over after one bite because an unhoused person threatens you at knifepoint?

The Trump takeover of our peaceful metro is an exact historic parallel to the Nazis’ violent goosestep to power. Thuggish authorities rounding up Jews for death camps, clueless feds wandering listlessly on the National Mall—there is no fundamental difference! It’s all white supremacy totalitarianism led by a grossly venal strongman who has no business being president, even if he did allegedly win the popular plebscite. Wooing a majority of voters is not democracy! I don’t care what Meriam-Webster’s says! Plus, Webster’s sounds eerily similar to Wehrmacht, no?

The MAGA Reich is being constructed in the heart of the nation, for all eyes to witness, including yours. If there was a time to protest, to pound the paved byways and fling our fists toward our depleting ozone layer, this is it. Send help: money, supplies, “Impeach Trump Now” pennants. Anything you can spare to make it plain that doofus Donny’s radical, reactionary, retrogressive commandeering of our city will not stand. Where should assistance be directed, exactly? Well, I don’t actually live in the District proper. My apartment is technically in Clarendon. But I’ll shoot some DMs to my prog comrades leading the insurgency from behind enemy lines. No doubt there is a GoFundMe you can contribute toward to free our White House from the unduly elected President!