Spouse got OC sprayed yesterday. Seems like every few years he ends up getting pepper sprayed or tased or both, just as an aspect of whatever training he is going through, because part of it is making sure they understand what it feels like. I like to think it makes him less choosy about my cooking. "May the star-spangled uncle bless you with his hot peppery spray!" I told spouse. God I'm glad he likes my sense of humor. I think he's getting a little sick of his classmates because we've been doing "helmet chatter" more frequently. We played mandalorian siblings in a star wars RPG many years ago, before we dated, like 2008ish? When spouse enlisted and moved Outside, the group still kept the campaign going via video chat and he was able to keep participating. Spouse and I would have a private text window off to the side and all we did was snark in character about the other characters and bicker like siblings do. We called it "helmet chatter" because we treated it like our character's direct comm line, helmet-to-helmet. So when spouse texts me with his little snarky observations about his classmates, it's "helmet chatter", it's the side gossip and jokes he's missing in his environment. Frequently irreverent and bitchy. Spouse is a private person and it takes him a while to show strangers he has a sense of humor. So the jokes and observations he's not comfortable saying in person, he tells me.

We were discussing the recent goings-on: the drama with the r/antiwork subreddit and the supreme court justice retirement. I told spouse that I couldn't bring myself to care about the supreme court justice thing, that it felt inevitable that we were going to sink into fascism in the next few years and that perhaps we would just have to go through a dark, bad time as a nation. Perhaps that would eventually spark the real change we truly need when we claw our way back to decency. I said I thought it was too late to "pull up" and avoid the disaster.

Spouse says, "Hold on there, antifa, I haven't even been fitted for my jackboots yet."

And I assured him he was going to look very handsome in his jackboots, but if I built a secret room to hide the gays and atheists from the fundamentalists that I wasn't going to tell him about it, for his own good.

He made a joke like, "But what if the gays really do have an agenda?" which he doesn't believe, and so the subtext is more or less, "okay".

And maybe it is tinfoil-hatty to think about such things now, but I bet the people who hid the jews didn't think they'd have to do that either, until it happened. We're going to be looking at houses and will I be thinking about possible secret rooms? You betcha. One of the women I danced with ended up finding a small secret grow room in the house she bought in fairbanks. Shit you not. I don't have any interest in growing pot (besides I think it's legal to grow now), but a hidden room would be an asset for other things in bad times. I'm pretty sure if I told spouse, "I have a light sensitive art project, don't go in the basement for the next 24 hours", he would comply without fuss. I'll just get into hobby screenprinting again - you need a darkroom to burn the screens. Plausible deniability.

It's messed up to be pondering the need to hide people. I just don't see how we're going to avoid sliding into fascism, and fascism has to create "the other" to serve as an enemy to manufacture the hate and fear that fuels the system. The persecution of "the other" must ramp up to make people feel like something is being done about the so-called threat. The system must justify itself and make some display to show it is strong. All the people it deems "the other" will be put at escalating risk. Being aware of all this now, I'm not going to just shrug and be like, "oh well, glad I'm not one of THOSE people, guess I'd better keep my mouth shut and conform so the star-spangled uncle doesn't disappear me." The time to see it and prepare is NOW. Everybody knows about the nazis, we can't be all shocked-pikachu when they pick certain groups to bully. We already know who those groups will be. I really hope I am being paranoid and dramatic and we never get close to sinking so low. Hopefully I'll just have a weird closet for camping stuff or something.

I just don't see how we're going to avoid it. The democrats have proven to be more worthless than I imagined. I don't know what their deal is, if they're trying to use fancy strategery or just too busy wanking into piles of corpo money. Frankly it doesn't matter, they aren't getting it done. They're playing games on their cell phone while the titanic heads straight for the iceberg. Everybody's pointing at the iceberg and screaming, too. I feel like it's too late for a course correction, and maybe we don't deserve to have a near miss at this point. Maybe this is when we play with matches and burn down our house and stand in the ashes crying about all the things we lost. Sucks to suck, America. Get ready to fall off your gold plated pedestal.

I don't even know what my politics are at this point, I just want people to be decent and honest and kind to each other, like they tried to teach us in kindergarten and sunday school. Tolerance and compassion for those who are different, as long as no non-consensual harm is being done. Freedom to thoughtfully choose, but the strength to accept the consequences. Generosity to share with those who lack. Who knew those expectations were so fucking unreasonable.