Okay, but seriously, are we overthrowing the government or not?

I used to think that Americans only voted for fascists when they were incredibly stressed, like a dog worrying at his paw, but to vote for two non-consecutive terms of the same fascist feels like an act of malice. Now we have to consider that this is the intent. These people have grievances and they’re going to make it our problem. They don’t feel powerful any more. They don’t feel like men. Or whatever it is that they feel. I don’t know; I don’t think I want to know.

A second Trump presidency is proof that the system is unfit for purpose. The decision we can make now is we can either let it limp along and die in agony, taking the rest of us down with it, or we can take it down to the river and shoot it in the back of the head.

The tricky part about democracy is that we’ve proven time and time again that we can’t be trusted with it, but there doesn’t seem to be an escape from it. I don’t know what an alternative looks like, because I’m a random yahoo with degree in linguistics and a working knowledge of an F-stop. I can tell you that the word comes from the Greek dēmokratia — dēmos as in “district” later “the common people”; kratos as in “rule — and I’m sure the word for the next thing, if we live to hear it, will be just as fascinating, but that doesn’t translate to real-world political theory. Where this gets frustrating is that the very act of operating within the system is an endorsement of it. You can talk all you want about how the system could work if only the right people were in charge of it, how the policies just need to be tweaked a little more, just one more tweak we promise, but we can all see that it doesn’t, it hasn’t, and it can’t. By design, the system benefits the rich and powerful, and most of us are neither. We’re freezing to death in our own homes while the gas company enjoys profits beyond number. We’re standing in the aisles choosing between bread and baby food. A genocide is being livestreamed to our phones and all we can do is watch. It isn’t even fun to be bisexual any more. All of this was going to happen regardless of who lives in the big white house across the Atlantic ocean. This election only proves that about half of us are cheering for it.

The master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house. The master may be a different species to you and I but the master’s house, like every other house, answers to fire.

I have a lot of American friends, and probably so do you. We live in a tightly connected, international community, for better and for worse. It’s hard to talk to them about these things, so I’ve put together a list of suggested talking points for your American friends. Sit them down, make them a cup of tea, and — gently! — get the dialogue started with one of these:

• What is wrong with you?

• Why are you like this?

• Explain to me right now why we shouldn’t just build a wall around your coastlines to keep you in.

• Did we anger you in some way?

• Do you think that most of your countrymen simply don’t care about the sexual assaults committed by your president, or that they consider this a mark in his favour?

• What do you think any of this says about how things have been going for the last three hundred years?

• Are you aware that three hundred years is not a very long time for a civilisation to have existed, and that your country has consistently ruined everything for everybody else during that short time?

• I love you, my American friend, but you have to get your shit together.

• I know this isn’t what you voted for personally, but you are the only American in front of me right now.

• I’m not mad at you. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this.

• I am disappointed, though.

• It’s not your fault, no, but it does keep happening. This is a pattern.

• It’s embarrassing for all of us when you act like this.

If we start to understand these people, maybe we can start to help them.