The Good News is Fascists Always Fail
Against Doomerism.
Between the plane crashes, the appointment of podcasters to high-profile law enforcement positions, and the mass firing of government workers, good news has been as hard to find as Elon Musk at his child’s birthday party. That’s why it’s crucial for us to remember the evergreen good news of this terrible situation. While they will cause pain and ruin important institutions, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are doomed to fail. Not just because of their staggering stupidity, but because of the nature of their ideology. While there’s no consensus definition of fascism, everyone agrees it is a reactive ideology that seeks to roll back real or imagined progressive change. Mussolini sought to return Italy to its prestigious status of the Roman Empire, Francisco Franco called for Spain to relearn Catholicism, and Ronald Reagan promised to “Make America Great Again,” ending the civil rights and New Deal programs to reclaim a mythological utopia lying somewhere in the nation’s past.
Reactionary politics — the desire to return to a previous political state, which is often viewed with rose-tinted glasses — is not a bug of fascism. It’s a feature. After all, the ideology was developed to counter early 20th-century socialism, so it’s no surprise modern fascism positions itself against Black Lives Matter, wokeness, DEI, and other phrases that trigger rightists. These politics are scary, and I won’t try to convince you otherwise. However, as fascism is reactive and always needs an imaginary foe to be angry at, fascists have no legitimate answers to the problems facing the general public. Out of power, fascists claim to hold the secrets to social and economic success. “We’ll end the woke agenda that is ruining your life!” they cry. But once they’re in charge, finger-pointing at boogeymen rarely fixes anything. Life in America is hard because we are subjected to capitalist exploitation, not because Disney put an Asian woman in Star Wars. While anger and lies got Donald Trump elected, now that he’s in office, his message has a shelf life. His political movement won’t end on its own, but every passing day of the second Trump presidency shows the American people he is incapable of delivering the change he promised.
Take Trump’s immigration claims, for example. Seizing on America’s long history of racism and humanity’s perennial distrust of the “other,” Trump and company have built a xenophobic political movement promising a border wall, deportations, and concentration camps. While anti-immigration is not unique to the United States, I’ve yet to see another political figure place everything at the bare feet of immigrants. On the campaign trail, Trump said deporting immigrants would reduce crime, rent, and, most confusingly, healthcare costs.1
Anyone with basic political familiarity and critical thinking skills can tell you this isn’t true. Studies have found that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have lower healthcare costs than domestic-born Americans. In fact, immigrants subsidize healthcare costs for the rest of us by paying into private insurance and public programs such as Medicare, which they use at lower rates.
“From 2000 to 2011, unauthorized immigrants contributed $2.2 to $3.8 billion more than they withdrew annually (a total surplus of $35.1 billion) [to the Medicare Part A Trust Fund]. Had unauthorized immigrants neither contributed to nor withdrawn from the Trust Fund during those 11 years, it would become insolvent in 2029—1 year earlier than currently predicted. — Immigrants Have Lower Health Care Expenditures Than Their U.S.-Born Counterparts (2024)2
“In this cross-sectional analysis of 210,669 respondents to the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the Current Population Survey, immigrants contributed $58.3 billion more in premiums and taxes in 2017 than insurers and government paid for their health care, and US-born citizens incurred a net deficit of $67.2 billion. Undocumented immigrants accounted for most (89.0%) of the surplus.” — Assessment of Immigrants’ Premium and Tax Payments for Health Care and the Costs of Their Care (2022)3
Not only will deportations not reduce healthcare costs, but they might increase them. As the conclusion of one 2015 study found, “Policies that curtail the influx of unauthorized immigrants may accelerate [the Medicare] Trust Fund’s depletion."4 Immigrants’ net-positive impact on the American healthcare system is obvious from a common sense perspective. Undocumented immigrants pay into employer-provided and government health programs through premiums and payroll taxes but are unlikely to draw attention by going to a doctor. As anti-immigrant policies were Trump’s only healthcare solutions, he has no plan to stop rising healthcare costs, which are expected to reach 19.7% of America’s GDP by 2032.5 His conservative masters might pull something out of thin air, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. While Fox News will keep telling people Trump is reducing healthcare premiums and is only days away from making America great (“Trust me bro, we’re almost there!”, it’ll be hard to argue against eye-popping medical bills and depleted bank accounts.
The same is true for the anti-DEI/wokeness/political correctness phenomenon that has infatuated the political right. As fascism operates on peoples’ feelings and not rationality, Trump has convinced many Americans that his anti-DEI executive orders will result in:
Better jobs for White men who were previously passed over for unqualified “DEI hires,”
Fewer plane crashes,
Less government waste by ending spending on “woke” programs.
While such claims make compelling narratives, none of these are true. Racism in hiring still impacts workers of color more than helping them,6 and the “woke” programs DOGE is cutting are either contracts Elon Musk wants for himself or soft power plays to keep foreign nations from allying with China. Not only is there not a secret plot to replace White pilots with untrained Black people (I can’t believe I just had to type that), but air travel causalities are up over 100% under Trump compared to last year.7 The unreality of Trump’s campaign trail promises are being noticed. MAGA voters are already going viral for complaining about the things they voted for, and Alabama Senator Katie Britt is freaking out that DOGE will cut federal funding for the University of Alabama, her state’s largest employer.8
While right-wing propaganda is the most powerful media force in the contemporary United States, there’s only so much it can do to refute reality. While many conservatives are fully brain-washed and would still support Trump if he personally executed their families, median voters are not. According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump has squandered a +8.2% approval rating in less than a month.9 He’s now down to just +.8% approval, a historic collapse for a president still in the honeymoon phase. For comparison, Joe Biden (who left office wildly unpopular) was at +17.2% approval at this point in his presidency.10
Even the Trump-friendly Washington Post has registered Americans’ dissatisfaction.11 In a joint poll with Ipsos, the Post found Trump had underwater ratings when it came to:
Handling the economy (-8 points),
Running the federal government (-10 points)
Overall job performance (-8 points), and
Elon Musk (-15 points)
The poll also found majorities of Americans were feeling pessimistic about the economic issues Trump ran on.
Nine in ten Americans reported being unhappy with food prices,
75% think gas prices are too high,
Seven in ten think Americans’ incomes are too low.
Defenders will say it’s still early in Trump’s presidency and too early to judge his performance. However, as tariffs and deportations were his entire domestic policy agenda, there’s nothing left for him to do to sway Americans’ opinions. He backed down on tariffs in exchange for a photo op of Mexican soldiers at the border (they were already there) and Canada naming a fentanyl czar (which he’d already done in December). Deportations are underway, but it's hard to argue they’ll have more of a chilling effect on undocumented immigrants using healthcare or applying for housing than they already have.
With nothing else coming to help them, Americans’ frustration will only build. Congressional Republicans are already feeling their constituents’ anger, both with the lack of the people-focused policies Trump promised and the excessive cutting of DOGE. Angry town halls were recorded in Texas’ 17th Congressional District, Georgia’s 6th, and Wisconsin’s 5th. Those are deep red districts, having voted for Republicans in the last elections by +33, +30, and +29 points, respectively. To say anger at Trump is limited to Democratic cities is inaccurate.
The below clip is from a town hall hosted by Representative Richard McCormick in Georgia’s 6th district. It went so bad McCormick canceled an appearance on CNN rather than face more questions.
So, if you’re afraid to open the news everyday, please know you are neither alone nor insane. Despite the media’s attempts to “both sides” Trump and uplift his cluster fuck administration, the American people don’t like what they are seeing. And what they’ve seen is all fascists can offer them. America has spent decades coddling conservatives’ fragile egos that we forgot that pretty much everything they say is bullshit. Just like their ideological ancestors, modern fascists are doomed to fail, as their politics stand for nothing except “Brown people bad!”
However, while Trump’s policies will eventually fail, that does not mean his political movement will end on its own. The GOP can plunge the country into chaos, but without an alternative force that gives Americans a vision of what the country should look like, we’ll remain in the Ratchet Wrench Paradox — Republicans will move the country right, and Democrats will refuse to move it left.
Remember, the arch of history bends towards justice. But only because brave people are willing to reach out and bend it.
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In Solidarity — Joe
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/11/business/economy/trump-housing-crisis-deportations.html
https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/immigrants-have-lower-health-care-expenditures-than-their-u-s-born-counterparts/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2798221
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4699990/
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-releases-2023-2032-national-health-expenditure-projections
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/01/racial-discrimination-in-hiring-remains-a-persistent-problem-northwestern-study?fj=1
https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-plane-crashes-2025-2024-commercial-flight-2033336
https://www.al.com/news/2025/02/katie-britt-vows-to-work-with-rfk-jr-after-nih-funding-cuts-cause-concern-in-alabama.html
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/joe-biden/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/20/trump-poll-unpopular-post-ipsos/
The trick is to get rid of the Democrats and replace them with a real, alternative, workers’ party.
Bad news is they take a lot of people with them before they fail.