My neighbor Swamp Rabbit took a moment to read the quote-out on my laptop, from an interview with PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist Joseph O’Neill:

My sense is that, in this era of the Internet, there are millions more fascists in this country than people think, young men in particular. And I believe that many more millions are fascinated by Trump not for his supposed business prowess but for his transparent wish to hurt others. He is an evil guy, a villain—and many Americans are excited by it. Harris and the Democrats, by contrast, are boring, boring, boring. In this sense, the election was like a choice between four more years of church or four years of violent entertainment. Nihilistic consumerism, as much as authoritarianism, prevailed.

“He sounds like you,” Swamp Rabbit said. “I like the phrase ‘nihilistic consumerism.’ That sums up the MAGA crowd pretty good.”

I told him to read the rest of the interview. It’s more than a diagnosis. It’s the first post-election piece I’ve read that doesn’t make me feel like all is lost regarding democracy in America:

New tactics will have to be employed. New people will have to be given leadership positions. Blue state authorities will have to coordinate with one another to protect vulnerable Americans. To make this happen, the [Democratic National Committee] should finally do what it should have done years ago: set up a political operations unit to devise and coordinate anti-GOP actions nationwide. (Fox News performs this function, and others, for the GOP.)

My sarcastic neighbor chuckled. “Does this mean you ain’t gonna withdraw from the human race and tend your garden? You’re blaming the party now, not the peeps?”

“I’m just saying I’d change things in a big way if I were in a position to make plans for the Democrats. I’d push aside the do-nothing dinosaurs — Chuck Schumer and so on. I’d make sure the chairperson of the DNC was someone who had a pulse and a sense of how to combat fascist propaganda. Someone who hasn’t fallen into the neoliberal trap the party set for itself, pandering to the rich at the expense of the working class.”

“Blah blah,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Are you sure about this O’Neill guy? He reminds me of Bernie Sanders.”

He was trying to annoy me. “What’s wrong with Bernie, swamp creature? He predicted that the Democratic party would implode if it ignored the millions of people being wooed by fascists. He was right, wasn’t he?”