(click on play button above and watch my short film vomitus)

Waiting for the Reichstag Fire (01.07.21)

I’m waiting for the flood.
I’m waiting.

I’m hoping against deliberative hope
that the storming of Congress wasn’t the prelude for the pretext —
that it wasn’t the Reichstag Fire that failed to catch —
hoping that we’re not headed for a “state of exception”
that we’re not on the path to enabling
the autocrat to break through.

I’ve heard it “can’t happen here,”
like a nauseating refrain,
five years running.

Look around, look back,
it’s all happened here.

“To be sure, Americans in 2020 had access to vastly more information than did Soviet citizens in 1986. But the Trump administration shared two key features with the Soviet government: utter disregard for human life and a monomaniacal focus on pleasing the leader, to make him appear unerring and all-powerful. These are the features of autocratic leadership. In the three years of his presidency, even before the coronavirus pandemic, Trump had come closer to achieving autocratic rule than most people would have thought possible.”

— Masha Gessen / Surviving Autocracy