Welcome to Weimar

A Secret Service agent assigned to Donald Trump’s security detail slammed a credentialed Time magazine photographer to the floor by his throat at a rally in Virginia today. Predictably, a flood of internet cockroaches wearing tiny brown shirts rushed to find a way to justify this assault on our free press, or even outright lie about the sequence of events in a transparent attempt to blame the victim.

The odds are very good that Trump is going to effectively lock up the GOP nomination tomorrow. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie accidentally endorsed Trump over the weekend after mistaking his hair for an order of sweet potato fries. Trump is leading in every Super Tuesday state except Texas, and he’s coming in second there. Baring a minor miracle, this is who the Democratic nominee is going to be facing in the general.

A man who openly encourages physical attacks on protestors, the press, and 1st Amendment itself.

A man who has to “research” white supremacists before commenting on them just in case there are some “good people in there,” despite his enthusiasm for condemning all Mexicans and Muslims without knowing a fucking thing about either.

And there are still progressives pretending there’s no difference between him and Clinton? Fucking seriously? We’re waaay past any legitimate internal party struggles here folks. We’re even past any sort of legitimate ideological disagreements between people of good conscience of opposing parties.

Odds are equally good that tomorrow will see Clinton pull far enough ahead of Sanders that his path to the nomination becomes effectively impossible. But whether that happens tomorrow, or a month from now, it’s time to start preparing for the general and defeating Trump by historic margins in a clear repudiation of his toxic xenophobia and nationalism that will serve as a lesson for future generations of demagogues.

It’s not enough to eek out a victory against him, because that will only encourage him to run again in 2020, or someone very much like him.

The defeat has to be so massive, so humiliating, that everyone will know with certainty that these kinds of politics will not be rewarded in today’s America or in its future.

We do that by supporting our candidate today, but quitting the deliberate mud-slinging of their opponent. We do that by NOT SHARING LINKS AND MEMES WRITTEN BY RIGHTWINGERS ATTACKING YOUR OWN PARTY’S CANDIDATES. I seriously can’t believe I have to tell y’all that, but I see it happen constantly.

And we do that by, when the time comes, coalescing around the winner in a united effort to get them elected in a landslide.

Yeah, that means some of you won’t be voting for your favorite candidate in November. Suck it up. Adulthood means making hard decisions, even choosing from the least-worst of bad options.

That’s life. And that’s politics. Welcome to them both. Otherwise, be ready to welcome yourself to Weimar-era Germany.