To protest the Palestinian blood on Kamala Harris’s hands, some people I know plan to vote for Jill Stein or Cornel West. Stein has even described her campaign as a way to “punish the Democrats.” The blood is real and the punishment well-deserved, but I’m afraid these people are living in an America that no longer exists. The beast with two heads – the elephant and the donkey – that has ruled U.S. politics for so long is dead. And third parties have no place in a one-party totalitarian state.

The mainstream media still haven’t caught on, but historians looking back at our time will recognize the rise of Trump as the faultline where our familiar two-party political system lurched into a radically new historical epoch. But contrary to appearances, it’s not really Donald Trump’s fault. He’s just the figurehead on the prow of the flagship of the new political order.

For decades mainstream America felt safe ignoring Rush Limbaugh, Fox “News,” the Heritage Foundation, the neo-Nazis and the rest of the right-wing fringe, counting on the Democrats and Republicans to keep taking turns in the White House and trading seats in Congress. Though the rhetoric frequently waxed vicious, neither party was willing to risk losing voters by straying to extremes.

Meanwhile, no matter which party was in charge, the rich got richer, corporations tightened their control, the “defense” budget grew fatter and the Pentagon’s lust for global dominance more aggressive. Democrats and Republicans differed primarily on domestic policy, vying to be tougher on drugs or crime or inflation, taking sides on abortion or immigration or health care, but voting in unison on military and economic supremacy abroad. And third-party spoilers could safely rail against Democratic Tweedledums and Republican Tweedledees, the conjoined twins of what a friend of mine calls “the duopoly.”

But in the background, some quiet changes were preparing the way for an unprecedented tectonic shift. Electoral demographics increasingly favored the Democrats as minority voters grew in number and a new generation reached voting age. Alarmed Republican strategists began targeting statehouses, governors’ mansions, and the judicial bench. And the malicious venom of Limbaugh and Fox over fabricated “issues” like Monica Lewinsky and Benghazi grew steadily louder.

Then came the Messiah they were spreading their palm branches for for. Naturally, the 21st-century incarnation of Ronald Reagan’s B-movie cowboy persona would be a reality TV star, right? With Donald Trump’s belligerent speeches and tweets, the radical right took center stage.

An Unfamiliar New Era with Brand-New Rules

It’s a time-honored tradition among both Democrats and Republicans to routinely exaggerate the depravity of their opponents. But in 2016, exaggeration on the Republican side suddenly gave way to insults, threats, and outright lies – a relentless flood of vitriol so outrageous it was literally impossible to exaggerate. The Republicans know they can’t win on the merits of union-busting and gutting Obamacare, so they fall back on make-believe: branding middle-of-the-road corporate Democrats like Biden and Harris as raving socialists, ballot-stuffers, sex-trafficking devil-worshipping baby-eaters plotting to take away our guns and our Social Security.

To the media, operating on the playbook of an antiquated past, this plays as colorful made-to-order entertainment. Accustomed to covering politics like any other sport and politicians like other celebrities, unsuspecting reporters and analysts failed to notice that Tweedledee had ditched the conventional rules of bi-partisan head-butting and was going for Tweedledum’s throat. Or perhaps the corporate bosses of the media establishment were simply aligning their coverage with their own long-term interests.

If Trump loses, the various criminal cases against him will likely go forward. And if he receives a fair trial, he knows better than anyone that he is going to jail. Trump is fighting not just for a life term on the imperial throne, but to dodge a literal prison term. And if he wins, under the perverse logic of a narcissistic ego, a host of politicians, pundits, prosecutors, political cartoonists, maybe even humble bloggers like me will be going to jail in his place.

In 2024, the Democrats suddenly find themselves fighting not for another turn in power, or even the survival of their party, but for their own personal freedom. And just like that, the age of the “duopoly” is over. The Republicans and their billionaire backers are staking it all on one last desperate lunge for totalitarian one-party rule.

As of Nov. 1, the polls give them a 50-50 chance of pulling it off. If the vote tally on Election Night mirrors those odds, their odds actually improve. The closer the vote, the better their chances of spreading enough doubt and confusion to put their man over the top. Red-state legislatures, right-wing judges, white-supremacist cops and mobs of vigilantes are standing by to overpower the election officials who are nominally in charge.

The Left, too, is watching through the outdated filters of an age now past: their fiery idealism, disdain for corporate Democrats, and understandable revulsion at the genocide in Gaza all prevent them from recognizing that Harris and her downballot compatriots are now fighting for democracy itself. In this unfamiliar new epoch, the fantasy of “punishing the Democrats” could open the gates to a fascist dynasty that punishes us all.

The first victims, of course, will be immigrants, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, women of reproductive age, and anyone who stands up for them. The Ukrainians will suffer, obviously, but the Palestinians too will be far worse off with an admirer of Netanyahu in the White House. Most alarming of all is the ongoing global fallout of an official U.S. policy of climate denial. And this could realistically be the last election that gives American voters any choice at all.

A Clash of Ideologies: Freedom vs. Control

Republican political tactics are war tactics: first, dehumanize the enemy. But do right-wing propagandists actually believe the lies they endlessly repeat about the amoral, subhuman “Libs”? I think they do – because like most people, they assume other people are more or less like them. Of course the Democrats manipulate the voters with “fake news” – because they do. Of course the Democrats win elections by cheating – because they do. Of course Joe Biden is guilty of heinous crimes and corruption, because crime and corruption is their ethical norm. Hunter Biden must be cashing in on his father’s name, because that’s what Jared Kushner did – because who wouldn’t? And so on, ad nauseum.

Conservatives consistently out-organize the liberals because the essence of liberalism is to simply let people be. Behind the guise of getting government off our backs, conservative Christians are itching to commandeer the power of government to control every aspect of our lives: converting the infidel at the point of the sword, in the tradition of the Inquisition and the Crusades. Meanwhile, the billionaires who finance them are salivating to harness that unholy itch to their own agenda, to defang the government and defund its regulatory police.

Yet according to the billboards and TV commercials of the right, it’s the liberals who have an “agenda.” You and I understand that gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans are simply asserting their right to openly live their lives without masquerading as someone they’re not. But to the propagandists of the right, these heroic underdogs are actively scheming to seduce children into the “LGBTQ lifestyle” – because that’s what they would do.

Some who believe this are sincerely concerned for other people’s children. But lurking behind them are others whose expressions of concern are neither genuine nor ingenuous. Condemning gays and transsexuals is an insidious tactic to enlist religious fundamentalists as agents of control. For all their political sins, the Democrats have become by default the party of freedom: freedom of belief, of expression, of identity, of bodily autonomy. At bottom, the red-vs.-blue “culture wars” pit a Democratic ideology of free choice against a Republican ideology of control.

In the ideology of control, “abortion” is code for “sex for pleasure,” and “pro-life” a euphemism for the puritan crusade to stamp out the anti-religion of hedonism. Yes, many Christians do sincerely believe abortion is murder, and they have a legal right to say so. But the point when a fertilized ovum becomes a human being is a mystery to medical science, and therefore purely a matter of metaphysical belief. No one, including the Supreme Court, can impose their personal or religious definition of “human being” on the rest of us.

Criminalizing abortion is not only a religious attack on pleasure, privacy, and the separation of church and state; it’s a political strategy to keep women occupied with child-rearing instead of fulfilling their potential in myriad other ways – political activism, for example, or running for office. But it’s an issue for men, too, who are legally obliged to pay child support for that unwanted child, or go to jail.

One of the more extreme Republican lies is that Democrats advocate abortion “up to the moment of birth, and even after.” But as ridiculous as that sounds, it does contain a spark of truth. The policy of retroactive abortion has long been a bi-partisan consensus in Washington, justifying the murder of thousands of innocent civilians – including newborns – in Gaza and around the world. Not to mention the Pentagon’s calculated plans for planetary thermonuclear abortion.

But if you think “punishing the Democrats” will change that, you really ought to check out this incredible, fantastic, spectacular bridge I hear Trump Properties has for sale up in Brooklyn.

Note: These are my personal opinions and do not represent any organization I’m involved in. If my words resonate for you, please share widely. You can subscribe at StephenWing.com. Read previous installments of “Wingtips” here.