America made a peaceful transition to fascism today.

It’s always despairing the day after an American election during an age of neoliberalism. Today, however, had a Berlin 1933 vibe. Donald Trump is now the President-Elect which confirms we are are at the final moments of the “American Century.” We be in a time of chaos which won’t be pleasant unless you are a spiv.

It's out of the fire of neoliberalism and into the pan of fascism. As people catch their breath. I leave you with the optimism my Dad carried with him his entire life. Here is an essay about fighting fascism, and neoliberalism and snatching moments of joy to savour while all around grows dark.

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Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Hope is hard to find in the grey teatime light because the darkness of fascism gathers. It has been the hardest, saddest and cruellest of years – a sour vintage- which brings heartache, financial worries and political unease to doorsteps everywhere.

Austerity seems eternal, and for many of us, it is because neoliberalism has no pity for the vulnerable or ordinary worker. Callous and brutal wars test our faith in humanity.

These conflicts reap an unstoppable refugee crisis that makes us weep in despair at civilisation's decrepitude.

Hope is as absent from society today as cash is to a pauper’s wallet because a noxious populism fuelled by hate now smoulders. Everywhere we turn, it feels like optimism has been eclipsed, by a world we don’t want to recognise as our own. Despair is in the breath of our words because we are frightened by how politics has became a harsh battle to make the 1% wealthier and us their serfs.

I am old so I've seen many times before humanity up against the setting sun of history. I witnessed our country on its knees during the Great Depression and its back to the wall under the threat of Hitler's armies. Over my nine decades of life, I’ve known despair but never hopelessness.

The source of hope that has carried me through my existence comes from the collective will of my generation in 1945 to beat our swords into ploughshares and harvest a just society through the creation of a Welfare State.

It all came to pass through a bloodless revolution- that transpired during the 1945 General Election. Those votes decided whether our country would cling to its feudal past or accept a bold egalitarian future.

I was 22, a member of the Allied Occupation Force and stationed in Hamburg. And it was there that I cast my ballot for the first time – and it’s been a love affair with democracy ever since.

On the day I voted in that occupied city, it looked as worse for wear as any city Britain and the United States have obliterated by aerial bombardment. Sorrow could be found on every street corner because of a dead tyrant’s madness.

While I queued to vote, I remember how conscious I was of both what I had endured as a boy and teenager during the Great Depression and what I’d witnessed during the war.

I knew by making my mark and voting for a Welfare State, I was declaring to my country, my peers and those who did not live to see that election day, that my destiny mattered regardless of my humble station in life. The hope that has kept me going all these years came from that election when ordinary people said their lives mattered just as much as any elite class.

My hope has always come from the humanity, kindness and intelligence that inhabits our species. It may seem dormant now, but it will rise again because those sparks of decency that built the NHS, gave affordable housing to each and every one of us, and provided free education to all, are in every person alive today. You are the children and the grandchildren of my generation. If we did it before, then we can do it again except this time it will be your turn to become the greatest generation.

Your support in keeping my dad’s legacy going, and me alive is greatly appreciated. I depend on your subscriptions to keep the lights on and me housed. So if you can, please subscribe. And if you can’t -it is all good because we are fellow travellers in penury. But always remember to share these posts far and wide. The Green & Pleasant Land, the project my Dad was working on at the time of his death is almost ready. Take care, John