They’re out there. They are appendages of a sick creature. Its quotidian dystopia is not its own master. Inevitability is. It is only a matter of time before they are gone, along with the entity that spat them out like bilious bile. The infectious splatter has contaminated the national, natural landscape. And its people. Some of the contaminated victims have succumbed to its targeted attacks. Others have been damaged. Physically. Mentally. Some are hiding from the creature’s tentacles. For decades this nefarious creature was made impotent, kept in check after being beaten back, bloodied, battered and too weakened, too restrained for it to reemerge.

But such vigilant safekeeping became weaker and lazier as time passed. Eventually, the forces that once stopped it in its tracks became too distant, too few in number. Their voices barely heard. History was allowed to become hazy, its lesson unlearned in ensuing generations. Ignorance became a default setting. Decades of complacency, capitulation, incremental compromising, magical thinking and eventually stupendous stupidity allowed the creature to re-emerge, again immediately ominous in appearance and temperament. It bellowed and barged around. Sensing it had been given authority to act out its hateful, historical instincts, it blustered and badgered, denigrated and denounced any expressed opposition. Its confidence being bolstered by its ability to withstand what little force its opposition displayed.

Until…

…the same process that permitted its resurrection had seen the creature for what it was and ordered it out of its position of authority. The creature, now used to its extremism as a daily affirmation of entitlement, refused to step aside. It refused to abide by any other authority than its own. It attacked the process. It vilified any perceived betrayers. The creature showed its fangs, its claws, its willingness to take by force what it needed not do before in gaining power.

To the great relief of many who were repulsed by the creature’s smug sense of self-importance, it was not allowed to force its way back into power. It’s vocal opposition assumed that it would be permanently banished, if not destroyed as it was so many decades past when it also sought total domination.

Tragically, absurdly, stupefyingly, the creature was not banished. Not barred from any possible place in the only process– besides force–that would again permit its hideous specter to appear and resume its dangerous agenda. In spite of once again having defeated the creature, having denied it any further access to the levers that it must control to enact its divisive, racist, belligerent, demagogic desires, its previous unlawful awfulness was not prosecuted. Those that could have made certain its initial re-emergence could now be impossible to repeat, failed in spectacular fashion. The means by which the creature could regain power were left unaltered, betraying recent historical reminders of the urgency for such assurances for those that knew they would be primary targets again. The creature’s stated agenda this time was far more dangerous, more sweeping in its vengeful intentions.

Now, the creature is far more dangerous than before, creating chaos and fear. Its appendages are out there, virtually unchecked. That it is back is an indictment of a System that has become a betrayal of trust for those who needed to be protected.

However much longer this will be tolerated is uncertain. The System appears impotent, bordering on blatant self-preservation only. The forces that crushed this type of aggression will not be the same as eighty years ago. Resistance now will not be in combat uniform. This current creature’s opposition will seemingly be civilian. How and when this current crisis of governing gone horribly haywire is gotten rid of cannot be foretold. Time will tell.

When that time does inevitably come, it will vanquish this radical autocratic monstrosity and necessarily take the corrupted and complicit System that failed its public down as well. To not do so, is to–again– demonstrate having still not learned the lesson taught all those decades ago. What few remain who aided in destroying fascist fanaticism decades past deserve to know after this creature, too, has been vanquished, is that it will never be allowed to emerge again.