Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

President Trump recently followed through on his threat to use the federal government shutdown as an occasion to fire government workers on a mass scale.

Shutdowns are temporary, yet the effects of this one seem likely to be permanent. It’s a kind of limbo, a foretaste of the old government being phased out, but with little clue what might replace it.

Such things have happened before in history.

While imprisoned in 1930 for opposing Mussolini’s fascism, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously wrote, “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” L.S. Stavrianos’ 1976 book The Promise of the Coming Dark Age now seems dated, but raises a provocative question for our time: can something new and better evolve from these dark times?

As Trump demolishes the old and drives America toward a darker future, the Democrats’ instinct has been to grieve, resist, and dream of restoration. But restoration may be the wrong goal. That’s the rueful lesson Polish democrats are drawing from Poland’s shift back toward authoritarianism.

Even if Democrats’ dream scenario — retaking the House in 2026 and the Senate and presidency in 2028 — comes true,

© CounterPunch