An acquaintance said something recently that really stuck with me… in the worst way.
But before I get into what happened, a quick note: This is a bit of a departure from our usual house-cleaning content. No tips on baseboards, no spring cleaning hacks, or how to get red wine out of carpet today. This is something that’s been sitting with me, and after that moment, I felt like I needed to get it out of my head and onto the page.
So, an acquaintance of mine and I were chatting in a Slack group (we share a common interest in this group; nothing political, nothing heavy), and I was expressing concern about the risk of fascism in the United States. He’s a conservative from Texas, identifies as a Republican (skewing toward libertarian), and at one point he just said, very casually, that “fascism can be good”.
Now… full stop.
Fascism is a far-right authoritarian ideology built on extreme nationalism, centralized power, and rule under a strong leader with little to no opposition. So when someone shrugs and says it’s “not bad,” what they’re really saying is they’re okay with authoritarianism.
That genuinely stunned me.
Because historically, and even just logically, the system that tends to produce the best outcomes for the most people is democracy. Not perfect, of course, but at least leaders are accountable to a broad population. Authoritarian systems, on the other hand, are accountable to a very small group, basically, the people the leader needs to keep happy to stay in power.
And that group usually looks something like this:
- Security forces (military, intelligence, police): they hold the real power. If they turn, things end quickly.
- Political insiders: party elites and loyalists who control access and decisions.
- Economic power brokers: the people funding the system and benefiting from it.
- Information gatekeepers: those who shape what the public sees, hears, and believes.
If you’re a dictator, you don’t need to keep everyone happy, just them. And the easiest way to do that? Shift wealth, power, and privilege upward to that small group… while everyone else gets the leftovers and a carefully managed narrative explaining why it’s fine.
So how could he possibly think this is a good system? And then it hit me this morning.
Cognitive dissonance.
On some level, I think he knows his political “team” may be drifting in that direction. But instead of stepping back and questioning it, he’s doing something very human: doubling down. Reframing the thing itself as acceptable, maybe even good, so he doesn’t have to confront the discomfort.
And it’s not just him.
I’ve seen this pattern with others I know in the U.S. who are conservative. The focus tends to stay on issues like trans athletes in sports or other trivial cultural flashpoints, while much bigger structural concerns quietly grow in the background. Meanwhile, rights feel more fragile, costs of living rise, alliances weaken, and the overall tone of the country becomes more combative. It’s like arguing about the paint color while the foundation is cracking.
Watching this unfold has deeply shaken my confidence in U.S. democracy. Not because decline is impossible to reverse, but because the speed of the backslide feels unusually fast. Faster than what we’ve seen in many historical examples. And that’s hard to process because the U.S. is my home country.
It’s not just intellectual. It’s emotional. It’s traumatizing.
The one thing I’m grateful for is that I’ve been thinking about these risks for years. I’ve read a small library on how democracies decline, how dictators consolidate power, and how economic cycles feed into all of this. The signs weren’t invisible, they were just easy to ignore. So we didn’t ignore them.
We made the decision to move to Canada to give our family a safer, more stable environment. For now, that’s Oakville, Ontario, where we’ve built our new home. And yes, I now shovel snow. Yes, taxes are higher. Yes, I still don’t fully understand why winter lasts nine months. But I’ll take all of that over risking my family’s safety or future. Because when things get uncertain, your job is simple: protect your people.
As for where the world goes from here, with major powers like China already authoritarian and the U.S. quickly moving in that direction, I don’t know yet. It feels like we’re entering a more volatile era, one that resembles a time before strong international norms held things together. Before internaional law was put in place post world war two to prevent world war three.
For now, our plan is simple: stay somewhere stable and safe, keep options open, and ride out the turbulence as best we can. So thank you, Canada, for welcoming us. And here’s hoping this country not only holds steady but may thrive in the years ahead.
(Artwork by Kate Kretz)
Related articles on Oakville Maids’ blog:
- How Canadians Can Protect Their Assets If an Economic Crash Happens
- An Open Letter by Judge Robert Meadows to Canada
Here’s a related article from the Dallas Maids blog: