Throughstone #19: The Short Tail of Fascism; The Long Tail of Stupidity
Jan 25, 2026
Although they cut across the dark sky with a fierce and nearly-blinding brightness, modern fascist movements tend to have a short tail–because they are not movements at all, despite their initial appearance as an upswell. Instead, they usually represent an unwieldy mob of discontents, united behind a particularly shrill and reactive voice that portrays collective self-interest as a cause. No matter how you do the addition, the sum total of that corralled self-interest never tallies up to the common good. The brighter the burn, the faster the fade, with little left to hold the light in the sky. The molten chunks of greed and hate fracture and fall to the ground. No head, no tail–only an ashen crater, if that.
Stupidity has a longer tail. Its tragedy lies in the stretch and longevity of its arc. Spanning the distance between shortsightedness and intentional ignorance, the long tail of bad choices is hard to shake.
It is beginning to feel like the streak of authoritarianism in this country can no longer sustain its own weight and will soon burn itself out with its self-immolating brutality. What follows, though, will be the long tail of stupidity, comprised of charred fragments of ideals, relationships, and reputation that will long hang above us as lethal reminders of the potential of improbability.
From a distance, others will see that arcing tail and share with their children yet another celestial tale of what power does when mortals foolishly allow peers to don the vestments of deities.
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“Throughstone 250” is a purposefully constrained blog project. As a long-winded Southerner constrained by Vermont’s limited porch season and the Yankee penchant for paragraphs of three words or less, I’ve opted to aim for semi-daily reflections of precisely 250 words for the foreseeable future.
250 means something right now. Maybe more than we anticipated. It’s symbolic but incredibly important…and a 250 word count seems much less constrained than a 5-7-5 syllable count for a haiku.
Like many others, I’m struggling to make meaning out of these tumultuous days. I’ve always found it useful to try and write my way out of tough spots. Looking for throughstones is just one more effort to try and generate some meaning from the mayhem.
More free-ranging rambles here, if you’re so inclined: https://www.freerangeprof.com/blog
Image Source & Attribution : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ikeyaseki_tail_30Oct1965.jpg, with credit to James W. Young (TMO/JPL/NASA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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