I want to highlight two articles from the last couple days that provide some vital insights into what we are seeing in the Trump phenomenon. I realize some people may be getting fatigued from all the political strife, and so I also want to note the underlying hope that is the flip side of the darkness that Trump has brought. In this article, Josh Marshall makes the very important argument that Trump far more represents a rancid nationalism than a little-man’s populism. In making this point, he highlights a fact that should be central to popping the misconception that Trump is somehow working for working class Americans - his lack of support for basics like unions, inequality, and retirement security. I describe these points as hopeful because the anti-democratic, anti-worker agenda is pretty much laid bare at this point, and Trump lacks the discipline to dissemble further. The contradictions lay him open to a powerful counterattack on the grounds of his betrayal of those he promised to help.
This article by Brian Beutler at The New Republic is also my choice for required weekend reading. Other people had been making similar observations prior to Trump’s inauguration, but Beutler demonstrates how a white supremacist agenda has motivated several key actions of the new administration. Depressing and scary as hell- but this is an agenda that the great majority of Americans find reprehensible. Calling it out is a key part of catalyzing a broad-based opposition to Trump. We are not nearly such a fucked-up country as Trump is counting on.
Both articles reinforce a point that is really beginning to gain strength among the quickly-coalescing Trump resistance - that this situation doesn’t just call for stopping Trump, but for advancing a counter-agenda that moves the country forward by embracing equality, economic fairness, and a super-charged commitment to democratic participation. Let’s face it - as much of a black swan event as his election was, we were bound to get a would-be dictator sooner or later. This isn’t to say that there aren’t some dark strains of our current economic and social situation that led to his election - far from it - but that human nature and chance being what they are, someone like Trump was bound to happen. On the one hand, our form of government essentially counted on this, by instituting the system of checks and balances that we all (or at least most of us) know and love. Our system reflects a pessimistic view of human nature and the corrupting properties of power; while I agree more with the former point than the latter, these were founding perspectives that currently work in our favor.
We have more than enough tools and forces at our disposal to defeat Trumpism, with its ugly nationalism and white supremacism. Team Trump proposes to implement what amounts to a pro-rich, pro-white, pro-conservative Christian agenda that flies in the face of America’s ever-increasing diversity and economic inequality. This is an agenda that takes as a given its permanent minority status; otherwise, why would they need to implement it via “shock and awe?” And while I’m on the topic, let’s recognize the twisted crudeness of the Trump team employing a phrase originally associated with the U.S.’s illegal invasion of Iraq to describe a political tactic used against the American body politic. The phrase is useful in one respect, though, in that it highlights how the Trump team’s strategy aims to disorient its opposition. We need to fully recognize this, and stop being shocked, or disoriented. Here’s the orienting principle I’ve adopted as something of my personal mantra - anyone who tries to “shock and awe” American society, to disregard majority opinion to implement retrograde and dangerous ideas, is a clear threat to that society who must be stopped by all peaceful means.
My response to shock and awe is to embrace of the idea that we must “shock and awe” the Trump administration right back.So while we need to pursue long-term goals like re-building our economy and political institutions to make a recurrence of someone like Trump as unlikely as possible, we need to embrace the overwhelming objective of ensuring that Trump does not serve out a full four-year term. Because we have already seen enough to know that, left unchecked, this presidency will end very, very badly, not for Donald Trump, but for our country. This is a man who has already antagonized multiple allies, falsely claimed millions of people voted illegally in the last election, signaled leniency toward ACTUAL white supremacist groups, attacked a judge who happened to rule in a way he didn’t like, and indicated that the laws put in place to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 financial meltdown have got to go. Donald Trump doesn’t believe in our democracy? Well, as awful as this is, we have plenty of remedies, because the fact of the matter is, most of us don’t believe in Donald Trump - not in his fitness to serve or his rancid ideas or his inability to distinguish friend (g’day, Australia) from foe (Russia?!). While I believe in playing the long game, the Democrats need to internalize the fact that their job is to force Trump from power as soon as possible, whether through impeachment in 2019, leading a charge to force his resignation, or support of an invocation of the 25th amendment to the Constitution. This may seem like an extreme position, but we are in a dangerous, unprecedented situation. Donald Trump is not playing by the ordinary rules of our political system, and we shouldn’t either, as long as the rules we DO follow are always grounded in democratic accountability and commitment to the rule of law (both of which groundings Donald Trump has abandoned).
Finally, in the name of articulating grounds for hope, let’s remember how very dangerous a game most Republican Party members are playing by either embracing Trump or not criticizing his various offenses. In not standing up to him now, they make themselves vulnerable to the coming backlash; every day that goes by, the Republican Party is seen more and more as the party of Trump, with all the baggage that carries.