Trump 2.0: Resistance ++

Part I in a series

A short series on fighting back

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been spending the last few months trying to decide exactly how I will be fighting back against the MAGA attempt to throw civilization back a century. This is my attempt to start to distill some of my thoughts.

This is just a sketch. The facts on the ground will change quickly in the future anyway. But since I am a part of a community, a chorus of voices fighting to make sense of a tragic and dangerous setback in humanity’s quest for a better world–this is my opening contribution to that discussion.

In today’s installment, I’ll introduce how I’m thinking about the moment, how we cope, who we need to lead this fight, and how we bring the best of ourselves to it.

In later installments, I’ll outline a plan that includes throwing sand in the gears of the Trump machine, revolutionizing the way we govern ourselves, showing the public a better way, telling the story, building a big tent without half measures, creating thick community ties, and winning elections.

Intro

Trump is in office, and his thugs are already aggressively pursuing his project 2025 agenda, adding in a touch of what the Economist called a “Project 1897” to go with it.

In a shocking turn of events, our criminal president is
governing like a criminal.

Aside from a dizzying array of probably performative executive orders that are designed to scare people into preemptive compliance, Trump has put one of Project 2025’s lead architects up for running one of the most powerful federal offices, illegally and dictatorially froze trillions of dollars that people rely on for basic healthcare, childcare, research and health infrastructure (and has since backpedaled), and given openly corrupt Elon Musk and his unelected, unaccountable, never-confirmed DOGE hacks access to our federal payments system and millions of Americans’ personal information. As I write this, it looks like they are also shutting down the part of the federal government that protects citizens from fraudulent loans and other scams.

They have attacked and are trying to erase trans people, including trans kids, cut billions in humanitarian aid to those most in need around the world, which if continued will kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people, destabilize countries, spark mass migration, and increase the likelihood of war and increased pandemics. It looks like we will have a moronic thug who aligns himself with white nationalist fascists in charge of the FBI, a fraudulent, conspiracy theorizing nepo-baby with dead families’ blood on his hands in charge of our healthcare and public health system. After the election, Trump blamed fires in California on brown people, gay people and women, and now that he has been innagurated, 67 people have died on his watch in the first commercial plane wreck in 16 years, he is blaming them again.

Coping

We all have our ways of coping.

Many people I know have given into the totally fair temptation to tune out. Some are panicking, some are organizing, some are screaming into the social media void.

Some paths I would definitely not suggest. Seattle City Councilmember Rob Saka, is gleefully trumpeting his desire to collaborate with the Trump administration. The corporate oligarchs are engaged in their own version of “boar of the floor” - from Zuckerberg playing dress-up to Amazon paying Trump a $40M bribe. Amazon has other ways of coping too–like trying to buy itself low taxes in Seattle by stopping an increase in affordable housing in Seattle (if you are in Seattle, vote Yes on Proposition 1, and vote 1A, on your February ballot).

But those of us who are still loyal to this country, its ideals, and to the aspiration of a world with a modicum of justice have to do better. We all sat in history classes and wondered “why didn’t they?” and “what would I have done when?”

We need only look at how we face Trump 2.0 to get a sense of the answer.

So what does the fight look like?

This is a hard question and I have been struggling to come up with my answer for it, dear readers. The answer is personal to you–and stems from a mix of personal groundedness, your own moral philosophy and situational obligations. We have strategic considerations and historical examples to consider, experimentation to engage in, and must have a readiness to pivot. It will take fidelity to principle and ruthless pragmatism–which aren’t always comfortable bedfellows.

In this series, I begin to sketch out a path for doing more than #resist-ing Trump 2.0. This time we have to kick him and his shitty, evil, self-serving movement to the curb for good.

Resistance++

Part of the path certainly involves resistance. But it is much more.

This resistance must embrace a clear sense of the abject failures (including our own) that led us up to now, capture the public’s imagination, and move us into the future we need.

Our institutions are broken and failing to deliver. Our legal order is turning into a twisted broligarchic joke. If resistance implies defending that order, we are doomed to fail and foolish for trying to preserve at least a good chunk of it.

Certainly I do not mean, like Sara Nelson in Seattle, that we should join Republicans’ chorus of claims about waste, fraud and abuse in an effort to discredit government so the rich can enjoy ever-lower taxes. But be that as it may, we should still not be pleased with what our government is delivering.

I will concede, I get the instinct to defend “institutions” because without the rule of law and custom, we stare into the bleak abyss of anarchy. But it is also the case that our institutions are hijacked and broken, and the public does not trust them. And a willingness to break with the past is the prerequisite for transformation.

In other words, it is time to move on to new ways of doing things.

Transformative Leaders, not Cowards

This means we need to put transformative leaders in place, people who will get real with themselves and us and who aren’t afraid to fight. Let’s face it–cowardice in the Republican party has turned it into an insurrectionist, increasingly fascist party with dictatorial ambitions. But cowardice in the Democratic party has often prevented the public from seeing a distinction between the parties, even if it should be obvious. Cowardice has also prevented Democratic politicians from generating the attention needed to draw the contrast.

In other words, we need less of what we saw from Washington State’s Second Senator Maria Cantwell, who just voted to confirm Scott Bessant, the treasury secretary that turned around and handed arsonist Elon Musk all our personal information and who ordered the feds to stop protecting consumers from financial fraud.

Instead, we need more of what AOC called “brawlers for the working class.” AOC can work with and through the establishment, but she knows when it is time to break with it and fight. In her discussion with John Stewart, Ocasio-Cortez noted that the people who told her they voted for both her and Trump said “they see two people that are fundamentally anti-establishment, two people that do not respect a rule if the rule does not lead to an outcome, like a positive outcome.” I think she nailed it on the head.

This also means we need to tell a simple, compelling story about what we plan to deliver and how we are going to lead the way to the promised land. There may be a place and time for wonkery (hello! newsletters like this!). But our political storytelling shouldn’t sound like it comes from a peer-reviewed paper. Our story should be true, but we don’t have to punctiliously caveat ourselves to death and bring all the receipts every time we tell it.

And then we need to go out and fight like hell for it, go into places and tell this story even if going into those spaces makes our allies mad. In other words, we have to be more afraid of an unjust world than of losing an election or a fight, or of correction from our allies.

First, You - Bring the Best of ourselves

The battles to come will be difficult, and probably painful. We are going to have to bring the best ourselves that we possibly can.

This means we need our feet as firmly planted and our lives as rooted as possible. Because when we are unmoored–we are less clear and less capable. Our stamina fails and we stumble. It is critical that we build the strength we need to be the people needed for this moment.

Yes, we are bound to fall short. I am falling short of this even today! We cannot wait until we are whole, flourishing, fully-adjusted humans–if such a thing is even possible. This is the world as it is now and we have to deal with it now.

But as cliche as it sounds, I simply mean we have to take care of ourselves and each other. Find your people and hold them close and show unselfish love whenever you have the chance. Know your values and reflect on them regularly. Engage in the practices that connect you with these values however you can–whether these are meditative, religious, communal, or something else. Get professional help if you need it and have the means. Even things as “simple” as practicing good sleep hygiene, or just a little more physical activity and a little less putting poison in our bodies can make a difference.

Another thing I have been working hard to keep in mind–we cannot have all the apocalypses at once. It is easy to be consumed by anxiety and dread, because bad things are happening and worse things are likely to happen. I don’t know about you, but one of my college majors was European History and I can see a pretty clear path to horrific outcomes. But if we are to retain our sanity and our agency, we need to remember that you can only have so many apocalyptic outcomes at once. I find that instead of trying to cope with all the potential bad things in my mind, I’m a better brawler when I instead move my attention to keeping myself in ready position to fight the battles that actually arise.

And know, there are millions upon millions of us, ready to fight alongside you.