David, that's a question so many of us are asking, like Billy below. Political organizing is no expertise of mine, and what experience I have had of it demonstrated to me the great challenges of it. But there are experts at it, at the level of public leadership and that of the invisible groundwork. I have no doubt more will be coming from those directions, and the first actions will arise after Trump assumes the presidency and the first offenses, of different kinds and at different orders of magnitude, start to occur. Then, to avoid that Weimar fate of "the 48%" disappearing from view, people will need to show themselves in coordinated masses as a powerful opposition that won't disappear, that will press at every point. That will be the only broad path to rescue. I don't imagine that Barack Obama, to choose a name, ever imagined he'd one day play the role of Alexei Navalny instead of another comfortable ex-President, but something like that has to be coming. For myself, in line with Billy's thoughts below, what I do is think, write, and create, and I'll harness and lend those talents however I can in the cause. That's what I imagined a possible future for American Samizdat to be when I started it, even expanded, in coordination with others, even, if need be, in the spirit of its inspiration, unofficially and clandestinely. We resist, early, often, and in numbers, or the nation we knew is lost.
These are our golden days, when we perch on the edge of catastrophe with no real knowledge of its specific nature, feeling the approach of an almost-certain disaster, and the small consolation of a quiet joy in each other’s company and the contemplation of what we still have, during this pause in history: a treasure to savor before it fades or is more violently seized from us, in the end. Your scholarship and research is much appreciated, in the midst of all this. And I'm with David in his question, though I think you're answering it, in part; we can bear witness and we can remain resistant rather than "obeying in advance." That, at least, is a start.
You say all that well, BM. I offered thoughts from my limited purview to David that reply to you too. It is about bearing witness to start, as you say, and then lending what talents we have to a resistant cause we hope those positioned to lead will lead with skill and courage.
Unfortunately, the analogy of the adolescent bully tossing the cat in the air to see how many lives it has left is the only visceral response I have to the upcoming Trump administration: purposeless except to inflict pain and giggle as the cat suffers.
Dean, the absence of empathy is always at the heart of these movements, we know, from the worst offenses to the smallest cruelties, like passing new bathroom rules in congress.
I’m watching from New Zealand, where we have had a festering poultice of 3 populist, race baiting, corporate greed parties come together to reach 51% and ignore evidence or decency.
In their first year, just celebrated, they have had the benefit of world wide inflation easing, but are drowning out treasury and economy experts who say our economy is hurting because of their austerity. A lot of race baiting to distract.
I must say, somewhat selfish though it is, I hope Trump destroys the US economy quickly, and the worldwide ripples hurt our greedy leaders too. Short term pain for us all, long term wake up call? Is there much chance of that happening?
One of the keys to understanding what's happening, I'm not the first to say, is to recognize that it's happening across the world. That's another way that this period resonates with the 1920s-30s period, though we the world is in a very different state of global development, so in the spirit of what I writer here, that's a similitude but not an identity.
Another idea I've seen tossed around is that rational argument and empirical evidence have been useless in making the case against Trumpism, and maybe what the population needs is to witness the collapse of properly functional institutions and the consequences. One hates to wish for such outcomes, but aside from a marginal reclamation of electoral power quickly in the next two years -- if even possible -- that may be the only, disastrous, possibility.
The question that rattles around in my mind is what specifically can I do?
David, that's a question so many of us are asking, like Billy below. Political organizing is no expertise of mine, and what experience I have had of it demonstrated to me the great challenges of it. But there are experts at it, at the level of public leadership and that of the invisible groundwork. I have no doubt more will be coming from those directions, and the first actions will arise after Trump assumes the presidency and the first offenses, of different kinds and at different orders of magnitude, start to occur. Then, to avoid that Weimar fate of "the 48%" disappearing from view, people will need to show themselves in coordinated masses as a powerful opposition that won't disappear, that will press at every point. That will be the only broad path to rescue. I don't imagine that Barack Obama, to choose a name, ever imagined he'd one day play the role of Alexei Navalny instead of another comfortable ex-President, but something like that has to be coming. For myself, in line with Billy's thoughts below, what I do is think, write, and create, and I'll harness and lend those talents however I can in the cause. That's what I imagined a possible future for American Samizdat to be when I started it, even expanded, in coordination with others, even, if need be, in the spirit of its inspiration, unofficially and clandestinely. We resist, early, often, and in numbers, or the nation we knew is lost.
These are our golden days, when we perch on the edge of catastrophe with no real knowledge of its specific nature, feeling the approach of an almost-certain disaster, and the small consolation of a quiet joy in each other’s company and the contemplation of what we still have, during this pause in history: a treasure to savor before it fades or is more violently seized from us, in the end. Your scholarship and research is much appreciated, in the midst of all this. And I'm with David in his question, though I think you're answering it, in part; we can bear witness and we can remain resistant rather than "obeying in advance." That, at least, is a start.
You say all that well, BM. I offered thoughts from my limited purview to David that reply to you too. It is about bearing witness to start, as you say, and then lending what talents we have to a resistant cause we hope those positioned to lead will lead with skill and courage.
So it is. We must at the least bear witness.
Unfortunately, the analogy of the adolescent bully tossing the cat in the air to see how many lives it has left is the only visceral response I have to the upcoming Trump administration: purposeless except to inflict pain and giggle as the cat suffers.
Dean, the absence of empathy is always at the heart of these movements, we know, from the worst offenses to the smallest cruelties, like passing new bathroom rules in congress.
I’m watching from New Zealand, where we have had a festering poultice of 3 populist, race baiting, corporate greed parties come together to reach 51% and ignore evidence or decency.
In their first year, just celebrated, they have had the benefit of world wide inflation easing, but are drowning out treasury and economy experts who say our economy is hurting because of their austerity. A lot of race baiting to distract.
I must say, somewhat selfish though it is, I hope Trump destroys the US economy quickly, and the worldwide ripples hurt our greedy leaders too. Short term pain for us all, long term wake up call? Is there much chance of that happening?
One of the keys to understanding what's happening, I'm not the first to say, is to recognize that it's happening across the world. That's another way that this period resonates with the 1920s-30s period, though we the world is in a very different state of global development, so in the spirit of what I writer here, that's a similitude but not an identity.
Another idea I've seen tossed around is that rational argument and empirical evidence have been useless in making the case against Trumpism, and maybe what the population needs is to witness the collapse of properly functional institutions and the consequences. One hates to wish for such outcomes, but aside from a marginal reclamation of electoral power quickly in the next two years -- if even possible -- that may be the only, disastrous, possibility.
Speak. We must speak and as you do so well, researched and decisive.
What I can, Mary -- what we all can. The next few months will be the crucial tests of that.
A true democracy gets what it wants...right before it gets what it deserves.