Whether you fight with words alone, or join marching crowds, or weaponize your wallet, you have more power than you may realize. Just use it!
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I assume I am not alone in finding the response to the current outrages — a response that is, to be sure, growing — still way too tepid. Still not quite stating the naked truth — let alone meeting it with serious resistance.
It would help to accurately call things the way they are. Most of the people who eagerly serve Presidents Donald Trump and Elon Musk are obsequious incompetents, nuts, degenerates, unenlightened cynics, goofballs.
More than a few are ruthless psychopaths, and/or deluded, and/or essentially corrupt and self-serving. They’re fundamentally criminal in the various senses of that strong word.
I’ve written a couple of columns already pointing out the chiling similarities between this cadre and the deplorables who became the Nazi leadership (here and here). And things have only gotten worse since I brought this up.
Vice President JD Vance, on his first foreign trip, just met with and stated support for Germany’s main far-right party in upcoming elections — a party that, among other repulsive behaviors, tries to minimize Nazi atrocities. This generated blunt, highly unusual criticism of Vance from the German chancellor.
And there are other large and small signs of our society coming apart.
In Cincinnati, for instance, Black leaders and residents were horrified when a provocative bunch of well-armed neo-Nazis came to their neighborhood to demonstrate — and were not arrested. Like the self-styled American Nazis who wanted to march through the village of Skokie, IL, in 1977, they enjoy freedoms of speech and assembly, freedoms won for them by a Jewish lawyer working for the ACLU. And, apparently, the freedom to menacingly bear arms, just like a “well regulated militia,” that was won for them by a couple of generations of NRA lobbyists and Federalist Society jurists. We have undoubtedly not seen the last of such displays of intimidation and hate.
And while Trump is throwing out brown migrants, no matter how productive or necessary they are for US farmers and builders, he is offering asylum to white South Africans, thanks to an Afrikaner group that promotes “white genocide” conspiracy theories, and refers to apartheid as a “so-called” historical injustice.
The same group is lobbying on behalf of Elon Musk’s business interests: Musk claims that his satellite phone network, Starlink, is being prevented from doing business in today’s South Africa because that country’s Black-led government, using “strict race-based criteria,” deems Musk’s company too white. I guess there’s too much DEI for Musk in South Africa.
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We’re stuck with this for the time being because Trump was elected by a slim majority of voters, too many of whom, like a large minority of the German people in the 1930s, are poorly educated, racist and/or misogynist, or just have very little information to work with and were conned by a smart propaganda campaign.
So that’s the baseline we’re dealing with.
Which means we are in very, very deep. And when you’re sinking fast into the mire, you might decide to just be a Good American and go with the flow. Or, if you can hear history whispering, you fight for your life.
Our options for doing that may be limited, but they do exist. Here are a few things I can think of:
- Hound and harass, online and elsewhere, bullshit-spouting MAGAs — particularly ones in positions of influence and power. Point out how deranged and dangerous almost everything they say and do is. Be relentless. No reason to let bullies control the field. And withhold your patronage and hard-earned money from any media that pay people to lie to you.
- Underline how malignant, cruel, selfish, hypocritical, manipulative, petty, and cynical these people are — how the entire government of Trump and his henchmen is corrupt.
- When MAGAs criticize the media, point out how Trump is trying to run an entirely media-controlled White House — and weeding out journalists and organizations, like the AP, that pose a threat to call out his lie machine.
- Also point out how readily they claim judges, their rulings, and election results are bad (or rigged) and thwart the public will — except when they like the results.
- Make allies. Talk to the FBI, the CIA, military, police, government employees (current and former), foreign governments, and others in positions of influence, and ask them to get information about their experiences to the public, since even the totally ignorant who voted for Trump will start waking from their slumber right about the time their expected government checks don’t arrive.
- Have a frequent “press watch.” When you know that what you read and hear is false, report it on social media. Write a letter to the editor of the publication, or the producer of a television or radio show — and include as many cc’s as possible.
- Target elected officials who support Trump, point out constantly to voters in their district the dire consequences of their obeisance and its direct impact on regular people.
- Boycotts: Tesla sales are declining, but that may not be enough to dissuade Musk from his reckless behavior. Whether his other ventures could be similarly pressured is unclear. Musk fights any agency that receives consumer complaints about his bad products. Further, in China when people criticize Tesla publicly on accidents caused by the mechanical failures of Tesla EVs, he sues the reporters and victims for “defamation” — and wins nearly every time.
- Call members of Congress. Ask Democrats to have a backbone. Ask Republicans to have a conscience. Although a single call has notoriously little impact, thousands or millions of calls can move the needle in a hurry. One more interesting idea I saw is to target Republicans who represent swing districts and start running ads there explaining to voters what is going on, how it affects them, and how the representative’s complicity is endangering them. This activity would of course have to be organized — and one assumes the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or some such would be the right entity to do so.
- Figure out a way to have huge, safe, and effective demonstrations in Washington — full of “regular looking” people, a minimum of blue hair and nose rings and personal-issue placards when all of humanity is at risk — and keep demonstrating day after day, ideally for weeks to come. If Trump pulls the Insurrection Act, be prepared to stand up to his threats and violence. If that’s where this is going, no point in delaying it.
- Come up with alternative systems that may be needed until these scoundrels are out of office; that is, assuming they ever leave voluntarily after losing an election. We need to provide Americans with many of the services they previously expected from the federal government. Of course, most things we can’t duplicate, but we can in some cases. For example, data nerds are already working to duplicate vital online government databases lest they disappear. And some sympathetic millionaires and billionaires will have to put their money where their sympathies are.
- Start investigating MAGA now for crimes they are commiting, and publish “public indictments.” We don’t need to wait for our version of the Nuremberg Trials. The value of this is mostly to educate those who aren’t fully aware of what is happening, or for whatever reason just don’t care yet — which is, shockingly, probably a sizable share of the populace.
- Focus on the rank hypocrisy and self-serving mentality of those who claim to be good Christians, how they seem not at all bothered that Musk and his dodgy DOGE minions deprive children of life-saving medications and food. And all while the leaders these MAGAs praise — as ordained by God — complain that their operations are hampered by persnickety regulations that guarantee workers safe workspaces, and the freedom to bargain collectively with their bosses. Speak out on these topics on a daily basis. The legacy media is way too tame.
- Begin now a talent search for real leaders. Stop favoring craven politicos that the system and elites foist on us. Find reliable sources of information, and help gutsy, fearless news organizations become more visible and therefore more effective. (Yes, that includes WhoWhatWhy.)
- Arm yourselves with facts. Easy-to-remember, horrifying facts that beg to be repeated. Here are just a few examples, thanks to DOGE and the influence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Preventable, highly contagious diseases will continue to spread. Measles, for example — which, through vaccines, had been eliminated by 2000 — is back again. Last year, there were 285 cases in the US. And this year, one area of Texas, the least vaccinated, has had an outbreak of 48 cases already. Worldwide, millions of people have been infected, and thousands have died. And then there’s whooping cough, Mpox (including the more dangerous kind), bird flu…
Wildfires will be even harder to fight (owing to the hollowing out of parks workforces through ill-informed and reckless “fat cutting”);
American farmers will lose billions (USAID had been buying their produce to give to starving people abroad);
Military veterans will suffer. Thousands of Veterans Affairs staffers were laid off in a late-night purge, as seven federal agencies carried out mass layoffs — 1,000 at the VA alone, the nation’s largest employer of military veterans.
For additional suggestions, please go here.
You Are Not Alone
Plenty of anti-Trump/Musk rumbling can already be heard.
Governors from 14 states are now suing Musk, calling him a “designated agent of chaos” whose position is a “violation” of the US Constitution.
Republican senators from several states — Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, North Dakota, and West Virginia — are protesting out loud about the potentially devastating impacts on their constituents of DOGE cuts.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) recently told CNN, “There have to be guardrails, obviously, on what information [Musk] accesses, but, more importantly, what he does with it.” [Emphasis added.]
Some high-powered law firms are helping in the fight against DOGE, and some of these Big Guns are doing it pro bono. And check out this heartening headline:
Sheryl Crow Waves Goodbye to Her Tesla, Pledges Money to NPR
The singer sold her car to protest what DOGE is doing. She said, “There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. … NPR was under threat by President Musk.”
NPR (and PBS) are worthy, but those wanting feistier journalism can sell their Tesla and donate to WhoWhatWhy — where we’ve been warning about the danger coming for a very long time. Supporting smaller, innovative news organizations and helping them grow quickly is the media equivalent of supporting new leadership in the Democratic Party.
This is what many of us will long be calling the most extraordinary period of our lifetimes. It’s a scary time, but it’s also a time to feel very alive — and to knock the rust off of our ability to act.
