By Sarah Roark |
“By the way, we’re from Sweden and just passing through. We wanted to come because the impression out in Sweden is that there is not really any resistance to Trump in America.”
That’s a paraphrase, but it is still LITERALLY what I was told the other day. And sadly, the lady has a point.
Context: this happened last week when I went to make a statement on behalf of Refuse Fascism at Revolution Books, after they were attacked by fascists again (Reiko Redmonde is another of my God Damn Heroes, btw ).
This woman came up to me, thanked me for speaking, and then said the above. I told her to let the folks back home know that wasn’t true…
But folks, I’m afraid it sort of is.
To be blunt: because the Resistance is currently failing.
That’s just all there is to it. It’s not that we don’t resist, and it’s not that there aren’t lots of God Damn Heroes putting themselves out there every day. But collectively, our resistance is completely inadequate — in terms of size and in terms of willingness to disrupt life as usual — to the actual scope and depth of the threat. That is why we continue to lose ground.
Two things can save us.
One is if millions of people en masse get out into the street — to protest, strike, and boycott in a sustained way sufficient to make the ordinary gears of business grind to a halt. That last part is crucial. It would need to be a big enough disruption to put even life in red districts essentially on hold.
(It would also risk backlash, possibly even civil war. What can I say, though, but that there are no remaining options that don’t carry that risk? The only ‘easy’ way to stop the advent of American fascism came and went in November 2016 JUST LIKE I TOLD Y’ALL IT WOULD. But we can still keep our end of the political confrontation nonviolent, at least. And keeping it nonviolent actually improves our statistical chances of succeeding, according to at least one longitudinal study.) This is our very best remaining option, definitely our quickest one — and the one that incurs the least damage and risk to the people involved, since the risk is distributed across such a large population. Only trouble is? Almost nobody seems to want to do it. I will probably die well before my spinal cord ever understands why.
The second thing that can save us is if a smaller but more hardcore subset of the people become willing to engage in more radical and more disruptive nonviolent direct action – yes, I said, still non-violent and ethical. I’m talking like desegregation protests, or ACT-UP guerrilla theater, etc. Once again, it would need to be deeply disruptive. Unignorable. Undismissable. Those who engage in this nonviolent direct action would also risk physical retaliation, possibly even death (never forget Heather Heyer), by those who are fighting to keep the fascism now being imposed. And even then, it wouldn’t by itself be sufficient — but it would have the power to provoke the millions-strong mass response I describe above.
Nothing else is going to cut it, kids. Not Mueller. Not the fucking #BlueWave. Necessary as those things are, they will not suffice. And I’ll tell you why as briefly as I can.
1) We started this struggle at a far greater systemic disadvantage than most of us realized, me included (I’m talking not ‘just’ about gerrymandering, vote suppression and Russian interference, though those continue on — but about all the empty federal benches Trump gets to fill, the starving of the regulatory agencies, the structural weakening of the Democratic party over the last eight years, and a ton of other stuff).
2) And the remaining checks and balances of our democracy are being destroyed, or made into a hollow mockery, faster than we can shore them back up.
3) Our people in Congress cannot legislate. The best they can do is try to slow down the worst. That’s worth doing, but it’s not remotely enough. Eventually, in the absence of Trump and Pence’s ouster, even the things they’re able to slow down will still happen, perhaps just by sneakier means. It only really helps us to play for time if we use that time to actually end the problem.
4) Even if the Democrats win every possible race in November, they won’t have anything like enough Senate seats to impeach Trump or Pence without GOP help. And while I know a lot of pundits comfort themselves otherwise, the GOP still has no reason to give the SLIGHTEST fuck what Mueller finds. Furthermore, the Dems will also remain unable to legislate on anything Trump feels like vetoing.
The fact that by and large, Democratic leadership is not explaining this to people so that expectations bear some resemblance to reality? Is absolutely one of my heaviest indictments against them. The odds of that ending well are not zero, but pretty damn low, for more than one reason.
5) That hands-tied situation will persist, and indeed most likely degrade, at least until 2020. Seriously, I haven’t even bothered to look at the horse-race statistics for 2020, because I give us approximately a 0% chance of making it that far with any meaningful rule of law or free election system still intact. I look upon all the circus around Warren 2020, Bernie 2020, Biden 2020, Brand X 2020 with something like pity and something like sardonic amusement. It literally doesn’t fucking matter, because on our present trajectory none of it has a chance.
6) Fascism has a parasitical nature, in that it is generally a disorder of failing democracies. That is (I’m summarizing Robert Paxton here) it uses the democratic system to get into power; then it uses its power within that system — taking advantage of the rules where convenient and blithely ignoring the rules where necessary— to dismantle the system itself out from under everybody. When opposition politicians frantically flip the levers of democracy in their desperation to stop it, all the while telling people to just keep calm and keep voting? They’re flight attendants smiling and soothing the passengers on a crashing airplane because they don’t know what the fuck else to do. They’re mechanics trying to fix that crashing plane in midair with tools that are falling apart even as they hold them.
They. Cannot. Save. Us. We are the only ones left who can save us, and even our time is running out fast.
7) Eventually, demoralized and paralyzed, even the best of our elected politicians who stay in office will come to some form of conciliation with the regime…or, they’ll be destroyed. It’s that simple. We’re already seeing this begin. And understand: it’s not a function of them being lazy or corrupt or cowardly or cruel or anything else. It is a function of being human. It is a function of preferring to stay within a system where you think you still have power and agency, to salvage what good you can out of it, rather than striking out into a terrifying unknown and basically starting over from scratch.
Which would normally be the wiser choice, except that staying in a system continually decaying under a consolidating fascism will inevitably involve enabling that decay— and at some point, you will have conceded all ability to do even the harm-reducing good you were hoping for. It’s an understandable mistake — but one that inevitably plays into the fascists’ hands. I don’t hate well-meaning officials for “doing what they can” — in many specific cases, it may even turn out to be a good thing they did — but they have still, knowingly or not, written their moral epitaphs, and history will not be kind. Being on the Judenrat can, by some lights, be argued as a matter of trying to make the best of a no-win situation; it can be argued that the other alternatives were worse; you can parse all kinds of nuance out of it; but whatever their intentions in doing so, no one can serve on a Judenrat without acquiring a taint of collaboration that will never be washed away. At that point, whatever happens, their fate is set.
Don’t accuse me of being overdramatic or making an inappropriate comparison: to be clear, our Congress isn’t that compromised yet. But without drastic course correction soon, it is destined to get there. I invoke the depth of the probable disaster in hopes it can still be avoided. But so far…the collective response from my fellow Americans is not encouraging.
***
So. That’s where we stand, folks. That’s the state of our disunion at the moment.
You cool with that?