After Friday, We Redouble Our Efforts
We Shouldn't Have Been Surprised...
After 10 years in the struggle against Donald Trump, of being your friendly neighborhood Cassandra, of watching dear friends cross the River Styx, there is little to surprise or shock me. I pride myself on keeping a steady heartbeat and low blood pressure as outrage after outrage roll across the little screens that connect us to the world.
Then the top of my head came off on Friday after watching JD Vance and Donald Trump’s kukla (Russian for puppet show) in the Oval Office. Together, they desecretated the White House; the place from which Lincoln and Roosevelt saved the nation and the world.
They laid a clumsy, oafish trap for Ukainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy and misjudged their quarry. Zelenskyy is both a better leader and a better performer than either of Useful Idiots in Chief. He stood his ground, and per tradition, Trump erupted into the boorish bully that he is. The masks slipped, revealing Putin’s bloodthirsty snarl.
The America of (Most of) Our Youth Has Passed Into Eclipse
History is a river, flowing only one direction, downstream. We’re carried along, occassionally a bend slows the current enough to let us grab a lazy branch or drag ourselves to shore.
More often, though, time takes us on a ride through the rapids, some strong and swirling enough to overturn everything we’ve known. Friday, February 28th, 2025 was that moment for what we’ve called “The Post-War Era” stretching back 80 years. More economic, political, and technological achievement occurred in that time than the rest of recorded human history put together.
On Friday, Trump and Vance hit the reset button. To be sure those eight decades had more than their fair share of problems, scandals, and massacres. However, it was a framework that Americans of a certain era, say everyone from Generation X backward, understood and in which we’d come of age.
The future sees the US in retreat, the Russians launching more missiles at schools and apartment blocks, Europe reforming itself, and China waiting, as they do, for their opportunity. While modern Republicans have mastered the art of instilling isolation in their voters, as the Athenian statesman Pericles noted, “Just because you don’t take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
No One Is Coming to Save Us
Choose your cliche. The cavalry isn’t coming. We’re on our own. Like the political system of yesterday, we must recognize that the country we thought we knew, too, is gone. In this time, it will be easy, and logical, to retreat into our homes, our phones, and our distractions. Trump is already, as promised, acting against our individual, collective, and national interests.
I’ve mentioned Stockdale’s Paradox in previous writings. We must adhere to the late admiral’s ethos: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your reality, whatever they might be.”
This moment, our moment, can be frustrating, angering, dispiriting, and depressing. We must commit to ourselves, and to our fellow Americans, and our fellow humans, that this admission of our situation does not equal capitulation or a belief that a better day, perhaps years away, is not ahead.
History teaches us that when regimes like Trump’s implode or explode, they do so quickly (read: years, not months) and leave an incredible destructive wake. Today, right now, this moment, is the time to recoginize that this era will end and when it does, we, the collective we, the righteous we, the humanist we, the decent we, the democratic we, must, must, must be prepared to both fill the vacuum they will leave and be ready to recreate the world we want to see.
Our adversaries of that now-finished time, Germany and Japan, were flattened, fractured and shattered by war. Rather than leaving their future to the fates, the United States spent billions upon billions to rebuild them and their neighbors. While imperfect, they understood the societies they wanted to build and given that opportunity, are faced with their own new reality: They are now the leaders of the free world.
Think Globally, Act Locally
Millions of Americans reacted to last Friday’s shame with unity. Many here in the US and in Europe took to the streets to show their support for Ukraine, but their message was far bigger and broader: Butchery and bloodshed must be confronted. Decency and democracy must be defended.
Here at home, we must confront the fact there is little we can do about Trump and Musk’s systematic dismantling of the world and the systems we’ve known. We must respond, not react, to their heresy not with retreat but refocus. In the coming days, weeks, and months many of our fellow Americans are going to feel the hammer blows of lost jobs, lost support, and lost opportunities.
We should put our phones down and pick up those around us. We will see a massive spike in the need for food banks, pro bono legal work, basic medical services, and other crucial assistance.
The definition of ‘freedom’ is not: I can do whatever I won’t and fuck you. Freedom means doing your part in a broader community so that we all, as Jefferson wrote, achieve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (as you see it!)
Our Neighbors Must Not Be Our Enemies
We’re already hearing the first notes of dissatisfaction from Americans that voted for Donald Trump once, twice, or three times. We’ll soon see a lot more quotes like, “I voted for him, but not for this.”
When we talk to strangers, friends, and neighbors who are waking up from their MAGA-induced state, we must welcome them. Their psychological, emotional and political journey may seem unforgivable to you. Fine. Understand, though, that the way to sweep Trump into the dumpster fire of history is to chip away at his foundation.
If you meet someone who’s made the pro-active decision to abandon their support of Trump and his ilk, give them the space to be comfortable with their new reality (and it will be a new reality for them.) Screaming, “I told you what would happen you mouthbreathing nitwit!” may make you feel good in the moment, but it will drive them back into his arms.
People would rather be with people that accept them even if they hurt them, than with people who look down on them or sneer at them for their perceived stupidity. A colleague of mine put it brilliantly last week, “If you meet someone who wants to leave the MAGA bubble, accept them with grace. Then go home and scream into your pillow.”
The Army of Patriots is Waiting to Be Recruited
In the coming months and years, new voices and new leaders will emerge from unexpected quarters and across any recognizable political spectrum. Belief, belief in America, in our collective good, in the world as it should be. This does not mean we agree on everything nor should we expect or demand such a thing. If Ronald Reagan could believe, “The person who agrees with you 80% of the time is an 80% friend, not a 20% enemy” than we can and must as well.
Take your litmus tests and chuck them out the window. Don’t have time for them, and they’re the quickest way to turn someone off. Don’t like who I am? Fine, I’m not looking for your approval, I have two black Labs. I’m looking for your help in this moment.
There are millions of Americans, starting with the six million who chose to sit out the 2024 election, who are looking for something better, different, new, choose your adjective. Spend some time, as I have, going around to tough neighborhoods all over the country. Race isn’t the issue. Economics is closer but not quite right. The issue is millions of Americans who believe they’ve been left behind, who are part of a system they believe doesn’t care about them, and will leave them by the roadside.
They’re right about all of it. We must begin with open arms, open eyes, and open hearts. If we build it, as it is said, they will come.
Don’t Expect Anything Will Go As We Expect
“Nothing will make sense to your American ears,” is what Benecio del Toro’s Alejandro Gillick tells Emily Blunt’s character, FBI Agent Kate Macer in 2015’s Sicario.
Between now and November 2026, little will make sense to our American eyes and ears. Every day, the Republicans will push more boundaries, cross more redlines, and diminish America more.
When you see a headline like, “Democrats have a 75% chance of retaking the US House in the midterms,” ask yourself this question: Why should we expect these next elections will happen as they have previously? Because as long as we can remember they always have?
I’d like nothing more than to be wrong about this, but my surprise meter is on empty after last week. We should be shocked by nothing. We should expect that anything and everything Trump, Musk and company want to accomplish will be legislated and appropriated before January 3rd, 2027 when the next Congress takes it seats.
Yale Professor Timothy Snyder wrote in his must-read book, On Tyranny, “You will never know if election is the last one before the right to vote is taken away.” The act of voting and your vote meaning something are two different things. Authoritarain regimes want the legitimacy of elections without the need to worry about their outcomes.
Get Some Rest
I’ll leave you with one last quote, this from Jason Robards’ brilliant potrayal of Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee.
“You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up. Fifteen minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendement to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. But if you guys fuck up again, I’m gonna get mad. Good night.”
News and Notes:
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Thanks, Reed. Just the kick in the pants I needed today. Appreciate your voice and the work you do!
I do not believe that autocratic regimes implode or explode quickly. Europe would be under Nazi rule today if Hitler was not confronted and defeated by the allies who sacrificed tremendous blood and treasure in defense of freedom and democracy. Fourteen independent nation states would still be under the thumb of the Soviet Union without economic pressures caused by the cold war arms race with the US.
Waiting for an implosion that takes years allows the autocracy to grow and inflict even greater destruction. As a parent with grown children and young grandchildren, I don't want to leave this mess for them to clean up. Those of us who have enjoyed the privileges and rights afforded to us in this great country must stand up and defend it now!