The Fight, Five Years On...
Reflections and Projections
You are not obliged to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it…
Rabbi Tarfon, The Talmud
Five years ago this week, five long-time Republicans launched The Lincoln Project. If you’d have told me then where we’d be today, and what the Lincoln Project would do, represent, and become in that time, I wouldn’t have believed you.
It’s worth a quick step back. The day we started, December 17, 2019, Donald Trump hadn’t yet been impeached (the first time.) Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were leading the fight during the Democratic primary. Joe Biden, if not an afterthought, seemed a dark horse at best. We were still roughly three months from Covid-19 transforming the world we live in, our lives, and our country irretrievably and forever.
Without a global pandemic, and Trump’s incompetence, it’s easy to assume he’d be ending his second term in a few weeks’ time, not preparing to once again take office. We mistook the joy and relief of victory in 2020. Far from Trump being simply an aberration, his loss bought us only time; not enough as it turns out, to attempt to reorient, restore, and rehabilitate the American body politic.
For four years we labored to shore up a rickety political system. The 2022 mid-term gave us hope, false as it turns out, that the country was indeed ready to rid itself of Trump’s MAGA-infused Republican Party. In retrospect, we won where we absolutely needed to, but little elsewhere. Our relief blinded us to the other virus that had already swept the country: Apathy.
The Biden-Harris administration couldn’t reckon with the idea that the America of the before-time; before Trump and before Covid, was gone, never to return. The future, uncertain as it seemed during the Biden Administration, is darkened by the specter of an emboldened would-be tyrant, an unimpressed populace, and a feckless, dispirited opposition party.
If my words seem downcast, they are, a bit. The return of full-blown Trumpism is hard to see as anything but dangerous for America and the world. We can draw a direct line from his top-two agenda items: Massive tariffs and the forced expulsion of 12 million undocumented immigrants to massive economic and social disruption, for exactly the people who can afford it the least.
Driving high prices higher while removing millions of taxpaying workers (and consumers) from the economy is a recipe for disaster. It will be a meal we’ll all take together, though some us of will fare far better than others, further exacerbating the have-mosts from the have-littles.
Given the nature of tyrannical regimes, I fear mass unrest met not by policy reversal and relief, but with repression. Opponents would become dissidents. The media, already drafting in Trump’s wake, will further abdicate its role as the Fourth Estate, that is, the watchdog of the powerful, in their quixotic attempt to arrest their financial and reputational free fall.
The response to these possibilities is neither more carrying on and screaming on social media, nor bellowing into the nearest echo chamber. “Likes” and “Retweets” have never been more than vanity metrics, and don’t serve as ‘resistance’ now.
Resistance will take the form of those willing to speak the truth to power when it becomes most dangerous to do so. “Fighting back” will require locking arms with our fellow Americans when we see the worst happening on our streets and in our communities. Superficial online outrage won’t cut it anymore.
The hardest part, though, will be doing the work of restoring Americans’ faith in democracy, in waking them from their politics-induced torpor, to communicate with them where they live, about the things they care about without fear, favor, or condescension. Just because I spend my days worrying about politics, doesn’t mean millions of otherwise decent Americans want to.
Our conversations must create and reopen societal and social channels that have fallen into disuse and disrepair, or have been actively torn asunder by the likes of an angry, aggressive, and hyper-resourced right-wing media ecosystem.
Talking aside, what does “doing the work” mean? I found a terrific explanation on Medium, from three years ago:
Doing the work means truly looking at yourself. It means taking an honest inventory of who you are, who you want to be, and the empty spaces in between.
Change the “you” to “we” and we’ve arrived at our starting line.
Who are we? Who do we want to be? Where are the ‘empty spaces’ and how do we fill them? What I love about this most is that it gives us a task, a hard one to say the least, but one upon which we can embark right now.
I live under no illusions about how difficult the work will be. The good days will be two steps forward, one step back. A lot of our work will be holding the line, finding new friends and allies with whom we can collaborate, and hoping that enough of us are willing to join up for the next iteration of the American Republic.
We cannot and must not labor under the misapprehension that we will return to “normalcy” anytime soon. What comes next is up to us: More Trump? Or are there enough Americans willing to commit to building what will replace his inevitably destructive presidency. The past is past. The past is prologue. The next chapters will be filled with Trump. The rest of the story is far from written.
I’m ready to start working on that story, and if you’ve read this far, I know you are, too.
News and Notes:
Please listen to the latest episode of The Home Front Podcast featuring Katherine Abughazaleh. She and I discuss many of the things I’ve written above. It’s a fun conversation, and Kat is already a leader of her generation.
Please, please, please listen and leave a five star review. Your support will help us grow this community.
I saw this beauty while walking my dogs this week. I’m not a huge believer in omens, but I’m glad he was there.
I don't have angry words, I just feel sad. Who am I and who are we? Good question, Reed. I thought I knew the answer to this question, but obviously not. Hope can die a bornin and give birth to apathy. Never thought that so many people would sit on their hands and not vote as if that was the answer. Well, I am sad, but I am not going away or giving up. Just need clear thought on what I can do that would be more effective. Take care.