Survival And Solidarity
In a prior post, I wrote about the merger of the techno-fascists, as represented by Elon Musk, and the white Christian nationalists, as represented by OMB head Russ Vought, and their seemingly now unstoppable effort to destroy democratic governance and replace it with an AI-powered version of Christian theocracy. With the DOJ’s openly corrupt quid pro quo to drop the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Attorney General Bondi’s assurances to Apple and Google that she will not prosecute them for breaking the law re TikTok, and the now repeated instances of the administration flagrantly disobeying court orders, it is readily apparent that the rule of law is dead. Similarly, the illegal mass firings, unlawful agency closures, and unconstitutional impoundments, even clawbacks, of legally authorized funding make clear that vast swaths of the federal government are systematically being dismantled. That destruction will very shortly flow down to the states, where much of federal government policy gets implemented, as the funding cuts eliminate personnel and programs, putting even more pressure of financially strapped state budgets.
The post-New Deal world that we all grew up in is gone. Forever. The breadth and speed of the withdrawal of government services and the destruction of state capacity may not be as devastating as what we saw with in Russia and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, but it will still be horrific. The courts cannot stop it; they cannot keep up with it; they can only delay it. Most Americans are not aware that their government is being systematically dismantled, and they are even less prepared for what replaces it. While I have no doubt that Musk wants to be an absolute dictator (and he may succeed), the odds are that our federalist system, the decentralized nature of our election administration, and the desire to at least to pretend to still be a democracy will eventually produce what is known as competitive authoritarianism, or managed democracy, where the scales of an election are so heavily tilted toward the regime in power that it is almost impossible for them to lose. At least on the federal level, we have already caught a glimpse of how easily that could be done during Trump’s first term – attempting to have state legislatures appoint Electors rather than accepting the will of the voters; the pressure to “find the votes” necessary to win; the generalized weaponization of the state against opponents; and finally resorting to violence. And, let’s face it, one-third of the elections we’ve had this century ended up with the popular vote loser becoming president, and at least two of the others came within a hair of providing a similar result. Between gerrymandering, the design of the US Senate, the filibuster for everything but budgets, judges, and the cabinet, and an almost lawless Supreme Court, we have basically enshrined minority rule.
Americans as a whole have no history, no experience, with fighting a war on their own soil. Yes, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were external attacks that galvanized and united the country behind our government, but they were not sustained. Today, however, the government is the attacking force, waging war against immigrants, LBGTs, women, Blacks, science, education, civil society, and democracy itself. Unless you are a Native American or an older Black or LGBT, you have had no experience with the government mounting a sustained all-encompassing attack on your very existence. But those groups survived and successfully fought what was for them an essentially fascist American government. Those groups, and others in similar autocratic fascist states, can provide valuable lessons for both surviving under autocracy and fighting it successfully.
Before we can learn those lessons, however, we must come to terms with where we are right now. First, regardless of what the courts or even Congress do, the Trump/Musk/Vought trio will have four years to destroy the administrative state, restrict the rights of everyone but white men, and institute their brand of fascism. In most cases they will find legal work-arounds for their illegal efforts that have been blocked. And, even assuming we return to somewhat normal governance in 2028 (which seems hardly likely right now), it will take years to rebuild that state capacity and restore those rights, if ever. That will be further complicated by the fact that the current rogue Supreme Court, which is lost for at least a couple of generations without major structural reform (which also hardly seems likely any time soon), has already signaled its intent to dismantle the administrative state and privilege whites, Christians, and males.
Second, congressional Democrats are, at least in the short term, no longer relevant actors. It was always maddening to hear the right claiming that Democrats stood for nothing, especially when I believed they stood for justice and equality. But they have proven that they are indeed just empty vessels. You can’t spend a whole campaign accurately portraying your opponent as a wannabe dictator and an existential threat to democracy and then talk about working with him immediately after the election or pivot to only talking about the price of eggs. You can’t talk about equality and then throw trans people under the bus because you lost an election.
Democratic leaders are more than just ineffectual; they actually exude weakness and irrelevance – Chuck Schumer hunched over and peering down at us over his glasses like an out of touch 1950s English professor talking about eggs and Hakeem Jeffries desperately trying to imitate the rhetorical flourishes of Martin Luther King while talking about inflation, but neither engaging in a single action that might highlight the rampant illegality and destruction of our government that is actually occurring. They are the Marshal Petains of today – always preparing to fight the last war and then capitulating when the new one begins. Beyond a handful across the House and Senate – AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, Chris Murphy, Ron Wyden – congressional Democrats seem incapable of understanding how to communicate in today’s attention economy. Any one of the current Democratic Senators could grind the Senate to a halt by always withholding unanimous consent and those dilatory tactics today would mean that the GOP has less time for other more nefarious projects later on. But not one of them, from the most progressive to the most conservative, has done so. Senators Gary Peters and Tina Smith have announced they are not running for re-election and have little to lose, yet still they do nothing.
The far more important reason for congressional Democratic irrelevance, however, is that they simply have no power. The Republicans have the votes to confirm Trump’s cabinet on their own. Yes, it would be nice for Democrats to highlight the Trump abuses of power, but they are in no position to stop them. They may make some headway in containing the worst abuses of the Trump administration in the budget and debt ceiling fight to come, but, again, if the GOP stays unified (which is always more likely than not), Democrats are powerless. Similarly, even if the Democrats take back the House in 2026, they will still have a difficult time accomplishing anything, much less restraining Trump, since the chances of regaining the Senate in 2026 or even 2028 is remote, hence the Peters and Smith retirements. That also assumes that the Trump administration won’t simply ignore congressional laws and appropriations as they appear to be doing today. It would be nice to have a shadow cabinet to refute the daily barrage of administration lies. It would be nice for House Democrats to at least draw up articles of impeachment and continually add to them as a way to document the crimes of the fascist Trump administration for posterity. But none of that will save us.
Once we accept the realities of how grim our situation is and how powerless and irrelevant are those who would usually be tasked to protect us, then we can begin to build a real resistance. Simply because of the damage that will be done, the willingness of the fascists to use the full power of the state against all enemies, real and perceived, and the powerlessness of our position, we must understand that this will probably be a generational or multi-generational fight, just like the fights for women’s suffrage, LGBT rights, and against Jim Crow. The one overarching lesson we can take from those in similar situations is to “act locally, think nationally”.
Because of federalism, state and local governments are our best defense going forward. Everyone should be asking their city councillor, state senator, and state representative TODAY what preparations they are making to fill the void left by an absent federal government. How are they planning to provide vaccines if they are withdrawn by HHS, provide healthcare for Medicaid and even Medicare or ACA recipients who have been removed from those programs or had their funding cut, provide or maintain housing after the withdrawal of HUD funds, provide that same housing and unemployment benefits for the thousands that the federal government is firing and those who will lose their jobs and homes in the probable economic catastrophe that Trump will oversee. What are their plans for protecting immigrants, trans, and other LBGT persons? Will they consider explicitly protecting certain rights in the state constitution? Does your state have abortion shield laws that protects doctors from lawsuits filed in states where abortion or mifepristone is banned, as well as the women who have come to your state to get abortions and the residents who helped bring them here? Is the state beginning to stockpile foodstuffs in anticipation of food shortages due to a pandemic or lack of labor for harvesting? How is the state or locality expanding emergency management capabilities in light of the unreliability of FEMA support? Is the bargaining power of public sector unions legally protected by the state? The answers to these questions may not be readily available but our state and local representatives desperately need to understand the urgency about thinking and acting on those items NOW.
Filling the void left by the federal government will cost money, but the more successful a state is at it, the more freedom from the fascist federal state it will have. Has the local or state authority started thinking outside the box at ways to raise revenue? How about a wealth tax, millionaire’s tax, a corporate alternate minimum tax, or a state investment fund? Or progressive multi-tiered sales tax rates based on cost? A state property tax on vacant lots to encourage more housing? States and cities that can provide better services, which mostly means blue areas these days, will attract lots of talented refugees from lesser served areas, primarily red states these days. There will literally be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of talented qualified workers being driven out of federal government. Is the state or local government putting a plan together to use some of that talent or encourage their employment locally? For a state successfully navigating this new era, housing will become more of an issue than it is now. Is your state or city willing to radically relax zoning and permitting regulations in order to encourage housing, especially in more already densely populated areas? I’m sure there are many more ideas that people cleverer than I can come up with to help state and local governments manage the coming crises. But we need the legislators to start focusing on this NOW.
Beyond government action, the history of oppressed groups in an autocratic state shows that the most effective strategy is what is generically known as mutual aid. Under the “separate but equal” regime of Jim Crow, Blacks were able to build an entire societal structure and economy that was purely self-reliant. Gays and lesbians built a similar societal world largely underground for years. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers created community economies with health clinics and after school programs entirely outside the capitalist system. They provided food, clothing, legal aid, and transportation to their local communities. Whether or not you agree with their tactics or goals, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and even Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories created similar social services structures outside actual governmental control. Using similar methods in churches and parochial schools, the evangelical right has currently built one of the most powerful political forces in the country.
It is in these mutual aid communities that we will build the most effective resistance. Find out what your local food bank or soup kitchen needs. Find out what’s being done locally to help immigrants know their rights and protect them. We need the professional classes to step up, with lawyers and doctors donating their time for legal aid and health services, and teachers and coaches for after school programs. The most important power that most of us have is our economic power and we can use it to attack the fascist collaborators. Think about moving your bank accounts to a local credit union. Support real adversarial and investigative media (The American Prospect, ProPublica, Wired, 404 Media have done fabulous work recently) instead of the corporate stenographers for propagandists. It’s time to start boycotting those companies that have completely caved to Trump’s fascist takeover and donated to the 1/6 insurrectionists or rolled back their DEI initiatives. Already, we are already seeing Tesla being targeted with protests and there is a general economic boycott scheduled for February 28th.
But mutual aid needs to extend farther than just locally. There will be people all over the country suffering oppression and hardship whom we can help. It might be nice if we could put together a well-funded group who could go into these red states where they are handing out school vouchers like candy and set up some schools that provide a real education, not just religious indoctrination, along with child care and health services. How can we set up a new Underground Railroad into and out of the more repressive states that can deliver mifepristone to those who need it, extract those who want and need safe abortions, and provide a safe escape for trans people? How can we help those in more repressive states build their own mutual aid communities? Like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and the Arpillera Movement in Chile, we need to document the crimes the administration is committing and demand it be held accountable.
Mutual aid and the help of state and local governments are the tools by which we survive the Trump/Musk autocratic takeover and the years that follow. Restoring our democracy and defeating these fascists will take a more concerted and even more communal effort and the building blocks for that effort and its leaders will emerge from those mutual aid groups or local politicians. Obviously, civil disobedience is the most visible form of such a movement and also an effective tactic in tying up fascist resources and highlighting its cruelty. In recent years, the focus has been far too much on civil and less so on disobedience, which is the act that highlights the injustices we are fighting against. Those brave Black men and women sitting at the lunch counters in the 1950s and 1960s were there because they were not allowed to be there. Today’s disobedience could take the form of nonviolent civilian rapid response teams who could protect churches, schools, hospitals, and long-time immigrant businesses from ICE raids, risking arrest to do so. It could be pop-up clinics providing vaccinations that RFK’s HHS has banned. The form of disobedience will have to meet the governmental threat. Whether or not you agree with the tactic, there will be a violent wing to the resistance. The Panthers, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and even the Christian right (remember Randall Terry’s abortion doctor assassination list) had either a military wing or an arm’s length relationship to violent elements.
Lastly, we need to practice solidarity. As Poland, Chile, Ukraine, and even Georgia today illustrate, it will take a united pro-democracy mass movement involving coalitions that may have vastly different policy platforms to beat back autocracy. Whatever you think of the 2024 election strategy, we will need the Liz Cheneys, the Adam Kinzingers, and the Bulwark conservatives to restore democracy. We will need those church leaders who believe in protecting immigrants and the sanctity of sanctuary but may disagree with us about abortion. We will need to embrace those disaffected Trump voters who made what to us appears to be an unfathomable decision and an attack on our own humanity. We will need those annoying members of the online left who agree to get back on the pro-democracy train and remember those who don’t. We will need a more robust Democratic party that at its core is a pro-democracy movement. It is apparent that that can only be done from the bottom up, again starting at the state and local level – the rot at the head is too deep.
All these groups will be part of the mass movement that can restore democracy. Fascism is powerful because it has the full weight of governmental resources behind it; but it is also incredibly fragile as it can brook no dissent. That makes it scary and dangerous, but also far weaker than we might imagine. It is up to us and us alone to fight for our democracy. Our lives will never be the same after the next four years and we need to adjust accordingly. We will lose friends and loved ones either through the direct actions of our government or its almost willful negligence. It will require more sacrifice, more generosity, more engagement than most of us have ever given. Simply giving money to your favorite candidate(s) won’t cut it anymore. Mass protests on weekends and holidays may make us all feel better but the powers that be have seen them all before and simply ignore us, knowing we will all be back at work on Monday. Coming to DC and shutting the city down for a week is something they will take seriously. Leaders will emerge and many of them will be targeted and sidelined by state power. New ones will take their place. Many more will lose their livelihoods standing up to the regime. But we will, we must, keep on fighting. There were many whose names we do not know who refused sit in the back of the bus and paid the price; but eventually, with an organized resistance behind her, Rosa Parks helped break the racial fascism of Jim Crow. We have done this before as a people. We will do it again.