Something I’ve blogged about a few times before is that things can be getting worse and better at the same time.
I felt freaked out and scared when the Felon won in 2016, even though as a comfortably off white dude I wasn’t directly in the line of whatever was coming. I felt worse in 2024. There was no longer any hope that maybe the Felon wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. As Michelle Goldberg says, the biggest scaremongers about him were spot on. The alarmists were the sensible, grounded one.
I know people who dropped off social media out of concern their anti-Felon posts would be used against them. I wasn’t one of them but I didn’t think they were crazy. The whiny Necrotic Toddler doesn’t believe there’s any crime on Earth worse than not bathing him in the love and worship he thinks he deserves. The Republican Party as a whole is all in on suppressing dissent.
And as Paul Krugman says the people in power seemed to throw in the towel rather than resist: “Our vaunted institutions, our system of checks and balances, either capitulated quickly or were overrun by Trump’s onslaught. Big business quickly bent the knee, immediately directing its focus to how to make money through Trump trades. The Supreme Court and the Republican Congress abetted and even encouraged every fascist move.”
And it has gotten bad. We’ve waged war on Venezuela, we’re talking about attacking Greenland to take it from Denmark (unsurprisingly, rich people are pushing for this), slapping tariffs on nations that oppose the Greenland conquest, the White House nominee for ambassador to Iceland talks about making Iceland the 52nd state. Back home, ICE is murdering people for disrespecting them. Their boss, Kristi Noem, has not only not acknowledged the error (saying that the buck stops with her would require ethics and a spine. She’s never shown any sign she possesses either), she’s asserting ICE officers can stop anyone and demand proof of citizenship. As multiple people have pointed out, security police demanding “papers please!” from citizens is what we used to hold up as What Doesn’t Happen In America. So much for that.
Except that, as Krugman says in the same post, it’s not working out like they planned: “If Minneapolis is a laboratory of democratic destruction, it has also become a laboratory of civil resistance — organized civil resistance, of a kind we haven’t seen since the civil rights movement. When ICE is on the rampage, crowds of brave Americans, summoned by texts and whistles, quickly gather to stand against the masked men with guns.” As I’ve mentioned before, for every committed activist there are three or four people who won’t step up until they see it’s possible. Each act of resistance inspires more. Each act of resistance says that no, the Felon and his enablers can’t simply roll over everyone in their path. They can be stopped. Case in point.
Jamelle Bouie: “Trump wants us to be demoralized. He wants his despotic plans to be a fait accompli. They will be if no one stands in the way. But every time we — and especially those with power and authority — make ourselves into obstacles, we also make it a little less likely that the administration’s authoritarian fantasy becomes our reality.” This does not undo the bad things that keep happening: the kids not getting vaccines, trans kids who can’t receive care, ICE’s victims. But they are not the inevitable face of the future either.
There are limits to what a president can do. The Necrotic Toddler is whining we should cancel the midterms because the party in power always loses and that’s soooo unfair when he’s done such wonderful work, even if people don’t appreciate it yet. As Courtney Milan says, there’s no legal grounds for this — which is not to say it can’t happen but it’s not something the Toddler can just snap his fingers on.
We can do more and we can do it without violence, as Cheryl Rofer says at the link. And while satire won’t bring down the Felon, it does prick his illusion of invincibility and encourages more people to mock him. So right on Jimmy Kimmel! And leaders here and abroad who speak up.
As Paul Campos says, it’s time for Democratic Party to fight. Including trials for anyone in the Felon Administration who’s committed crimes — no “Well, that would be criminalizing politics.” I don’t want the DOJ to persecute anyone in the Felon Administration, no matter how vile they are — but yes, if they have committed crimes, take them down.
And given the Republican push for gerrymandering, it only makes sense, for now, for Democrats to play hardball back.
Lots of Dems, including Minnesota’s Gov. Walz, are pushing back hard, calling out the fascists. Not all. The pull of centrism is strong, the conviction that only by being the blandest, most inoffensive candidate possibly can Dems win. Which frequently translates into focusing not on what Dem voters support but what Republican voters want.
Perhaps the most remarkable case, which I somehow missed until recently, is Chuck Schumer’s test for making political decisions: asking whether an imaginary Long Island couple, Joe and Eileen Bailey, would support him. “Schumer describes the couple as Reagan-era Republicans — socially liberal but fiscally conservative. He’s offered up intricate details about their fictional lives: their love of Kung Pao chicken, Joe’s habit of singing the national anthem at Islanders games, and Eileen’s father’s chilling run-in with prostate cancer.” That’s a little detailed for his purpose … but what’s really daft is that the Baileys are Republicans. As noted in the quote, they voted for Reagan. Joe voted for the Necrotic Toddler in 2016, 2020 and 2024; Eileen abstained in 2020, otherwise she’s a Trumper.
These are not the people, even if they were real, who should be the inspiration for Schumer’s policies. And “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” — if they voted for Reagan and the Felon, where is the social liberalism? I’m not sure there are that many socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters out there, though the media loves talking about them (which may explain Schumer’s framing).
There’s the conviction among some Dems that even trying to recapture control of Congress is an absurd goal. Or that Democrats should do what centrists always recommend: forget about abortion, POC, immigrants and focus on things like drug prices and inflation. Honest to god I’ve seen tweets from elected Dems complaining the problem with ICE violence and regime change in Venezuela is that it won’t lower the price of groceries. Um, it’s okay to say Renee Good’s murder is bad and waging war for oil is bad, period. It’s true talking about the Felon’s threat to democracy didn’t win the day in 2024, but he’s making the case for us.
It’s important not only to contact our Republican reps with disapproval (it can’t hurt) but to let our Democratic representatives and senators know we support them when they fight, and disapprove when they don’t. There’s lots of other stuff we can do, even if it’s only sending checks to groups on the frontlines, but telling them where we stand is part of the resistance. Let them know the centrist path is not the road to walk.
I’ll conclude with Andrea Pritzer’s quote: “People who embraced cruelty have caused tremendous death and suffering in 2025, but those opposed to cruelty have banded together, gaining so much strength across the year. We will continue to rise, and our power increases each time we do.”
