America Is on Fire, and Our Leaders Are Roasting Marshmallows
Show up and speak out now before it's too late.
Two weeks ago, I wrote that “the cost of opposing Trump has never been higher, but that cost will only rise as time goes on.” We’ve since seen a terrifying escalation from the Trump Administration, which is making it clear that they plan to relentlessly attack and punish dissent, using every lever of power available to them. From the unlawful arrest and imprisonment of student organizer Mahmoud Khalil to calls to impeach judges whose rulings the Administration doesn’t like, to the open admission that the Administration and the GOP seek to destroy the left’s infrastructure starting with fundraising clearinghouse ActBlue but certainly not ending there.
It’s not just happening on the national level. In Idaho, a teacher was ordered to take down a poster reading “Everyone is welcome here” because of the current political climate. The district claims the issue is that there are hands of different colors on the poster, not the phrase itself. A maddening distinction. After initially complying, she has since hung her posters back up and is now facing disciplinary action from her district. Students and parents are rallying around the teacher, but despite this and an international outcry, the district hasn’t budged on their demands.
I’ve been thinking about this incident a lot. Because while the cost of opposing Trump is currently high, the cost of doing nothing is catastrophic. Trump, Elon Musk, and the MAGA movement continue to rob us blind to enrich themselves right in front of our eyes. They’re dismantling the U.S. government and entitlements and services we all rely on piece by piece. Making it more difficult for Americans to access the Social Security Administration, shutting down the Department of Education and all the civil rights protections and access to services it provides. Engaging law enforcement to violently take over the U.S. Institute of Peace. They’re even trying to erase our history in real time. Meanwhile, I can’t even keep track of the ever-changing tariffs situation or what countries we’re threatening to invade on any given day.
America is an ongoing five-alarm fire, but you wouldn’t know it based on the response from most of our elites. While a teacher in Idaho and her students are fighting over the idea that everyone belongs in a classroom, while constituents are begging their elected officials to actually do something at what few town halls there even are, while ordinary people are protesting Tesla every week at dealerships across the country, Senate Majority Leader Schumer and several of his colleagues couldn’t be bothered to use the one piece of leverage they have and force Republicans to come to the table with a shutdown. The vast majority of the press continues to cover MAGA like a curiosity rather than an existential threat to our nation’s existence, And don’t even get me started on the well-funded organizations and institutions that exist to mobilize people into action.
Take the #TeslaTakedown movement, for example. It’s arguably had the biggest success of any effort currently happening, tanking Tesla’s stock price, and clearly freaking Elon Musk out. But what, if any, institutional support does it have? It's clear from a quick review of who is (or, more importantly, isn't) promoting #TeslaTakedown that the campaign has limited institutional backing, even among progressive institutions. While I don't have inside knowledge of the funding, everything from the website to the fact that they're still using basic Gmail accounts tells me that big donors are also keeping their distance so far. It’s also notable how few Democratic politicians have jumped on board with what should be an easy win; only Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Judy Chu had endorsed or promoted #TeslaTakedown as of publication.
It shouldn’t be too much to ask that our elites and leaders show as much courage as a teacher and her students in deep-red Idaho. But apparently it is.
Where does that leave us?
, who has covered digital organizing since before Obama’s first election, has written an assessment of the current landscape in his newsletter, The Connector. Sifry offers who is mobilizing – “Federal workers unions, veterans, park rangers, scientists, teachers, women’s groups, civil and immigrants’ rights groups, and localists (like Indivisible, 50501 and the TeslaTakedown network) – and who is speaking out but not in a coordinated way as of yet – “many academics, professionals and their associations.”Sifry acknowledges that while momentum is building, we haven’t yet reached the necessary critical mass, writing:
[I]t’s going to take more widespread and concerted action that involves many more people than now in nonviolent forms of protest. As longtime readers know, the benchmark for successful movements against authoritarianism, according to Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth, is when at least 3.5% of the population gets involved in regular, public, nonviolent acts of opposition. In the US that would mean at least 11.5 million people turning out on a daily to weekly basis. We are just baby steps towards that benchmark.
I agree with Sifry’s assessment. I’m both hearted at how many Americans have stepped up, and stepped out in front of the elites courage-wise. But I’m also realistic that it’s not yet enough. We don’t yet have the groundswell needed, and for the most part, we’re not yet taking the kinds of non-violent direct action necessary to make the people and institutions who hold power uncomfortable. We’re inching closer every day, but the Musk-Trump Administration is working at breakneck speed. And I fear by the time we get there, there won’t be anything left to save or rebuild from.
To put it another way, we need to harness our economic power and our labor and shut it down. #TeslaTakdown and economic actions such as boycotts give us a roadmap that we need to follow. Collectively, we can refuse to cooperate with the current regime. We can create disruption, friction, and discomfort. If that sounds scary, just remember that the cost of doing nothing is that, ultimately, we will lose everything.
ICYMI
The Right Dominates the Online Media Ecosystem, Seeping Into Sports, Comedy, and Other Supposedly Nonpolitical Spaces (Media Matters)
Important research from Media Matters. The Right-wing media ecosystem is even bigger than you think and covers a lot more cultural ground than you think. The asymmetry is staggering.
How the Anti-vaccine Movement Weaponized a 6-year-old's Measles Death (NBC News)
Brutal reporting from Brandy Zadrozny. Grieving parents immediately turned into (willing) props for the anti-vaxxer movement. Some days I have no words for how horrible the world is.
Vivian Jenna Wilson on Being Elon Musk’s Estranged Daughter, Protecting Trans Youth and Taking on the Right (Teen Vogue)
I started reading this interview out of professional curiosity but enjoyed it in its own right. Wilson has obviously been through some shit, but her personality, and her optimism, really shine through here.
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Happy March Madness to all who celebrate. Personally, I’m rooting for Kentucky’s women’s and men’s teams. (Sadly, the women’s team just lost to Kansas State by one point, but it was a hell of a game!) Talk to you again next Sunday when all of our brackets are busted.
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Thank you for this essay, and detailing the urgency of fighting back the oppression of this regime. We need voices of encouragement to keep up the pressure, on the fact that we have a fascist coup to overcome.
First, thank you for the work you're doing. Too many are either complacent or cowed - we need more like you, Greg Olear, Marc Elias, and Glenn Kirschner.
This article is another good one. I have one quibble - this seems like a small thing but it's important. As George Lakoff has written about, we shouldn't let our opponents frame the vocabulary of the issues on which we fight them.
With that in mind, please don't call Social Security, Medicare, and the VA "entitlements." They are earned benefits.
My wife and I have both been paying into Social Security for nearly fifty years, and since my military retirement pension is taxed for Social Security along with federal and state income tax, I will be paying into Social Security until the day I die. We both started working and paying into the system as teenagers, and now we're seniors.
Likewise, I earned my VA benefits - I enlisted as a healthy teenager and retired after twenty years on active duty in the Marine Corps with PTSD and a body an orthopedic surgeon told me looked like it had fifty years of wear and tear rather than twenty. I've had five orthopedic surgeries, courtesy of the VA, and will have a sixth next month - that's not an entitlement. It's a benefit I earned.
My wife is also disabled, a senior and a cancer survivor with multiple surgeries in her chart, and she earned her Social Security disability benefits. Howard Luttnick said that if we didn't get our Social Security payments and chose to complain rather than passively wait and hope they'd just catch up later, that would mean we were "fraudsters." We aren't fraudsters. We're just Americans who don't want to default on our mortgage and be unable to buy groceries.
The human rights violations of targeted minorities, the contempt for the courts, the heavyhanded persecution of lawyers and journalists who dare to criticize - I've also been studying history for fifty years, and I believe it's no hyperbole to say this country is looking more like Germany in the 1930s every week. But we need to keep raising our voices. As we used to say when I was in the Marine Corps, they can kill us but they can't eat us.
Semper Fidelis, and keep up the good work!
Jim Finley
Captain, USMC, Retired