There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone. You will learn that your trouble is but part of the trouble of all the western world.
Elrond Halfelven at ‘The Council of Elrond’
Chapter 14 of The Fellowship of the Ring
J. R. R. Tolkien
When I meet people I know these days and they ask me how I’m doing, I say, “Apart from being terrified, I’m fine.” And they know exactly what I mean. I’ve had a fortunate life, rich in beauty and comfort. And now as I’m nearing my retirement years it looks like it’s all about to be shattered.
That first night some here were trying to put a brave face on it. “We’ll survive.” My reaction: some will, some won’t, but all of us will lose irretrievably much that we value, much that makes life sweet.
A Trump Presidency seemed literally unimaginable during the election. And now that the reality is upon us it still defies our imagination to guess how this will play out. It’s clear that Trump does not have a plan beyond lining his own pockets so catastrophes are as likely to unfold inadvertently as through design. OTOH, Steve Bannon does have a plan
(I wrote all the above about ten days before Christmas and didn’t have time to finish. Since then I’ve tried to grasp glimmers of hope, but have seen much more corroboration of what I was seeing then. So I continue.)
Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.
Steve Bannon to Ronald Radosh
This is the President-elect’s chief strategist! Does anyone now doubt the strong likelihood of his goal being realized? Trump’s combination of recklessness and thoughtlessness is going to create disorder on so many fronts we’ll all be disoriented.
Here’s what I expect from a Trump Presidency:
- Wars early and often. In Trump’s mind any deployment of American military power is a demonstration of strength, especially if we initiate it. Trump is already spoiling for a fight with China. And I don’t expect Putin to wait long to test NATO’s resolve in the face of aggression. As a bonus it’s a great vehicle for marginalizing dissent— anyone remember “Support the Troops”?
- A spike in terrorist attacks— a great excuse for even further abridgement of civil liberties.
- Quasi-military occupations of our cities in an escalating cycle of response to protests.
- Disruption of services we take for granted. It might be a good time to lay in some extra provisions. It will be too late to get them when the need is upon us.
How it ends
Trump is bound to crash and burn. But it’s an open question how much of the rest of us he can take down with him. If we can get out of this short of open civil war, I think we’ll be lucky.
The institutions we are counting on to help us have already demonstrated their inadequacy in failing to prevent him coming to power. The mass media are perfectly willing to serve as propaganda arms of the Trump regime without the least coercion. Elected Democrats have for decades failed to fight back against the aggressive nihilism and inflammatory rhetoric of mainstream Republicans. Most of them are kind of old to be learning new tricks. We’ve had difficulty mobilizing our voters in sufficient numbers and voting is just going to get harder— for Democrats.
Am I being too pessimistic? Here are two voices a lot us respect:
The futility of fleeing
Some people talk of moving to Canada or someplace that feels… nicer. I sympathize with the feeling. I myself have permanent resident status in a prosperous, stable country that I also love, but I’m not going. As a friend of mine put it, “The rest of the world is downwind of America”.
Or to frame it in more positive terms, what we have is valuable and worth fighting for. This is shaping up to be the defining crisis of our time. I am determined to stand my ground and defend our values and our people and our places.
I really think that what motivated a lot of Trump voters is their wish to make us suffer, even if their own sufferings increase as a result. It truly is deplorable, but that’s where we are.