Normalization, The Future of Our Resistance Movement, and Some Cursing
This week in the Trumpster Fire:
Scott Pruitt, whose job is to try to destroy the EPA, was engulfed in scandal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for trying to destroy the environment. It was for building a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office, renting a condo from a lobbyist, and having 24-hour security details on family vacations. If you need that, YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG because being head of the EPA is not supposed to be an exciting job, for God’s sake.
Ronny Jackson dropped out of consideration as Veterans Affairs secretary for a variety of lewd and unethical behavior.
And Trump called up Fox and Friends ranting and rambling, saying things that will deepen his legal troubles with regard to porn star payments and indicating he wanted to purge the Justice Department.
This is one week. I’ve left a lot of shit out. And I can no longer remember what happened last week.
Now think back a million years ago, to January 2017.
Do you remember that post going around Facebook that we all should start keeping a list of things that are not normal?
Then, we could look back at this list in the future to remind ourselves that these things are not normal.
VICE News did a pretty good job keeping the list for a while:
DAY 3 — JAN. 22
Trump’s press secretary spreads lies — but his senior adviser called them “alternative facts”
DAY 6 — JAN. 25
Trump says he’s ordering investigation of massive voter fraud (that doesn’t exist in election he won)
Day 8 — JAN. 27
White House confuses British prime minister with British porn star
DAY 33 — DEC. 11
Trump doesn’t believe a CIA report that Russia hacked the U.S. election
And now we hear this shit and we’re like, yeah…and?
It has become normalized to a great extent.
It’s in our nature to normalize. It’s how we survive.
Even though in 2018 our brains are desperately trying to protect us from reality, it’s not a good coping mechanism. Even though we’re standing in the middle of the storm, we have to keep our perspective and understand rationally what’s going on around us.
We have to recognize the moments for effective action, and have the awareness and courage to step outside of our new normal, so that we can do what needs to be done to steer the course of history away from the precipice.
A year and a half into our resistance movement, there is a current of outrage — punctuated by mass protests when people feel strongly enough or feel like we can make a real difference.
Like in Lansing, Michigan when antifascists defeated Richard Spencer and other assorted Nazis, and the March For Our Lives.
Our nation has become very polarized, and it is likely to become even more so. We shouldn’t rail against this.
Let’s accept it and understand it. We are living through one of those periods of history where society becomes polarized and mass direct involvement in the political process, beyond the normal approved channels of voting, is necessary.
For some of us, this has made us better and braver people.
For others… not so much.
This time will be written about — assuming we survive — “How could so many otherwise (or formerly) decent people let this happen?”
You can really see the depths and the heights of the human character in this fight.
On the one side you have people who are the type who would come to a Trump rally a year and half in. Embracing their racism, embracing the term deplorable, doubling down on the worst impulses they’ve ever had, even doing violence to others at Trump campaign rallies.
There is a dishearteningly large sector of society that is embracing false emotion over truth and even self-interest, eagerly and aggressively believing in lies.
There was a rally against supposed Sharia law in Dearborn, Michigan, last weekend. This display of ignorance of bigotry was ignited by fake news from a fake news site called the National Reporter.
The National Report’s own disclaimer page notes:
National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental.
But people believed that Dearborn was under Sharia law and showed up by the hundreds to protest it.
This is a terrible time we are living through. But it has also brought out some of the best in human nature.
We have a resistance movement that is fighting for giving a shit about other people. Because one of our better human instincts is doing things for the good of the whole, even if it’s not directly in our self-interest.
We are fighting to take care of each other — otherwise known as civilization.
We are fighting for equality and the freedom to live as we want as long as we aren’t hurting others. We are fighting for resources to be spent on improving lives, on clean water, healthcare, jobs, housing, and food. We are fighting for a world where having money doesn’t mean you get to live longer, or that your kids get a better education, or that you get healthcare that is denied to others, or that you get to buy leaders and make the laws.
This is some Sesame Street and Mister Rogers shit that a lot people have failed to learn.
We are the majority, but that’s not enough.
To win a social struggle like this, we need the majority of the people who are prepared to act. We need people to be as active and as outraged as we were in January 2017.
We are living in times that call for more than the usual channels of political involvement. I do not subscribe to the belief that the 2018 elections are gong to save us.
The Republicans and the Democrats have by and large failed to do their jobs in putting out this dumpster fire. They have not been the intransigent, bold leaders that we need.
And if Democrats win, it may even make Trump even more unhinged and desperate.
I believe we should be putting our time and energy into organizing rapid response teams to defend our communities from ICE, from fascists, and from police brutality.
We should be putting our energy into organizing protests and direct action.
Protest is a powerful motor of social change.
Just a few days ago Armenians won the resignation of their prime minister by protesting for 10 days. On the last day, 50,000 Armenians protested and 200 soldiers joined the protests. The next day, the prime minister resigned.
There is an implicit question, even when the protests are peaceful, of what happens next. Protests are a threat to power.
Our priority should be building the leadership, confidence, experience, and self-reliance of our resistance movement.
We are powerful. Not yet powerful enough to rid ourselves of Trump and all he represents, but getting closer every day.
