Time to bring back that WW1 marching song?
Donald Trump represents everything that for my entire lifetime this country flattered itself it was not. His reelection puts the lie to that national fantasy. The long arc of the moral universe took a nose dive on Nov. 5 like the stock market on Black Monday.
Trump’s “United States of Backlash,” Paul Waldman calls it:
What is the society Trump now seeks to create? It’s one in which virtually all the social progress of the last half-century is reversed. Not only will efforts to address racism in both public and private institutions be eliminated, even talking about racism will be either forbidden (as in schools) or banished through intimidation. Even the most milquetoast efforts to improve diversity will no longer be allowed. Millions of undocumented immigrants and their families — including both legal immigrants and U.S. citizens — will be deported, while legal immigration is drastically reduced, the result of which will be a re-whitened nation in line with a blood-and-soil conception of American identity.
Women will be removed from combat roles in the military and leadership in other organizations, where “masculine energy” will finally be valued again. Abortions will become unobtainable, at least for those who aren’t wealthy. Transgender people will be forced back in the closet, their very existence deemed unspeakable. Straight white men will no longer have to fear anyone saying to them “Hey, what you just said is kind of uncool, don’t be an asshole.” At long last, “wokism” will be destroyed. And with that, the liberals will no longer be on top; they will be hounded and frightened into silence, just as they ought to be.
Readers knew that. But it’s worse. The America Trump means to create for himself, and only for himself, snuffs out the American spirit the huckster claims to embody.
The Trump era that began in 2016 has made America a meaner, angrier, more quarrelsome place. Trump has convinced millions that their worst self is their truest self, that there is no greater happiness than seeing those you hate suffer, and that there is not only no shame but even a kind of nobility in being like Trump: rude, cruel, petty, greedy and small.
Where is the backlash against that, against the public savaging of the ideals behind our flawed founding and the last century of world leadership? Or has Trump convinced a critical mass of Americans that all those lofty words introducing the Declaration were Trumpish “truthful hyperbole“? Bullshit?
The Irish Labour Party’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin gets it. Trump and Trumpism is as much an attack on American principles as it is on EU principles. He’s not having it even if his fellow legislators are prepared to go along to get along with America’s newly inaugurated monarch.
Where are the Democrats?
Will Stancil gives Democrats their marching orders. Bring the fight to the führer. Set a new narrative. Define the shit out of Trump. And not by trying to craft “the” message that will do it. Two can play flood the zone:
So, Democrats: your job is to argue that Trump is unfit, corrupt, decrepit, incompetent, and authoritarian. You want voters to form a mental image of him as unsafe, unreliable, untrustworthy, immoral, and inept. He can is selling out to the highest bidder; he is motivated entirely by greed, hate, and stupidity. His family is corrupt, and everyone who touches him is corrupt. He elevates violent men because they praise him, and dictators because they also praise him. He’s liable to get us all killed or destroy the federal government. When he’s president you can’t sleep easy at night, because there is no one competent leading the country who can respond to any crisis. It’s indecent and insane he’s president.
(This narrative has the added benefit of being entirely correct.)
Then, you just flood the zone with every horrible thing he’s done. React appropriately and angrily. It does not matter if every Democrat is reacting to the same thing, as long as the reaction is appropriately negative.
Indeed, it’s useful to have people mad about many different things at once, which maximizes the chance that some of it will land. Think about how information works in the modern media ecosystem: some stuff blows up, goes viral, and is seen by everyone, but you can’t predict in advance what it will be. Better to have lots of people saying lots of things to maximize your odds, than everyone saying a single thing, and hoping it’s right.
It certainly doesn’t matter if people capture every horrible detail. Some abuses will attract more attention than others. That’s fine. The goal is to ensure that everywhere people look, they see more evidence of the key narrative of Trump’s incredible unfitness and corruption. That’s how narratives work! The pieces promote the whole.
The right wing did that with Al Gore, with Hillary Clinton, and with Joe Biden. Make payback hell.
March. Meet offensive with counteroffensive. Trump has declared war.
For Trump’s second presidency, let’s do things differently. Let a thousand scandals bloom. Exploit the fact you have hundreds of elected officials and thousands of prominent voices and chase after every bit of wrongdoing. As long as Americans are hearing bad things about Trump, and not good things, you’re still promoting the core narrative of his unfitness. And that’s the essential fact that voters need to carry into the ballot booth.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a comedian and actor before Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces invaded his country. Zelenskyy adapted. He learned. It may even have been against his nature, as leading in this environment seems against that of most Democratic “leaders.” But he did it.
It comes down to a simple choice. “Get busy living or get busy dying.”