We are approaching two weeks since the Inauguration of Idiocracy II: The Magats Destroy the USA. If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the madness unfold with despair and, perhaps, resignation. It feels very much like the country we all grew up in, the laws and rules that have developed over the last two hundred years to protect us all and try to ensure fairness and some modicum of justice within our society, and even the ideals we thought our country rested on — it’s all being demolished before our eyes.
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Ours is not the first democratic republic to be taken over from the inside and replaced with a fascist, authoritarian regime. I was reminded of this most starkly by this reddit post quoting from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, a book based on interviews with ordinary Germans who lived through the Nazi takeover, in which one of those ordinary Germans described how it felt to live through the gradual replacement of freedom with tyranny:
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
Sound familiar? Terrifyingly, it describes exactly what seems to be happening right now. And the logical next question: What can we do? How do we stop this? Because if we don’t it seems almost certain we will end up at the logical and inevitable conclusion those Germans described, where “Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”
That last part seems to be wishful thinking on the part of this unknown German. We don’t like to think the Nazis intended the horrors they eventually perpetrated, and maybe 99% of them did not, but it seems pretty clear that Hitler and his top people really did intend those horrors. They designed a system to make the world as they wanted it to be and they took every action they could to make that world reality.
Trump and the Magats are doing the same thing. What’s crystal clear is that Project 2025 is the plan — today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future. The goals and tactics outlined there are what they are doing. It starts with emptying the entire federal govemment at every level — including the professional civil service — of anyone who might question, slow roll, or even disagree with what is to come. This means getting rid of anyone who sees their job as upholding the Constitution of the United States. The goal is to have a vastly smaller government of people loyal only to Trump. From there, anything is possible.
Think about it: Trump fired all of the Inspectors General. (And there’s already a Wikipedia page about it!?) That was not legal. But if eveyone else in the government is loyal only to him (including, as we know, to a great extent, the courts), the law doesn’t matter. The Inspectors may attempt to stay in their jobs and continue to do them becuase they believe their firing was illegal, but if everyone else is loyal to Trump, those Inspectors will be locked out of their offices, they won’t get paid, no one will speak to or share information with them, they will be unable to do their jobs, and this illegal act becomes reality. Sure, the Inspectors can file a lawsuit, but if the courts back Trump, that will be pointless, and anyway, by the time its resolved months or years will have passed with no Inspectors General reporting on all of the other illegal or unethical or just plain evil shit the federal government is doing.
This is just one example, but the point is: If the Magats succeed in replacing all federal workers with sycophants and fellow Magats, the Constitution doesn’t matter anymore. The law doesn’t matter anymore. In one swoop, it’s all gone.
That seems dire because it is. It already feels like it’s too late. The pathetic billioniares are all on board. The mainstream media is already obeying in advance. Doesn’t it feel like we’re powerless? Like there’s nothing we can do? Where is the opposition? Where are the leaders standing up against this? Could those leaders be us? What are we waiting for? But also, what can we do?
Figuring out what to do is reallly the hard question, right now. It’s clear what’s happening. It’s obvious how it’s happening. They aren’t hiding it. It’s all happening right in plain sight. And that’s what makes it so damned disheartening — it’s a train wreck happening every moment right before our eyes and it’s seems like there’s absolutely nothing we can do to stop it.
But, as Chris Geidner at Law Dork explains, we can’t just succumb to nihilism and begin obeying in advance; we must keep fighting however we can:
Stepping back, this is also a part of a larger discussion — one that I think of as the “there’s no point“ nihilism approach to the administration. There absolutely will be people on the left who take that approach — just as there were in the Reagan years and in the George W. Bush administration — but I think that is both wrong and in some cases dangerous.
Not all challenges will succeed. The point, though, as I see it, is (at least) three-fold: First, the Trump administration must be forced to defend its actions that veer afield of or ignore the law.
Second, the courts must be forced to weigh in. We must not allow Trump’s actions to pass by without forcing the court to either stop illegal acts or, in essence, own those acts that clearly violate federal law.
Third, particularly in light of the current failure of congressional Democrats to unify in opposition to Trump’s actions, every effort possible should be taken by others to reduce the harm imposed by [the] Trump administration will be important. Some efforts will not even aim to stop an action, having a purpose of reducing harm.
It will take work and it won’t always succeed, but it is always important.
So of course the Inspectors General have to try to stay in their jobs. They have to sue. So do all of the other federal workers who are being pushed out — they have to try to stay and they have to continue fighting. But we have to fight for them. The question is how.
How can we fight? What can we do? I don’t know. I dont’ have the answers. I don’t know if anyone does. The best answer I have seen is Timothy Snyder’s idea for an opposition people’s cabinet, but while that seems like the best way to fight back right now, I see no sign of it actually happening.
On a much smaller, and more individual scale, at least to protect our sanity:
- Don’t drink from the firehose of “news” and madness — Matthew Haughey
- Only pay attention to the cancer when you must or when doing so will actually help — Mishell Baker via Kottke:
It genuinely does not matter, the SIZE of the horror that looms over one, even if it threatens one’s very life.
When it is time to deal with that horror – to ameliorate, evade, conquer, whatever is available to you – you will know. By all means, focus on the task.
But every minute you focus on that horror when you are *not* actively doing something to evade or improve or ameliorate the situation (receiving chemo, taking Zofran, listening to the doctor, etc.), you are WASTING WHAT’S LEFT OF YOUR WILD PRECIOUS LIFE.
- More self-care and digital sanity tips from Kottke
- Robert Reich’s ten ways to resist
These are helpful ideas and tips and ways to stay sane, for sure, but they really do not seem like enough to meet the moment. If we really are going to fight ‘em til we can’t, we have to start fighting.
How?
Note on this post’s title: Although I just learned there’s a song by Anthrax entitled “Fight ‘em till you can’t,” I’m not an Anthrax (or metal, in general) fan. Instead, this post’s title is inspired by Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. I like that quote so much I also once had, briefly, a blog called “Fight ‘em till we can’t” about being a public defender. It didn’t last for lots of reasons, but mostly bc it’s hard to write regularly about being a public defender withouth revealing confidential information that is better left off the internet. It would still be a great blog title, don’t you think?