Fascist Threats, Fighting Back, Dictator Trump, Hard Swinging Liberals: So Much is Happening & I Try to Explain (as much as I can from the middle of a shitshow)

So, what happened to the Great Communicator, the Presidential Rasputin, the 4-D Chess Master? We’ve just passed the hundred-day mark of Donald Trump’s second term in office and the public has turned on him more than they did in his first term (and much faster). He started his presidency in a popularity hole of 47% approval and is now at 41% approval, a record low for a president at the 100^th day. And note the point drop. Trump lost six percentage points in just one hundred days. That is significant.

Some perspective: In July 2005, George W. Bush’s presidential approval rating was at 46%. Roughly one hundred days later, he’d lost six points and was resting at 40% approval. What caused the drop?

The first thing was the Iraq War. Before Bush switched the “War on Terror’s” focus from Afghanistan to Iraq, 73% of Americans “favored military action.” Most of that support was based on Bush administration lies such as Saddam Hussain was close to getting a nuclear weapon and that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. Soon after the US attacked Iraq, that support dropped to somewhere between 55% and 68%. When it became apparent that Iraq had no nukes, public support started to wan. When, in 2003, torture by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison was revealed, support dropped further. When the US entered a meat grinder phase of the war, which seemed destined to go on forever, less than 50% of Americans approved of Bush’s handling of the war.

And then came Katrina, the massive hurricane that wiped out much of New Orleans. Bush’s complete fuck-up on Katrina pushed him into record disapproval numbers, numbers which would only drop lower. (Bush began his presidency with a 57% approval, which jumped to 90% after 9/11, then started to decline. After Katrina, it sunk to 40% and it kept dropping, to 31% mid-2006 and then to his lowest, 25% a few months before the end of his second term. He ended his presidency at a 34% approval rating and was considered the worst president in US history.)

While the first hundred days of Trump’s second term have been horrible, we’ve yet to really start feeling it. Yes, prices of thing keep going up and a lot of people have lost their jobs. The stock market has crashed, which hurts people who have their retirement tied up in stocks. And Elon Musk’s fit of destruction has left public services in shambles. However, we’ve yet to really feel the pain from all this chaos. It will come, but right now we are bracing for the big hit.

With the immigration crackdown and other authoritarian reaches, Trump and Co. are pursuing a “duel-state” strategy, which Amanda Taub breaks down in the New York Times (recommended free read). The dual-state strategy was pioneered in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and used in Franco’s Spain, apartheid South Africa, Pinochet’s Chili, and throughout Latin America. As Taub writes,

First developed by a German lawyer named Ernst Fraenkel in the 1930s, the dual-state theory posits that authoritarianism can take hold in small pockets, even while the broader legal system appears to function more or less normally. In his 1941 book “The Dual State,” Fraenkel, who was Jewish, argued that within Nazi Germany there were in effect two interlinked systems: one in which most laws and many rights still applied; and alongside it a zone of authoritarianism, in which government power was unbounded.

Basically, you have two legal systems for different classes of people. The first legal system is the one we are used to and which applies to common citizens. This system handles civil disputes, family law, non-political criminal cases, etc. The second system is absolutely political. It serves two purposes: To control, attack, and eliminate The Other (in Nazi Germany, Jews, Roma, queers; in the US right now, Black and Brown immigrants, trans people), to control troublesome others (artists, writers, women, queers, mainstream political opposition), and to punish and eliminate dissent.

In other words, if you play for the people in power or just keep your mouth shut and go on staring at screens and eating your cheese doodles, if you are not seen as The Other, life pretty much continues much as life has always been. Sure, you might miss a neighbor or two, maybe your favorite restaurant or corner store will shut down because the owner was kidnapped and sent away, prices might go up, you might see more cops wandering around, but all your shows will be on TV, you will be able to drive wherever you want, your favorite team will still be playing sports games (though perhaps without foreign players), and there will be plenty of beer and porn. As long as you aren’t perceived as a threat, you might even get to hear some protest songs and be allowed to gather in a crowd to shout obscenities at buildings from the state-sanctioned protest pen. For many, life will seem mostly normal.

However, if you are The Other, a troublemaker, or a known dissenter, life will get hard, very hard. But, will anyone notice? That depends on how well they muzzle the media, something which is pretty difficult to do in the open without public reaction, but can be done through driving media members to self-censorship.

Again, we see a dual-strategy in Trump’s suing, harassment, and defunding media outlets. He’s tried to defund Voice of America, PBS, and NPR, low hanging fruit due to (partial) taxpayer funding of these operations. We’ve also seen lawsuits by Trump against mainstream commercial media outlets. The two things defunding and legal harassment accomplish are, first they punish Trump’s critics. Second, and more important, they serve as a demonstration/example of what happens if you cross Trump, which not only silences critics but scares people into self-censorship, a form of soft authoritarianism or “friendly fascism.”

Since none of us can accurately stare into the souls of others and figure out what they hell they are thinking, self-censorship is difficult to detect, but there are signs it is happening, especially when they are pointed out to you by people like new producer Bill Owens, who resigned from 60 Minutes because CBS’s owners were leaning on the show to tone down criticism of Trump (as to not disrupt their money-making plans).

You also see self-censorship every time a university, law firm, politician, or media group cave to Trump’s bullying. It might seem ironic that people who have far more power and resources to fight back than most cave so easily, but, remember, that these people believe that they have a lot to lose and that a lot is money, money, money, not fairness and freedom.

But people do stand up: There’s me and you. Bernie Sanders, AOC, and many other political leaders. After months of silence Vice President Al Gore came out swinging, comparing the Trump administration to Nazi Germany. He was beaten to that conclusion by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who weeks ago made that warning, and just last week laid into Trump hard (well worth watching his New Hampshire speech).

And then there are the millions of people who are openly dissenting, people who are not The Other and who have never been perceived as troublemakers. We’ve seen massive protests in big cities and small towns. We’ve seen Republican lawmakers get savaged by constituents in deep red states and districts. Most of the country is against Trump’s lawless deportations and his attack on due process. A good majority of the country thinks Trump sucks on every issue, including the economy and immigration, formerly his two strong issues. And then there is this:

This week PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), a non-partisan group, asked people if they agreed with the statement, “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.” Fifty-four percent said “Yes.”

Certainly, it’s concerning that there’s a large number of people who don’t see Trump’s dictator qualities (or do and support authoritarianism). I’m not going to write that off while still acknowledging that this is new ground. I’ve never seen a poll that asks if a president is a dictator, now would I expect people to cut through all the bullshit and see Trump as who he is. (The whole PRRI poll is fascinating. I encourage you to dive in.)

The point is: There’s a lot going on, a lot of information and disinformation about, and a lot of fear and concern over what is happening. It is difficult to get a line on things, even when you soak yourself in a bathtub of data and analysis. If you stare into the abyss (or your screens), of course, you are going to see darkness; however, if you look around, you will see the bad and the good, the horrors and what people are doing to stop it. You see people standing up and fighting back, and seeing those people inspires us to keep standing up and others to join with us.

So, forget the New York Times editorial board and others telling us to mellow out. Don’t accept Chuck Schumer and his “strongly worded letters” to Trump. Stand up and fight back!

Yesterday, I wrote this on social media. It’s an appropriate ender for this piece:

On this day in 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa. This was just four years after he served 27 years in prison for fighting apartheid. And his pre-prison years were no cake walk.

Certainly, Mandela was a great one; however, he was also a person like you and me, with the same feelings and fears that we have. He lived in one of the most oppressive countries on earth, under a regime that classified him and other Black people as low as possible. Before prison, his freedom was severely limited. In prison, he had no freedom. And yet he never gave up, even when it surely seemed like the government was going to kill him. He kept his spirits and fought back, determined to beat his oppressors and help free his country. And he did just that. If he was alive today, he’d tell us to never surrender, never give in, keep fighting the good fight, be compassionate, and try to build a better now.