There’s an emerging blue-state nightmare: Inspired by President Donald Trump’s call to round up immigrants who are in the country illegally, red-state governors might start sending their National Guard troops into blue states without those leaders’ permission.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Your assessment of the situation is right—this is extremely dangerous and it cannot be allowed to stand. But that means our political strategy is more important than ever. People seem to think that because this is dangerous and we’re angry we just need to go for the most extreme reaction possible but this does not logically follow if it’s not effective in achieving our goals.
First you need to understand that this is happening because a plurality of Americans want it to. So it’s not at all clear to me that violent actions will turn anyone against them. Maybe if the acts are small and well targeted and there is a huge, violent overreaction, but remember that their control over the media means it will be painted in the worst possible light. I personally think this only increases the danger and is more likely to turn fence-sitters and even some supporters against us than to join the cause.
A military coup is a particularly bad solution. Firstly because it has exactly zero chance of happening—our military leaders are not going to take Trump out because he’s trying to perform an internal coup. They just won’t. And even if they did, there is a danger they don’t relinquish power. And even if they did that it still normalizes the military as the highest power that can simply depose any president they don’t like. It’s hard to imagine a more destructive action to American democracy even if it did remove Trump from office.
The best actions at this time are raising awareness of what’s happening and building and organizing public support and resistance. People are scared and discouraged right now. We need actions that change this energy and unite people. Like it or not, political violence is divisive in US culture and it won’t achieve this. Once our movement is widely supported and powerful we can take on Trump directly but we need to build that up first.
In the meantime, courts, bureaucrats and politicians need to do everything they can to raise the alarm, slow things down, and impose political costs on them to make their takeover more difficult. This can buy us time to muster the public support we need to win.
I hope you’re right, because what you’re describing is how things are headed. An entrenched fascist government will be a lot harder to remove with or without force, however.
Sadly in either case we’re looking at a decade or more to undo the damage that’s already been done, if it’s even reversible.
Whatever happens I’m certain now that American hegemony is collapsing in my lifetime, and hopefully that ends up being a good thing.
It’s at least possible it may be a good thing but without a broader liberation movement to fill the power vacuum, it’s more likely it will simply be filled by another imperialistic nation or coalition. I don’t see much sign of such a movement so I’m not very optimistic.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Your assessment of the situation is right—this is extremely dangerous and it cannot be allowed to stand. But that means our political strategy is more important than ever. People seem to think that because this is dangerous and we’re angry we just need to go for the most extreme reaction possible but this does not logically follow if it’s not effective in achieving our goals.
First you need to understand that this is happening because a plurality of Americans want it to. So it’s not at all clear to me that violent actions will turn anyone against them. Maybe if the acts are small and well targeted and there is a huge, violent overreaction, but remember that their control over the media means it will be painted in the worst possible light. I personally think this only increases the danger and is more likely to turn fence-sitters and even some supporters against us than to join the cause.
A military coup is a particularly bad solution. Firstly because it has exactly zero chance of happening—our military leaders are not going to take Trump out because he’s trying to perform an internal coup. They just won’t. And even if they did, there is a danger they don’t relinquish power. And even if they did that it still normalizes the military as the highest power that can simply depose any president they don’t like. It’s hard to imagine a more destructive action to American democracy even if it did remove Trump from office.
The best actions at this time are raising awareness of what’s happening and building and organizing public support and resistance. People are scared and discouraged right now. We need actions that change this energy and unite people. Like it or not, political violence is divisive in US culture and it won’t achieve this. Once our movement is widely supported and powerful we can take on Trump directly but we need to build that up first.
In the meantime, courts, bureaucrats and politicians need to do everything they can to raise the alarm, slow things down, and impose political costs on them to make their takeover more difficult. This can buy us time to muster the public support we need to win.
I hope you’re right, because what you’re describing is how things are headed. An entrenched fascist government will be a lot harder to remove with or without force, however.
Sadly in either case we’re looking at a decade or more to undo the damage that’s already been done, if it’s even reversible.
Whatever happens I’m certain now that American hegemony is collapsing in my lifetime, and hopefully that ends up being a good thing.
It’s at least possible it may be a good thing but without a broader liberation movement to fill the power vacuum, it’s more likely it will simply be filled by another imperialistic nation or coalition. I don’t see much sign of such a movement so I’m not very optimistic.