DAMAGE CONTROL - sure there's a Deep State, but we're all GOOD guys, amirite?
If We Adjust to Trumpism, the Republic Is Lost
What I mean when I say I’m in the resistance
November 20, 2019
Richard Primus
Law professor at the University of Michigan
https://web.archive.org/web/20191121071325/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/what-it-means-be-part-resistance/602302/
To me, resistance names a posture that goes beyond ordinary political opposition; it suggests a context in which power is wielded in unusually dangerous ways and is countered by a population with heightened consciousness, exerting itself to an unusual degree. Understood in this sense, I embrace the term: I’m a resistor. And my resistance is based on two premises. The first is that the Trump presidency is morally repugnant and a threat to the rule of law. The second is that I am obligated to exceed my normal level of civic engagement to meet the threat.
Read more: Lessons from the French Resistance
Many people disagree with my first premise—that Trump is morally repugnant and a threat to the rule of law. Roughly 40 percent of Americans say they approve of Trump’s job performance. They shouldn’t. The president is a bigot, a con man, a relentless liar, and a spoiled bully who inflicts needless suffering on vulnerable people. He pardons convicted war criminals, uses his office to enrich himself personally, and courts foreign interference in American elections. He will break any rule, violate any norm, betray any national interest for his personal benefit. The constitutional system is not built to withstand the damage that an unscrupulous president with no sense of self-restraint can inflict. As I have explained at greater length elsewhere, the Trump presidency is the greatest internally generated threat to our republic since the 1870s.
As for the reasoning behind the second premise: I firmly believe that Americans can meet the challenge posed by Trump and Trumpism. But we cannot take anything for granted. Every system of government eventually passes away, and the United States enjoys no magical exemption from that reality. Our constitutional republic can survive Trump and Trumpism, but there is no guarantee that it will. Whether it does depends on what we do, now, and week by week until the danger has passed. Navigating that danger successfully will take a lot of effort by a lot of people.
The required effort has both practical and psychological aspects. Practically, resistors need to devote time and energy, actively, to work that has real-world impact. Much of my resistance takes the form of legal work—a lot of it through the organization ''Protect Democracy''—because that’s a skill I happen to have. But people without law degrees can do the field work of political organizing, and everyone who knows people who are not yet persuaded that Trump must be stopped can try to persuade them to think differently. That’s hard, but no republic worth saving is saved easily. And everyone who knows people who know Trump is bad, but keep quiet, can encourage those people to speak up. Each week resistors need to answer the question, “What did I do to address the problem?”