Mind the gap

Just when you think something has to give and the pace of events will slow down, even more happens. In the last week, we’ve seen a fourth Venezuelan boat blown up by the U.S. government, in apparent ongoing complete contravention of international law. HHS is imploding. There was a the hateful pageantry of the memorial for Charlie Kirk, which made political hay from his violent death. Trump ousted Erik Siebert, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, apparently for refusing to bring charges against Letitia James—who successfully prosecuted her case against the president. Trump is now promoting Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide, to replace him.

Are you up to date on those outrages and all the new ones in the time span since this post went up? Well, I regret to inform you that it is not enough to be up to date on the outrages.

Today, I want to talk about the difference between being aware of or criticizing what’s happening and taking action. I’m going to address why we’re stuck in an endless loop of rhetoric, in which we’re asked to compromise with Trump supporters, which is not the actual way out of this crisis. Today I want to talk about whether there’s even a point to this newsletter, and about understanding the mess we’re in versus doing something about it.

Dealing with Trump voters

We are seeing so many calls from democrats for bipartisan action that punishes Democrats. We’re seeing people like Adam Jentleson, former staffer for John Fetterman, saying, “The folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions.”

We see Ezra Klein suggesting that the left put forward anti-abortion candidates in places like Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri. As many have noted, these are all states that voted to enshrine abortion rights in the last three years. It may be that Klein forgot those states came out to support abortion rights, or perhaps he’s just suggesting compromising for the sake of compromise. In either case, it seems to me that this kind of approach is a bad one.

A majority of Trump voters are never going to change their mind. They simply have to be defeated. Begging the deluded voter or the hateful voter to accept you if you’re willing to go along with their delusions is never going to work. It’s like getting in an argument with a toddler throwing a tantrum. Their political support doesn’t rise out of a rational process that can be reversed with rational methods.

Positive attraction

The key is to shape a vision that feels more meaningful and more powerful, one that becomes more attractive to more people than the autocrat’s. With support from a very small percentage of weakly affiliated Trump voters, those opposing his policies would win. We don’t need the hardcore Trump voters. And so far, Democrats are in fact overperforming across the country in most of the races that have taken place since the 2024 general election.

It can be hard to let go of an irrational fixation. We all have them. But it’s a bad idea to actively encourage them. Most Americans don’t define their political identity through submission to a wannabe authoritarian. That tens of millions do should not mean that everyone else surrenders to that vision in one way or another, or sacrifices someone else’s rights as a compromise with a bigot. Our goal should not be to placate hatred.

Anyone who’s worked or lived with a toddler or someone with dementia knows that once fixed positions are adopted in a disagreement, to stay mired in the framework of that argument is to invite failure. You have to step outside the preexisting conflict, reframe the situation, and offer an appealing alternative.

Candidates who would counter Trump don’t need to accommodate his platform, much of which is irrelevant to voters regardless. If he told them to do the opposite tomorrow, most of them would comply. The real differences are not over policies.

Instead, the left needs to offer a different, better vision for the country. The policies Democrats adopt should flow from that—policies that will directly benefit voters.

Analysis vs action

Civilians in the U.S. as a group still have more than enough power to keep authoritarianism from solidifying and undermining democratic rights completely. It is simply a fact. Though we are careening dangerously down that path, there are not yet enough law enforcement officers to crack down on the whole country. The Trump administration is unpopular. At this point the widespread deployment of the military against U.S. civilians who are conducting peaceful demonstrations in opposition to Trump would make the current government’s hold on power more unsteady, not less.

But that window won’t stay open indefinitely. In the last eight months, we’ve seen the Supreme Court back up kidnapping people from the streets specifically on the basis of perceived race and language. We’ve seen institution after institution that could help to protect Americans bow down before Trump preemptively, apparently willing to take no risks at all.

Some leaders have been putting themselves on the line to help those they’re in a position to protect. Despite weeks of reporting suggesting Harvard was going to cave, the university won its case against the administration over federal funding being yanked, though it’s still unclear whether the school will be able to fully extricate those funds from the administration. In Virginia, Fairfax County schools—which my kids attended for two decades—have joined with other area counties to protect the rights of trans kids. We should absolutely crow about and applaud these actions.

But far too many institutions are not standing up. And if we the people don’t express our displeasure by disrupting the Trump administration agenda that targets the most vulnerable among us, we can’t expect to keep the ability to protect anyone in the long run, including ourselves.

The problem with Degenerate Art

Nearly a year into doing this newsletter, sometimes I wrestle with continuing it. Being well-informed is important, but it’s a trap to think that being well-informed by itself will stop any part of this nightmare.

As a books person, a reading person, I often feel like if I can get a mental handle on an argument or an idea or some piece of history, I’ve gained some kind of… not exactly mastery or control, but some sense of achievement. I feel transformed by knowledge. And intellectually, that may be true. But when the world around you is falling to pieces in ways you understand to be at least partially preventable, knowing what’s happening without acting on that information is pretty useless.

Each week, I tend to say in these Tuesday posts that there are still things we can do to stop the authoritarian power grab that’s underway. And I name some of them. But if that reassures you so much that it keeps you from doing anything yourself, I might be doing more harm than good. It’s an issue I’ll continue to ponder.

In the meantime, I take heart in hearing how many of you—and how many people overall—are out there taking action. As if to emphasize the line from the book of James: “Faith without works is dead,” Reverend David Black protested U.S. government abuse against immigrants in Chicago, taking a projectile strike to the head and what looked like pepper spray to the face over the weekend.

And Amanda Litman over at “Run For Something” noted that nearly 1,000 people signed up to run for office in just the last week. It’s possible to be aware of the bad acts underway without letting them paralyze you. Instead, let each day’s events remind you how important it is to do something, and that publicly doing your part can help turn the tide.

What’s going on versus what to do

It’s easy to get hamstrung through overthinking. The Trump administration has the opposite problem, in which the lack of coherent thought sometimes inhibits even their own agenda. At the same time, the administration blowing up boats (for instance) aims to show that action, no matter how illegal or inane the application, demonstrates power that can’t be resisted.

But the opposite of the senseless application of violence is not to remain perpetually in critical mode, while avoiding taking action yourself. Name calling and detailed online criticism are a good exercise of freedom, but they’re insufficient to counter Trump. If they were enough on their own, he never would have been elected in 2016 in the first place.

What can be even worse is when people sitting at home criticize those who are out working for change. Maybe your criticism is right, and maybe it’s wrong. In either case, it’s unlikely to make a positive difference. Why not step up and do something yourself?

The problem is that it can be difficult to switch modes from armchair quarterback to actually going out to demonstrations, running for office, and organizing a diaper bank or a Covid clinic.

When I mention armchair quarterbacks, I’m not talking about journalists out doing original reporting, because reporters for news outlets you love (and even others that I take issue with) are often actually doing things. Some online personalities are even lawyers litigating cases against the government. Countless people on social media are going to protests, reporting on tear gas and projectiles, and sometimes getting hit themselves.

You keeping up with them, supporting them, and commenting on developments is great. And if you’re a journalist, an organizer, or an educator, online engagement might be a key way to know if you’re making a difference in what’s happening in the U.S. right now. But in our society as it exists today, I think there’s a real danger among the general population of mistaking online engagement itself for action.

A secondhand life

It’s a conundrum faced by all of us these days, one set up by those who don’t have the public interest at heart. I’ve written before about the trap of secondhand experiences that strip you of agency. We live in a reality in which social media companies are competing to create virtual AI friends for you, instead of fostering real-life connections. We live in a political world in which the governing party has literally been swallowed by the cult of a strongman who’s entirely detached it from reality.

Generative AI may have its uses in medical science, but outsourcing your thinking or your creativity—or worse, reducing it to a prompt you give a machine, and calling that literature or art—is a measure of how we are no longer living our lives or staying fully human. Think of who benefits from your dependency on these models.

Even in less harmful settings, a lot of the culture just leans toward this kind of secondhand experience. Think of all the reboots that are not reinventions of the original concept, but merely slowly degrading repetitions of it.

Think of how many people watch Twitch streamers play a game they themselves could be playing instead. Think of the podcasters who pretend to hear a classic song for the first time, and act out their reactions to it. It’s a nostalgia loop in which they pantomime your experience of first hearing something you grew to love.

There’s a small dopamine hit—as if you’re sharing a connection to that person or reliving your life through them. But really, it’s a closed loop and a third-rate recreation of your original experience.

I’m not trying to torpedo your fun. If you just enjoy seeing someone play a video game, or checking out the eleventh installment in a sequel, or watching the simulacrum of hearing a song the first time, there’s not much harm in it. Not everything in life has to be useful. But if you’re experiencing your political reality that way, with no sense of yourself being a player or able to actually act to change the world—on a large scale of millions, it’s a disaster for the country and the world.

The secondhand experience of politics protects you from reality. Social media companies try to corral you on their sites in a bid to lodge you in the cocoon of a passive observer who experiences everything but risks nothing. But political effort and political change entail small risks. Any real life entails some risk.

It is possible to step outside an online community and try something in the real world. Most Americans won’t have to be Pastor David Black, getting pepper sprayed by law enforcement. They can, instead, move the needle in critical ways through smaller actions.

Stepping up

If you’ve only watched Twitch streamers play a game or critiqued protest tactics from the sidelines, your critical faculties are going to be much more developed than your ability to do the thing you’ve been critiquing. They’re two different skills.

All of which is to say it’s fine to just go out and try simple things. The cost of food is already through the roof. Due to the government terrorizing agricultural migrants and the current tariff policies, food prices will go much higher in the coming months.

See what kind of help your local food bank needs. Volunteer. If you’re more of an organizing personality, find out whether your community is effectively identifying the families that don’t have enough food. Talk to local politicians, talk to nonprofits. See what’s missing, and whether there’s some hole to fill through a fundraising campaign, or negotiating a cut-rate lease, or even donated space.

There’s a thing in fascism called the cult of action for action’s sake, in which having an effect in the world is seen as more important than it being well-planned or effective. Think of the murders the U.S. is committing with the boats.

It might be easy to dismiss the Trump threat as all action and no thought. But the truth is that most of what’s been done so far had a trial run or was discussed in the first Trump administration. In addition, Project 2025 is still providing a playbook. There’s thought behind what they’re doing, even if the thinking isn’t being done by the president.

Where we stand today, whole groups on the left are in a different kind of danger—on a path that’s all thought with no action. As journalist James Ball noted, the Democratic party seems to have adopted items from a manual written the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) about how to derail political meetings: “Talk as frequently as possible and at great length… bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible… haggle over precise wordings… refer back to matters decided upon to reopen the question… and be worried about the propriety of any decision.”

The danger for the left now is to get caught up in critiques of those who are actually doing things, in which the people doing the critiquing will mistake their contribution for something useful. At this stage, facing a closing window for outcomes without significant increase in state violence, putting your weight into the societal shift we need is far more valuable.

Much of that will take the form of small actions in your community. And that shift might be easier than you imagine.

U-turn to democracy

For a paper published in January in the journal Democratization titled “When autocratization is reversed,” Marina Nord led a group of authors at Sweden’s University of Gothenberg and the University of Liverpool in the U.K. in a look at political U-turns—times that governments had rapidly switched direction—between 1900 and 2023.

They divided instances of sudden shifts into three categories: authoritarian manipulation, democratic reaction, and international intervention. They found that these shifts were linked in ways that political science hasn’t fully clocked before. They wrote that more than half of all authoritarian shifts—autocratic episodes—turned into democratization shifts, and that in the last 30 years, that number was nearly three-fourths.

What’s more, some 90% of U-turns led to greater democratization in the end. The authors wrote that they found “a democratic breakdown does not necessarily prevent a return to democracy, especially if autocratization is halted and reversed relatively swiftly.”

No one study represents all of reality. And reversals don’t happen overnight. But this study offers snapshot from a more objective perspective of how our current situation might fit into history or play out. We’re on a steep descent right now, but we can still take action to save democracy. And the odds are with us.

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