The Perils of Resistance
On Election Night, as the depressing results rolled in, the Daily Show's Jon Stewart cautioned that those of us who see Trump as a great danger should move beyond resistance: "We have to continue to fight and work day in and day out to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country that we know is possible." That's good advice for a lot of reasons.
It may be that simply resisting the world of Donald Trump and trying to prevent the very worst will indeed seem like a full-time job over the next four years, but do we really want to exhaust ourselves that way? Worse yet, the message resisters send is ultimately a negative one: Whatever we may be, we are not that. So, in the years to come, a politics of resistance runs the same risk that befell the Harris campaign. As Harvard pollster John Della Volpe put it: "'Not being Trump' was never going to be enough."
What's more, resistance is all about stopping change. Yes, sometimes change is dangerous and needs to be stopped, but that still makes such resistance inherently conservative. A devotion to preventing the worst will allow the other side to look like the force for change and so define the terms of debate.
Yet, by definition, liberals and progressives are supposed to be that force. Do we really want to cede that to -- yes! -- Donald Trump?
For now, at least, the lesson of Election Day 2024 is that, in a contest over which party can best protect Americans, the current version of the Republican Party is likely the winner. We've learned in the hardest way possible that the Democrats can't "out-Republican the Republicans," as Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, put it.
A politics of resistance could end up merely reinforcing the fear driving MAGA-ism's longing for a strongman. It's simply not the right message to send to Trump voters if you wish even a small slice of them to change their minds two to four years from now.
It may feel good to focus on Trump's evils and exclaim, as poet Walt Whitman did about President Franklin Pierce: "Such a rascal and thief in the presidency. This poor scum -- the sh*t-ass! God damn him! -- eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it, and tries to force it on the states." But to focus solely, or even primarily, on such anger means making Trump the center of our attention. (Exactly what he wants, of course!) Hasn't he gotten enough attention already?
And do we want to carry all the anger that full-time resistance is likely to breed? Do we want to let Donald Trump rob us of our capacity for happiness for the next four years? We could at least balance our outrage with the sentiment Whitman expressed about President Benjamin Harrison: "I think him mainly a gas bag, the smallest potato in the heap. As long as he remains in office, the aura of the presidency will give him prominence -- but after that -- oh! what will be his oblivion -- utter!"
As the Italian revolutionary philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously put it, in the years to come we could use more "pessimism of the mind and optimism of the will."
Alternative Vision and Action
Of course, we need to keep up some significant degree of resistance. (I'm definitely not among the astounding 28% of Democratic voters who claimed, in a post-election poll, that they would "support" Trump's presidency.) But we should heed the words of Barack Obama's former speechwriter Ben Rhodes: "Democrats must reject the impulse to simply be a resistance that condemns whatever outrageous thing Mr. Trump says. While confronting Mr. Trump when we must, we must also focus on what we stand for. We need to articulate an alternative vision for what kind of democracy comes next."
Even the New York Times editorial board, hardly the most progressive group around, got the point: "A threat to democracy does not exempt leaders from giving voters a plan for the future that reflects the America they want to live in."
And we can do more than envision a better future and plan for it during the next four years. Though things may be dreadful in Washington, state and local governments still have significant power to pursue policies to make life better. In my Colorado town, for example, there's a strong effort to push the city council to raise the minimum wage, a measure our county commissioners, under public pressure, already endorsed. Denver is not only preparing to resist the deportation of undocumented residents but offering them access to city services, modeling what a humane government, one that cares about all its people, actually looks like. And even when politicians won't act, many states allow citizen-initiated referenda like the ones that secured abortion rights in my state and many others.
Then there's an endless list of things we can do as individuals. Think of it as "prefigurative politics." As Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day put it, the energy we would burn up trying to tear down an oppressive government can be better used by ignoring that government and building "a new civilization within the shell of the old" -- new institutions that genuinely serve people.
It also means building new feelings and attitudes. As we face a nightmarish four years of a federal government built on fear and intent on keeping all Americans (other than billionaires) afraid, anything we do to bring more confidence and happiness into our lives is a step in a better direction -- for ourselves and the country.
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