Article: Don't Give Away Your Power Willingly

What you are reading almost didn't get written.

About a month and a half ago, I noted on my to-do list, "Download and scrub stories from pub[lication]s if we lose." Heeding the threats to free speech, particularly the media, a second Trump administration posed, I wanted to leave little trace of my writing for potential malefactors to use as a pretext to arrest and possibly disappear me.

I woke up Wednesday morning astonished and sickened the country that had had a front-row seat to the twice-impeached felon's perfidy willingly, effortlessly, even, chose to put him back into office. I deactivated my Twitter (I still dead-name it) account, but I was conflicted over carrying out the task of erasing years of writing. Besides the headache of doing it, what might it imply? Fear? Intimidation?

I started writing political op-ed pieces in 2015, inspired by author and progressive radio show host Thom Hartmann, whom I got a chance to meet in 2019 at a book signing for his first in the Hidden History book series, T he Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment. I had his email address from when he gave it out on the air once, so, before I effaced nearly a decade and countless hours of time and research, I decided to ask Thom, not entirely expecting a response.

"Good morning, Thom," I wrote. "I publish prolifically on Medium, Substack, and OpEd News. Now that you-know-who is returning to power, do you suggest I scrub everything from those sites? I would appreciate your advice."

Three minutes later I received the response, "I'm not."

"Thank you for your prompt reply," I responded. "I will not either then."

To my surprise, Thom actually referenced this exchange on the air. The next morning, on my way to work, I was listening to one of the dozens of podcasts I subscribe to, and heard someone on the show tell someone else, "Don't give away your power willingly."

Between Thom's advice and that one, I was certain I was making the right choice leaving everything in the field to speak for itself. This is my power, and I'm not giving it up willingly.

That being said, we are about to enter a very fraught time period in American history. Some are assuming that since our institutions held during the first Trump administration, and the adjudicated rapist was prevented from realizing most of his heinous, incompetent impulses, the upcoming sequel won't be too bad.

As many have pointed out, though, the former slumlord host of Celebrity Apprentice has had four years to foment a return. And he isn't the only one. The entire republican party has been filling up with MAGA loyalists while President Joe Biden has been righting the ship. While he is responsible for appointing a third of the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices, Donald Trump did not have absolutely immunity from criminal prosecution for "official acts" while in office. That came this summer. He did not have an ultra-right wing blueprint for "deconstructing the administrative state" like he does now in "Project 2025" and "Agenda 47". He did not have any idea before there would be anyone in his administration with the temerity to tell him "no". Those people are gone. They warned us about him, yet we failed to listen.

2016 was a fluke. This time, it's completely our fault.

How did this happen?

How could we have see the choices between continuing and strengthening our constitutionally limited democratic republic and ending it, and choose the latter? There's plenty of blame to go around. The Democratic party is not off the hook here. For one thing, it still hasn't learned how to effectively message its accomplishments. Those of us who marinate in politics every day are aware that Joe Biden has been the most legislatively accomplished president since Franklin Roosevelt. But those who do not follow politics rely on a for-profit corporate media more concerned with its ratings than actually presenting context. The horse race is more salacious than policy. Even the so-called "liberal" media like CNN and MSNBC really aren't liberal at all. There is no comparable media on the left to effectively compete with the billionaire-funded right-wing hate media machine. President Biden and his surrogates should have been reiterating the administration's accomplishments as much as Donald Trump reiterated his lies about accomplishments when he was in office. Trump was lying through his teeth, but because he was screaming about "the best economy in history" and held "Infrastructure Week" each month without actually investing in any infrastructure, the media picked up on it and amplified it.

Democrats, however, just assume the successes speak for themselves.

The problem is that most of the progress will not be evident for at least a year or two -- right in the middle of the second Trump administration. So guess who is going to be taking credit for it just as he took credit for President Obama's accomplishments.

The cycle continues. As Vt. Sen. Bernie Sanders said last week in one of myriad postmortem analyses, "[It] should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party, which has abandoned working-class people, would find that the working class has abandoned them." Where was the cable news coverage of Joe Biden being the first sitting president to walk a union picket line? Where was the coverage of Biden being the first president in forty years to repudiate neo-liberal "trickle-down" economic policies? Where was the term "corporate greed" anywhere in the mainstream media instead of "inflation"? The Democratic party had an opportunity to write/right the narrative by explaining to us that continual high prices are due to corporations refusing to lower costs after the pandemic drove them up due to supply chain disruptions. As a result, people hear Trump and his surrogates pounding the message that the economy is the "worst" when the opposite is true. This, of course, segues into a historical trend. History shows that whenever there is progress -- particularly economic -- there is always backlash. This is no different. The Biden administration was the first in too long to require the morbidly rich to pay a little more in taxes, so naturally, those morbidly rich have declared war on him and democratic economic policies. The wealthy people who own the corporate media, whether it's CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or NBC, want their republican tax cuts . They know how to feed people just enough to maintain the status quo. Dark money is a factor too. Most estimates state about $20 billion was pumped into this election cycle, brought to us by five corrupt right-wingers on the US Supreme Court who asserted money equals speech. Let's not forget that Kamala Harris received millions fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020. The numbers of people who abstained--Democrats, republicans, and Independents -- is on par with the apathy we experienced in 2016. Current polling numbers suggest third-party candidates like the Green Party's Jill Stein and Independent Cornel West did not play as sizable role this time as they did in 2016. However, many still voted for them because of their stance on the Israel-Gaza war. It's pretty safe to say Gaza will be toast after January 20. Finally, let's not discount misogyny and plain old American racism, which the wealthy and well-connected have traditionally used as a wedge to gin up the electorate for the sake of tax cuts and deregulation. The republican party can't come right out and admit, "Hey, we're the party of white supremacy and misogyny, and we only serve the wealthy." So they throw enough red meat to the base to disguise their disdain for minorities, the poor, LGBTQ+ Americans, and women in tirades about "tax cuts", "immigration", the "economy", "cancel culture", and "woke liberal" policies like "trans people playing women's sports" and books that teach America's uncomfortable history of slavery and genocide of Indigenous people. Former Reagan policy advisor Lee Atwater explained this "Southern strategy" back in the 1980s.

As the Brookings Institute published nearly a month ago:

"Race is traditionally a factor in presidential elections in the United States. Trump knows this and uses race as a means of dividing the country. Accordingly, he injected race into the campaign almost immediately following Harris' emergence as the Democratic nominee, calling into question her racial identity. Trump said, "I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now, she wants to be known as black." He added that "she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went, she became a black person." While Trump stated that he does not care how Harris racially identifies, he knows that many Americans do. One strategy in casting doubt about Vice President Harris' blackness is aiming to chip away at the Democratic voting bloc of black voters, whether this be by voting for him or not voting at all."

So get ready.

Get ready for the indefatigable gaslighting.

Get ready for relentless projection, because if there is one thing we have learned from the modern-day republican party, particularly its standard bearer, if it accuses us of doing something, we can be sure Republicans are doing it.

Get ready for corruption like we have never seen. The next president is going to surround himself with some of the most unscrupulous individuals among us who will not be concerned with the price of bacon or affordable housing, but how to extract as much profit from us as they can. They are wasting no time in taking their victory laps, licking their chops, getting ready to turn this country into the oligarchy they have been plotting for decades. They want another tax break on top of the one Trump passed at the end of his first year in the White House that handed a $1.5 trillion dollar permanent tax cut for the morbidly rich. The middle class and lower-income Americans who voted for him, thinking he is going to "better for the economy," aren't going to escape the imminent collapse.

Get ready for the environmental catastrophes that will accelerate now that we have re-elected a climate change denier who withdrew us from the Paris Climate Accords during his first term and installed in his first cabinet a coal lobbyist to head the Environmental Protection Agency and a fossil fuel lobbyist to head the Department of the Interior. In April, Trump promised oil industry executives that, if re-elected, he would destroy the fossil fuel regulations making President Biden the most environmentally progressive president in history.

Get ready for more incompetence, which might actually help stave off the creeping fascism the majority of us chose last week, but...

Get ready for an administration predicated on revenge and lust for more power.

Get ready to join the syndicate of global autocrats disdainful of democracy, which includes Russia's Vladimir Putin, who will most certainly ramp up his assault on Ukraine now that he will have our blessing. Once that happens, we can almost guarantee he will not stop there, but continue marching into other European countries, possibly even NATO ones, like Poland. Once that happens, it's World War Three -- and we'll be one of the Axis powers.

China has been watching what the United States does about Ukraine. Now that we have elected someone who has expressed a desire to leave Ukraine twisting in the wind, what's to stop Chinese president Xi Jinping from invading the island democracy of Taiwan off China's coast? He's already asserted he is prepared to go to war with western powers over it.

Instead of clutching our pearls, however, some legislatures are springing into action to help stave off anticipated anti-democratic behavior.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the Empire State Freedom Initiative, which plans to address policy and regulatory threats that may come out of the Trump administration. Attorney General Letitia James explained:

"My office has been preparing for a potential second Trump administration, and I am ready to do everything in my power to ensure our state and nation do not go backwards. During his first term, we stood up for the rule of law and defended against abuses of power and federal efforts to harm New Yorkers. Together with Governor Hochul, our partners in state and local government, and my colleague attorneys general from throughout the nation, we will work each and every day to defend Americans, no matter what this new administration throws at us. We are ready to fight back again."

On election day, New York passed Proposition 1, the "Equal Rights Amendment" to the state Constitution, to protect New Yorkers' ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, pregnancy and outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week convened a special session of the state legislature bolstering California legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families.

Dr. Timothy Snyder, Yale University history professor and author of Our Malady, On Tyranny, and The Road to Unfreedom, warns against obeying in advance.

Writing is another act of resistance as is all art. This is the time to make more art as acts of resistance.

I refuse to give up my power willingly. Don't anyone do it either. Ben Franklin famously said, "A republic, if you can keep it" when asked what kind of government the framers of the Constitution designed.

On Tuesday, we chose not to keep it any longer.

But we will survive this -- if we don't give up our power willingly.