Resist

 Josh Marshall looks at the failure of civic elites to stand up to Trump. He references the concept of "civic virtue" that was central to the earliest vision of republican rule immediately after the Revolution. The assumption was that - in a Republic - citizens, especially elite citizens, would subsume their personal ambitions into the national project. This largely failed under the Confederation and was why the Constitution was written: to replace voluntary virtue with a government strong enough to enforce laws. Ironically, the Framers still thought some civic virtue would remain, which is why they didn't think political parties and the attendant partisanship would exist. How can their be an "opposition" party in a Republic?

Back to Marshall, I heard Obama speak at the CT Forum, where he said that elites need to risk a little comfort to preserve democracy. The results since then have been mixed. Universities are finally fighting back against efforts to destroy academic freedom, but corporate media seems more and more supine in their coverage of Trump. The Times currently has a piece about the changing architectural plans for the East Wing, rather than screaming about the fact that every bit of what he's doing is a violation of the red letter of the law. He's breaking the law in plain sight and they want to discuss his aesthetic vision?

Krugman has one of his weekend talks with Erica Chenoweth, where they discuss the relative success of both protests and civil resistance (which Chenoweth argues are not synonymous). Chenoweth famously noted that if 3.5% of the population joins protest movements, the regime usually falls. 

While that is actually optimistic - No Kings mobilized about 2.3% of the population already - my concern is about one aspect that we are truly deficient in, if we are going to use mass movements to defeat fascism in America: civil society. When Chenoweth looked at the most successful mass movement, she was especially taken with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Those happened despite crackdowns on civil society, but those crackdowns actually made civil society important. When you repress something, you get a counterreaction. 

Our problem is not that civil society has been repressed, but that we have largely let it atrophy and perish. 

The Big Event that has yet to happen is Trumpist shock troops shooting protestors. What made No Kings so impressive was how peaceful it was. Chenoweth and Krugman talk about how important that is. Still, Trump has hired a bunch of unqualified goombahs to staff his Deportation Force. It's only a matter of time before one of them fires at and kills a protestors. I know I kept a wary eye towards every pickup truck that drove by our protest. 

If - or more likely when - Trumpists draw first blood, the response of the American people will be critical. I have no idea what that response will be.