Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Millions of Americans now share the profoundly disturbing experience of watching and waiting as their nation lurches toward authoritarianism. In a previous essay, I described the Trump administration as a “presidency in search of an emergency”—i.e., a crisis that could be used as a pretext for seizing unchecked power. I opined that the emergency could come in the form of an economic meltdown, a terrorist attack, or a natural disaster.
Forging a force that can effectively counter Trumpism requires change that will involve tension within each movement as well as between them, but that may be necessary if either is to have a future.
There are no party lines in our movements today, only a variety of proposals, tactics, strategies, memes, and other approaches to mobilization that we might choose from, and so far, while some have accomplished great things, we have yet to find the formula to empower this movement of movements as the force it must become.
If the first 17 days of the new administration foreshadow the next four years in the context of anticipated climate change, we will need to tap deeply into our own inner resilience, and most especially, we’ll need each other.
From a Transition perspective, a shortening of trade distances has to be a good thing, right? Bringing manufacturing back closer to where people live, thereby reducing carbon emissions, enabling more money to cycle within the national economy rather than globally? So far, so Transition… And yet.
Nevertheless, even as political events spiral toward (perhaps intended) chaos, I wish once again, as I’ve done countless times before, to point to a lie even bigger than the ones being served up by the new administration…It is the lie that human society can continue growing its population and consumption levels indefinitely on our finite planet, and never suffer consequences.
If these were ordinary times, progressives might get away with casual images of our political opponents. Those who disagree “lack information,” or “remain prejudiced,” or are “gripped by an emotion like hate.” Reassured, we can return to informational outreach or protests or confrontations and hope that makes a difference.
The wall signifies a desire to reduce the number of newcomers and to preserve a way of life that is threatened economically and culturally by the globalism embraced by the country’s bi-coastal elites. Stop the invasion of newcomers and you will stop the forces bearing down on a threatened way of life in flyover country; so goes the visceral logic.
To the question, “What is wrong with the economy?” Trump answers: we have made bad deals…
When a local organizer for a new adult education project in Austin, Texas, asked me to teach a course on politics in January, it was tempting to focus on the potentially disastrous short-term consequences of the election. Instead, I decided to frame the course around the disastrous long-term forces that shape the contemporary United States, no matter who is in office.
Not since the Civil War has an American presidential Inauguration Day been so fraught with fear and dread (on February 23, 1861, Abraham Lincoln traveled to his inauguration under military guard, arriving in Washington, D.C., in disguise). The incoming president is the most unpopular of any to assume office since modern polling began.
This week on Sea Change Radio, in the second half of our discussion with former senior advisers to the Bernie Sanders campaign, Becky Bond and Zack Exley, host Alex Wise struggles with the harsh reality of an incoming President completely unqualified and unprepared to lead the planet’s only superpower.
