Why aren’t we protesting in the streets?
This week’s question comes to us from Simo Ferraro: Why aren’t people protesting in the streets this time as much as during the first Trump term?
This week’s question comes to us from Simo Ferraro:
Why aren’t people protesting in the streets this time as much as during the first Trump term?
First off, I’m not sure that’s completely true, but I get what you’re saying.
When Trump was elected in 2016, Erika and I were in Berlin speaking at a conference. The conference was a two-day thing, and the election was happening right between both days. I was lucky enough to speak on the first day. I remember cracking a few jokes during my talk, like “hah hah orange clown.” I was convinced there was no way America was going to elect such an obviously horrible candidate. That night, we gathered with some of the attendees in the hotel lobby and watched the returns. I remember being confident enough, and tired enough, that I went up to bed before the results started coming in. Stupidly, I got in bed and turned the TV on. A couple of hours later I was back in the lobby with everyone else. Stunned. Erika had to speak the next day. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to do it. She’s amazing.
The day after the conference we went to the Topology of Terror Museum, built on the site of the old SS office. The exhibition at the museum presents a timeline for how Hitler came to power. In short: an idiot no one took too seriously made cause with disaffected regular people, convinced them their disaffection wasn’t their fault by giving them a common enemy to blame, rallied everyone’s worst instincts, and murdered those people in mass. (I’m in no way making light of any of this.) As we walked through the exhibition it was chilling to see how transparently Hitler’s actions, especially as he rose to power, mapped to Trump’s rhetoric, and eventual actions.
That night we joined in a protest at the Brandenburg Gate. And honestly, the irony of gathering in that particular spot to protest against the rise of fascism in America was something.
By the time we got back stateside a few weeks later, we felt ready to join every protest. And we did. Did it accomplish anything? I’d argue that the gathering of people in common cause always accomplishes something.
Fast forward four years, and we were relieved he was out of office.
Fast forward another four years, and we were despondent that he was back in office.
So we got ready to protest again. Except, yeah, it feels a little different doesn’t it?
I think the answer might lie in the part that we fast-forwarded. So let’s rewind a little bit:
When Trump was elected the first time it felt like an aberration. We were coming off eight years of Obama, and although Obama didn’t quite turn out to be the revolutionary HOPE he advertised himself to be (no one could be), he was absolutely a sign of positive change, of forward momentum. Proof that America was improving. Proof of momentum towards a more just place. We elected a Black dude! Twice! And a momentum we absolutely expected to continue with the election of America’s first woman president, an expectation which polls predicted. When that didn’t happen, we were convinced that something had gone wrong. Foreign interference! The Russians! Election hacking!
We protested because we didn’t believe it was real. We protested because it felt like our positive momentum was hijacked. Democrats thumped their chest and made speeches about “this not being who we are.” The state of California issued a decree about how we were keeping democracy warm for everyone. The Washington Post changed their tagline to America Dies in Darkness™. LOL. We protested the Muslim Ban. We protested families in cages at the border. Etc. Etc.
Then Covid hit and we broke. Trump did nothing. Millions of Americans died. George Floyd was murdered by cops. White America started waking up to the fact that the cops kill a lot of Black folks, which Black America was already very much aware of. Corporations made grandiose statements about how much they cared about DEI. People marched some more. 2020 rolled around and we kicked Trump out of office. He attempted an actual coup. Oopsie. Skipped the inauguration and fucked off to Florida.
Aberration over. Whew.
Joe Biden, of course, kicked things off by saying nevermind about the coup, just boys being boys. Ate ice cream while Roe was dismantled, kept building the border wall Trump started, pretended Covid was over, forgave a couple of student loans, then smiled and signed a lot of bombs before shipping them to Palestine. Trump comes back. Nancy Pelosi emails me about my $10 being the only thing that stands between America and fascism. Silicon Valley discovers fascism might get them the new hit they so desperately need after Bored Apes stunk up the room, and rips up the DEI statements it made two years earlier. The Washington Post and the NY Times remember that Trump sells a lot of newspapers. Biden remembers he’s too old for this shit. America breathes a sigh of relief because Kamala Harris isn’t an old white guy, but then she remembers that AIPAC has a lot of money. She lights up The Sphere in Vegas and takes Liz Cheney to lunch with the $10 we all sent her. The world’s richest and shittiest human being, who can absofuckinglutely afford to go to therapy, decides to make his bad transphobic parenting everyone’s problem. Chuck Schumer goes off into the Poconos looking for two mythical moderate Republicans. Trump wins again.Trump wins again.
If it happens twice it’s not an aberration.
I think that’s the basic difference between the first Trump election and the second. The first felt like a weird mistake. An aberration. The second election tells me that, no, this is exactly who America is.
It’s not an aberration. It’s a regression to the mean. I mean, the election wasn’t close. This wasn’t a coup. This wasn’t foreign interference. This is who we are.
And no, I’m not trying to depress the fuck out of you and tell you to give up. I’m saying that we should look at ourselves squarely in the mirror, see who we really are, and be honest with ourselves about it. We had the energy to put America in rehab once, it got out, and that second intervention is much much harder than the first.
America is an imperialist country built on genocide, enslaved labor, and hatred. If you need to believe we are #1, then know that we are #1 in all of those things. You can keep your foam finger.
Then we can get to changing it. There’s a lot of work to do. Some of it will be done in the streets. You should take part in it if that’s your thing. But you should also ask yourself what you are doing to make those things happen. Protests are organized by people like me and you. So are food banks. So are mutual aid stations. So are strikes. We’re gonna need all of it.
But we need to understand that all of the ugliness we see right now? It IS who we are. We can change. It’ll be hard.
Meanwhile… GIVE MONEY TO TRANS PEOPLE!
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