If you have read Revolution in the Air, or a couple of related posts on Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy, you know that I agree with Sharp’s ideas about how to resist dictatorships in order to replace them with democratic forms of governance.
One helpful reminder is that nothing Trump has threatened to do, however horrible or outlandish, comes close to the damage Bush and Cheney did when they started the Iraq war.
That adrenaline isn’t the result of dry, routine training in procedures. It results from a culture of fear and threat perception turned to aggressiveness, and use of firearms as a form of aggressive self-protection. It requires a lot of firm, even obstinate leadership in the other direction to change this culture, to turn police officers into public servants again.
We realize now how completely our relationship with police has flipped. Police used to put themselves in danger to protect us. Now they put us in danger to protect themselves.
He tweets his own foolishness, then gets mad when people don’t believe him. He throws mini-tantrums in his sleep, and uses terms like FAKE NEWS! with such abandon that few, even his supporters, care what he says anymore.
We have to find a way to return simple profitability to our health care markets. If we cannot do that, the supply of high quality, economical, and timely health care will continue to decline.
Call the results apocalypse or whatever you like – dismiss the prophets as crazies – but citizens’ response to their government is based on politicians’ deeds, not some irrational fear that the sky is about to fall. Pervasive alienation arises from real circumstances.
Such a loss of connecting tissue ends nationhood. That is our current destination, unless we find leadership that prevents such a grim outcome.
Donald Trump is not responsible for crimes committed before he was elected president, but he sought leadership of the government that committed them. Do you want to follow him?
The Jeffersonian 