RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 313 Apocalypse or a Call to Resist and Build?
Episode 313 of RevolutionZ continues to focus on resisting Trump and going beyond him to build better. It briefly shares feelings and fears that dog me and likely you too. It lays out three paths toward removing Trump. It offers a hypothesis about the potential impact of the first months of Trump's second administration. And it moves from the facts and the hypothesis it offers to a proposal about what we might do now. Along the way it also offers a way of thinking about Trump's voters that avoids writing them off, and a way of collectively resisting and beating Trump along with everyone who wants to resist that avoids becoming subservient to the Democratic Party.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 313th consecutive episode, which is more than a little hard to believe. Perhaps you will do me a favor and talk to new folks about connecting with it, and if you are yourself new, well, most of the old episodes really almost all of them can be heard now and be fine, because they are so often about vision and strategy, and not solely journalistic, that only a few are time-bound. So this time again, I can't help myself. As it seems so germane and people seem so distraught about it, I again address Trumpism and what to do about it. The title is Die, survive or Thrive, and we begin.
Speaker 1:Are you like me? Has getting out of bed become a serious challenge? Has getting back in bed become a beckoning attraction? Do you intermittently see a mountain on one side and a cliff that plummets to hell on the other side? To borrow from Dylan, do your eyes collide with stuffed graveyards? Are you ill that Maggie's farm, which itself deserved revolutionary transformation, is now instead morphing into Trump's concentration camp plantation?
Speaker 1:And yet, however distraught, we also know, however deep down, that surrender is not an option. Surrender is a luxury that we cannot afford, okay, but what would no surrender mean? If Trump has his way for even just four years? Will everything now worthwhile die? Does that thought disturb your nights and days? Well, the truth is that outcome is distinctly possible. Indeed, a succinct summary of Trump's 900-page project is kill, destroy, eradicate all which Trump targets Incredibly. That mantra aims to define our future. Will some that is worthwhile survive Trump's onslaught, should it succeed? But horribly hobbled Perhaps, but that would likely be the best that might emerge from Trump too. Fully manifested People thriving, not a prayer. So Trump too, must not fully manifest.
Speaker 1:As I say these words, I think to myself what is this noise? I am emitting Apocalyptic claims without detailed data. Isn't that irresponsible? Shouldn't I talk tariffs, talk deportations, talk health care, talk daycare, talk school demolition and education eradication. Talk school demolition and education eradication. To give reactions to circumstances but not detail those circumstances, that is emotional but not informative, isn't it? Shouldn't I describe our current circumstances in all their gory ugliness, but with logic and evidence? But then I think, why do that?
Speaker 1:The facts are now piled high in dozens, indeed hundreds of places that anyone can find. Google is grotesque, but for that it works. There are endless lies and their manipulations. Yes, that is true, but there are also a great many truths and their explanations. A great many truths and their explanations.
Speaker 1:At the very least, anyone who may hear this rant will have undoubtedly heard or read anything I may offer specifically about Trump, his appointments, his policies and even his structural aims for transforming the government. Oh, I suppose I might be able to mull over the dynamics of tariffs and come up with some slant or subtlety that someone might not have heard or read too many other places, or that they could not easily find to hear or read with, say, a five-minute search. But is piling on in that way to convey what is already conveyed, even with a tiny twist, a contribution? I don't think so, not really. Yes, it is true that an incredible number of people living in the US who are about to endure whatever Trumpism is able to unleash, have very little idea, in some cases even have no idea of what may come, much less of its most likely consequences. But that isn't true for you, who will hear this, though? Or, if I am wrong about that, and it is true for you, you can remedy the lack easily enough with countless footnoted analyses easily available. Those who regularly visit Znet, for example, already know whatever I could offer or they could find in many places in a flash. But incredibly, it is also true that people who pay attention to venues and sources even well into at least parts of the mainstream, know what Trump augurs. It isn't hidden. I wish my little podcast could reach out to those who do have no idea what is coming, but it can't, and in any event it has gotten to the point that others can, and at least to a point they do. As a result, it requires a willful act to avoid a pretty large percentage of truth about Trump at this point.
Speaker 1:Okay, here is a spin that might not be widespread. The ignorance of so many citizens about what is bearing down toward them is sort of like how you or I willfully avoid and or reflexively dismiss conspiracy theories. Relevant conspiracy information is there. It takes only minutes to search it out. We could become aware and even expert in conspiracist claims. Instead, we avoid them. We believe that to address them is to waste time. We find giving conspiracies our time to be an infuriating as well as fruitless pursuit. They are ludicrous lies. To rebut piles and piles of conspiracies would be useless distraction. That's us relating to conspiracist claims. Get out of here.
Speaker 1:Well, at this point there are many, many people for whom truth about what will come from Trump's policies, if enacted, seems to them like conspiracy claims. Seem to us the information is all over. It's easy enough to find, to access and consider, but many believe that information is the ranting of crazy, malevolent or duped people. The ranting of crazy, malevolent or duped people or of people who are all that and also hate whoever disagrees with them. And so they tune it out. And here we all are. An anti-vaxxer cabinet is about to assault hospitals. A racist cabinet is about to assault immigrants. A moneybags cabinet is about to assault imports and, derivatively, the whole economy, even as it transfers funds from poor to rich on every front. And somehow roughly half the country believes everything is going to get better for them. This isn't even Alice in Wonderland. Kafka would be addled.
Speaker 1:Given free reign, here comes hell, and not just for rural and urban poor but not rich America, but for the whole world, since our biggest export is our cultural lies and delusions, our distorted hate and greed. And, yes, if you don't welcome that, our commands and bombs. Give it all a name. How about fascism? So sure Trump himself might thrive, though even that is dubious. Repression, denial, denigration and especially high water and hard rain everywhere, each steadily escalating, will not inexorably facilitate thriving, even for the rich.
Speaker 1:So what now? Back to bed? More Netflix? Or perhaps we must face easily available or at least discernible, demonstrable and demonstrated facts. Fact 1. Whatever else we believe in, desire, want and pursue. Fact one whatever else we believe in, desire, want and pursue, trump and Trumpism, which is to say fascistic, social and environmental collapse, must be stopped. And I know that it is ridiculous that this disgusting, degenerate blowhard occupies such a world-spanning position as to absolutely require unlimited attention. But that is, like it or not, our situation. Head-in-the-ground denial of what's obvious is suicidal.
Speaker 1:Fact two perhaps it is not an exhaustive list, but there are at least three possibilities for how Trump will be stopped. For how Trump will be stopped, and I will here bunch all three as one fact First, trump destroys himself and his own agenda, or he at least helps us to do so, by his overreach, hubris, insanity and, we can only hope, his total and complete personal, physical and mental dissolution. Second, trump and his minions lose the Senate and House of Representatives and then the White House, in two and four years respectively. Third, trump is removed from office by corporate monsters in gray flannel suits, barely more moral than himself, but who, for their own selfish reasons, dump him and also instruct his replacement, jd Vance, on what he then can and cannot do. Those three possibilities are all that my mind conjures because, as much as I would give anything to help it happen, in the next four years I don't foresee a revolutionary movement of 50 or more million strong taking over government buildings and workplaces to then implement compelling, workable, shared, participatory plans, perhaps ironically called Participatory Project 2029.
Speaker 1:Fact three regarding these three possible paths away from Trumpism becoming full-on fascism again, let's take three observations about the three possibilities as one additional third fact. First, there is nothing much that we can do about the devolution possibility. Maybe Trump will be dumber and wilder than would be wise for him to fulfill his own agenda, or maybe not. Either way, he must be stopped. The second election possibility is going to be pursued by many among those who don't hope for a spontaneous miracle, who don't sell out to avoid the chopping block or perhaps even to cash in, or who otherwise don't opt to resist at all, or who otherwise don't opt to not resist at all. But how does the second possibility of election losses for Trump actualize. Either Trump and his Republican agents lose many supporters voters and attract fewer placements for them, or whoever runs against Trump and his minions attracts many new supporters voters and loses few that offset those gains, assuming as well that there are contested elections at all, which is not 100% certain, of course. Even if this electoral path works, trump is gone, but we arrive back at the status quo before Trump, with its Democratic Party victors celebrating their tremendous accomplishment, even though their preferred status quo earlier allowed and even produced Trumpism in the first place, and if given a sufficient time and room to move, it would very likely do so again.
Speaker 1:The third, your fired possibility arises from a whole different direction. In causal calculus, at some point, and the sooner the better a few corporate emissaries visit Donald and they inform him that it is time to hand in his papers and head off to one of his waiting mansions. He can blame health or whatever else he might like to give as an explanation, but he must vacate. This, of course, leads back to the election option, including making its success more or less inevitable. So what can a serious leftist who rejects the whole damn system we live under and who wants fundamentally new political, economic and social institutions and relations do. Well, since we have agreed that surrender is not an option, it seems we have to work on option one, two, three or four. How do we decide? And then how do we act on our decision? I don't see how we leftists can induce Trump to blow himself up. We could, of course, work on the electoral option, but, not wanting to go right back to the status quo before Trump, we would presumably prefer an agenda that makes Trump removal electoral results more likely, but that also aims to attain better than prior business as usual. For that perhaps there is a better option than subordinating to Democratic Party plans.
Speaker 1:And now to propose a possible decision about those options, I need to move from facts to conjecture, but I think it is a rather sensible conjecture, hypothesis If Trump implements step after step of his agenda, even just a bit at a time, much less in massive doses, and he claims his wins are wonderful for the public and horrible for the public's enemies, and he claims that all the simultaneous hiccups and pains are products of enemies he hasn't yet but will deal with, and if media behaves subserviently, then Trump's support will actually grow as he appears validated and unstoppable. Get on the train or get run over by it, and each new celebrated step will accelerate further larger steps. And each new celebrated step will accelerate further, larger steps. He will seem to many omniscient, a servant of God, for others merely a genius. Yes, I know, it is beyond belief, but it is, I think, a quite reasonable hypothesis. And if it is so, stopping Trump would in that case become steadily more difficult. On the other hand, if Trump's steps are disrupted and blocked, and if media is successfully pressed to report even somewhat accurately and fully, in that case Trump's support will become steadily less militant and even diminish.
Speaker 1:Put differently, my conclusion is that early, effective opposition to Trump's plans will both impede his plans and thereby diminish the damage he inflicts, and will also prevent growth of, and indeed diminish, his support and thereby make every path to his elimination more likely. So it turns out that not signing up to electoral campaigns that are four and two years down the road, but instead opening fronts of activist resistance to Trump's policy efforts, deportations, tariffs, departmental cuts and whatever others come first, can not only aid future election prospects but also, looking further down the road, retain independence from the Democratic Party and develop organizational tools and popular desires able to keep alive and pursue aims able to take us beyond reimposing prior business as usual. So I find myself believing a simple argument that leads to a simple proposition, despite the incredible mass of complicated details that bury us in shock and awe with every new day and with every new Trump appointment and pronouncement. And it really is a simple proposition to best stop Trump and thereby reduce Trumpian damage. Stop Trump and thereby reduce Trumpian damage, while also propelling electoral prospects against Trump, but avoiding Democratic Party diversions and preparing the way for movements against the next Democratic Congress and administration.
Speaker 1:Leftist resistance should reach out to ever wider constituencies to actively block Trumpian policies with whatever methods immediately work and also continue to grow the resistance. For example, teach-ins, talks, sanctuaries, encampments, marches, demonstrations, strikes, occupations and diverse civil disobedience Really anything anybody is able to do Of the many, many sorts described and urged all over progressive media, directed both at Trump's policies and structural plans and, when need be, at both the mainstream and independent but not yet progressive media, to pressure all them to. But what about the morally decrepit gray-flannel corporate invaders who we hope will fire Donald along the way? Why might they do that when the UAW strikes against auto companies and actually when any movement seeks any demand. How do they win? It is not rocket science. They do not win by convincing the people in position to implement their desired changes that the moral thing for them to do is to make the changes. That is like trying to convince a tree to float. Movements win instead by creating a situation that the elites in position to implement their demands so fear that they decide to defensively give in to prevent the movement's further growth.
Speaker 1:So in the current case, the resistance to Trumpism and fascism wants first to make Trump back off his various policies and then to make corrupt, immoral corporate power fire Trump. The task is for the resistance to appear to elites capable of continually growing, diversifying and ultimately threatening not just what is nominally focused on Trump's policies, but also the dominance of elites and their favored institutions more broadly. So if Trump soon tries to implement deportations, tariffs and a few other initial aims, the resistance focuses on all that to stop Trump from having wins to celebrate. But we also seek to develop in a way that says we are going to keep going. Repression and not implementing our demands won't beat us, but will instead grow and intensify us. That is how a movement seeking to stop Trumpist policies can win, even as it also starts to prepare to continue beyond Trump.
Speaker 1:So the undeniable truth is that these are dark times. That the population simultaneously emphasizes the need for lower prices and favors Trump's terrorist plan is just one of many incredibly distorted conditions we face. That the public wants change in order to improve working and living conditions and increase respect and dignity for most people, but is about to endure change designed to worsen working and living conditions and reduce dignity and respect for most people is another distortion, and there are more, of course. The bottom line is the horror of Israeli and East European warfare, the suicidal pursuit of militarist war production and fossil fuel use, the danger of worldwide economic chaos and also the possible further and even complete dissolution of even partially democratic structures and the parallel further centralization and regimentation of media. We live in knife-edge times. The worst threatens us. The best can emerge and is the only real and lasting alternative.
Speaker 1:So no surrender, no submission. Find your way to resist. Business as usual, school as usual, even personal life as usual aren't a sensible option. To retain those, to even enjoy those by ignoring encroaching fascism for months or a year, will forfeit everything usual, much less anything better for many, many subsequent years, for friends, family, others and self, it would be a world-bendingly poor choice. Whatever form of resistance may suit you and be available to you, however modest or profound it may be, do it as best you can Do. I sound overdramatic. Am I urging too much? I think not. But if it is a little too dramatic, that is better than harboring a delusion about what's now at stake. Free Palestine, free the planet, free ourselves. And that said, this is Michael Albert signing off and I'm recording, on Thanksgiving Day, a horrific holiday for Revolution Z Until next time.