RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 320 Trump, MAGA, and Fundamental Change
Episode 320 of RevolutionZ addresses the next few months of Trumpian challenge. What can we do? Howmight we do it? Who is we? How does it all work? This episode addresses reaching way beyond current support with what we call non reformist reform struggles. How do we assess our own choices? What constitutes success? What brings more success?
Episode 320 takes up these and related questions to provoke, inspire, and aid coming activism even against feelings of fear and weakness that many now suffer. Our target is the most corrupt, callous, and crazy administration, to quote the lead deranged asshole, that anyone has ever seen. Could there be a target with more weaknesses? Our goal is to not only stop Trump and severely weaken MAGA but to do so in a manner that causes all those involved to struggle on after that victory to still more fundamental changes.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I'm the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. I want to talk this time, this episode, about some issues bearing on the months ahead. I have in mind two main tasks in the US. There are comparable things in other countries, to be sure, but I live, live here. Stop Trump and MAGA. That's task one. Task two do so in a way that persists to fight for further gains after Trump is gone and MAGA is defanged.
Speaker 1:How do we stop Trump and MAGA? The way you impact, the way we impact government policies, government agendas and, for that matter, all elite agendas, is by raising social costs that they don't want to bear. What does that mean? It means they confront a situation in which they have an agenda they want to pursue, they have a policy they want to implement, but there's a cost to doing so, and the cost is something that they care about enough to decide. Well, on balance, we shouldn't do this. So what raises social cost in that kind of way? It isn't a movement or an opposition that isn't growing. A movement or opposition that isn't growing just doesn't have a threat. It's not going somewhere, it is not increasing. What raises costs is threats, the threat of an ongoing escalation, an ongoing development of opposition, if the policy or agenda is pursued. So to raise the social costs for somebody like Trump, as compared to, say, the rest of the government, is sort of difficult, because he doesn't give a shit about anything except his own well-being. And therefore the way you raise the social costs for Trump is by creating a situation in which he believes pursuing his policy or his agenda item, or whatever it may be, is going to cost him personally more than he gains, than he benefits by implementing it. What affects that most of all, I think, is the unity, size and commitment of the opposition and its trajectory. If we, for example, could unleash a demonstration of 100,000 people simultaneously in New York, washington and San Francisco on the third Tuesday of February, and then on the third Tuesday of March the same thing, and on the third Tuesday of April, the same thing, trump would look at that and say to himself well, this is no big deal, all we have to do is clean up the area after the demonstration is over. It's not going anyplace, it's not getting bigger, it's not a threat. On the other hand, if you started with 10,000 and then went to 25,000 and then went to 40,000, now there's a threat. Now there's a threat. Now it looks like to Trump, because it is a process that is continuing and its future might be too costly for Trump. So he pays attention.
Speaker 1:Maga is a little different story. I think MAGA, as an entity which is vague, already doesn't have its hands on policy levers, and I'm not sure at all how they would measure costs, so to speak. So I think stopping MAGA involves reducing their commitment, it involves taking away their members, it involves creating a context in which to be MAGA-like is embarrassing. It conveys and connotes a degree of delusion or hate that people start to not want to be associated with. So how do we do those things? Well, it seems to me that fighting Trump is like fighting a war, it's like fighting for affirmative action, it's like fighting against, you know, a horrible policy, and so on. It's all like that, with the slight wrinkle that what you're trying to do is convince this maniac that he himself will suffer. He doesn't care about the country. I don't think he cares about ideology either. I could be wrong, but I don't think he does. It seems like he cares about being the boss and getting outcomes he wants, precisely because he wants them.
Speaker 1:And how do we reach MAGA? Well, I think that's going to require that we communicate, that we actually reduce their support by communicating with those who support them, support by communicating with those who support them. How do we continue on? How do we do those things in such a way that we continue on once the first step is more or less achieved, once Trump is slowed down to a crawl, one hopes, and perhaps even removed, and once MAGA is no longer the tribe that its members want to be in and allegiance is failing, do we just go home? Is that it? We've won? Well, there's a way of pursuing those ends which has exactly that result. It's a reformist way of pursuing those ends a, whatever it might be, win a higher income level in some union, institute a wealth tax, whatever it might be. We can pursue it in a manner which says, basically, this is our goal, this is what we want. Winning this is great. Let's win it and celebrate and go home because that's the end. It doesn't have to be said explicitly that way, but that can be the tone, that can be the mindset that develops. And so, upon reaching the end of the campaign, people feel like, well, okay, I did that. Now I'm onto something else of my own.
Speaker 1:The other possibility is that our way of fighting against Trump and fighting to weaken MAGA generates desires to win more. We talk, we conduct ourselves in a fashion which raises consciousness, not just about how bad Trump is or how dangerous MAGA is, but about things we want that go beyond the present, that go beyond getting back to say, for example, business as usual. Another way that what we do now can enhance the likelihood that we continue on after Trump is stopped and MAGA weakened is that in the process of resisting them, we arrive at shared vision which we are motivated then to continue to seek. We've also fight for those gains in a manner which is non-reformist. What does that mean? That means, let's say, we're fighting against deportations, or we're fighting against tariffs, or we're fighting against whatever it is or, for that matter, anything else. We fight in a manner which is designed to create lasting organization, lasting ties. We're trying to create terrain on which we can continue on. We're trying to increase our desires for more by talking about more. If we're fighting for a higher wage, if we're fighting against tariffs, if we're fighting against repression, whatever it may be, we conduct ourselves and we use language and we talk about what we're doing in a way that means to inspire desires for more. That means to inspire desires for more.
Speaker 1:If we're battling for income, say, or a wealth tax, we don't just talk about how bad things are and how the limited inevitably now the limited goal that we have for a higher minimum wage, say, or a wealth tax, makes things better. We do that. We talk about how bad things are and we talk about how the thing that we're demanding would improve things, but we also talk about what we really want. We also talk about the longer-term desire. We don't really think that a wealth tax that takes a smidgen away from trillionaires is the goal of a good society. We think it's a step and we talk about what it's a step to. And the same thing for raising, say, the minimum wage or for, in a particular struggle, raising wages per se.
Speaker 1:Or take up battling for divesting from arms manufacturers. Okay, we talk about the particular situation at hand, the particular use to which arms are being put, the particular reasons and the horrors that we're opposing when we demand, let's say, that our university or our, whatever it may be, divest from dealing with arms manufacturers. But then we can also talk about ending war. We can talk about changing international relations. We can talk about broader goals. Same thing for battles to protect immigrants. We're not just talking about, for example, not deporting immigrants. We're talking about changing the way society operates so that being an immigrant doesn't mean getting lower wages, being oppressed even more than everybody else. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that one is weaker by virtue of having come from elsewhere. So we have additional attributes that we talk about, even as what we're demanding is Trump, stop it. You can't do that, and we're going to block that, and we're going to create sanctuaries and so on.
Speaker 1:Who does all of this? Well, I think the answer to that is obviously people. But which people? Well, on the one hand, current activists. There are lots and lots and lots of people in the US or we could be talking about any other country really confronting similar dynamics, confronting similar dynamics. There are lots of people who already are engaged in various sorts of let's call it social activism. It might be electoral, it might be non-electoral, it might be in a community, it might be for a national organization, it could be all sorts of things, but there's a whole set of people who have a degree of experience with anything from strikes to occupations, to letter writing, to door knocking, to whatever it may be, where they are giving of themselves to partake of a campaign.
Speaker 1:The current activists. What are the obstacles to current activists becoming involved in stopping Trump and weakening MAGA in the manner that I'm trying to suggest would be optimal? I think the biggest one may be and here I'm largely guessing the biggest one may be a feeling of weakness, a feeling of fear, a feeling that this monster in the White House is going to crack down and it's going to hit me and I have to sort of defend myself. It's going to hit my organization and we have to defend ourselves and our focus starts to become entirely defensive. What we need is the opposite. What we need is movement, activism, resistance which is taking it to trump, not protecting us from trump. So that's one obstacle. I'm not saying that it's wrong to be concerned about repression it's not wrong but one has to confront it, not defensively but aggressively, along with aggressively confronting, say, deportations. What about new activists? That is, I think, a much larger set of people.
Speaker 1:Again, I'm largely guessing, but it's my impression that, as January ends, february unfolds, march unfolds, Trump's activities are going to cause a great many people to feel like I want to do something. I want to try and help stop this. Activists get maybe even less prone to feel that way, because they already have felt that way and they've felt that way in many cases for years and years. And now what they're confronting is a situation that feels daunting, but others are going to be confronting a situation which is calling forth their activist inclinations, arguably for the first time. That would be, say, voters, people who voted Democrat and people who voted Republican. It would be non-voters or independents.
Speaker 1:What are the obstacles? Well, one sort of unusual obstacle in this case and I'm not talking about obstacles, ie they like Trump so much that they're not aroused to a feeling of anger and desire to do something. Of course, that's an obstacle, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who are aroused, who are upset, who are angry, who are fearful and who want to do something. So what's the obstacle in that case? Well, ironically, one obstacle might be they don't know what to do, they don't have experience of this. They don't know who to contact, how to get in touch with anybody and they may anybody and they may feel like they're not wanted. They may feel like you know the world of activism and their world never the twain shall meet. They may feel that way.
Speaker 1:So our task, then, regarding current activists, is to generate a degree of desire, but also confidence, a willingness to stand up and fight With new activists. It may well be that the task is to facilitate, or a task is to facilitate their becoming involved, which is not so easy if you haven't been involved before, and to facilitate their being welcomed when they do move to become involved, instead of feeling like, you know, not really wanted. How does all that happen? Well, I suspect that it involves activists existing activists, leftists, existing activists, leftists thinking carefully about our language, our tactics, our outreach, our ways of onboarding new people, with the priority, with the thought in mind that what we're doing, the way we're talking, the way we're acting, the way we're explicitly outreaching, the way we're taking people into our organizations, has to be geared to growing. It has to be geared to reaching those who we haven't reached, even those who disagree with us but are inclined to act.
Speaker 1:In light of all this, suppose we make a demand, we undertake an action or a campaign in pursuit of a demand. The demand might be Trump stop doing this or that or it might be we want X or Y. How do we evaluate our work? Maybe we're doing an occupation, maybe we're doing an encampment. Maybe we're doing marches and rallies, maybe we are doing an electoral campaign. How do we evaluate whether or not we're doing a good job?
Speaker 1:It seems to me that the issue is what is our effect? What is the effect of our campaign or our action on the people involved, on the people who see it and on the people who are neither involved in planning and acting it out or see it? They also don't see it, but they hear about it. What's our effect on all of those constituencies? Let's call it? Why is that the issue? Because, again, the issue is are we being born or are we dying? Are we growing or are we static or even declining? That's the issue that's going to govern not just our momentum, but whether we appear to be and are a threat.
Speaker 1:So suppose we schedule to block some event. There's a talk happening, I don't know, trump's going to Chicago to give a talk or there's a meeting of a government committee and we plan to block something. Or we plan to take over a building, or do an encampment, or have a boycott, or do a march, do an encampment, or have a boycott or do a march, whatever it might be. It seems to me that there's a tendency to evaluate our efforts on the wrong grounds. If we're trying to block an event, the extent to which we did or did not block the event, that's not the criteria of success. If we're trying to take over a building, the extent to which we did or did not block the event, that's not the criteria of success. If we're trying to take over a building, the extent to which we did or did not get into the building and hold it is not the criteria of success. To do an encampment, holding the area, conducting ourselves in the area, is not the criteria of success. Same for a boycott, same for a march, whatever it is. Whether we actually did the thing isn't the issue. It's what was the impact of the thing, what was the effect of the thing on ourselves carrying it out, on those who see it and on those who hear about it? And are we conducting ourselves in such a way as to maximize those effects?
Speaker 1:Enlarging the movement? One concept I think that bears upon this whole thing is the idea of organizing as compared to mobilizing. I mean, there's nothing wrong with mobilizing. So, for example, you know if we're going to have a rally at such and such a time and such and such a place and we put out a call. We're mobilizing people who know, who agree with us to come to the event. We're mobilizing our let's call it current constituency. Organizing is growing the constituency. Both are important, because you do have to have people at events and you do have to evidence your size, your growing size, or else there's no threat, but organizing is what is essential to growing.
Speaker 1:The underlying idea of all this is that it's the trajectory of the movement, not its current immediate situation, that, day after day, at the level of government and also of media and culture and everything else, in the United States and we could be talking about some other countries too I think we are also or I suspect we are also a bit blown away by it.
Speaker 1:I suspect that, starting in a few days when Trump is actually in office, starting in a few days when Trump is actually in office, he's going to try and unleash a kind of shock and awe barrage of insanity, of crazy things, which are part, however, of a broad agenda, and the agenda isn't just to institute his policies but it's to reconstruct government so that he can do whatever he wants. And there's going to be a tendency to put our arms over our heads to ward off the blows. And I'm not saying that that's the wrong thing to do, but I'm saying that unless we start to hit back, it's not going to get us anywhere. And he doesn't give a damn about it, and neither does MAGA. The only thing that's going to communicate is if we develop a resistance which takes an aggressive stance, which constantly grows, and so, as rambly as this has been, and so as rambly as this has been, I guess that's my message for this episode. And that said, this is Mike Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.