I wrote this on Facebook on 7 Nov 2024, barely a day after the election, and it seems a little too prescient.
I don’t like writing in this tone, which even to my own ear sounds like a cacophony of paranoid white-guy strategery. I’ll look for a new style, but for now…
I’m getting a very strong sense that most people have no idea what’s coming — and by “most people” I don’t mean “them,” I mean you, dear reader.
Trump doesn’t matter. Sure, the forces gathering around him will have to contend with his increasingly erratic behavior as he continues to fall apart, but those forces are what matter. They’re as dark as they come, from edgelord tech bazillionaires like Musk and Thiel to ur-reactionary outfits like the Catholic cult Opus Dei. Think of it like this: you’re Baghdad, Stephen Miller is W, and it’s 2003 — “shock and awe” time.
The Trump admin will almost certainly try to hit the ground running with a blizzard of executive orders that kneecap not just everything you hold dear but everything you took for granted. I have no idea of their scope or scale, but they could well include shuttering entire agencies, freezing budgets, recategorizing civil servants, and illegalizing entire categories of organizations, activities, ideas, and product (hello, Mifepristone). The language will be a mix of jaw-dropping provocations, mind-numbing bureaucratese, and blood-curdling dog whistles. The point will be to overhwelm everyone: the media, civil society orgs, and even — or maybe especially — the courts.
Understand well: THEY WILL MAKE THINGS DRAMATICALLY WORSE ON PURPOSE in order to provoke, disorient, degrade, and defeat us. They’ll provoke outrage in order to exploit it. Anything that gets worse, anything that collapses, they’ll blame on the scapegoat du jour: “immigrants,” “extremists,” “radicals,” “trans people,” “marxists,” “fascists,” “globalists,” “leftists,” whatever — it doesn’t matter. And when we protest, they’ll blame us. Your new bosses won’t notice your one-day protests, your consumer boycotts won’t even register as statistical noise in their churn, if you occupy anything they’ll send the cops in and use the battles as propaganda fodder. And the media will profit from your outrage.
Do you trust Zuckerberg, Musk, or Bezos to help you out? If not, maybe time to start looking for a new virtual home or at least crash pad, especially if you plan on organizing. Do you trust the NYT, Washington Post, or CNN to help you out? If not, maybe time to look for some new “media consumption habits.” Corporations? What, like Ben and Jerry’s? Now, there’s a plan. The courts? Sorry, taken. Academia? LOLZ, good luck with that. The ACLU / SPLC / EFF? Uh, yeah, no. Chappell Roan and Charlamagne Tha God would have more traction.
This all sounds apocalyptic, but it’s not. The vast, vast majority of things will remain exactly the same: Monday will lead to Tuesday, winter to spring, pay to bills and bills to pay. But, squirrelled away throughout all that will be very real, often really hard choices. If you prioritize your own comfort and security, you’ll mostly go with the flow — a Good German, as they say, except this time you’ll be a Good American. Prioritizing others’ safety will demand principles, bravery, and strength that many of us don’t have, and a frightening number of people wouldn’t even recognize. I don’t mean that heroic WW2-movie stuff, I mean depressing things like risking your career or missing rent or mortgage payments.
Inauguration Day is January 20th, and Trump’s people — with unlimited cash at their disposal, armies of technocrats to plan, and allies in every government agency you can think of — will be working around the clock to prepare for that day. You don’t have time to “recover” from the election.