Trump Victory in 2024: The Time to Plan for 'The Resistance' is Now
Should Americans lose their minds and actually return Trump to power, those who treasure democracy must begin planning for resistance.
Former Republican political strategist Rick Wilson recently predicted that short of “choking on a cheeseburger, being struck by a meteorite or eaten by a shark,” Donald Trump will be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. A New York Times/Siena College poll this month shows President Biden losing to Trump by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in key swing states if the election were held today. This as he faces 91 felony counts.
Meanwhile, in anticipation of his victory at the polls, the legally beleaguered Trump is plotting to turn the United States into a Fascist state. His “Project 2025,” cobbled together by far-right “think tanks,” including the once respectable Heritage Foundation, plans to purge the civil service of career employees, replacing them with MAGA shock troops; install lapdog lawyers in a neutered Justice Department; prosecute and jail on trumped up charges his opponents, from Joe Biden to Republicans who have turned against him like Bill Barr; establish mega-camps in which to dump millions of aliens prior to their mass expulsion from the country; and — the pièce de résistance — immediately invoking the Insurrection Act to enable military troops to quash demonstrations and arrest enemies.
At a recent New Hampshire rally, Trump vowed, “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” asserting that “the real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left, and it’s growing every day.” Undocumented immigrants, furthermore, are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trump is channeling Adolf Hitler, who said:
Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?
Those nations who are still opposed to us will some day recognize the greater enemy within.
All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.
Trump’s first wife, Ivana, reportedly said that her husband kept a book containing Hitler’s speeches at bedside.
So, where’s the outrage?
Exactly.
Media Matters has highlighted how CNN, Fox and MSNBC have covered Trump’s outrageous statements: “[T]hese extreme and alarming statements received scant coverage across major TV news networks: Three of the four comments received no more than 22 minutes of attention each, with only one nearing an hour.”
And The New York Times published this sorry headline: “Trump takes Veterans Day speech in a very different direction.” Oh, really?
Hitler, Mussolini, Peron, Franco and other autocrats telegraphed clearly before gaining power the extreme measures they planned to implement. Trump is following their playbook. Americans, I fear, aren’t taking him seriously. Again.
The New York Times’ David Brooks admonishes us not to panic. “Biden doesn’t have to become magically popular; he just has to remind the tens of millions of Americans who voted against MAGA multiple times before why they need to vote against MAGA again,” he writes. “This does not mean that, when it comes time to cast ballots and actually pick a president, their preferences will be the same” as what they register in early polls. Historical record shows that centrism always wins out and that “dull but effective government can win, and circus politics is failing.”
I tend to agree with Brooks. But if he’s wrong? The 2016 elections, the ongoing MAGA cult and, earlier, the Tea Party, make me have second thoughts. Something more needs to be done to check Trump.
Robert Reich counsels us to become more politically engaged, to counter lies with truth, not to overreact to MAGA provocations, tolerate bigotry and hate, or carry out violence, and to “be compassionate toward hardcore followers of Trump, but be firm in your opposition.”
Along similar lines, veteran Republican strategist Frank Lutz, in a NYT op-ed, “How to Make Trump Go Away,” advises us to reflect “more closely on Mr. Trump’s rule-breaking, paradigm-shattering campaign in 2016 and all of his unforced errors since then.” His recommendations for making Trump “go away” include offering Republicans “a candidate who champions his agenda but with decency, civility and a commitment to personal responsibility and accountability”; “compliment Mr. Trump’s presidency while you criticize the person”; expose his hypocrisy; appeal to independents and grandparents; and recruit Fox echo chamber MAGA propagandists to turn on Trump.
Guardian columnist Margaret Sullivan asserts that “the press must get across to American citizens the crucial importance of this election and the dangers of a Trump win.” How? “Journalists need to figure out a way to communicate it — clearly and memorably.”
Sorry, but all of these tame recommendations are fine if you’re fighting by the Marquess of Queensbury rules, but not when the other side is following MMA methods, which include, lies, threats, intimidation, voter suppression, extreme gerrymandering and refusing to concede election losses.
I spent nearly a quarter century as a diplomat serving in and analyzing dictatorships, and prior to that in military intelligence with similar duties. What I learned was that people in thrall to a cult leader, or brainwashed by a closed political system are more or less impervious to rational discourse or intelligent persuasion. History shows that autocrats’ demise usually comes from defeat in war (Axis powers in WWII; Saddam’s Iraq), debilitating internal contradictions of the political/economic system over time (Soviet Union & East Bloc nations) or economic collapse (Peron’s Argentina, Idi Amin’s Uganda). Trump, in fact, reminds me more of a leader in the mold of erratic, impulsive tyrants like Amin or “Papa Doc” Duvalier than Hitler or Mussolini, who were much smarter than he.
I, for one, write off all MAGA followers as unredeemable. The crazier and more extremist Trump acts, it seems, the more ardent their fealty to him. As Tom Paine warned, “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead.”
Add to this a Republican Party that can only be described as a neo-Fascist movement. MAGA fanatics and their Vichy Republicans in Congress have no truck with democracy. Hence, they launch Project 2025, which is straight out of the Fascist playbook.
A move is afoot to try to disqualify Trump from holding office under Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which denied ex-Confederates who had previously sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution, but then fought against the Union, from holding public office. The argument is made that, having sparked and encouraged the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Trump disqualifies himself under this amendment. Lawsuits are active in three states to have him disqualified.
It’s a longshot and likely to fail, especially given the current makeup of the GOP-friendly Supreme Court. Even if Trump becomes disqualified in some states, adjudication wouldn’t come till well after next year’s election and Trump’s reinstallment in the White House. If you think that the “Stop the Steal” myth is outrageous, how would you think about outright civil war?
Today’s political climate in this country approximates that of the 1850s. Indeed, as in that era, fisticuffs almost broke out in the Senate this week. We of the sane have hoped that Trump and his MAGA movement would fade over time, that the “fever would break” eventually. Instead, the temperature of the American body politic is increasing at fever pitch.
So, what is to be done if tame measures as described above fail to defang the situation? Countries under threat of enemy occupation often have planned in advance for such an eventuality by organizing a resistance movement and infrastructure. One must plan ahead. While in government, I worked on a super-secret program along similar lines. Not to be alarmist, but, should Americans lose their minds completely and actually opt for a return to power of Trump along with his blueprint for dictatorship, Project 2025, those of us who treasure democracy will have no choice, in this writer’s opinion, but to do just that, starting with multiple legal challenges, robust counter-propaganda and more. What “more”? Stay tuned.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.
I take issue with writing off the MAGA Americans. They have real concerns that aren’t being addressed: our border is a disaster, our ideal of equality of opportunity is being overshadowed by a forced ‘equity’, education appears to no longer reward excellence, focusing more on safe spaces and affinity groups and..., external threats grow without a decisive response, or an attempt to rebuild our shriveled industrial base.
Biden was supposed to be a moderate Democrat. He has been anything but...
They have a point. A serious point. Trump, for all his faults, takes these issues very seriously and will do something about it.
I am not a MAGA dude. But, they are our fellow Americans, our sisters and brothers. I am sure our foes see our division and are chuckling, trying to make it worse, because the way they win is by dividing us.
The US Republic rests on the people of the US. If Trump manages to become President it will mean that a majority (or at least a plurality) of voters are voting for incompetence, corruption and the end of the US experiment.
The people will have spoken and as far as I'm concerned, the US, as we have know it, will be over. I'm not joining your "resistance". I will not risk my wealth and liberty in the face of a people that could not manage to support its history and traditions.
Anyone who joins the "resistance" should not delude themselves. There will be no constitutional protections. Resisters will probably be jailed. There may be civil war as the West Coast and the East Coast resist as well.
Good luck with your resistance. I hope that it works. My choice is to stay out of the path of history.