Ep 313 Apocalypse or a Call to Resist and Build?

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 . 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 ?

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 . 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 ? 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 . 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 .

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 .

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 .

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 . 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 .

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

. 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 .

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 .

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 .

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 .

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 .

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 . 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 . 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 .