In the wake of Trump's entirely predictable strikes against the constitution, his call for genocide in Gaza, his wide assault on immigrants, and his decision to go all-in on removing women and minorities from the military, security, science, even space, there is a temptation to punch down. It is easy to turn on Women for Trump, the Arab-Americans for Trump or even Latinos for Trump, and say to them "What the hell did you expect?!!". It feels good, but it is stupid, counterproductive, and just plain wrong.
Sooner or later, all tokens get spent, and these groups know it.
They may have assumed that they would be safe, or they may have just stayed home, but either way they already see the result. We will never win them back by punching down, if anything we will just drive them further away.
If we want to focus our attention on anyone, focus on the normies. The Republican party's straight dive into fascism was pushed by an aggressive faction of Christian Nationalists, misogynists, grifters, and reactionaries hell-bent on wielding government like "a blunt instrument indeed." They plan to bludgeon their views on all of us and they are not shy about it. But aggressive as they are, they are still small.
This hostile takeover has been aided and abetted by a far larger group of "normal" voters who gazed upon insurrection, violence, bullying, racism, and corruption and chose to pretend that what they saw was ordinary. They told themselves, and us, that he did not mean all those things he said or did. He would "calm down" and just "cut a little red tape", and besides Elon Musk personally caught a rocket. They also cynically told us that "both sides do it" and reminded us again, and again, and again, not to "overreact". Besides there is an election in 2 years.
In this they get support from normal journalists who race breathlessly to find balance in all of Trump's actions, and to deliver regular doses of gossip and acts of stenography which serve to "balance" everything we see. Your average pundit is, in many ways, more soothing than a lullabye with an added dose of cynicism.
We don't all know Palestinians who are seeing dead family. We don't all know a latino congregation that has been raided. But we do know normies.
We know veteran uncles who assumed that Trump would leave the VA and their government job alone. We know normie teachers who don't realize that the Department of Education pays their mortgage or keeps the lights on in their school. We know businesspeople and investors who assumed that they would cut a little red tape but not romp through treasury databases. We may know farmers who used to sell food to Canada or USAID. We know fisherman or farmers who depend on NOAA for accurate, free, weather forecasting and don't want to pay a higher price because Trump sold it off. And we certainly have friends who want tax filing to be simple and are pissed if it gets "deleted".
We have waited far too long for these people to just wake up.
We need to reach every one of them, every day, in every way. We need to force them to see that the pain is coming home. And that the destruction is not inevitable. We need to tell our parents about the misogyny their granddaughters will face. We need to tell our brothers and cousins about the economic crash that will hit them. We need to tell our children that apathy is not a choice. We need to tell everyone how ending the rule of law, corrupts everything around us. We can't let them make the mistake that the Germans once did, and march to a dictatorship while dreaming they were free.
I don't expect these talks will always be pleasant. Many people, even our nominal allies, will be offended that we expect them to act. Many more will prefer not to care. And still others who we've always thought were reasonable will reveal themselves to be nothing of the sort. That, may be the hardest blow of all.
But do it anyway.
Call your representatives, then call your normies!
Because the personal discomfort of annoying your relatives is nothing compared to the long-term price we may pay.