It must be said that Donald Trump understands the power of fear. The “Respect” he seeks is the respect that frightened children accord an abusive father, and broken women give a drunken spouse. Key to that fear is making an example of your power or the power itself goes away. Trump knows this that is why his attack on DEIA (even accessibility is too woke) demands not just an end to support but an assault on anyone who dared work differently.
This is clear in his decision to rip up not only current rules but to rip out basic prohibitions on racism from 1964. He longs to not only return to the expansionism of McKinley but to the open racism, sexism too. With the addition of violent Christian Nationalism.
But revoking protections is not enough. Not until someone is made an example. Trump has tried to get staff to inform on each other. But no one will do that unless they have to.
This is where the other order comes in per CNN:
He also ordered each federal agency to identify up to nine targets for federal investigations into their DEI practices to see if they should be judged “illegal.” That includes publicly-traded private corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations and major foundations.
With this order Trump will force agencies to find targets, name names, single people out to be raked over the coals and have their companies and jobs destroyed. What was legal yesterday will now be deemed illegal and you can be convicted on the testimony of your former friends.
This is what Marxists do. This is how a cultural revolution works. This is, indeed exactly the kind of struggle session and star chamber attacks that the “anti-cancel-culture-warriors” warned us about. Only it is their candidate doing it. Whether they justify this as payback or they just don’t care it is brutality all the same.
So what do we do?
Trump controls the federal government. He is surrounded by a gang of Marxists who plan to abuse the power he has. The Republican party will do nothing to even slow him down, clearly they all want this too. And the courts have already granted him immunity and are now reduced to begging politicians to obey the law. No salvation will come.
Our only weapon is our refusal.
So said Michael Collins, who knew that even if the Irish did not control their own nation, they did not have to play along. They did not have to turn one another in to the castle, they did not have to take the occupiers coin or, as members of the senate have chosen, accept self-gelding (my term) to keep their sinecures.
We cannot stop the storm that they plan in one go. At this point we cannot even expect sex assault survivors to do the decent thing and refuse to promote an assaulter. But we can refuse, in each moment, in each little way, to play along.
I know that is easier said than done. And I know that I am no braver than any other. Nor do I have a way to bring mass refusal about. But I know that we have to start somewhere and it starts with our refusal to play along.
Postscript 3/11:
During today’s press briefing Trump’s press secretary said that they have has asked Columbia University for help in identifying alleged “pro-Hamas” activists on its campus, but the school is refusing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
They Understand.
They understand the value of fear. The admin has names, they can search for people, but what they want most of all is for the school itself to turn on its’ students. They want the institution to comply, to become a spy, and to point others’ out.
This is what dictators do.
They do it because fear of the dictator alone is never enough for control. They have to ensure that you fear everyone. Only a society divided by fear and institutions that are compromised by it can be ruled by one man because noone will ever dare stand up, lest they be stabbed in the back. We all need to look to our organizations and institutions and work ensure that they will not comply.
Because Donald Trump understands the value of fear.