How to respond to Trump

I am a regular reader of Josh Marshall's politics website, talkingpointsmemo.com.  Back in the early 2000s, I found him one of the most sensible and honest American commentators on both the Bush regime and its disastrous wars.

Recently Josh wrote an optimistic piece on the current political situation, optimism meaning "not primarily a prediction but an ethic, a philosophy, a way of confronting the world."  Granting all the terrible problems Americans (yes, and others) face, he also sees a positive challenge.  He does it by referring to the famous Lyceum speech made by the young Abraham Lincoln in 1838.  A theme in that speech was the apparent lack of opportunity for Americans to win the glory won by the founders of the republic.


[Sez Josh:]

 Lincoln explained that his generation faced a paradox. They were blessed with free government. But their dutywas simply to preserve it. They had no field for glory and great deeds like those who had lived during the revolutionary era, the last of whom were just dying at the time. To Lincoln, his generation was both immeasurably blessed and yet robbed of the chance for greatness, condemned to a competent and steadfast mediocrity.

 As Lincoln writes ...

This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others?

[Josh:] Our field of vision is quite different today, certainly in retrospect. We know that in 1838 slavery was practiced throughout the South, women couldn't vote, much of what we now know as the architecture of democracy and freedom didn't exist. It's hardly like there was no work left to do. And yet there is a basic similarity. The challenge, the potential for accomplishment, for 'glory' to use that archaic and perhaps uncomfortable word that could be found in preservation and betterment simply couldn't compare to that of creation. There is a certain boringness and restraint inherent in being the preservers and betterers of a republic that has endured for almost a quarter of a millennium.

And yet here we have the opportunity to be its guardians and protectors at a unique moment, perhaps a moment of especial peril. Who would not embrace that challenge? We know the curse: may you live in interesting times. We are living in interesting times. Most of us would not have chosen it. But we have it. I think many of us look back at critical momentous moments in our history, the Civil War, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement and other comparable passages in the country's history and think, what would I have done? Where would I have been? Well, now's your moment to find out. We are living in interesting times. We should embrace it rather than feel afraid or powerless. We have a fabric of 240 years of republican government behind us. We have the tools we need.

This isn't naiveté. It's not any willful looking away from anything that is before us. It's being ready. It is embracing the challenge of the moment rather than cowering. It's having some excitement and gratitude for living in a moment when a new and potent challenge to preserving who we are has fallen to us.

Reserved.

The overall message:  Let's not be crybabies.


Elsewhere on the Web I have noted other people arguing for an equally important point.  Fact-checking Donald Trump at this point is going to be of limited utility.  Anyone who cares to know Donald Trump and his character knows what they need to know.  Getting involved in debates on his latest outrageous statement just lets him set the terms of the debate, and since he doesn't play fair, what does that get us?
.  A sense of our own virtue?  But that doesn't win elections, deal with climate change, or achieve any of a number of worthwhile goals.


What's needed is for that same fact-checking, critical energy to be put into organizing --  some of which will be reporting facts people need to know, but also in building organizations and movements to resist Trumpism and achieve real political goals. To Americans, let me suggest that the make-up of the House of Representatives and what to do about it should be something you think about ALL THE TIME.  The Republicans are in charge now.  Make sure, using tactics pioneered by the Tea Party, that they have to take responsibility for every disaster that takes place on their watch.  There will be no lack of them.

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