And finally, marches and performative protests are photogenic and build solidarity, but because they seldom disrupt much of anything, they are often all too easy to ignore. Moreover, in Donald Trump's topsy-turvy world, it's hard to know not just where to direct your protest, but even at whom to direct it. On February 5th and again on a frigid Presidents' Day, sizeable demonstrations against Trump, Musk, and their policies took place across the country. If you didn't notice, no surprise there since they barely made a blip in what passes for the news these days (and apparently not even that in Donald Trump's consciousness).
May I Have Your Attention!
"Attention, not money, is now the fuel of American politics," writes New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. MSNBC host Chris Hayes, whose most recent book is about attention as a valuable and endangered commodity, has called Trump's skill at commanding it a "feral instinct." He noted that, while the president excels at getting the public's attention, he's not all that great at holding it. Still, give Trump credit for his remarkably relentless pace of presidential threats, orders, and mind lint to keep our synapses sparking and, while he's at it, overwhelming any opposition with the enormity -- and folly -- of resisting him or his administration.
Always leading with his chin, Trump employs a variety of tactics, including:
Stating something as fact when it isn't. He did not win a mandate last November with just 49.7% of the vote; Panama did not agree to a freebie for U.S. ships in its canal; and Ukraine did not start a war with Russia.
Repeating and embellishing half-baked ideas -- including annexing the Panama Canal and Greenland, turning Canada into the 51st state and Gaza into a golf resort -- until they become articles of faith or at least possibilities worth considering. By then, of course, he's already corralled the discussion.
Drowning us in verbiage, belligerence, and hollow proclamations -- or, as Steve Bannon put it, "flooding the zone" -- until it's impossible to respond. In his first week in office, Trump typically talked so much that even official stenographers scrambled to keep up.
Confusing everyone (probably himself included). Take the inherently illegal directive that froze massive amounts of federal funds already appropriated by Congress. Except it was utterly unclear what money was being frozen and, according to the White House press secretary in her first press briefing, it was legal because the relevant Office of Management and Budget memo said it was. Oh, and then came that other directive rescinding the first one. Except it turned out to apply only to the memo announcing the other directive, not the directive itself. Except" no, wait! That non-rescission applied to previous executive orders. Except" oh, never mind.
Whining about "unfairness" to the United States and -- yes, of course -- him (he often conflates the two) as a cover for bullying people, organizations, and countries into submission.
Not giving a damn if he's caught in a lie or an error or simply sounds nuts as long as the focus remains on him or, these days, on his stand-in, Elon the Enforcer.
Ultimately, the last of these may be Trump's greatest menace, but also his greatest weakness, because what he does give a damn about is his image. It doesn't take an armchair psychologist to recognize why Trump preens and puffs himself up or a master strategist to know how easy it would be to make him lose his cool (which may be the only time the words "Trump" and "cool" appear in the same sentence). And boy, can he not take -- or make -- a joke!
So, one simple way we could resist is by denying him our full attention. Of course, we can't ignore him completely, since willful ignorance is self-defeating and, like an adolescent testing parental limits, he'll just keep upping the ante to see what he can get away with. But it's necessary not to be derailed by every inanity or outrage. I'm choosing to concentrate my attention on two or three areas I know something about, while counting on my fellow outragees to attend to other issues.
Not that I think Trump cares what I do, but if enough of us focus less on what he says and more on his actions that have discernable policy outcomes, we might indeed be able to cover all the bases and have enough energy and attention left over to push back more quickly and effectively.
Disrupt the Disruption
As for the longer range, I'm tired of being told resistance is futile, not to mention a bad strategy. The Democratic party may be in disarray and protests probably were more impressive during Trump's first term, but enough already! It's time to focus on the majority of the electorate who didn't vote for Trump and who still think democracy is worth working toward.
Which leads me to Gene Sharp, an unsung but influential theorist of nonviolent resistance, whose pragmatic ideas about peaceful protest were picked up by popular liberation movements around the world in this century. He argued that the power of governments depends on the cooperation and obedience of those they govern, which means the governed can undermine the power of the governors by withdrawing their consent. "When people refuse their cooperation, withhold help, and persist in their disobedience and defiance," he wrote, "they are denying their opponent the basic human assistance and cooperation that any government or hierarchical system requires." While his suggestions for challenging power included individual resistance, he advocated a nonviolent insurgency big enough and sustained enough to make a country ungovernable and so force the governors to truly pay attention to the governed.
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