Can we heal America?

Willythepeople gave it a shot:

Everything this country strugged for in the past fifty years - for civil rights and decency, for a modicum of dignity - was wiped out overnight, and the Nazis are in control of the government.  Stephen Miller and Elon Musk are running - and by running, I mean destroying - the government while Trump grifts and whines and threatens anyone who refused to kiss the ring.

The Democrats were never a good opposition party, and now they're essentially powerless in federal affairs.  Congress has lain down at the feet of the Toddler Tyrant.  

Wiser minds than mine are admonishing Democrats to do whatever they can to throw sand in the gears to at least slow down the Nazification of the country.

"Even a court that moves as fast as humanly possible cannot keep pace with an administration that changes what it’s doing every time the sun goes down and Stephen Miller emerges from his crypt."  -- Elie Mystal

Evil and stupid and probably a stock photo.

HuffPost has got a lot of heavy lifting to do.

There are no words sufficient to respond.

Democrats have mounted a sluggish opposition mostly because their party machinery was built long before the Trump era. The people who’ve thrived in it made their way in a bygone world. Chuck Schumer’s wile is a good fit for the politics of the 1990s and the aughts. His savvy as an operator was once a matter of consensus in both parties.

Today, both he and his party are lost.

But it’s more than just that. They also seem flatfooted for the same reason many critics can’t quite articulate what they’d like to see instead: We’re overwhelmed by vandalism, by the clamor as spiteful people shatter the load-bearing infrastructure of a functioning society.

It’s day 12. The pace of destruction will slow. But there’s probably no way to dislodge Trump and even if his unlikely demise comes to pass, JD Vance is a craven fanatic who’s soft-boiled his brain in the pseudo-intellectual sludge of dictator apologetics. He’s not unhappy about any of this.

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They are fucking around, and we will all find out; but by the time they find out, the fucking around will be over and, for a long time to come, irreversible.

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So we have years of it ahead of us.

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A worthy opposition will of course prevent whatever damage it can, but a sustainable one will have to reach a stage of acceptance, where anger (often impotent anger) gives way quickly to resolve. Loved ones are mortal, but entities can be rebuilt.

To my mind, the correct formula is one Democrats ought to have applied before Wednesday’s tragedy:

Warn ominously about the kinds of catastrophes we can expect when a degenerate like Trump fires capable servants and replaces them with compromised amateurs.

Mount a rapid public response when those consequences come to pass.

Promise, in open and defiant terms, to rebuild quickly once voters run these vandals out of office.

To coin a great man: If you strike us down, we shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. To coin a terrible and insincere one our revenge will be succeeding where you’ve failed.

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[S]ustainable resistance can’t just challenge Trump or Republicans in Congress. It should also challenge anyone who goes out of their way to gain favor with Trump or prop him up. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos should be reminded daily that they’ve lashed themselves to someone almost certain to leave rubble in his wake. They should fear our long memories.

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Public-facing influencers like Joe Rogan can’t be exempt just because they’re less methodical in their politics. They’ll owe their audiences atonement when the worst comes to pass. And they should never be allowed to outrun their poor judgment.

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The threat is idle if Republicans can see, as is clear today, that Democrats lack the resolve to do anything ambitious or politically risky.

For this reason, I’d feel better with newer, younger, more voluble Democratic leadership. But I’d content myself if Schumer listened to these impatient governors and figured out how to operate as an effective opposition figure in the Trump era.

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If democracy survives this president (as we should always insist it will) and Democrats reap the benefits of a backlash (which seems very likely) they must enter office in 2029 committed to dismantling the kleptocracy quickly.

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Enacting procedural reforms and institution building must become non-negotiable party commitments, like abortion and health-care rights.

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Yes, future Democrats will probably have to vote to give bureaucrats in Washington a significant raise. It will probably mean filibuster abolition and court reform. It will mean lightning-strike rebuilding on the scale of Trump’s lightning-strike destruction. These Democrats will be expected to support the whole endeavor, even if they fear it’ll cost them their jobs.

And it means those Democrats have to start demonstrating a commitment to saving the country today. There is a formula that can sustain the Trump opposition for four years, but it doesn’t work if the Democratic Party organizes itself around a commitment to swaddle its most gun-shy members.

  Off Message

I have no faith in the ones we have now. Primaries need to be fulsome and many next year. If we're lucky enough to get an election in 2026.

My fellow citizens, the rise of this blusterous man bewilders the educated among us, conjoins opposing politicians, agonizes our international allies, threatens minorities, spits on the disabled, and touches the hearts of those who just don't know any better.

Let us stop propounding how mad this all is, but instead, do something.  

Liselotte Hübner in 1929 about Adolf Hitler

There may be precious few uplifting or encouraging posts on YWA during this fall into the abyss, but when I find anything, I'll post it.

Link to sign up

WRITE AND CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES OFTEN.

And contribute whatever you can to people who are fighting.

And this is still (so far) Black History Month.

UPDATE 09:42 am:

Nor does this one.

UPDATE 10:30 am:

People inside and outside of government are confused about who is staffing—or even leading—agencies. Federal employees have been thrust into a state of paranoia about the status of their jobs. Even lawmakers say they are utterly in the dark, unable to reach contacts at federal agencies to get key information about which parts of the government are functioning and which aren’t.

“There’s no clarity about which federal funds are frozen and which are left untouched,” Rep. Ritchie Torres told The Bulwark in an interview. “I’m not aware of any member of Congress who has been—any Democratic member of Congress—who’s been kept in the loop about the scope of the executive order.”

  The Bulwark

And I'm not aware of any Democratic member of Congress who's been organizing any attempt to find out.

And it has thrown much of Washington, D.C. into chaos, as lawmakers, civil servants, state and local governments, nonprofits, companies, and even foreign governments scramble to figure out just how dramatically our governing institutions are being altered or altogether undone.

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The first indication of [the coup] came in the opening days, when groups that rely on government grants suddenly discovered they could not access portals or contact officials who served as points of contact. Days later, the Office of Management and Budget issued a two-page memo saying that all federal grant funding would be frozen. That memo was subsequently rescinded. But the original executive order putting a pause on various areas of federal spending remains in place. So too has the freeze on external communications.

One official with the group Meals on Wheels, which works to alleviate hunger among seniors, said they were “not hearing anything from our typical contacts within” the Department of Health and Human Services. Asked where they were turning to for guidance, the official replied: “Just the news and the leaked memos.” Another official, who works with the Social Security Administration in an office outside the capital, said their field official “has no idea what is going on” and has received no direct guidance about return-to-work policies despite the White House insistence that every employee head back to the office. A top congressional aide said offices on Capitol Hill were trying to decipher tweets from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as if they were Indus script.

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“You don’t trust anyone at work right now. I don’t trust any coworkers and coworkers don’t trust each other. People are deleting files,” said one federal employee. “They are very secretive. It literally feels like they’re finding their allies internally with the career folks and using them to make this new police internally. It’s scary. It’s psychologically torture.”

No worries. Jesus didn't have electricity either.