Pat Taub
Many of us are struggling with this question as we try to process last week’s heinous hate crimes where a Trump disciple mailed pipe bombs to many of Trump’s sworn enemies; where a white racist killed two elderly African Americans in cold blood in a Kentucky market; where 11 mostly elderly men and women were murdered at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in what has become the worse anti-Semitic crime in American history.
Rose Mallinger, 97, a Holocaust survivor, killed in the Tree of Life massacre
As horrible as these Trump-inspired crimes are they offer a huge wake-up call. We should no longer waste a second fretting about Trump’s tweets or hold out hope he will calm down. If anything the odds are his hate speech will escalate given his pattern of attacking others when he’s on the hot seat.
Similarly we have to give up on converting Trump’s followers. In a recent Truthdig essay Chris Hedges likens Trumpies to members of a cult who will blindly follow Trump because he plays into their fears and insecurities. Trump rallies routinely demonize and stoke fears of immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, Jews, women, LGBT folks, liberals or anyone who dares to challenge him.
By manufacturing a fear of the marginalized, Trumpies are provided with an easy target for the disappointments in their lives. The more Trump can rile up his followers with attacks on CNN or George Soros or anyone Trump doesn’t like, the wilder and more dangerous the crowd becomes while supplying Trump with the adoration he craves.
A Trump rally fired up by his attacks on CNN
Hedges cautions against challenging Trump’s lies in the fashion of newspapers like The Washington Post and The New York Times who have been running tallies of Trump’s lies. Hedges considers this futile behavior because Trump will continue to label newspaper accounts of his lies as “fake news.” Logic won’t penetrate his devious, amoral brain.
So what do we do?
We vote for progressives in the midterms while recognizing the ballot box is not the final answer. Many of us will be voting for the lesser of two evils. If we want real choices, real candidates who represent our interests, like curtailing the Pentagon’s bloated budget, while supporting single payer health care, an equitable minimum wage, good schools, racial and gender justice, and gun restrictions, than we have to roll up our sleeves and work for these issues 24/7.
Voting in the midterms is critical but it’s just as important to work for change around the clock.
When we get discouraged let’s focus on those positive actions happening around us.
A crowdfunding campaign started by two Muslim groups has raised more than $40,00 for the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue. Nuns on the Bus are traveling the country with their message for just reforms. Young activists, sparked by the remarkable student leaders from Parkland, Florida have been crisscrossing the country to register our youngest voters. Communities across the country are holding candlelight vigils to remember the victims of the Tree of Life.
10 Nuns are traveling the country to raise awareness around the inequalities in Trump’s tax bill
In one of his last speeches Martin Luther King addressed this very question of where to go from here. His advice was to take back our power through nonviolent protests. The future no doubt holds more acts of violence by Trump disciples but we can’t afford to respond in kind. Violent responses on our part will strengthen the growing police state, providing excuses for more crackdowns, like the recent Trump proposal to outlaw protests in the vicinity of the White House.
At the moment the bad guys are winning. But we can build the momentum and the resistance to defeat them. There are more of us than there are of them.
I take heart from Martin Luther King’s concept of “divine dissatisfaction” as a template for change:
Let us be dissatisfied until American will no longer have a pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of despair shall be crushed by the battering arms of the forces of justice.
