The Resistance is Winning

 

The last few posts of mine have been pretty bleak, I admit.  It is hard not to descend into despondency when you learn that your nation is no longer one of the good guys; that 49.8% of the population knowingly voted for the worst people possible because they thought it would line their pockets (what I have come to refer to as the Bondi Defense).  

But I have also come to realize something else: that an old Catholic admonition is correct when it warns that to despair is to sin because there is always hope, and hope does not disappoint. 

The Trump regime, along with its allies of the moment, has proven to be a glass cannon.  Sure, they can lash out with the awesome power of the state, but such firepower is short-lived.  When met with sustained resistance, the cannon begins to crack and, ultimately, shatter.

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There have been many such cracks as of late, but perhaps the most noticeable has been the administration's abject defeat in Minneapolis. What the administration envisioned was a "shock and awe" campaign involving latter-day slave catchers running amok, pulling people off the street for the crime of not being white, while the citizenry cowered in their homes. That is not what they got.

In the best tradition of the abolitionist movement, the people of Minneapolis took to the streets in record numbers, formed networks of support to aid their targeted neighbors, and made life a living hell for every ICE goon in the city via clever acts of non-violent resistance, from whistleblowing to documenting the abuses agents via their smartphones.   

Of course, what Trump and his gallery of misfit toys wanted to happen was for the ICE agents to be beaten, broken, and gunned down on television, something that would justify the declaration of the Insurrection Act.  However, it instead got two likeable civilians, Renee Good, a mom, and Alex Pretti, a Veterans Administration nurse, executed by ad hoc firing squads on video. It is cynical to say this, I know, but it remains true: every resistance movement is watered with the blood of martyrs, and the Trump administration, via the gross incompetence and malfeasance of Kristi "Puppy Killer" Noem and Gregory "Lil' Eichman" Bovino, gave it just that.  Good and Pretti became martyrs for a noble cause, individuals who should, nay, must have monuments erected to their honor in the coming years.  Their courage is a reminder that even in an age of state cruelty, ordinary people can bend the moral arc. 

Trump, if nothing else, is a man of marketing instincts, and he realized he couldn't sell a 'victory' when the product was the lifeless body of a VA nurse.  So, with the incompetence patina thick enough to be cut with a knife, Trump booted the criminally hapless Noem and Bovino to the curb, and replaced them with Tom "Cash in the Bag" Homan, who promptly announced a drawdown of operations in the city that has now led to a full withdrawal. While reports on the truth of these statements remain varied, their mere announcement was an acknowledgement of defeat.  

The Trump regime tried to use a militarized force to terrorize a community in pursuit of its racist agenda and failed. Worse, they showed every other community in this nation how to organize and fight back in the finest tradition of peaceful resistance.  

Strike one.

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Remember Trump's obsession with conquering Greenland so he could make it the 51st state in yet another desperate attempt to permanently tilt the balance of power among the states towards the GOP, as well as to put his name on the world map ("Do you love me yet, daddy?")?  Well, as ever, that turned out to be a fiasco.

To paraphrase Tolkien, Europe woke up and discovered they were strong. Unlike their acquiescence to Trump's unprovoked trade war, this time the leaders of Europe banded together to oppose what was a deadly serious matter: America engaging in imperialist operations against a fellow NATO member, something that would effectively kill NATO as a defensive alliance and leave Western Europe open to further Russian aggression.  (Trump has always despised Europe in general - he is clearly intimidated by their superior education and fashion sense 😁 - and NATO in particular because of its anti-Russian raison de entre.) In a remarkable move of defiance, Denmark, with the backing of select allies such as France, Germany, and Sweden, rushed troops to Greenland obstensibly to conduct a defence drill entitled Operation Arctic Endurance.  But, as anyone could see, those troops were also there to act as a tripwire to deter any possible American aggression.  

And it worked.

Trump, who ever-so-briefly attended the Munich Security Conference (again, he is always intimidated by a gathering of intelligent and polished leaders) left empty-handed, with no transfer of sovereignty to America and, even more tellingly, not a single agreement on the exploitation of Greenland's vast mineral resources. In other words, he got bupkus.  And while Trump did his usual "the check is in the mail" mumbling about a deal being in the works, Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen declared that he knew of no such deal, something Copenhagen would later confirm. 

(And if there was any doubt that this entire operation had nothing to do with Russian and Chinese(!) threats to Greenland, notice how, since Trump's humiliation, not a word has been spoken about Greenland, and not a single US soldier has been deployed to Greenland for increased security under the existing 1951 defense treaty.)

To call this a major humiliation for Trump and for cosplaying SecDef Petey Hegseth would be to undersell the spectacle.  Don't forget, Trump once boasted that he was such a great negotiator that when he walks into a room, no one is allowed to leave until he gets what he wants.  Munich exposed the truth: when Trump walks into a room that isn't filled with obsequious rubes, he gets nothing and is told to like it. 

Strike two!

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If you need any more proof that the Trumpian glass cannon is beginning to shatter, look at the silence from Omaha. For 88 years, since FDR was in the Oval Office, Gallup has been the gold standard for measuring how a president is faring with the people. But last week, Gallup confirmed it is officially walking away from tracking presidential approval ratings. Yes, you read that right!  Not only has Gallup confirmed that it has decided to throw in with such lickspittles as CBS/Paramount and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, forever tarnishing their reputation in the process, but their actions have confirmed what we all can see with our own eyes: Trump's polling is so historically bad that, in the fashion of an authoritarian state, some pollsters have decided it is best to stop polling. 

Of course, in a country now governed by the mantra that ignorance is strength, the official line is that its decision is part of a 'strategic evolution,' the equivalent of McDonald's strategically evolving from selling burgers and fries to sushi. The reality? Trump’s approval has cratered to a second-term low of 36%. Gallup has decided that it is no longer safe to report on the weather when the forecast is a permanent hurricane of disapproval.

But it gets even more humiliating for Trump.  

The most delicious irony, which is to say the one that surely has the ketchup hitting the walls at Mar-a-Lago, is that as Trump’s numbers vanish into the Epstein files, the man he defeated is suddenly more popular than ever. Recent polling from Quinnipiac and Data for Progress shows that Joe Biden’s favorability rating has surpassed Trump’s current approval!

It would seem that the bucket of cold water that is this fiasco of an administration is serving to sober up a voting public that has been drunk on cheap, watered-down Trump Vodka.  Americans are looking back at the normalcy of the Biden years with a sudden, sharp longing. It turns out that 'normalcy' is a premium product when your current government is being run by incompetents and grifters who excel at little more than pillaging the public purse.  Trump spent four years trying to paint Biden as a senile bungler; now, that same man is haunting his polling data, proving that even a retired Joe Biden is a more welcome prospect to the American majority than the self-proclaimed ubermensch with his cadre of chickenhawks currently occupying the Oval Office.

Perhaps this is why a record 35 Republicans have announced that they are not seeking another term. They see a blue tsunami heading their way, and they are making for the lifeboats.

Trump likes to imagine himself as a brave warrior riding into the battle to save the day. Here's the problem: he thinks he is Rommel when in reality he is George Custer. 

Strike three; you're out!

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Flannery O'Connor once wrote that one has to push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. We are seeing just that as the millions of Americans who didn't sell their soul for a 50K Dow have fought against an openly corrupt and incompetent regime. What is more, a portion of the populace that mistook a presidential election for just another reality television show has begun to realize that politics is not a game; that it has real consequences for their lives, and now they are joining the resistance (better late than never, I guess).  

Trump is obsessed with numbers - television ratings, crowd sizes, stock tickers. But he is now finding himself in a room where the most common number is zero. Zero new territory in Greenland. Zero control over the people of Minneapolis. Zero indictments of the rich and powerful in the Epstein files. And now, zero data points from the world’s most famous pollster.

The cannon is cracking. The only question now is: what happens when it finally explodes?

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