How We Need To Deal With This Tyrant

 

Robert Reich has some tips on how to deal with the tyranny of Donald Trump:

We have learned several lessons about how to deal with this tyrant, and we must practice them. 

First, it is not possible to appease him. As Columbia University, several big law firms, and media companies such as ABC and CBS have shown, seeking to appease him only further encourages his tyranny. 

It is better to fight and litigate than to settle.

 

Second, it’s hard to stand up to him separately, since every university, law firm, media company, and other target of Trump’s wrath is competing with every other for students, consumers, clients, or advertisers. Which is why it’s important for us to join together to create a united front. 

Harvard is doing a good job confronting the regime but would do better if it acted as umbrella for all of higher education — litigating against the regime as a whole and speaking with one voice against its incursions on academic freedom and free speech. 

Every tyrant in history has sought to divide and conquer. It’s one of Trump’s major ploys. He wants to attack institutions individually so they don’t join together. He also seeks to divide America — by politics, ethnicity, race, religion, region, sexual orientation and preference — so that we’re fragmented and angry with each other. 

The third lesson is that confronting a tyrant requires courage. Large profit-driven corporations like ABC and CBS have none. Columbia and several other universities, as well as the law firms that surrendered to Trump, have shown little. 

But The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have displayed backbone, as has Harvard. And hundreds of thousands of you have shown courage by making good trouble at Republican town halls and participating in peaceful demonstrations.

Courage can be contagious. It is easier to be courageous if others are courageous, which is why solidarity is essential. Demonstrations show us we’re not alone — that we’re part of a broad movement to take back our democracy. (Mark your calendars for the next No Kings protests, on October 18.)

A fourth lesson: Confronting tyranny is an ongoing effort. It requires tenacity. The oppression we’re experiencing will not end soon. Which is why it’s important to pace ourselves, maintain our strength, and not get burnt out. 

Fifth, confronting tyranny requires that we act in small ways against it as well as large. We must correct lies when we hear them coming from anywhere, even members of our family. We cannot tolerate bigotry, from anyone. We have to push our elected representatives — as well as the organizations that employ us and the institutions in which we participate — to fight back. 

Sixth, we must look for opportunities to celebrate even small wins and find ways to maintain our hopefulness. Tyrants want those whom they oppress to lose hope so the tyrants can take over all facets of society. We must not ever lose hope. 

Finally, the best antidote to feelings of panic, helplessness, and stress is activism. The more we speak up, write our members of Congress, push the leaders of our companies and universities to take strong stands, organize locally, participate in demonstrations, boycott companies that are surrendering to the tyrant (such as canceling our Disney+ subscriptions), and protect the most vulnerable among us — the better we feel and the stronger we become.

 

My friends, these are among the hardest times most of us have ever experienced. I understand the stress you feel. I share it. But please do not despair. Do not feel helpless. Channel your outrage, anger, and sadness into action. 

It is up to us to preserve democracy and protect social justice. Our predecessors in this struggle — generations who have sacrificed for these values — demand it. Our children and grandchildren deserve it.

A New Declaration of Independence

The following post is by Andy Borowitz: 

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.

That to secure these rights, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of the people to refuse allegiance and to stand united in the defense of their freedoms.

The current holder of high office has shown himself to be unfit to lead a free and just society.

* He disrespects women, mocking survivors of violence and stripping away their rights.

* He fuels racism and white supremacy, scapegoating communities of color and denying their equality.

* He assaults free speech, attacking the press, punishing dissent, and spreading disinformation.

* He exploits public office for private gain, enriching himself and the billionaire class while abandoning the poor and working people.

* He undermines justice, ignores the rule of law, and places himself above accountability.

* He disregards science, endangering lives in times of crisis and sacrificing the planet for profit.

* He fans division and incites violence to maintain power, wielding fear as a weapon against the people.

Time and again, we have protested peacefully, spoken truthfully, and appealed to our shared humanity. We have been met with indifference, hostility, and violence. A leader who governs through hatred and greed is unfit to govern at all.

Therefore, we, the people of conscience and conviction, do solemnly declare our independence from this tyrant and all he represents.

We withdraw our consent.

We refuse to be complicit in cruelty.

We reject the abuse of power for personal gain.

We stand for dignity, truth, equality, and justice for all people.

With firm reliance on each other and unwavering hope in our collective strength,

We pledge to resist oppression in all its forms,

To uphold the rights of the vulnerable,

And to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity.

Let this declaration be both a breaking and a beginning. 

Trump Wants To Control What We Do - And What We Think

The following is by Robert Reich:

Why is Trump trying to cancel “Sesame Street,” which has helped children learn to read and count for over half a century?

Why is he seeking to destroy Harvard University?

Why is he trying to deter the world’s most brilliant scientists from coming to the United States?

Because he is trying to destroy American education — and with it, the American mind. 

Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated public.

Slaveholders prohibited enslaved people from learning to read. The Third Reich burned books. The Khmer Rouge banned music. Stalin and Pinochet censored the media.

And Trump, like past authoritarians, wants to control not just what we do, but also how and what we think. 

He has embraced one of the mottos from George Orwell’s 1984: “Ignorance is strength.” He knows that an uninformed public is easier to divide and conquer.

There are five facets to Trump’s authoritarian attack on the American mind:

1. Rewrite history

The protagonist of 1984 works in the so-called Ministry of Truth, where he’s made to literally rewrite history because Big Brother knows that he “who controls the past controls the future.”

That’s chilling in a dystopian novel. It’s far scarier in real life, where Trump and his MAGA cronies are making schools whitewash slavery and segregation, cover up the genocide of Native Americans, and erase the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Authoritarians know that if they can convince us our country has never been wrong, they can make us believe our ruler is always right.

 

If they can make us forget how brave activists fought for change in the past, they can stop us from seeking change in the future.

Trump wants us to forget (or never know) that he lost the 2020 election and then instigated a coup against the United States. 

He even claimed last weekend that former President Joseph R. Biden was “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone. 

2. Gut education

As Trump tries to abolish the Department of Education, he’s also proposing to cut funding for K-12 public schools and to force universities to let him influence student admissions, faculty hiring, and what is taught.

As a professor, I know firsthand how education empowers young people’s minds. We can’t have a functioning democracy if people cannot deliberate critically about it. That’s why authoritarians replace education with indoctrination.

But the Trump regime doesn’t want a functioning democracy.

 

Instead of teaching students to think for themselves, authoritarians seek to instill blind allegiance and suppress dissent. As Trump adviser Stephen Miller said: “Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots.”

This is why the Italian and German fascists of the 20th century immediately turned their countries’ educational systems into instruments of the party.

3. Dismantle science

By freezing university research grants and attacking the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and USAID, Trump is stifling medical and scientific research. 

And his cuts to the Centers For Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration put all of us at risk.

He’s also abducting and deporting international scientists who disagree with his administration. Can you imagine a crueler way to rob America of the global intellectual capital that has helped us become the world leader in scientific research?

He is now revoking visas of some Chinese college students. Some 277,000 students from China attended school in the United States last year, second only to the number of students from India. The United States employs tremendous numbers of scientific and technological experts originally from China. We need this continued pipeline of intellect and skill.

How can medical research and disease prevention be political? How can scientific research in general become political? Why is Trump afraid of science?

Because science acknowledges objective facts. Authoritarians insist that the ruler is more powerful than the facts. Trump wants to control the facts. 

As George Orwell wrote, “it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this.”

4. Suppress the media

From suing ABC and CBS over their news coverage to threatening to strip network broadcast licenses to defunding PBS and NPR, Trump is trying to silence America’s sources of news. 

As Trump repeatedly says: “I call it the fake news media.”

He wants control over what information Americans can (or cannot) get.

His regime is even going through social media accounts of people seeking visas to the United States. 

A free press exists to question authority and help the public question it as well. But authoritarians insist that they must never be questioned.

Authoritarians want to consolidate state power over what the public can know.

5. Attack the arts

The arts exist to provoke us, challenge our thinking, and help us see beyond ourselves. 

They arts are an important and independent aspect of an educated society, which is why authoritarians have historically attacked them. 

So it’s no surprise that Trump is canceling grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, is dictating what’s displayed at the Smithsonian, and has installed himself as the chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

To limit art is to limit free speech and expression. It’s a crucial step that authoritarians use to silence anyone who dissents through creativity.

***

Added up, these five facets of Trump’s attack on the American mind render us less informed, less inspired, and easier to control.

They empower him to divide us with hatred and fear. 

And they prevent us from discovering that we have more in common with one another than with the authoritarians who try to rule us.

This attack on our minds reduces our capacity for self-government because ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.