A cheer for sand in the gears

Especially on the left, it's popular this year to dump on the response to Donald Trump's first ascension to the presidency in 2016.

In the Guardian, someone named Dustin Guastella condemns that "resistance" was "big on spectacle and short on substance." Watch out -- when someone says something lacked substance, you can be pretty sure they wanted that something to mean what they preferred, rather than being content to observe what it meant on its own terms. I kinda think getting millions marching for women, for science, against corruption was inherently a good thing, even if the on-the-ground consequences are not immediately apparent. 

And by the way, ignorance of the magnitude of the obstacles ahead sometimes enables progress in overcoming them.

Or take Michael Schaffer in Politico. He regrets that...

The bulk of those great public protest moments, for instance, were organized around issues of identity: The Women’s March, the mobilization against the Muslim ban, the fury about the Charlottesville protests, the 2020 racial-justice protests. ...

True -- but should insults from Trump and the MAGAs to civilized decency have been unmarked? 

Note also, he misses the vital category of efforts to protect immigrants.

Schaffer goes on to complain that "the resistance" launched mainstream press on a kind of sugar high but failed to save the legacy media, which seems to be true. Aside from the New York Times, legacy media is not longer where information is widely found. And even the Times kowtows to power often.

All this seems ridiculously short sighted to me. Present circumstances are different than 2016. Trump and the GOP actually won a tiny, but real, presidential victory; lots of Americans demonstrated their discontent with what Joe Biden had on offer. That matters.

Lawyers and other professionals will carry on a fight for rule of law. Democrats with any power (and guts) will stick up for a more benign version of both federal and state action on behalf of a better society. But for sure it is going to be a shit show.

But at some point, large groups of people are going to be moved to collective action on behalf of better values. That's what we do. 

Opinion columnist Charles Blow (gift article) who was very vocal during the last round makes some interesting observations:

It may not be clear what issue or person or group will galvanize opposition to Trump’s second term. But any assumption that an opposition won’t rise or any revisionist history that casts resistance as something unique to Democrats would be a misreading of contemporary movements...

... As Democrats look for a way forward, it should not be a surprise if what emerges as Trump’s opposition is ... hostile to the Democratic Party as presently constituted.

... when Trump takes office again, the response of the public to his policies will have sway, and if that response is disapproval, and if it becomes organized and focused, it could be a formidable obstacle to Trump fully realizing his aims.

Note that Tolkien opined this while looking at fascist Europe.

Meanwhile, millions of us are not going to take the repeat of the sociopath's ascendancy lying down. We're going to do the little things that make society more humane. We already are; see #strikeseason.

As events develop, we'll be looking for stress points, for where ordinary people can throw sand in the gears of theft, hatred, and cruelty. We won't know where we'll find them; but these MAGA frauds and blowhards are not some coherent, unstoppable force.