the one thing that seems to be missing from all of them is an actual solution. I read the article and this is how it ends:
So what can we do?
We can learn from Trump the importance of telling a simple, understandable story and sticking to it. Pro-democracy forces need to pick a message and repeat it again and again to drive it home. There is surely no one in America who has not heard the phrase Make America Great Again and does not associate Maga with Trump. We can learn to appeal to national pride and drive home that national greatness requires addressing the daily experiences of ordinary Americans in language of the kind they use.
Make America Affordable Again. Make America Work Again for Everyone. Think X, Instagram, and what works on a podcast.
Pro-democracy forces can learn to be as determined and undaunted in defense of democracy as the president has been in his assault on it. Take off the gloves. Show your teeth, take no prisoners. Trump has shown that it matters to voters not just what you stand for but also how you go about standing for it.
That's all this author can offer. Two trite slogans that might just as well be Trump campaign slogans (
Make America Affordable Again. Make America Work Again for Everyone.) a suggestion to "think about what works on a podcast," and an exhortation to "Take off the gloves. Show your teeth, take no prisoners."
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people talk about how we need to "take off the gloves" and "show no prisoners" without providing any concrete examples of
what that actually means in the real world.
The author says we should learn from Trump. He says that under Trump, "Insurrectionists become patriots. Law-abiding immigrants become threats to America’s way of life. Journalists become 'enemies of the people'. It’s magic."
It's not magic. Trump's only talent is that he is inhumanly incapable of feeling shame, which means he can lie, cheat, and bully at will. He is a co-opter, and a coercer, and a blackmailer. He's the human equivalent of Hitler's blitzkrieg across Europe. He is a cancer, and articles like this are the equivalent of trying to cure cancer by yelling at your body's T-cells that they need to take the gloves off.
I apologize if this comes across as despairing. I am by no means suggesting that America just lie back and take Trump's abuse, but at the same time, I don't have a solution. So I guess I am just a little tired of reading opinion pieces by authors who think that saying "take no prisoners" is a meaningful political strategy, and implying that pro-Democracy forces could easily defeat Trump if they just "showed some teeth."
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