Emboldened, vindictive, and surrounded by managerially incompetent loyalists out to destroy government agencies and punish his enemies, Mr. Trump is much more of a threat than during his first term.
On Freedom
Yale Professor and best-selling author Timothy Snyder, whose On Tyranny (2017) helped us understand the first Trump presidency, has published a new book, On Freedom, just in time for the second. Faced with seemingly unsurmountable threats to our governance, international security, and (in the case of women, immigrants, and transgender people) our very lives, we are sorely in need of his analysis.
His theme is the distinction between negative and positive freedom, how we over-engage in enunciating what we are against when what we really need is to focus on what we are for.
Snyder posits that we Americans understand freedom as “the absence of something…. An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way,” while he holds that “[w]e enable freedom not by rejecting government, but by affirming freedom as the guide to good government.”
Powerless as individuals, we need other people to get anything done: “Freedom is about knowing what we value and bringing it to life. So it depends on what we can do – and that, in turn, depends on others.. . .”
Snyder, who speaks five languages and reads ten, arrives at hypotheses about international affairs from observations during his travels in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. His findings are inductive to the extent that other experts find him “unpredictable,” a trait he associates with positive freedom.
For example, when the USSR dissolved in 1991, most Americans expected capitalism and democracy to follow automatically, the assumption being that “wealth would bring rationality, and rationality would bring democracy.” Not so for Snyder who saw nothing automatic in this. Similarly, we got into the Iraq war, “an adventure in negative freedom,” under the mistaken premise that “destroying the Iraqi state would “automatically bring capitalism and democracy.”
Snyder’s frequent visits to Ukraine convinced him that Volodymyr Zelens’kyi would stay and fight because of his love for freedom. When Russia invaded, Snyder disagreed with security providers and international experts who were convinced that Zelens’kyi would flee the country and that the war would be over in three days. “His refusal to leave gives a hint of what positive freedom – true freedom- might be,” he writes, adding, “[s]taying was not something he did alone: he was in the company of those who had taught him when he was younger and who had elected him… His values were solid within him and in solidarity with his likeminded compatriots”
Staying and Fighting for our democratic values
With the threat of a second Trump presidency that promises to be far worse than the first, we too are staying and fighting. Snyder’s take on positive freedom impels us to transcend mere rejections of Mr. Trump’s anti-democratic horrors to construct effective affirmations of our democratic and constitutional values.
First, we need to pick and choose which among the threats we need to fight, as they constantly spew out of the President Elect’s mouth: On “day one,” he will order mass deportations of illegal immigrants, open up federal lands for oil drilling, abolish the Department of Education, and weaponize governmental agencies like Department of Justice to punish his political enemies.
In my state of Michigan, we proudly elected Elissa Slotkin as one of our two Democratic Senators. A legislator with wide experience as an analyst for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), she served three years in Iraq and worked in defense, security, and intelligence under both Democratic and Republican presidents.
Her advice in these dire political times is for us to pick carefully which threats we should address: “We know from the first Trump presidency that we can’t possibly be effective if we try to push back on everything he says. […] And when we’ve decided to engage in an issue, it’s not enough to complain about it, tweet about it, or discuss it with passion around the water cooler. We need creative, sustained action to show we’re willing to fight.” (bolding added)
Slotkin’s plan is to distinguish between what are the short and long-term threats. If it is likely to have an impact “beyond the next news cycle, we need to ask if it is reversible or irreversible,” by which she means whether “a future administration can undo the damage.”
Slotkin’s example of a long-term and irreversible policy is the unconstitutional use of the military — that would demand effective and concerted opposition.
Fighting Back
Looking back at my article about the first months of the previous Trump presidency, I can see the important difference, this time, in knowing what is coming.
That is why President Biden issued executive orders during the Lame Duck phase (the Congressional time between the November 5 election and the January 20 inauguration) to limit the impact of expected Republican actions that could prove permanent and irreversible. Two examples of what he did:
- In light of the fact that, as President, Trump revived Federal Executions for the first time in 20 years and put 13 people to death, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 prisoners on Death Row to Life Without Parole;
- Responding to Trump’s threat to issue executive orders to “‘drill, Baby drill’ on his first day in office,” President Biden issued an executive order prohibiting drilling for oil and gas off 625 million acres of U.S. ocean waters over the entire East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and parts of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea, with provisions that will be hard for the incoming Republican administration to reverse.
As in 2017, civil servant resistance is cropping up: the EPA union of the staff employed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the AFGE, has put new language into their contract forbidding retaliation against employees who act on the basis of scientific integrity.
When Mr. Trump issued his “Muslim Ban” after the 2017 inauguration, lawyers rushed to the airports to guide people from Muslim countries through customs.
This time around, it is likely to be much worse: Trump threatens a national sweep to round up illegal aliens and their families for deportation and to hold them in detention camps.
This grim reminder of Hitler’s Storm Troops rounding up Jews and dissidents to put in concentration camps weighs heavily on our minds. I have a friend with an illegal immigrant living in the apartment next to him: what can he do? Should he hide him in his house? How about the churches, libraries, schools, and medical facilities that the Department of Homeland Security has declared sanctuaries in a memorandum that Mr. Trump threatens to rescind?
A good number of Sanctuary Cities and Counties in my State of Michigan are fighting back against deportations with Non-Cooperation policies for police and government officials to refuse collusion with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainments.
In my own town and several nearby ones, the police will not aid and abet roundups. However, in “redder” (more Republican) cities and counties, the opposite policy prevails, creating dangerous holes in the safety net for immigrant families and workers.
Given ICE’s uneven application and lack of infrastructure – it does not have sufficient personnel or transport (planes, buses) to carry sweeps out as planned – Slotkin’s scale might categorize the deportation threat as unattainable.
However, every deportation that goes through can do irredeemable damage to immigrants and their families and, therefore, commands our attention.
As in 2017, legal organizations have been recruiting lawyers to provide defense for immigrants who need to rectify their status. Two that I mentioned in a previous article, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD), have already been reversing as many cases of “illegal immigration” as possible.
As the inauguration approaches, Democrats worry about Mr. Trump’s Trifecta, his win not only of the Presidency but also Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. However, the Republican margin is only 6 in the Senate and 5 in the House, with Trump dissenters among them.
Can Congressional bipartisanship save the day?
At the meetings I attend as a Citizen Climate Lobbyist where the new 119th Congress is analyzed, it is clear that there are Republicans willing to step forward on environmental issues.
However, it is hard to imagine Mr. Trump signing any legislation based on climate science, which he considers “a hoax.” Since it takes 2/3 of both the House and Senate to override a presidential veto, I don’t expect significant bipartisan legislation to be signed into law during his session.
Related Articles: Trump’s Climate Change and Factory Farming Policies: What to Expect From His Win | The Danger Trump Poses to Climate Change — and Our Future | How Trump Was Indicted Again And Why His Supporters Stay Unswayed | Trump at War with Europe | Can Donald Trump Really Afford to Ignore Climate Change?
A Shadow Cabinet
In two years, there will be midterm elections, and in order to win more congressional seats, we Democrats need to do a much better job at communicating what we are for.
In England, the party out of power maintains a “shadow cabinet,” with a senior member of the opposition chosen to keep an eye on each government minister, challenging positions and proposing alternatives.
Democratic Congressman Wiley Nickel suggests we do the same thing here:
“As Democrats, we simply failed to convince the American people we have better ideas to solve their problems. Now, we need to dust ourselves off and get ready to fight. We can’t let Donald Trump’s radical agenda go unanswered or unopposed.”
Here are some of his suggestions (bolding added):
- “If Trump attempts to weaponize the justice system against his political opponents, we could see incoming Sen. Adam Schiff (California), as our shadow attorney general, arguing against replacing our independent prosecutors with Trump loyalists.
- If Trump seeks to eliminate the Education Department, Rep. Jahana Hayes (Connecticut), a former teacher of the year, could step up as shadow education secretary to loudly defend it.
- If Trump tries to hand Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (New York), as shadow secretary of state, could be a strong voice in support of maintaining international relationships and protecting democracy at home and abroad.”
Similarly, Timothy Snyder has proposed a shadow cabinet “to provide alternatives to the Trump fascist administration… we have to be able to keep it positive, not in the sense of saying everything is great. It’s not. It’s terrible. They’re trying to break the government, which means breaking the country. But positive in the sense of we should have a shadow cabinet.”
In the case of “positive freedom, “we need to communicate about practical alternatives based on the common good.
Speaking Truth to Power
Given our low hopes of actually getting anything done during this Congressional session, what is the point in presenting unattainable alternatives? What use is “positive freedom” if nothing but words come of it?
“Speaking Truth to Power” is not for sissies.
This Quaker protest method, which Bayard Rustin brought into the Civil Rights Movement, is a non-violent tactic with a proven effective track record. After all, practitioners Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama all changed the course of history.
As it happens, Mr. Trump’s inauguration coincides this year with our national Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorations, and the beloved long-time Civil Rights Leader Reverend Al Sharpton is bringing his National Action Network to Washington for a parallel march on the day:
“While Trump supporters will be on one side of Washington watching him take the oath of office,” asserts Reverend Al, “I will be at the nation’s capital working to keep the dream alive,. . .There has never been a more important time to peacefully organize and mobilize.”
The motto of the march is “Rise Up!”
As the National Action Network organizers put it:
“On Martin Luther King Day 2025, as Donald Trump is sworn in, we won’t stand still. We will rise up, honor and defend Dr. King’s dream by marching for justice, equality and change.”
This is “positive freedom” in action, witnessing for democratic values strategically, in the right place and at the right time.
With barriers set against us in every direction, we must meet in solidarity to voice our common values in order to be free. Or, in Timothy Snyder’s words, “[t]he place between what is and what ought to be is where we roam as free people,”
On Inauguration Day, I will be looking for some nice Quaker people encircling the workplaces, churches, schools, and libraries where immigrants are seeking sanctuary so that I can join them.
RISE UP!
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: The American flag flies atop the Eisenhower Executive Office Building during the 4th of July celebration at the White House, Monday, July 4, 2022. Cover Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe.