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Destruction of our Government, Economy, and Foreign Policy is Close at Hand: What Will Stop it? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-07
So What’s Been the Response?
I have to confess to having no idea what the current Democratic leadership’s strategy is? If ever there was a time when strong, visible and emotive leaders were needed to be selected with a consistent message and strategy throughout the Party, it is now. Division and holding back militancy and coalition building will prove fatal.
Lack of, or Weak Leadership, Demoralizes a Nation
Looks can be deceiving!
Winston Churchill was not, in many ways, a progressive leader and was soon voted out of office after the war. I mention him because the lesson served by his war time leadership is valuable for us now. WWII brought on terrible events, bombings of major cities, deaths, destruction, loss and suffering to the British people. Winston never left them.
A fighting symbol like Churchill was exactly what they needed for the sake of national morale. Has the Democratic leadership considered the importance a fighting leader brings to a nation under attack?
A Crisis as Serious as the Cuban Missile Crisis
Headlines, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1961.
Well that’s where we are now. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is one of the closest persons we have to Churchill right now other than aging Bernie Sanders. She, or someone like her, is not by any means ever going to get that role from the current leadership. Perhaps no one will. Time will tell.
But it should be remembered that lack of, or poor leadership, can be deadly to our cause. As is pretending we are not in the middle of most serious crisis since the Cuban Missile affair.
Only don’t expect today’s media to tell you that.
Same Old, Same Old Will not Work
Good message, but low impact.
The Party has always saw itself in a mostly electoral way. In normal times, that might call for organizing a comeback for the mid-terms. These are hardly normal times. There may never be another election, at least one that opposition has a winnable chance in. That will be the Republican’s goal.
The Party also seems to deny that the situation calls for major deviations from former policies and strategies, and failed to invest previously in enough popular coalition building. Popular resistance is not something they are thrilled having to embrace. Or feel comfortable allowing it to get anywhere near allowing input into leadership and policy.
History has demonstrated that fascism is violent, repressive, lawless, and at times murderous. It is typically without human decency at any level. Party leadership does not seem to recognize this in any meaningful behavioral way.
A Disorganized Message
Traitors Trump, Vance and Johnson at Tuesday’s Congressional Address.
This was amply demonstrated by Democrats at Trump’s recent address. The only messages Republican’s led by Trump will respond to, since they control all levels of power at present, are some kind of force or popular pressures.
Fascist Ways
Republicans also have fascist ways to undermine the only line of defense currently left, the Judiciary, and have already announced their plans to threaten and impeach judges that do not support them, at the highest levels. I do not doubt they would do so.
It’s my belief that the only potentially successful road open to the Democratic Party is popular, not electoral, struggle at present. And to do everything possible to stimulate open resistance. Which is clearly not their instinct at present, at least at the leadership level, and it showed at Trump’s horrible “State of the Union” address. It leads me to believe that some are more interested in maintaining Party control than necessary strategic changes.
A New Strategy is Needed, Not “Rope-a-Dope”
Rope a Dope requires a knock out strategy.
A passive by default sort of “rope-a-dope” strategy seems to be followed currently by Democratic leadership. For those not familiar with what the sporting term means, it involves a defensive boxer allowing a harder punching opponent to exhaust himself in a furious attack, waiting for the moment he runs out of gas, and then knocking him cold.
While it worked once for Muhammad Ali, we are not exactly in a boxing match. A struggle in which the “referee” (in our case the National Media) will deflect any of our returned blows aimed at KOing Trump by not reporting them.
President Biden also seemed to follow a “rope-a-dope” strategy in his four years, always avoiding a direct confrontation with Trump. Just Look at what that got us.
Eton Musk, our number 1 oligarch
Put another way, if Trump were a tree in a forest and fell to the ground, would anybody notice it? Would it be reported? Probably not, which is one of multiple reasons why a passive “rope-a-dope” strategy might not work. Trump may indeed collapse under pressure. But who will report it?
Why Rope a Dope Fails in Trump’s Case
Any successful strategy must break the Media shield of lies and distractions which surrounds and protects him. Yes, we all know what a moron, bad negotiator and incompetent fool Trump is, but he’s steering the entire country like a ship running aground precisely because the oligarchs selected him for that purpose.
What he’s doing it equivalent to breaking up your fleet of taxis with a sledge hammer. That’s what he’s doing to the government and the economy.
He is more than capable of ruining both for his oligarch backers so they can pick things up.
Mass Struggle and Resistance: Strategies which Work
1965 confrontation between Civil Rights demonstrators and police at the Emen Pettit Bridge.
The only way I see that potentially beating Trump and his oligarchs is by encouraging mass struggle and getting millions involved in whatever ways possible. In that way, the media is stuck with having to report it.
Not to sound like I’m advocating violence or murder, but when the United Health Care CEO was assassinated, the media just had to jump all over it. Millions of Americans, as it turned out, were less than sympathetic with the victim and it in a perverse sort of way it brought attention to how much Americans hate the current American Health Care System.
Resistance cannot be too passive, there are lots of militant things we can do to attract attention and advance the struggle against what Trump is doing short of violence or what Luigi Mangione did.
Awakening America’s Conscience
Selma, Alabama, 1963.
We need acts like massive but peaceful civil disobedience in Washington D.C. and across the country, strikes, rallies or sit-ins at a place where layoffs occurred or cuts were made. This was how vicious, violent segregationists were brought to their knees in the 1960s.
Martin Luther King was a master at Civil Disobedience. I think there are people today that are desperate to do something like this. We just need the leadership and training. We must awaken America’s conscience. I can think of no other way. []
Recommendations:
Jean Pasaki Speech on Trump’s America
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