Resistance is Futile—Now We Are Forewarned
What you resist persists. Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s a bedrock concept in metaphysics.
On Politics from this morning’s New York Times describes it thusly, “For four years, President Trump bullied his rivals and intimidated his enemies. He commanded the world stage and commandeered social media, spreading torrents of misinformation and falsehoods. From Israel to Iowa, Mr. Trump was inescapable—and seemingly unstoppable.
“Since the attack on the U.S. Capitol, his power has been rapidly disappearing, evaporating in a cloud of recriminations and condemnation.”
As far as I can tell, the entirety of the Trump enterprise from papa down to and including great grandkids has been based on resistance, insistent resistance to what is and an indomitable will toward what they want to be.
That’s not how reality works. Or, not for long anyway. No, reality, just the facts, ma’am, will insist on raising its ugly head. What is not real contains the seeds of its own dissolution.
Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman, the expert of experts on all things Trump, write in “A First for an American President, and a First for Donald Trump,” “In the final moments of his presidency, Mr. Trump is confronting an unfamiliar fate: He is being held to account as never before for things he has said.”
Accountability is what resistance to reality triggers.
Matt and Maggie again, “For most of Mr. Trump’s 74 years, the relationship between his words and their consequences has been fairly straightforward: He says what he wants, and nothing particularly durable tends to happen to him.
“But in the final frames of his presidency, Mr. Trump is confronting an unfamiliar fate. He is being held to account as never before for things he has said, finding his typical defenses—denial, obfuscation, powerful friends, claiming it was all a big joke—insufficient in explaining away a violent mob acting in his name.
“Aides could not do it for him, anonymously offering more palatable accounts. Allies could not argue that he had been misunderstood. His own words were all anyone needed to hear on this one.”
In fact, his own words have been his own condemnation and will ultimately lead to his own destruction. It will continue to be till the last i is dotted and the last t is crossed. I’m relatively certain that he never thought it could or would happen.
Now there’s a whole lot of fuss and feathers over what is happening in the Republican party. Or what will happen. Trump’s son’s assertion that it is the Donald Trump Republican Party ruffled more than a few feathers. There are calls for cutting him and his base out. There are calls for letting him lead. There are calls for positions in between. Most of all there are calls for showdowns.
Does it matter? Oh, I know, we tell ourselves it matters. But at this point, because of the exhaustion that is surfacing in the wake of Nightmare on Trump Mountain, it’s hard to care. The GOP will do what it does, and we will witness it when it happens. That’s all we need to know for now.
Maggie and Matt again. “Those who have known and watched Mr. Trump across the years cannot shake the irony of a president felled by the very formula that powered his rise: inflammatory speech and a self-regard that has congealed at times into functional self-delusion.”
Actually, it congealed at ALL times into functional self-delusion. And now we have to deal with that.
That’s what’s worrying. Have we the people been deluded into believing that we have even had a president for the past four years? On one level, I expect so. Because in fact we haven’t really had a president. We’ve had a puppeteer. Perhaps better said, a marionettist, pulling the strings on the optics via Twitter and the right-wing press.
In the Letters to the Editor today, the esteemed, and now retired journalist Arthur E. Rowse writes from Chevy Chase, Maryland, “So who should be blamed most for the wild assault on the nation’s Capitol?
“Let’s go down the list: President Trump and his tweeting, Ted Cruz and his band of apologists for Mr. Trump’s attempted coup d’état, the Capitol Police, the many Republicans who did not dare to stand up to Mr. Trump’s provocations?
“None of these factors—except possibly Mr. Trump’s Twitter account, which has been suspended—comes close to playing as much of a role as the trio of bomb throwers at Fox News: Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. This irresponsible trio of Trump backers has done more to divide this country and stir up the animals within us than any other force.
“And they have done it with impunity by acting as legitimate members of the press, which is protected in this country by the First Amendment. They know they can say almost anything they want and they won’t be punished.
“Journalists have wide latitudes of power. And that power can be used in some pretty damaging ways, such as rousing pliable people to commit crimes they would not otherwise commit.”
Mr. Rowse ought to know. And, between you and me, the bombers at Fox News ought to lose their press credentials. They weren’t behaving as journalists. They were arsonists, pure and simple, and now they’re trying to figure out how to keep the ratings they enjoyed when their news “platform” was resistance, resistance, resistance in complete agreement with the Trump Agenda. Now that they’re relegated to reporting, whatever shall they do?
Letters to the Editor seem to understand intuitively that the only thing that will draw enough of the flea-like attention span of the soon-to-be ex-president is money. Consider these:
One Queens resident suggests that Trump & Co. pay for the damage their followers inflicted upon The Capitol—that way we’d see they took some sort of responsibility. Fat chance, say I.
Another writer offers, “In view of the disgraceful and illegal actions of Jan. 6, the new Congress should ban all government support for a prospective Trump Presidential Library and Museum. Let the National Archives store what must be stored in its suburban Maryland warehouse. Only presidents who obey the Constitution should get the honor of a taxpayer-supported library.”
But the thing that is the hardest to bear is that experts say the January 6th Mob and its blatantly unpatriotic behaviors have been a clarion call to recruitment by hate groups and militias across this country. “Hate groups have been a staple of American life no matter who is in the White House. They have had natural foes when Democrats have held the presidency. Under Mr. Trump, they have had an ally.”
And that just burns me. We elected a man so craven that he can’t see what is wrong with the actions of hate. I’d rather go to dinner with Hannibal Lecter. “The president echoed their demonization of immigrants and fears of gun seizures and pushed white grievance into the American mainstream.”
“I feel like the movement has surpassed the person. He has created this movement that I don’t think anybody can stop. They can try to silence, they can try to deplatform, it’s just going to make it louder.”
It might. But we, Beloved, we the people have a serious choice to make. Will we continue to rent this broken, amoral and immoral man and his fascist agenda space in our minds? Or will we, not in resistance, but in compassion, in kindness, in empathy shut down Trump World once and for all? Because in the end, it’s up to us.
We can take the resistance route. It’s always available. But in more than 60 years of living, I’ve found it’s much, much easier to live based on saying yes rather than saying no.
Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, who holds himself as a defender of free speech said, “Everything we learn in this moment will better our effort, and push us to be what we are: one humanity working together.”
Resisting the Donald Trumps of the world only makes them stronger, Beloved. Acknowledging their menace forewarns us. The saving grace of being forewarned is that once we are, we know, and ultimately, they know they won’t win—because they can’t win.
For the entirety of his term as ersatz president, Mr. Trump tried to shut down the National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities. That should have put us on Red Alert from the get-go. A headline blared today, “Instead, It Grew.” That made me smile. Of course it did. Because what’s good and right doesn’t create resistance, and what’s bad and wrong does.
“Each year, President Trump’s proposed federal budget eliminated funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. But the agency survived, largely by relying on bipartisan support in Congress.”
“Nevertheless, to many in the world of culture, the endowment’s value as a symbol cannot be underestimated. Created in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation declaring that the arts and humanities belong to all people, the endowment was founded on the belief that the arts have a role in the spiritual and economic health of the nation, and deserve government underpinning.”
That’s what’s at stake, Beloved, our spiritual and economic health. Resistance cures neither. Instead, it only makes both suffer.
“Hayong Lau, 28, who lost her job at a cocktail bar last spring, began fostering kittens, even bottle-feeding a newborn every two hours at one point. ‘Fostering feels like we have something to control, and it just felt good to do something good,’ she said.”
Want to be in control? Want to feel good? Do something good. Look at your own resistance to the last four years. Do what you can to clean up your own care and feeding of the Trump Machine. Then, pick something, anything, that would make you feel good and do good, Beloved. Do that.
Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection between spirituality and culture. Find out more at www.susancorso.com