Shock and Awe

Trump's avalanche of executive orders is meant to overwhelm and obscure.

Photo by UX Gun on Unsplash

The 24-hour period after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States was a shock to the system — to the country’s legal system, to the our system of mass media, and to my system personally, and maybe to yours, too. He signed more than two dozen executive orders on his first day, a record; and he signed the first eight of them in DC’s Capital One Arena, in front of a cheering crowd to whom he threw the sharpies he used. He also issued a flurry of pardons and commutations, freeing the rioters who attacked the capitol on Jan. 6th, including those convicted of seditious conspiracy, those the FBI considered domestic terrorists, and those who engaged in acts of serious violence and who are part of extremist organizations. He said he plans to label drug cartels “terrorist” organizations so that he might use US military force against them, while freeing men deemed domestic terrorists by the FBI, as well as one of the nation’s most notorious and prolific drug traffickers. He has flouted the rule of law and sought to undermine the plain language of the Constitution. There is much more, but I’m getting heart palpitations writing it all out.

This is overwhelming.

You are meant to be overwhelmed.

When we are overwhelmed we miss a lot. When we are overwhelmed we struggle to distinguish between what’s important and what’s a distraction, or what’s important and what can wait, or what’s doable and what’s out of our control. When we are overwhelmed we not only feel powerless, we begin to behave as if we are powerless.

This is the point, or at least part of it. The Trump administration has taken all of these actions all at once is to flood the field. Even most close politics-watchers — even most elected officials — can’t keep track of every proposal and order and change and action Trump has put into motion, and have to pick what they believe are the most dangerous or salient to most vociferously oppose. News outlets have to pick and choose which ones to cover; those that aren’t covered, or aren’t highlighted, or have potential consequences that are complex and don’t fit into a pithy headline, go largely unseen by the public. Activist groups with limited budgets and staff have to pick which ones to fight.

This strategy virtually guarantees that many of these orders will remain in place, either because they go unchallenged or because the challenges are weak. It also guarantees that some significant swath of the public will simply turn away — will feel overwhelmed, may feel disgusted, but will conclude that things are new levels of bad and only getting worse and there’s nothing they can do.

Authoritarianism thrives on despair.

And I get it; I feel it. I have also chosen to close my laptop and get away from political news for periods of time, and I am convinced that following politics like it’s sports or entertainment is particularly corrosive. You need to get outside. You need to spend time talking to people in your real life about things other than Donald Trump. You need to resist obsessing over the things you cannot change.

But there remains much that we can change, and the overwhelm that Trump and his lackeys hope to foist upon the nation is intended to kneecap any efforts to fight back.

I’m feeling quite inspired today by Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, who used her pulpit at the Washington National Cathedral to plead with the president, who sat in the audience, for mercy and decency. While so many already-rich and already-powerful people line up behind Trump so that they might secure more money and more power, or at least protect the largesse they have, the good reverend risked her livelihood and potentially her life (and definitely her temporary wellbeing) in facing Trump publicly and asking of him what any spiritual, moral, or religious leader should ask of all of us: That we act with humanity. This should not be an act of bravery, but in a political atmosphere where death threats and violence are routinely rained down on those who criticize the president, and where seasoned political actors seem to be throwing up their hands and where the emerging narrative is that “resistance” is not only pointless but cringe, it was. It didn’t require her to do everything all at once. It didn’t require her to solve a single problem. It was just one public display of dissent and defiance. It was a public refusal to obey or subordinate.

Conservatives, including elected officials, are already putting a target on her back. Trump predictably tweeted his complaints and demanded an apology. Even a reverend, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, is not safe simply for doing her job, which is asking all of us to behave with Christ-like mercy. I have little doubt the Reverend knew the risks she was courting. She chose to act anyway — a small thing that is really a big thing.

We may not have the ear of the president. But none of us are entirely powerless. We have the ability to shape the views and perceptions of those around. We have choices to make about how we spend our money and our time — not just in terms of keeping our attention on the bad acts in front of us, but in restoring and tending to ourselves so that despair stays at bay. We may not be able to change the whole of the Trump administration, but we can demand that those in power act. We can certainly change our own communities. I think often of the fact that the Trumpian anti-DEI far-right movement that has taken over the GOP did not just spring to life by an act of God. It was cultivated, most effectively at the hyperlocal level (school boards, community groups) and then in online spaces where hate and bigotry begat more hate and bigotry in an ever-louder feedback loop to a widening audience. It invited in those who felt disillusioned or excluded from the mainstream. These tools — local politics, community-level power-building, attention capture, pulling in as opposed to pushing out — are not only available to the right. We can, in fact, adopt them and use them to our far more righteous ends.

This is going to be a long four years; it’s going to be a long 48 hours. Do log off. Do refuse to trap yourself in the endless doomscroll. Do remember why you care: Because there is so much beauty in the world, so much good about other people, and so much worth saving. Do soak that up. Do find your power where it exists, even if it is small, instead of talking yourself into powerlessness. This Trump-led effort to do nothing less than remake America as a totalitarian nation was not created overnight; it was the culmination of years (decades even) of steady effort, not just from the rich and powerful but also from many people who aren’t famous or wealthy or even particularly influential but have pushed for the dominance of their own gender or religion or race, and for the subjugation of others. You don’t get a man like Trump in power without the consent — the enthusiasm — of a lot of “average” people. And you don’t temper his worst efforts, or get him out, without the concentrated work of the rest of us.