Resistance 1NC

A2 Trump not that bad/Trump good

Williams 11/16
Zoe Williams, columnist, The dangerous fantasy behind Trumps normalisation, Guardian, November 15, 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/15/dangerous-fantasy-donald-trump-normalisation-us-presidentelect-barbarism--CB

It was David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, who crystallised the situation into a chilling shard, following the US presidential election

When I listen to Conrad Black describe Donald Trump, I think Im

hallucinating. When I hear him described as not sexist, not racist, not playing on white fears, not
arousing hate, when hes described in a kind of normalised way, as someone in absolute
possession of policy knowledge, as someone whos somehow in the acceptable range of rhetoric,
I think Im hallucinating. And I fear for our country, and I dont think its unreasonable to do so. I accept the results of our election,
result. Speaking on CNN, he said:

of course I do. At the same time, I think Vladimir Putin played a distinct role in this election, and thats outrageous. And weve normalised it
already. You would think that Mitt Romney had won. Hillary Clintons concession speech buried the hatchet, on the basis that the peaceful
transfer of power a principle Trump explicitly rejected before the election required that the nation give him an open mind and the chance to
lead. Obama was warmer still: We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country. The peaceful transition of power is one
of the hallmarks of our democracy. And over the next few months, we are going to show that to the world We have to remember that were
actually all on one team. The logic is that Democrats are, by definition, true believers in democracy:
theyre not the right. They dont seek to impeach or recount or rerun an election. That principle sets off a chain of responses suggested by reason

if accepting Trumps leadership is the democratic way, then any American patriot should
line up behind him. Other leaders of democratic nations should offer him partnership and
support. The battle has been won, and the only next stage for a body politic is reconciliation. Yet
this situation is not normal or, if you prefer that in social media terms, #notnormal. When
women are lining up for long-term contraception in a mournful, pragmatic farewell to their
reproductive autonomy; when the chief strategist is accused of enabling racism and antisemitism;
when the vice-president-elect signed legislation requiring women to hold and pay for funerals for
miscarried foetuses; when the president-elect has vowed to deport three million immigrants;
when he has at least 12 allegations of sexual misconduct outstanding against him; when he has
announced a cabinet that includes his own three children: this looks nothing like a democracy. It
looks nothing like reconciliation. It looks despotic, inflammatory, extreme and violent: it looks,
in short, exactly as Trump promised it would look, as he campaigned on a pledge to imprison his
opponent. His adversaries respond that he probably doesnt mean what he says, a position for
which there is precisely no evidence. Their desire to normalise has put them in the fantastical
state of seeing the forthcoming presidency as they wish it, and not as it plainly is. Normalising is
not Nigel Farage frolicking in a golden lift with Donald Trump: Farage was a man of the same
stamp all along. The fact that his rhetoric was always so flaccid, so shifty, so euphemistic by
and history:

comparison with Trumps doesnt excuse it any more than British corruption is excused when,
compared with the USs, the sums are always so paltry. But Boris Johnson, foreign
secretary, telling EU leaders to snap out of the doom and gloom, calling Trump a dealmaker,
someone with whom we can do business, telling us to see this is an opportunity: that is
normalising. Look on the bright side, liberals. The sheer fatuousness of Johnsons speech, the
absence of any discernible values, or a backbone to put behind them, raises in me an
unfathomable, hot, eye-pricking sense of having been betrayed. How was it possible for Johnson
to disappoint, after his delinquent and self-serving summer? Its like discovering that a
neighbour, after a long party-wall dispute, has shopped you to the Stasi. I knew he was a jerk; I
never realised he scorned our shared humanity. Normalising is not Marine Le Pen, up with the
lark to hail the new fascism of which she hopes to be the next beneficiary. But it is Theresa
May waiting anxiously by the phone to assure Trump she would be his special relationship; it is
also a single column inch devoted to wondering how this affects our Brexit negotiating position.
When you have a prime minister who will not raise a peep in defence of decency, you are in a
new world. Its data cannot be fed into old formulas. Normalising is not the Ku Klux Klan taking
a rosy view of the Trump presidency, it is CNN asking uncritically, reaching out for that view.
It is trying to fashion a joke out of the Breitbart headline, Would you rather your child had
feminism or cancer?, published under the vicious chairmanship of chief strategist Stephen
Bannon. I want to see the absurdity of it, but it is not funny. Bannons ilk sees a woman on a
quest for dignity and equality and wants to irradiate it out of her. Its like living in a John
Wyndham novel. Normalising is not anything the rightwing extremists do, and they do not try:
they dont look for acceptable labels for themselves. It is the mainstream that twists itself into
conciliatory pretzel knots finding nicer words for fascist, such as alt-right. Democrats try to
find the fault within themselves: ask not whether a racist hates; ask what made the racist so angry
in the first place. Once we have found the right member of the liberal elite to pin it on, the hate
maybe wont sound so frightening. All this has a few sources: there is straightforward denial, the
first stage of grief. Trump cant be that bad, because that would simply be too bad. There is a
sense that the far right doesnt just ignore liberal sensibilities, it actively takes nourishment from
our despair. The US journalist Wajahat Ali, writing the day after the result, described
his conversation with his father: Please be careful if Trump wins, his supporters will feel very
energised. This was borne out by the spike in racist and sexist hate crimes in the US, and
resonates here in Britain, too. Racists are energised by the victory of racists, and calling them
racist simply rams that victory home. A year ago, to be antisemitic would have meant exclusion
from public life, and now it amounts to fitness for high office. Every time you reassert a
fundamental value of humanity, you give a cheap, scornful thrill to the person who made it
necessary for you to say it. You cannot shame a white supremacist; unaccountably, you feel the
shame yourself when you try. The charge is so extreme, if they dont accept, then you must be
hysterical. There is an underlying truth, here, that the act of debating brings its own
legitimacy. If we are really going to go back to square one and have to explain why grabbing a
woman by the pussy is a violation of her human dignity, or why you cant ban an entire religion
from your shores, where does that end? What territory have you ceded just by allowing the
question? It is genuinely hard to say. The hard right does not accept argumentation as a path to a
shared truth; it is simply not how they are wired. They take a view; you take a view; their view

electorally prevails, you shut up. End of, as they always say on Facebook. You just dont get it,
do you? You LOST. That is the authoritarian way. It is hard to escape a pragmatic conclusion
that verbal combat is pointless, but it is also wrong; the purpose now is not persuasion. I dont
think anybody is going to unearth any hidden sophistication or empathy in the person of vicepresident-elect Mike Pence. The purpose of making these basic arguments is solidarity with one
another, lest, in the silence, we lose our bearings. As to the descent into leftwing in-fighting, so
distracting from the task of trenchantly opposing a fascist, it has the same driver: if you are
fighting to reach a consensus, however bitterly, you can only do so with people who will move.
You cannot discuss climate change with a person who thinks all scientists are crooked; you
cannot discuss abortion with people who conceive women as chattel to begin with; its meritless.
And yet to fight with one another is not neutral, it does more than just pass the time. It creates
false equivalence or, worse, a hierarchy that has its arse on backwards. If you are talking about
Hillary Clintons corporate cosiness and not Trumps endorsement by the KKK, you are
unavoidably putting one above the other. What does non-normalising look like? Bernie Sanders
told the Today programme today that it would be millions of people coming together to defend
institutions and the rule of law. This is specific to the US, obviously there isnt much point in
millions of non-Americans coming together, for all that the new toxicity of the USs political
culture affects us all, practically and theoretically. And its reactive, since the Trump presidency
will choose the sites of the conflict. Yet there is meaning and hope in remembering, as the
American Civil Liberties Union has, that the president is not pope; that there is a constitution and
a set of laws; that supreme court judges can lean whichever way they will, but there are only so
many ways of interpreting a constitution founded on the universal rights of man; and that
millions of people can and will oppose their traducement with the backing of the ages. The
American journalist Masha Gessen, who has spent most of her life living in autocracies, gives
her six rules for surviving under one, and they read as a direct accusation of the political
response so far. First, believe the autocrat: if he says he will deport you, he means to. When you
claim he is exaggerating, you reflect nothing but your own desire to rationalise. Relatedly, dont
be fooled by small signs of normality, the odd moderate placed in this or that position, a
peremptory call for peace. Dispiritingly, rule No 3 is: Institutions will not save you. The only
meaningful way to marry that and Sanderss call is to assume that institutions are as strong as the
people ready to defend them. Rule No 4 is: Be outraged. Wherever you are in the world,
however insignificant you think yourself, every time you shrug, caper, look on the bright side or
do a Boris Johnson, you do grave injustice to the people in the autocrats line of fire. Rule No 5:
Dont make compromises. This is to put aside the grease of the modern political process.
Politics cannot be the art of the possible when the impossible has already happened. No 6 is:
Remember the future. Trump cannot last for ever. I would add a seventh, which is to remember
the past: whether its globalisation or those who are left behind, whether its economic stagnation
or the long, lashing tail of the financial crash, we should, as we climb over each other to be
modern in our interpretations, remember there is nothing new about this story. It is the oldest in
the world: nebulous animosities given shape and energy by the rhetoric of unabashed hatred. You
cannot find common cause on the plight of the low-waged; navigate your own way through the
swamp of secular stagnation, and name Trumpism for the barbarism that it is.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/the-normalization-of-trump-and-what-comesafter.html

Dreier 11/17
Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy
Department at Occidental College, Trump Isnt Hitler. But We Should Act Like It. The Huffington Post, November
17, 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/trump-isnt-hitler-but-we-_b_13045282.html--CB

Donald Trump isnt Hitler.

The United States is not Weimar Germany. Our economic problems are nowhere as bad as those in
Depression-era Germany. Nobody in the Trump administration (not even Steven Bannon) is calling for genocide (although saber-rattling with
nuclear weapons could lead to global war if were not careful). That

said, it is useful for liberals, progressives and radicals to think

and strategize as though we face that kind of situation. None of us in our lifetimes have
confronted an American government led by someone like Trump in terms of his sociopathic,
demagogic, impulsive, thin-skinned and vindictive personality (not even Nixon came close), his
right-wing inner circle, his reactionary and dangerous policy agenda on foreign policy; the
economy; the environment; health care; immigration; civil liberties; and poverty; his willingness
to overtly invoke all the worst ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds in order to appeal to the most
despicable elements of our society and unleash an upsurge of racism, anti-semitism, sexual
assault, and nativism by the KKK and other hate groups; his lack of understanding about
Constitutional principles and the rule of law; and his lack of experience with collaboration and
compromise. All this while presiding over a federal government in which all three branches are
controlled by right-wing corporate-funded Republicans. We may be lucky to discover that Trump
might be an incompetent leader and unable to unite the Republicans, but we shouldnt count on
it. In such a situation, progressive movements, journalists and Congressmembers face a dilemma and some
strategic choices: On the one hand: Treat Trump and his administration as normal politicians and
government officials? Try to negotiate compromises to get the best deal to make life less desperate for vulnerable people? Encourage
Trump to be pragmatic, as President Obama (trying to look sincere) did the other day, and, as some Democrats are suggesting, give Trump a
chance? Allow Trump to use the media as a megaphone to announce his appointments and his policy ideas as though he was a normal
President with a consistent ideology and a willingness to compromise? Cover Trump with the typical he said/she said journalistic formula he
makes an announcement and the press finds a Democrat or a liberal to provide the other perspective, as though they were equally valid (ie
climate change is a hoax (Trump) versus climate change is real (99.9% of scientists)? (The current phrase for this misleading approach is false

Or: Refuse to treat Trump as a normal politicians and refuse to legitimate his
regime? Refuse to cover Trump in the media as though his ideas were legitimate, but rather assume that almost everything he
says is a lie or a half-truth? Maintain an all-out effort to constantly remind the public of Trumps ugly
and outrageous views and his sociopathic and sexist behavior , including full coverage of all the criminal and
equivalence)

civil lawsuits against him? Be prepared to take advantage of his character flaws that will likely lead to lots of outrageous and
embarrassing comments? Refuse to compromise on legislation and instead make him and the GOP own his agenda so he takes
the blame when people suffer? Develop and constantly promote a clear, easy-to-understand progressive policy agenda as an
alternative to Trumps agenda a kind of shadow cabinet to remind Americans that there IS a better way to run the country
and win the support of many Americans who failed to vote or who voted for Trump? Spend the next two and four years
mobilizing opposition to obstruct almost everything he seeks to do, while laying the groundwork to win a majority in the House
in 2018 and win back the White House in 2020 by raising money and investing in organizing campaigns in key swing districts

and states ASAP? Try, as best we can, to avoid the lefts proclivity to fragment and divide itself via issue silos, organizational turf
battles, personality disputes, and constituency rivalries? In the not-too-distant future, we can try to translate our progressive
policy agenda into actual policies adopting campaign finance reform, immigration reform, stronger environmental regulations,
stricter rules on Wall Street, and greater investment in jobs and anti-poverty programs; turning Election Day into a national
holiday, reforming our labor laws, protecting womens right to choose, expanding LGBT rights, making our tax system more
progressive, reforming our racist criminal justice system, investing more public dollars in job-creating infrastructure and clean
energy projects; adopting paid family leave, and expanding health insurance to all and limiting the influence of the drug and
insurance industry. But, at the moment, our stance must be one of resistance and opposition. The
Trump presidency and Trumpism is a new phenomenon in our countrys history. Never before has such an authoritarian personality been
president. Weve had demagogues in the House and Senate, but never in the Oval Office. The best primer to understand what were facing is
Philip Roths 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, a counter-factual history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the 1940

It is not enough simply to proceed with

caution. We must view Trump as a real threat to our institutions, to our democracy, and to
our future.
presidential election by the pro-Hitler, anti-Semitic aviator Charles Lindbergh.

The alternative is to reject the 1AC as an act of resistance against the Trump
Administration.

Klein 1/25
Naomi Klein, an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestsellers, This
Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate (2014), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
(2007) and No Logo (2000), Trumps Crony Cabinet May Look Strong, but They Are Scared, The Nation, January
25, 2017. https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-crony-cabinet-is-full-of-scared-losers/--CB

Lets zoom out and recognize what is happening in Washington right now. The people who already possess
an absolutely obscene share of the planets wealth, and whose share grows greater year after yearat last count, eight men own as much as half

The key figures populating Trumps cabinet are not only ultra-rich
they are individuals who made their money knowingly causing harm to the most vulnerable
people on this planet, and to the planet itself . It appears to be some sort of job requirement. Theres junk-banker Steve
Mnuchin, Trumps pick for Treasury secretary, whose lawless foreclosure machine kicked tens of thousands of people out of their homes.
And from junk mortgages to junk food, theres Trumps pick for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder. As CEO of his fast-food empire, it wasnt
the worldare determined to grab still more.

enough to pay workers an abusive, non-livable wage. Several lawsuits also accuse his company of stealing workers wages by failing to pay for
their labor and overtime. And moving from junk food to junk science, there is Trumps pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. As an
executive and then CEO of Exxon, his company bankrolled and amplified garbage science and lobbied fiercely against meaningful international

the world lost decades when we should have

been kicking our fossil-fuel habit, and instead vastly accelerated the climate crisis. Because of these
climate action behind the scenes. In no small part because of these efforts,

choices, countless people on this planet are already losing their homes to storms and rising seas, already losing their lives in heat waves and

As usual, the people impacted worst

and first are the poorest, overwhelmingly black and brown. Stolen homes. Stolen wages. Stolen
cultures and countries. All immoral. All extremely profitable. But the popular backlash was
mounting. Which is precisely why this gang of CEOsand the sectors they come fromwere
rightly worried that the party coming to end. They were scared. Bankers like Mnuchin remember the 2008
droughts, and millions will ultimately see their homelands disappear beneath the waves.

They witnessed the rise of Occupy and then the

resonance of Bernie Sanderss anti-bank message on the campaign trail. Service sector bosses like Andrew
Puzder are terrified of the rising power of the Fight for $15, which has been winning victories in cities and states across the
financial collapse and the open talk of bank nationalization.

country. And had Bernie won what was a surprisingly close primary, the campaign could well have had a champion in the White House.

Imagine how frightening this is to a sector that relies on workplace exploitation so centrally to
keep prices down and profits up. And no one has more reason to fear ascendant social
movements than Tillerson. Because of the rising power of the global climate movement, Exxon
is under fire on every front. Pipelines carrying its oil are being blocked not just in the United States but around the world.
Divestment campaigns are spreading like wildfire, causing market uncertainty. And over the past year, Exxons various deceptions came under
investigation by the SEC and multiple state attorneys general.

Make no mistake: The threat to Exxon posed by

climate action is existential.

The temperature targets in the Paris climate deal are wholly incompatible with burning the carbon
companies like Exxon have in their reserves, the source of their market valuation. Thats why Exxons own shareholders were asking increasingly

This is the backdrop for

Trumps rise to powerour movements were starting to win. Im not saying that they were
strong enough. They werent. Im not saying we were united enough. We werent. But something
was most definitely shifting. And rather than risk the possibility of further progress, this gang of
fossil-fuel mouthpieces, junk-food peddlers, and predatory lenders have come together to take
over the government and protect their ill-gotten wealth. Let us be clear: This is not a peaceful
transition of power. Its a corporate takeover. The interests that have long-since paid off both major parties to do their
tough questions about whether they were on the verge of being stuck with a whole bunch of useless assets.

bidding have decided they are tired of playing the game. Apparently, all that wining and dining of politicians, all that cajoling and legalized

they are cutting out the middleman and doing what every top dog
does when they want something done rightthey are doing it themselves. Exxon for secretary of state. Hardees for
secretary of labor. General Dynamics for secretary of defense. And the Goldman guys for pretty
much everything thats left. After decades of privatizing the state in bits and pieces, they decided
to just go for the government itself. Neoliberalisms final frontier. Thats why Trump and his appointees are
laughing at the feeble objections over conflicts of interestthe whole thing is a conflict of interest, thats the whole point. So what do we
do about it? First, we always remember their weaknesses, even as they exercise raw power. The
reason the mask has fallen off, and we now are witnessing undisguised corporate rule is not
because these corporations felt all-powerful; its because they were panicked. Moreover, a
majority of Americans did not vote for Trump. Forty percent stayed home, and of the people who
voted a clear majority voted for Clinton. He won within a very rigged system. Even within this
system, he didnt win it, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment lost it. Trump didnt
bribery, insulted their sense of divine entitlement. So now

win with overwhelming excitement and big numbers. He won because Hillary had depressed numbers and a lack of enthusiasm. The Democratic
Party establishment did not think campaigning on tangible improvements to peoples lives was important. They had virtually nothing to offer to

Heres the
good news: All this makes Donald Trump incredibly vulnerable . This is the guy who came to
power telling the boldest and brashest of lies, selling himself as a champion of the working man
who would finally stand up to corporate power and influence in Washington. A portion of his
base already has buyers remorse, and that portion is just going to grow. Something else we have
going for us? This administration is going to come after everyone at once. There are reports
are of a shock-and-awe budget that will cut $10 trillion over 10 years, taking a chainsaw to
everything from violence-against-women programs, to arts programs, to supports for
renewable energy, to community policing. Its clear that they think they this blitzkrieg strategy
will overwhelm us. But they may be surprisedit could well unite us in common cause. And
if the scale of the womens marches is any indication, we are off to a good start. Building sturdy
people whose lives have been decimated by neoliberal attacks. They thought they could run on fear of Trump, and it didnt work.

coalitions in a time of siloed politics is hard work. There are painful histories that have to be confronted before progress is possible. And
foundation funding and activist celebrity culture tend to pit people and movements against one another rather than encourage collaboration. Yet
the difficulties cannot give way to despair. To quote a popular saying on the French left, The hour calls for optimism; well save pessimism for

in
this moment when everything is on the line , we can, and we must, locate our most unshakable
resolve.
better times. (Lheure est loptimisme, laissons le pessimisme pour des temps meilleurs.) Personally, I cant quite muster optimism. But

https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/resistance-our-civic-duty-ccr-respondstrump-election

The Tea Party proves that local disruption works. Our intention is to make it impossible to
walk around the halls of INSERT HIGH SCHOOL this weekend without other teams,
coaches, and judges knowing what were doing.
Newell 12/16
Jim Newell, staff writer, The Most Useful Guide to Resisting Donald Trump, Slate, December 19, 2016.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/the_tea_party_taught_us_how_to_resist_donald_tr
ump.html.--CB

The Tea Party protests of 2009, culminating in the feverish health care town halls of that August, were not a pleasant time for Democratic
members of Congress. There were countless stories of Democratic members getting booed and yelled at, fearing for their physical safety, or
being burned in effigy. Things got hot. And it all mostly worked. Anybody who was working for progressive members in 2009, 2010 has a
personal story to tell about how the Tea Party impacted them, said Ezra Levin, who at the time was a staffer for Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd
Doggett. A meet-and-greet Doggett held early that August in a grocery store, for example, quickly turned into a raucous protest. A video
recording of it was among the first of many to go viral. Doggett represented a safely Democratic district, so the disruption didnt deter him from
supporting the Affordable Care Act. But it was incidents such as this one that built up the impression of mass discontent with the Obama
administration and its large congressional majorities. Levin doesnt think Democrats should replicate those Tea Party scenes and their nastier

the Tea Party was onto something with the way it

applied pressure at a local level , against individual members, to stifle the Democratic administration and eventually put it wholly
out of power. Last week, these two dozen or so former Democratic congressional staffers released their vision for a similar Democratic
resistance to Donald Trump in a 23-page document titled Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the
Trump Agenda. The document offers a step-by-step guide for individuals, groups, and organizations
looking to replicate the Tea Partys success in getting Congress to listen to a small, vocal,
dedicated group of constituents. Indivisible was a hit from the moment it dropped online Wednesday night, earning raves
elements. But he and a couple dozen other former Hill staffers do think

from journalists, artists, former government officials, a candidate for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship, and George Takei. We
have been just absolutely overwhelmed. You dont know when you put together a 23-page guide on saving democracy that anyone will read it,
Levin said in a Friday interview. But we posted it the night before last and have been just really touched by the response weve had. By
Monday morning, after a long weekend of work done out of Levins house with new volunteers who wanted to pitch in, Indivisible had a fresh
new website, Twitter handle, and flashier design. Twitter celebration is one thing. The response the authors are most satisfied with, though, has
been from people on the ground, all across the country, saying, Oh my gosh, this is what Ive been looking for, and this is what we need to do.
Is there anybody else in name-the-local-town who wants to put this to use? And shockingly, he added, there hasnt been some kind of troll
blowback. Its early yet. Levin is careful not to take credit for this; he notes that hes just one of many authors. Hes only handling press because
he has the flexibility to do so. (Levin works at a D.C. think tank now. His work on Indivisible is done in his spare time.) But the idea came up a
couple of days after Thanksgiving, when he and his wife, Leah Greenberganother former Hill stafferwere at a bar in Austin with a college

friend, Sara Clough. Clough was the volunteer administrator for an online group that popped up after the election. * Group members wanted to
counteract Trump in some way, but they were unsure of how to do so. Levin and Greenberg decided it would be useful to leverage their knowhow from their time on the Hill to disseminate best practices for how to get members attention. They took a first whack at outlining some of
their thoughts and spread the document around to their network of old colleagues to fill in. The guide first offers lessons about how the Tea Party

They acted locally, organizing in small, dogged groups to get in

members faces. Critically, they were also purely defensive. They didnt feel obligated to present
alternatives to what was happening in Washington; they just said no. While the Tea Party activists were united
by a core set of shared beliefs, they actively avoided developing their own policy agenda, the guide says. Instead, they had an
extraordinary clarity of purpose, united in opposition to President Obama. They didnt accept concessions and treated
weak Republicans as traitors. Stopping Trump isnt about coming up with alternatives, since Democratic
alternatives will have nowhere to go under a unified Republican government , the guide adds. The hard
truth of the next four years is that were not going to set the agenda; Trump and congressional Republican
will, and well have to respond. The most effective ways for people to resist arent through indignant tweets. Its by taking on
was able to get Republicans to resist Obama.

their own members of Congress, on their turf. One of the guides more useful charts shows what members of Congress care about versus what
they dont. They care about local press and editorials, maybe national press; they dont care about wonky D.C.-based news, though it
depends on the member. (If I may: Somewhere between zero and no members of the incoming majority care about wonky D.C.-based news.)
Members do care about an interest groups endorsement. They dont care about your thoughtful analysis of the proposed bill. They dont care
about form letters, a Tweet, or Facebook comment. But they care if you and a group of like-minded individuals show up to their town hall or
ribbon-cutting, ask difficult questions or register dissent, and turn their hoped-for sunny 15-second spot on the local news into a longer story
about the anger they faced from constituents .

These and other protest actions in the guide are designed to

achieve three goals the authors lay forth: stalling the Trump agenda, because members are too busy dealing
with their own constituent unrest; sapping Representatives will to support or drive reactionary change; and reaffirming the
illegitimacy of the Trump agenda. On the last goal, the authors admit that Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will have the votes to push through what they want to put through. Activists goal, even if they
cant prevent something from going into action, is to make their members own the consequences
and lay the groundwork for their repeal. This playbook might sound familiar. Levin says the authors really, really dont want
the lesson to be that Democrats should copy the worst elements of the Tea Party resistance. The Tea Party, they really had a
whole bunch of really nasty, petty scare tactics, like hanging members of Congress in effigy, or bringing a tombstone with
the name of a congressman, or physically assaulting staffers, or yelling really vitriolic things, Levin said. That was the ugliness that was the Tea
Party, and

that was exactly what were recommending people not do. The argument in the guide is
thats not what made the Tea Party effective. It was the harnessing of conservative energy into
efficient, local organizing that did that. If Trump and the Republicans agenda is going to meet
meaningful resistance, its not going to be because liberals on Twitter persuaded the New York Times to use falsely in a headline, or
because some annoying Slate columnist wrote about how the GOPs Affordable Care Act replacement doesnt add up. Its going to be
because people made themselves, and their rejection of the agenda, impossible for members
of Congress to ignore. Indivisible is a more useful document for progressives than all of the online hand-wringing since election
night combined.

Trumps = destruction of how we policy makehow are we supposed to do policy debate

with a straight face?
Finer, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State John Kerry, 1/26
Jon Finer, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State John Kerry and Director of Policy Planning at the State Department,
and spent four years working on foreign policy in the Obama White House, Why the President Is Feuding With the
Media and the Intelligence Community, The Atlantic, January 26, 2017.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/why-the-president-is-feuding-with-the-media-and-theintelligence-community/514484/?utm_source=atltw. --CB

American presidents can come to be defined by the fights they choose to wage. Ronald Reagan fought big
government at home and the Iron Curtain abroad. George H.W. Bush fought Saddam Hussein. Bill Clinton fought a "vast right-wing conspiracy"
and Slobodan Milosevic. George W. Bush fought the Axis of Evil and the wellspring of extremism that his invasion of Iraq unleashed. Barack
Obama fought the Islamic State, climate change and, occasionally, the U.S. Congress. What, then, are Americans to make of the early fights

President Donald Trump has picked with American institutions he seems to perceive as his primary foes: the press and
the intelligence community? Those battles, which have simmered for many months, came to a head over the weekend when the
president held what amounted to an anti-press pep rally at the Central Intelligence Agency, whose analysis he had long disparaged, and his press
secretary used his first appearance in the briefing room to shout easily disprovable "alternative facts" about the size of the crowd at Trump's
inauguration, then stormed out without taking questions.

It would be easy to dismiss these developments as stunts

aimed at distracting the public from some unpleasant failing, like the chaotic transition Trump's team has overseen or the scathing
reviews of his grim inaugural address, or, perhaps, as spontaneous tantrums that speak more to temperament than to nefarious intentions. But a
closer look reveals a clear and unsettling logic behind Trump's two early fights and a common
thread that links his unorthodox adversaries. Trump is taking on two institutions in American life
that are traditionally charged with establishing the factual basis that inform national-security
decisionsthe press in its public discourse and the intelligence community behind closed doors in the Situation Room. In making
foreign policy, what a government does should flow from what it purports to know about the
world. For an administration that says it is bent on upending aspects of the established order, that
means there is a premium on seizing control of baseline facts to fortify its narrative of an
America in decline, our economy depleted by trade, our borders overrun by hordes bent on doing
us harm. Every administration feuds with the press, sometimes with good reason. With the unenviable task of writing about meetings they
cannot attend, Washington reporters can be too easily seduced by leaks that may only provide a portion of the story. Nor is it unusual for the
objective truth of news events to be contested. When I covered the Iraq War for The Washington Post, my colleagues and I often found ourselves
competing with an army of government spokespeople over whose account of the conflict was correct. The stakes of such disputes are high: public

What is different about

the Trump administration's approach to the press is that it has not just advanced an alternate
version of important events, but rather it appears to be signaling an assault on the very legitimacy
of the press as an independent actor in American public life. The result has been unusual
statements by administration officials about what is or is not the press's job, ominous warnings
about holding reporters "accountable" or ensuring they suffer the consequences, misapplying
the term fake news to legitimate organizations, and repeated statements by the president
himself that the press are "the most dishonest human beings," a sentiment he echoed to chilling applause at the
perceptions of the war helped determine how much latitude the Bush administration had to continue waging it.

CIA. At least part what explains this onslaught is that the press has been the first line of defense against a steady stream of contestable, or outright
false, "facts" put forth by Trump since the dawn of his campaign, including about a deluge of rapists and murderers among Mexican immigrants,
a surge of violent crime across urban America, or millions of fraudulent voters in the 2016 election. Now that candidate Trump has become
President Trump, such "facts" are no longer just about winning votes. In government, they become the basis on which policies are sold to the
public. For example, different decisions would surely flow from the myth advanced by Trump that the refugee population could be replete with
terrorists, than from the reality that an infinitesimal few have been implicated in any crimes at all; or from his frequent claim that Iran received
$150 billion in the nuclear deal it made with the international community, rather than the reality that it received a small fraction of that amount.

Trump has not been content to merely distort the public debate over his policy proposals, an
approach that may differ in degree, but not in kind, from that of his predecessors. Rather, and without recent precedent, he is
also laying the groundwork to influence highly sensitive policy discussions by taking on the
intelligence community, whose job is to frame those debates for national security decisionmakers. At the beginning of virtually every interagency meeting chaired by the president's National Security Council, representatives of the
But

Central Intelligence Agency or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are traditionally asked to brief on the current state of play for

the issue at hand. For example, a meeting about the conflict in Iraq and Syria will often begin with an assessment of the current strength and
disposition of Syrian regime and opposition forces, as well as the campaign against the Islamic State. These updates can be highly influential
consider, for example, the different policy options that would ensue from an assessment that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is on his last legs,

The Trump administration would hardly be the

first to express skepticism about the intelligence community. Before the Iraq War, former Vice President Richard
compared with one that indicates he will endure for the foreseeable future.

Cheney famously pushed for information that would more strongly link Hussein to al Qaeda or document his possession of weapons of mass
destruction. While being immersed in Obama administration foreign-policy debates over the last seven years, I often heard policymakers
effectively use information gleaned from diplomatic conversations or platforms like Twitter to challenge what intelligence officials reported about
emerging crises. Excessive deference to intelligence can itself be irresponsible. Skepticism is constructive if it is intended to introduce important

But it sends a different message when Trump compares

the intelligence community to Nazi Germany, or his advisors refer to the former director of the
CIAa respected career professional who served at senior levels in both Republican and Democratic administrations as a partisan
political hack. These are not substantive criticisms but assaults on the very legitimacy of the
intelligence agencies, and it would be dangerous if they also prove to be a prelude to usurping
their role in laying the factual predicate on which national security decisions are made. The Trump
new perspectives or identify biases and false assumptions.

administration may eventually abandon its burgeoning fights against the press and the intelligence community, but there is at least one reason to
believe it will continue to go to unusual lengths. In the near term, the new administration's biggest vulnerability seems to be nagging questions
about its own legitimacy, which is why certain uncomfortable factsabout popular vote totals, FBI actions, or Russian meddlinggenerate a
ferocious response. Here too, the two institutions best-positioned to shape this evolving perception (other than the administration itself) will be

the press, whose editorial decisions will determine how much public scrutiny such questions continue to
receive, and the intelligence community, which may acquire and disseminate further evidence about Russia's role. Any administration would
contest a challenge to its basic claim to power. And it is hard to imagine this president ceding to anyone else's
account of the facts. Therefore, while the intensity may ebb and flow, these fights are likely to continue, at least until
the administration feels secure enough in its ability to advance its agenda and fend off attacks on its ascent. Much of the world may not find
Trump's early battles unfamiliar, let alone alarming. The United States has always distinguished itself from more autocratic powers like Russia
and China, or from our partners in the Middle East, by the protections we provide our press, and by our aspiration to preserve some autonomy

If Trump prevails in these fights, he could do

more than simply enact his agenda; he could alter aspects of our political culture in ways
that will be difficult to reverse. In the meantime, it is important to clarify the underlying effect that the
administration is seeking: not merely a political advantage by distraction or deception, but, rather, to undermine its
main rivals and define its own reality on which to base the most consequential policy
decisions it will face.
from political interference for the analysis of our intelligence agencies.

Tucker 15
Jeffrey A. Tucker, director of digital development at the Foundation for Economic Education an CLO of
Liberty.me, Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Newsweek, July 17, 2015. http://www.newsweek.com/donaldtrump-fascist-354690--CB

Just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump was a crank and joke, living proof that making lots of
money doesnt mean you have the answers and further proof that being a capitalist doesnt mean
you necessarily like or understand capitalism. His dabbling in politics was widely regarded as a
silly distraction. This week, he leads the polls among the pack of Republican aspirants to the
office of president of the United States. While all the other candidates are following the rules,

playing the media, saying the right things, obeying the civic conventions, Trump is taking the
opposite approach. He doesnt care. He says whatever. Thousands gather at his rallies to thrill to
the moment. Suddenly he is serious, if only for a time, and hence it is time to take his political
worldview seriously. I just heard Trump speak live. The speech lasted an hour, and my jaw was
on the floor most of the time. Ive never before witnessed such a brazen display of nativistic
jingoism, along with a complete disregard for economic reality. It was an awesome experience, a
perfect repudiation of all good sense and intellectual sobriety. Yes, he is against the
establishment, against existing conventions. It also serves as an important reminder: As bad as
the status quo is, things could be worse. Trump is dedicated to taking us there. His speech was
like an interwar sance of once-powerful dictators who inspired multitudes, drove countries into
the ground and died grim deaths. I kept thinking of books like John T. Flynns As We Go
Marching, especially Chapter Ten that so brilliantly chronicles a form of statism that swept
Europe in the 1930s. It grew up in the firmament of failed economies, cultural upheaval and
social instability, and it lives by stoking the fires of bourgeois resentment. Since World War II,
the ideology he represents has usually lived in dark corners, and we dont even have a name for it
anymore. The right name, the correct name, the historically accurate name, is fascism. I dont use
that word as an insult only. It is accurate. Though hardly anyone talks about it today, we really
should. It is still real. It exists. It is distinct. It is not going away. Trump has tapped into it,
absorbing unto his own political ambitions every conceivable resentment (race, class, sex,
religion, economic) and promising a new order of things under his mighty hand. You would have
to be hopelessly ignorant of modern history not to see the outlines and where they end up. I want
to laugh about what he said, like reading a comic-book version of Franco, Mussolini or Hitler.
And truly I did laugh as he denounced the existence of tech support in India that serves American
companies (how can it be cheaper to call people there than here?as if he still thinks that
long-distance charges apply). But in politics, history shows that laughter can turn too quickly to
tears. So, what does Trump actually believe? He does have a philosophy, though it takes a bit of
insight and historical understanding to discern it. Of course, race baiting is essential to the
ideology, and there was plenty of that. When a Hispanic man asked a question, Trump
interrupted him and asked if he had been sent by the Mexican government. He took it a step
further, dividing blacks from Hispanics by inviting a black man to the microphone to tell how his
own son was killed by an illegal immigrant. Because Trump is the only one who speaks this way,
he can count on support from the darkest elements of American life. He doesnt need to actually
advocate racial homogeneity, call for whites-only signs to be hung at immigration control or
push for expulsion or extermination of undesirables. Because such views are verboten, he has the
field alone, and he can count on the support of those who think that way by making the right
noises. Trump also tosses little bones to the religious right, enough to allow them to believe that
he represents their interests. Yes, its implausible and hilarious. At the speech I heard, he pointed
out that he is a Presbyterian, and thus he is personally affected every time ISIS beheads a
Christian. But as much as racial and religious resentment is part of his rhetorical apparatus, it is
not his core. His core is about business, his own business and his acumen thereof. He is living
proof that being a successful capitalist is no predictor of ones appreciation for an actual free
market (stealing not trading is more his style). It only implies a love of money and a longing for
the power that comes with it. Trump has both. What do capitalists on his level do? They beat the

competition. What does he believe he should do as president? Beat the competition, which means
other countries, which means wage a trade war. If you listen to him, you would suppose that the
United States is in some sort of massive, epochal struggle for supremacy with China, India,
Malaysia and pretty much everyone else in the world. It takes a bit to figure out what this could
mean. He speaks of the United States as if it were one thing, one single firm. A business. We
are in competition with them, as if the country was IBM competing against Samsung, Apple or
Dell. We are not 300 million people pursuing unique dreams and ideas, with special tastes or
interests, cooperating with people around the world to build prosperity. We are doing one
thing, and that is being part of one business. In effect, he believes that he is running to be the
CEO of the countrynot just of the government. He is often compared with Ross Perot, another
wealthy businessman who made an independent run. But Perot only promised to bring business
standards to government. Trump wants to run the entire nation as if it were Trump Tower. In this
capacity, he believes that he will make deals with other countries that cause the United States to
come out on top, whatever that could mean. He conjures up visions of himself or one of his
associates sitting across the table from some Indian or Chinese leader and making wild demands
that they will buy such and such amount of product, or else we wont buy their product. He
fantasizes about placing phone calls to Saudi Arabia, the country, and telling it what he
thinks about oil prices. Trade theory developed over hundreds of years plays no role in his
thinking at all. To him, America is a homogenous unit, no different from his own business
enterprise. With his run for president, he is really making a takeover bid, not just for another
company to own but for an entire country to manage from the top down, under his proven and
brilliant record of business negotiation and acquisition. You see why the whole speech came
across as bizarre? It was. And yet, maybe it was not. In the 18th century, there is a trade theory
called mercantilism that posited something similar: Ship the goods out and keep the money in. It
builds up industrial cartels that live at the expense of the consumer. In the 19th century, this
penchant for industrial protectionism and mercantilism became guild socialism, which mutated
later into fascism and then into Nazism. You can read Mises to find out more on how this works.
Whats distinct about Trumpism, and the tradition of thought it represents, is that it is not leftist
in its cultural and political outlook (see how he is praised for rejecting political correctness),
and yet it is still totalitarian in the sense that it seeks total control of society and economy and
demands no limits on state power. Whereas the left has long attacked bourgeois institutions like
family, church and property, fascism has made its peace with all three. It (very wisely) seeks
political strategies that call on the organic matter of the social structure and inspire masses of
people to rally around the nation as a personified ideal in history, under the leadership of a great
and highly accomplished man. Trump believes himself to be that man. He sounds fresh, exciting,
even thrilling, like a man with a plan and a complete disregard for the existing establishment and
all its weakness and corruption. This is how strongmen take over countries. They say some true
things, boldly, and conjure up visions of national greatness under their leadership. Theyve got
the flags, the music, the hype, the hysteria, the resources, and they work to extract that thing in
many people that seeks heroes and momentous struggles in which they can prove their greatness.
Think of Commodus (161-192 A.D.) in his war against the corrupt Roman senate. His ascension
to power came with the promise of renewed Rome. What he brought was inflation,
stagnation and suffering. Historians have usually dated the fall of Rome from his leadership. Or,

if you prefer pop culture, think of Bane, the would-be dictator of Gotham in Batman, who
promises an end to democratic corruption, weakness and loss of civic pride. He sought a
revolution against the prevailing elites in order to gain total power unto himself. These people
are all the same. They purport to be populists, while loathing the decisions people actually make
in the marketplace (such as buying Chinese goods or hiring Mexican employees). Oh, how they
love the people, and how they hate the establishment. They defy all civic conventions. Their
ideology is somehow organic to the nation, not a wacky import like socialism. They promise a
new era based on pride, strength, heroism, triumph. They have an obsession with the problem of
trade and mercantilist belligerence at the only solution. They have zero conception of the social
order as a complex and extended ordering of individual plans, one that functions through
freedom. This is a dark history, and I seriously doubt that Trump himself is aware of it. Instead,
he just makes it up as he goes along, speaking from his gut, just like Uncle Harry at
Thanksgiving dinner, just like two guys at the bar during last call. This penchant has always
served him well. It cannot serve a whole nation well. Indeed, the very prospect is terrifying and
not just for the immigrant groups and foreign peoples he has chosen to scapegoat for all the
countrys problems. Its a disaster in waiting for everyone. My own prediction is that the political
exotica he represents will not last. Its a moment in time. The thousands who attend his rallies
and scream their heads off will head home and return to enjoying movies, smartphones and
mobile apps from all over the world, partaking in the highest standard of living experienced in
the whole of human history, granted courtesy of the global market economy in which no one
rules. We will not go back.

https://refusefascism.org/we-refuse-to-accept-a-fascist-america/

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-america/a-belief-systemthat-once-laid-the-groundwork-for-fascism

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-actually-afascist/2016/12/09/e193a2b6-bd77-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?
utm_term=.ef1b2407dac1

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/24/get-ready-for-the-first-shocks-of-trumps-disaster-capitalism/

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/trump-victory-rage-resistance

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/trump-no-second-reagan
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/historical-task-of-left-present-period-trump
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/devil-we-know-trumpism-us-history
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/trump-victory-regime-change-lessons-autocrats-erdoganputin

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/donald-trump-obama-pardon