Hopeful signs that majorities of people are noticing--and disapproving of--the Trumpian "find out" phase. Polls of Trump's first weeks in office register a broad sense that he's overstepped his power in several ways. Almost no one likes the mass firings. (Even Fox News's Jesse Waters pleaded with DOGE to spare a friend of his from firing.) And Trump's baffling new insistence that Ukraine and not Putin's Russia is to blame for, well, the Russian invasion of Ukraine--even some prominent Republicans balk at that.
Nor is Trump's (master? buddy? co-President? hanger-on?) pal Musk helping things. Musk commands perhaps the most powerful propaganda network (the Trump-X-Fox News Pipeline) yet realized. But the guy seems bound and determined to become as unpopular as possible with as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The massive savings DOGE initially crowed about shrink considerably--by about $14 billion--on closer inspection. I'm hoping such slip-ups (as well as his childish tirades with [checking notes for today] astronauts) start chipping away at his intellectual and entrepreneurial bona fides. Right now this vague reputation appears to be all that justifies the unprecedented power he's being granted. I don't know how he survives when that reputation goes belly up.
All of this turmoil makes it tough to know how to proceed in terms of depolarization groups like Braver Angels. Our local meeting on Sunday was very well-attended, but the attendees were manifestly left-leaning (or at least Trump-critical). We gathered ostensibly to discuss/debate whether we need a new labor movement. But the video of Braver Angels talking heads debating this issue tended toward broad consensus: labor good, even as it could be better. Our own live guest speaker, head of the state's AFL/CIO, found little to dispute in any of the video speakers' words. He had harsh words for Democrats, but his main sympathies were for working class people trying to organize.
Most of the breakout conversations I was part of dealt with marches and protests spinning up to speak out against Trump's mass firings, DOGE's depredations, and general chaos of Trump II.
One of our exec members wrote a brief but honest letter to our chair afterward, saying that if he had been a red visiting this meeting, he'd not have felt welcome. We've drifted, he points out, from the core functions of Braver Angels--to get two sides to talk to each other and learn from each other (even if they end up disagreeing).
I concur that a deep-crimson MAGA Trump supporter would have hated this gathering. But then, I'm hard pressed to imagine a Braver Angels meeting that such a person would enjoy. I'll indulge in a little both-sides-ism: I don't think a revolutionary anarchist would enjoy the average BA meeting either.
But we're at a point where the reds in power--the GOP platform--has sorted itself almost entirely into the likeness of Trump. And what that shade of red shares with the radical anarchist of the left is a basic disagreement with many of the premises of liberal constitutional democracy. Here we're beyond polarization.
Indeed, as recent polls attest, there's actually very little strong polarization about folks' opinions on the mass firings: we're against it! Ditto issues like sensible gun laws or moderation in abortion regulation. There's broad agreement. These issues seem polarized only if you give the vocal minority that's taken over the GOP pride of place as 50% of an argument.
Up until recently, though, even this vocal minority stayed basically within the bounds of democratic norms. Trump and MAGA-ites simply do not care to have a pluralized democracy. Or at least, their version of democracy looks radically different than anything we've seen for hundreds of years. They don't want checks and balances between branches of government (even those they control). They don't want liberal concerns (I mean classically liberal--respect for human rights, etc.) getting in the way of profit for a few billionaires or autocrats. The very
I'm not sure BA has many full-on-pro-Trump fans in its midst any more. Instead it has an explosion of "purples" and other independents. They don't like Trump, but they can't stand the left. But the awfulness of Trump II has the potential to make some foxhole coalitions.
And that's a problem for Braver Angels. BA proceeds from the premise that polarization (affective polarization) is the biggest problem facing US politics today. And I think most of the time, that argument has teeth. But not right now. Polarization isn't the biggest issue. The biggest issue is Trump II. Whether you call it a coup or chaos, whether you disagree with his ideas or dispute his implementation--the guy is going to be pretty unpopular pretty soon. Yet he's in power and causing great harm--directly and indirectly.
Are there still die-hard Trump supporters? Definitely. But for how much longer?
I'll be curious to see what BA does in response to all this.
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