EDITORIAL: Resistance, Part II — Here We Go Again

I’ve been around here so long I remember the first time we put out an issue about resistance against the Trump regime. It hit the streets Dec. 21, 2016, right around the same time we are now in the cycle. 

A lot has happened since then. The first Trump regime came and went, with indignities against Americans of every stripe baked right into the plan, along with disregard for the rule of law, our system of checks and balances, historical precedent and our place in the world order. Let’s please not forget the COVID pandemic, the proliferation of which was largely Trump’s fault after he disbanded the country’s pandemic response team, charged with containing outbreaks of this nature. The Racial Reckoning of 2020 — and the pushback against it — also happened on Trump’s first watch. The George Floyd protests arose from the spirit of resistance and a frank acknowledgement of the way things have always been for Black folks and other marginalized communities in this country. The pushback came from everyone who felt threatened by these and other hard truths.

And then there was the Jan. 6 insurrection, born out of misplaced anger, a disrespect for the electoral process and the notion that sheer force could bend the nation to one man’s will. 

We have no reason to expect anything different this time around. In fact it will probably be worse.

But it’s important to remember that our resistance worked, to a degree. Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020, ushering in the Joe Biden era that made right a few historical wrongs in its quest to un-Trump everything. The “Red Wave” predicted in 2022 never materialized, instead bringing more gains for the party that’s not Trump’s.

One could argue that the Red Wave did finally break on the American shore during the 2024 election, when Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress and, of course, we got more Trump.

So what happened?

For the answer, let’s look at the nature of resistance. It’s an eternal struggle, not one that can ever be won or lost. The bastards will always keep coming. We should all know that by now. And so resistance is not so much an act as a lifestyle, something that must be practiced constantly, every day, every election and the months in between. There is no room for complacency when they want to tear everything down. Resistance is who we are, not what we do.

So here we are again, dreading the specter of another Trump regime, imagining what the damage will look like and how long it could last, bracing for the worst and hoping for the best. And maybe it will get so bad we can rise again and push their movement back for another four years.