Letters to the Editor: How we the people are letting Trump destroy our democracy
To the editor:
A week or so ago, I wrote: “President Trump’s first 100 days are a reminder that political opposition is the only force strong enough in our democracy to challenge an entrenched authoritarian regime.”
My comment was not meant to be derogatory, but to acknowledge that an opposition movement is emerging — and a counter-revolutionary one, at that — to resist Trump’s “imperial” takeover of the U.S. and the world.
The “bannonite” movement that surfaced among the anti-Semitic, authoritarian and nationalist-populist alt-right a few years ago has re-emerged as a political force — a far more formidable and powerful one as it grows. It has not been able to build the type of mass organization — in the type of nation-states — that would be necessary to overthrow a regime that doesn’t respect the rule of law.
But the alt-right is not the only opposition movement. One other important political force has been unable to build mass organization: the grassroots people who organized the successful anti-Trump protest in August.
These are the “ordinary Americans”, many of whom were not Trump supporters, as his media defenders claimed, but were, in fact, his victims. They saw their lives turned upside down by him and his policies, and, to a significant number, they lost everything.
This was also the people of Michigan, who brought with them a large, diverse and engaged group of pro-Trump, pro-American supporters and protesters to the state capital in Lansing, calling it “The People’s March Against Trump.” It was their “people’s march” to show the country – and the world – that they weren’t going to allow Trump to destroy our democracy.
The people who showed up in Lansing were overwhelmingly young, white, pro-Trump, pro-American and pro-progressive Americans, and were joined by more than a dozen protesters from all over the country. They rallied from the University of Michigan’s campus, onto the streets near the Capitol, to the Michigan State Capitol; and