The Witness Chronicles, 11/9/24

Resistance

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

The Path of Personal Resistance

They can’t control 330 million of us. At least not yet.

The US isn’t like China, a country that has been expanding its citizen surveillance for decades. One western writer counted 60 cameras in a train station in Beijing while walking to his train, and those were the ones he could see. But even a battery of cameras can’t tell them what you’re thinking. Not yet.

Paranoia is a dark path, not one I want to follow. Post-election I’m seeing a lot of chatter about how to resist and right now the focus seems to be on personal resistance. We don’t have to succumb to violence or blame, nor should we demonize those who voted for these people. It will do no good and serve their means, which is an America divided against each other.

This morning there are numerous reports of text messages being sent to African Americans inviting them to come pick cotton on the plantation. They are being sent through an anonymous texting service designed to hide the senders, because of course these people can’t stand the light of day.

These forms of psychological terrorism likely originate from outside the country, though they may be the product of domestic terror organizations emboldened by the Trump victory, a sign of things to come. But their effectiveness was diluted by how quickly the story spread. It’s not going to be that easy to scare people.

Resistance starts with grassroots actions, small things that as they spread become movements. Right now I do not know what those things are, other than what I am doing, which is writing and talking to others. And given the uncertainty and the threats of violence I do not expect anyone to do even that, but I made my choice long ago, small as it is.

A man named Stephen Miller, who has been ostracized from his own family because he is so full of hatred, will be running Trump’s promised deportation of millions of immigrants, both illegal and legal according to Trump’s campaign gibberish. Sounds simple but it’s not going to be. Many of those immigrants are embedded in our society, working hard at jobs others don’t want, paying taxes that don’t benefit them, and raising families.

Acting like upstanding citizens, in other words. And many of their employers are large businesses that are reliant on them including big agriculture, the hospitality business, and even Trump’s golf courses and hotels. Threats to deport them are going to create a backlash against the whole idea and that backlash will come from many of those who backed Trump.

Like many of his beautiful ideas, this one has little serious thought behind it, though I’m quite sure it scares the hell out of a lot of people who went through hell to get here. But scaring people he doesn’t like is the kind of thing a monster like Miller lives for. There’s going to be a lot of that fear mongering going on.

But we don’t have to give in to it. I know, easy for me to say, an older white male and definitely not a target, not yet anyway. But totalitarian regimes start with the obvious resistance and work their way down into personal resistance until you get Xi’s China or Putin’s Russia, places where every citizen is closely monitored and the rule of law is only the territory of those leaders.

Right now the problem is that we have few tools to resist with. The checks and balances central to the Constitution have largely been neutered over time and that includes the Supreme Court and Congress. Trump holds all the cards right now and could end a fundamental right like the right to vote. Those who voted for him likely never considered that possibility, but it’s very real.

Which gets me to that path of personal resistance. With very limited options, what can we do? First, we can keep ourselves informed while being vigilant for information that makes no sense when you apply logic to it. Then we can share that information with others.

The phrases ‘low information voters’ and ‘high information voters’ appeared in the last year but were largely ignored, something the right was counting on. They made it acceptable for those low information people to not bother informing themselves and to simply believe whatever Trump told them.

One of the first wake-up calls those low information voters may get is likely to be rapidly rising prices as Trump’s promised tariffs on Chinese made goods kick in. Despite his claims, the costs of tariffs are paid by consumers, not the Chinese sources, because suppliers will jack up prices on a wide range of goods.

All those who cited prices as their number one reason for electing him may get an unexpected lesson in how they work. We are talking about an enormous range of products from appliances to athletic shoes. Manufacturers who do a lot of business with China are reportedly looking for factories in other lower wage countries across Southeast Asia, not the US, where labor costs can’t compete.

So much for ‘fixing’ prices and bringing more manufacturing to the US. Welcome to Trumplandia folks.

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