THE TRUMP ERA

Anand Giridharadas -  I talk to people for a living. Over the holidays, with time off, I took a break from talking to people for a living by talking to people for free. And something I have been noticing in all of these conversations, and in the public conversations I scroll through, and even in the comments many of you have been making, is that many people are similarly wondering about their posture in this moment in history...

When I think back eight years ago, at the dawn of the first Trump term, people seemed clearer on their posture. For a lot of people who opposed him, that meant drafting themselves into a so-called #Resistance. It was a strange word, given that in other times and places it was a word that really meant something, denoted real and life-threatening risks taken to defy autocracy, whereas here we were often talking about Twitter beefs. But it was an idea that gave people purpose and brought a lot of less political people into politics and gave people who had been flailing in early November a solid sense of purpose by the time that January rolled around. The concept of resistance was useful and life-giving to laypeople, activists, organizations.

And, of course, there were other postures back then — from tuning out the news, to going with the flow, to you-name-it. It’s a big country.

My overwhelming sense in talking to people over the last two months is that almost no one — there are some, but almost no one — is interested in signing up for Resistance 2.0. There will be, and there must be, brave people who, in fact, do just that, who suit up to file lawsuits, oppose nominees, investigate corruption. God bless them, every one of them. Democracy dies in people like that not existing.

But my strong sense is that a great many people who felt drafted into a resistance posture last time around do not feel so drafted this time. This does not mean they support Trump. Most of them are far angrier and more worried this time around. Most of them assume that this time will be worse, with fewer guardrails. More