Another winter of our political discontent is coming. Or as Yogi Berra supposedly said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
A month after Donald Trump was reelected president, many of my fellow progressives — including several who pack a union card like I do — are still wandering in the political wilderness.
“I had a lot of hope, but it’s gone now,” said a Kentucky Democratic activist and Steelworker retiree. “I’m still not watching the news.”
His remarks wouldn’t surprise Kirk Gillenwaters, a longtime union activist who is president of the Kentucky Alliance for Retired Americans. “I’ve never seen so many people tuning everything out right now. They are not watching the news. They are not looking at the Internet.”
The epidemic of self-doubt and self-flagellation still rages. The blame game shows no signs of abating.
In the speech that closed out her campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris, our candidate for president, urged, “We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It’s time to turn the page.”
In defeat, we must still turn the page, still quit the finger pointing, and as a party mirror the motto of our state, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” Count this union- and NAACP-card carrying lifelong western Kentucky Democrat all in for making the new progressive movement watchword resistez! – a rallying cry for the Free French resistance (which included many trade unionists) against the German occupation in World War II.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are giddy over our blame game. They’re high-fiving each other over our circular firing squads. They’re counting on us to ultimately sit down and quietly submit to the president-elect whom TheAtlantic’s Tom Nichols called an “an aspiring fascist.” (His cabinet picks, according to Nichols, are “a claque of opportunists and kooks.”)
“Americans must stay engaged and make their voices heard at every turn,” Nichols warned. “They should find and support organizations and institutions committed to American democracy, and especially those determined to fight Trump in the courts. They must encourage candidates in the coming 2026 elections who will oppose Trump’s plans and challenge his legislative enablers.”
Ours is the good fight, the righteous fight. Who are we to give up when Vice President Harris isn’t giving up?
“The light of America’s promise will burn bright as long as we never give up and we keep fighting, and the fight that fueled our campaign, a fight for freedom and opportunity-that did not end on Nov. 5,” she said in a Nov. 26 video message to her supporters. “A fight for the dignity of all people, that did not end on Nov. 5. A fight for the future? A future in which all people receive the promise of America? No...The fight for the ideals of our nation, the ideals that reflect the promise of America? That fight’s not over.”
It’s just starting.
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls,” Tom Paine, my favorite American revolutionary, wrote when it looked as if we might lose our war for independence against Great Britain. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
The Republicans are counting on us becoming “summer soldiers” and “sunshine patriots.”
“We’ve got to keep like-minded people active,” said Gillenwaters, also a member of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO Executive Board and a retiree member of UAW Local 862 in Louisville. “When those who have tried to lead stop leading, then who steps up?”
Who indeed?
Gillenwaters is determined to stay active against Trumpism, which is rooted in hate, cruelty, division, fear, revenge, and union-busting. He said Trump was one of the most anti-union presidents ever and expects him to be worse in his second administration. “He’s going to drop the hammer on us,” Gillenwaters said. “The book is out there.”
He meant Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term that includes an all-out assault on organized labor. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed he had nothing to do with the document, but CNN found that at least 140 people who had been in Trump’s old administration helped with Project 2025. Trump is now hiring Project 2025 alums to key posts in his new administration, according to the Associated Press.
“The question of how bad it’s going to be is up to us,” said Murray State University historian David Pizzo. “Are we in our own behavior going to allow this? Are we going to habituate ourselves to dictatorship?”
Wrote Chris Bowers for Wolves and Sheep online: “This is a time to focus on what you can control right now — what you can actually do — and less on what you think would happen if only other people would just listen to you and act as you believe they should.
“Without having to get anyone else’s approval, and without having to presume that you know The One True Path Forward, right now you can control what media you will consume, what organizations and candidates you will support, what meetings or rallies you will attend, what petitions or letters you will send to your elected officials and other decision makers, and more. In this regard, the first such decision you need to make is if you stay engaged in politics at all, although if you are reading this article then you likely have made that decision already, and I applaud you for deciding to stay in the fight.
“This isn’t to say that there is no place at all for ‘Here Is What Went Wrong/Here Is What Democrats Must Do’ articles, as it absolutely is important to analyze your past efforts and try to figure out ways you can improve. What I know that I can do is continue to operate Bowers News Media, and help Matt [Kerbel] with Wolves and Sheep, as engines to try and help you better understand and take action for Democrats and for democracy. That is something I can control, right now, and so that is what I will focus on, and leave it to others to figure out exactly what it is that Democrats simply must do.
“So forget, for a moment, what you think Democrats should do. Think instead about what you should do.”
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| Tip Jars |
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