An Alternative Inaugural Wish For 2025

<"Buyer's  Remorse Sunk In Yet?"/The Reckoner>

The less said about the Devil's Festival, AKA Donald Trump's Inauguration, the better. The less said about those obeying him in advance -- Jeff Bezos, John Fetterman, Carrie Underwood, Mark Zuckerberg, and too many others to name -- the better. The less said about those tithing themselves to the Dear Leader, the better (see US News & World Report link below).

The less said about Trump's junk drawer Cabinet picks, the better. For all the ink lavished on the freakish likes of Pete Hegseth -- whose tattoo-plastered upper body suggests some unholy collision of a Sharpie, and a bottle of Scotch, force-fed via some nickel and dime Henry Rollins-style angst -- it's easy to forget that he'll join 13 billionaires in the most plutocratic Cabinet seen since the Roaring '20s.

The less said about those sticking their heads in the sand -- imagine Husker Du retitling Zen Arcade's side four curtain raiser, "Turn Off The News" -- the better. The less said about those who didn't vote -- apparently, for lack of an ultra-ideal alternative, like someone who drinks milk all day, and hangs out with Donny Osmond, for instance -- the better. 

The less said about those who voted against their own interests -- from the suburban women who shrugged off the post-Dobbs world of abortion restrictions, to the Blacks and Latinos who rationalized Trump's bigoted outbursts ("He doesn't mean us"), and Arab Americans who cashed in their righteous moral anger over the slaughter in Gaza, with Israel's fullest-throated supporter -- the better.

The less said about those milking their ride on the Trump Train, the better. That includes the likes of Nick Johnson, one of countless YouTubers churning out pro-Trump content at an industrial place (full attention spans have no relevance in dopamine-driven culture, after all). 

The less said about Trump's loyal subjects -- such as the Black female proprietor of a pro-Trump merchandise store, proudly displaying her latest offering, a Confederate-styled flag bathing suit -- the better. If you can find a better snapshot of the contradictory doublethink that underpins the Trump movement, we'd like to see. (Hey, it's heritage, not hate, right? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.)

The less said about the political deathbed conversions of our outgoing President -- who warned us, in his farewell address, “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead' -- the better. Like his Democratic predecessors, Joe Biden left a fair imprint on the nation; yet, like Clinton and Obama before him, he also departs, having failed to fully appreciate, let alone master, the far right's continuing assault against our democratic system. If America sleepwalks into autocracy, that failure will cast the longest of shadows.

The less said about any, or all of these things, the better. Seeing Biden finally, belatedly, embracing some of the reforms that might have earned him another term -- notably, reforming the character and transparency of the Supreme Court, one dominated by Republican appointees, who seemed hellbent on kneecapping his presidency -- marks one of our most painful milestones, coming as it did, on the eve of his enforced departure from the race, and the end of his 50-year political career. 

We can only imagine how Biden might have fared, had he launched his 2024 Presidential campaign, with the above-mentioned words of warning, or these, perhaps: "And in a democracy, there's another danger to the concentration of power and wealth. It erodes a sense of unity and common purpose. It causes distrust and division. Participating in our democracy becomes exhausting and even disillusioning, and people don't feel like they have a fair shot." 

How much farther Biden (or Harris) would have gotten, and how much better would their party would have fared, if only they'd rallied around these forceful words? We'll never know, of course. It's the sort of cognitive dissonance that has driven progressives crazy, over the long run, and one that will surely haunt them, in the short one.

Our hope is that progressives do not linger over such parlor games for long. In many ways, they offer an energy-draining dance of diversion, and distraction, one that is temporarily useful, in venting frustration, yet no substitute for a long-term strategy. There is a great deal of truth in Martin Luther King Jr.'s suggestion that "right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant," and his oft-quoted aphorism: "If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward."

We have already outlined some potential responses in our previous message ("The Real Project 2025"), which we need not rehash here. For now, it's sufficient to state our biggest wish, as we begin the likes of 2025 -- a year that seems destined to rival George Orwell's year (1984) in the pop culture infamy sweepstakes. That wish, simply stated, is to get up, and get moving.

Already, various counterintuitive narratives -- some promoted by the far right and its enablers, some not -- are beginning to take shape. Trump won a decisive mandate to remake America in his image. The various prosecutions against him represented partisan "lawfare" that cemented his re-election. Perhaps we can find ways of working with Trump, whatever we think of his worst tendencies, or his ghoulish cheering section.

Pushing back against these narratives is certainly an important step, in changing it for the better; it's the reason that the Clash placed a graphic on their breakthrough album, Combat Rock (1982), which reads, "Know your rights. The future is unwritten." In the spirit of self-defense, we offer a guide to finding a demonstration near you (see link below), for today.

And if you do, let these words from The New Republic ring in your ears: "In his second term, it should be the task of liberals to force Trump to swallow a daily spoonful of the very real job stress that Obama struggled so mightily to endure." That seems like a good start, especially as Trump and his allies gear up, and prepare us for four years of plutocratic minority rule. 

Let them plot, let them plan; let them laugh, and let them lick their chops; let them stand up and shout, let them stomp and scream and celebrate. Let them do any or all of these things, for today. What matters is tomorrow, one that will arrive sooner, rather than later -- one that we can take back, if we only put our minds to it -- and when that moment comes, we're ready to meet it. --The Reckoner

Associated Press: Progressives Are Frustrated
By Biden's Final-Days Warning Of Billionaire Influence:
https://apnews.com/article/biden-oligarchy-democrats-progressives-criticism-420ad7e81a692f0444f84d41654faae1

Paste Magazine: The Fake News Pipeline:
How A Small-Time Clickbait Farmer Is Spreading the Gospel of Big Oil:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/bayou-bridge-pipeline/the-fake-news-pipeline-how-two-small-time-clickbait

People's March: Find A Demonstration Near You:
https://map.peoplesmarch.com/local?link_id=2&can_id=4e6c8046819e1ba183f676fa03eddc7a&source=email-take-a-stand-at-the-peoples-march-this-inauguration-weekend&email_referrer=email_2587221&email_subject=take-a-stand-at-the-peoples-march-this-inauguration-weekend

The New Republic: Shove The Presidency Down Trump's Throat:
https://newrepublic.com/post/190337/trump-second-term-democrats-respond

US News & World Report:
Trump Ushers In The Oligarchy Biden Is Warning Us About:

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-01-16/trump-biden-oligarchs-billionaires-treasury-secretary

White House: President Biden's Farewell Address (Text):

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2025/01/15/remarks-by-president-biden-in-a-farewell-address-to-the-nation/

Here's To The REAL Project 2025: Snuff The Stench Of Advance Obedience

A vision of the future?

The Sorrow And The Pity (1969): Movie poster

<i.>

The stench of advance obedience is hanging in the air, and so is the whiff of white-gloved propriety. Those are my main thoughts, as 2024 fades into 2025 -- the year we heard so much about on the campaign trail. Not that any of it mattered, mind you, when so many chose to stay home, throw up their hands, or vote against their own interests. 

The Donald Trump restoration is just over three weeks away, and as we've already seen, many entities have wasted no time falling in line. Start with the so-called legacy media, such as the billionaire-owned Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, who declined to make any presidential endorsements, for fear of cramping their style at the box office. 

ABC News presumably followed the same logic in abruptly settling Trump's  $15 million defamation lawsuit. This, despite many experts suggesting that ABC had ample grounds for continuing the fight, since the suit focused on a question posed to U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC). 

Star correspondent George Stephanopoulous asked how Mace, who's spoken about being raped as a teenager, could support the same man (Trump) found "liable for rape" in a 2023 civil suit (see link below). Seems like a fair question deserving of a fair answer, doesn't it? Not in a Trump restoration, apparently.

While we're at it, let's not forget "Morning Joe"s main anchor team, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who outdid their cohorts in making the requisite pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. Just in a case anybody thought they were "the enemy within," right? To coin a phrase from Margaret Thatcher, even if Trump thinks he came up with it first.

Finally, don't forget TIME making Trump its "Man Of The Year," just in time for his return. Yes, Virginia, it's not an official endorsement, but does anyone with an IQ above room temperature really believe it's not an unofficial one, of sorts? And that  narcissists like Trump, who crave unlimited adoration, money, and power, don't see such designations as the righteous validation of that lifelong mission? 

All could do with the advice dished out by Carole Cadwalladr, of The Guardian, via The Power, her new Substack venture: "Do not bend to power. Power will come to you, anyway. Don't make it easy. Not everyone can stand and fight. But nobody needs to bend the knee until there's an actual memo to that effect. WAIT FOR THE MEMO."

<https://www.downwithtyranny.com/>

<ii.>

The legacy media certainly has a lot to answer for, but they're hardly the only profiles (lacking) in courage. Let's not forget those mainstream Democrats, never the most resolute bunch, some floating trial balloons of running as independents (see Politico. com link below). Chief among these apostles is Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who expressed his reasoning thusly:

“I reached the conclusion that if you call yourself a Democrat, all the Republicans automatically line up against it. You call yourself a Republican, all the Democrats automatically line up against it. And I really don’t think there’s a path forward for this state if you don’t get the reasonable folks in both parties to work together.”

Alas, Mayor Mike's reasoning is seriously flawed, starting with the last sentence. Who does he mean by "reasonable," exactly? The notorious election denier Matt DiPerno, a man so politically radioactive, he swore off running for the Michigan Supreme Court? Or perhaps his like-minded cohort, Kristina Karamo, who unsuccessfully sought Michigan's highest elections office, Secretary of State?

Or could he mean Andrew Fink, a graduate of Hillsdale College, one of the nation's most extreme institutions? Or maybe Fink's ideological twin, Patrick O'Grady, who called himself a proud Christian, and staunch textualist, and promised to rigorously apply both principles, if they'd won their Michigan Supreme Court bids? (Thankfully, they didn't.)

Yes, those examples don't describe all Republicans, but they do describe who commands the center of gravity within their party. And until that situation changes, we should proceed accordingly. Mayor Mike may mean well, but he suffers from a malady called "Both Sides-Ism," which conflates both major parties into one seamless entity ("They both suck").

But let's take that last premise at face value, shall we? Given the yearning for common ground, what's the upside in posting bounties on women who seek abortions, or filing lawsuits, once they do? Where's the boon in banning books, or giving school districts vaguely defined, sweeping new powers to do it?

Who benefits most from maneuvers like those seen in North Carolina, where Republicans jammed through a bill stripping key powers from the Governor, and the Attorney General, as retribution for losing their veto-proof supermajority (see link below)? As of late, the answer seems to be, "The GOP, more often than not." Sadly, some prominent Democrats seem unable to learn this lesson, or worse, hellbent on disregarding it.

One of the more glaring examples is Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who's joined Trump's website (Truth Social), as he counsels his colleagues to "stop freaking out." I wonder how long his advice will hold, or what good it will do, if Republicans finally succeed in shredding the national safety net -- or who will bother to listen, once the inevitable buyer's remorse finally begins to sink in.

             <https://downwithtyranny.com/>

<iii.>

While we're on the subject of advance obedience, and who helped in bringing it about, let's not leave the public out of our discussion. I find it to feel hard moved by the likes of MSNBC's exhortations against feeling "schadenfreude" for Trump voters, particularly in light of sentences like these:

"The common denominator is an ongoing refusal to take Trump’s own words at face value. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, it became clear that many of his supporters only believed what they wanted to believe and with a wave of their hand dismissed the most brutal or authoritarian of his promises."

The article cites a Georgian family, who seems to think their undocumented relative will somehow escape Trump's mass deportation threats, and farmers worried about how their livelihoods will fare, amid a severe absence of migrant workers. Such examples beg the question -- what emotions should we feel for people who vote against their own interests, and end up risking everybody's rights, in doing so?

Shouldn't be there some measure of social accountability, especially when we remember the consistent "sanewashing" of Trump's unhinged outbursts during the campaign, by cleaning them up for mass consumption? Because, at some point, the Trump circus will finally grind to an end, somehow, somewhere, some day, some weay, in our lifetimes -- and that's when the real fun will begin, once those who got caught up in the whirlwind, or made their peace with it, struggle to explain themselves.

It may, one suspects, sound uncomfortably similar to the German collaborators of World War II, like Leni Reifenstahl, in defending films like Triumph Of The Will, essentially one of several infomercials that she made, on behalf of Nazism: “I don’t know what I should apologize for. All my films won the top prize.” In short: "Hey, I was just making a movie around here. What was the harm?"

Or, perhaps, the lower-level local collaborator, who might have sworn, "Hey, I just helped out here and there. I didn't personally know anybody who disappeared." For a deeper dive into this particular phenomenon, and the social consequences it unleashes, see The Sorrow And The Pity (1969), which provides an important and necessary counterweight to films like Riefenstahl's. It's also four and a half hours long, having been made for TV, so plan to eat in, whatever night you choose to see it (popcorn: optional).

"Just a few uber-rich bros...meanin' you plenty of harm...":

(With apologies to the "Dukes of Hazzard" theme's composer!)

<https://broligarchy.substack.com/>

<iv.>

So where does this dark picture leave us, exactly? Not in a good place, obviously, but we're hardly as powerless as they want us to feel. We definitely have entered a sinister new phase, as the recent MAGA food fight over H-1B visas should demonstrate -- one that abruptly halted, once Trump sided with Elon Musk, who seems to be emerging as some type of co-president. That emergence, presumably, came with the $277 million that Musk reportedly splurged to re-elect Trump.

This is where I go back to the A-word again (accountability). Trump supporters already feel betrayed, apparently, by the elevation of Musk's money over their nativist beliefs; if you get into a conversation with them, it might be fair to ask, "When you voted for him, did you realize that you were casting a ballot for Musk, who wasn't even on the ballot?" The reaction will tell you what you need to know.

Then I'd revisit Carole Cadwalladr's list (via The Power), which offers an excellent starting point for the mindset we'll need to navigate this forthcoming era of chaos, darkness, and confusion. If we can be so bold, let us add a few pertinent observations of our own:

A better world won't happen overnight, but unless we imagine what it looks like, we'll never get one.  For too long, we've centered our politics on what we don't want, which throttles the discussion of what we do want. Why does Bernie Sanders publishing op-eds, all brimming with proposals that may or may not ever become law? Because jump-starting the discussion, he realizes, is the first step toward making changes that make people markedly better off. 

Be honest about what challenges you can take on, and what issues you can work. Everyone has to decide their own acceptable level of risk, the constraints involved, and how we navigate them. Suffice to say, the second Trump era will offer as many challenges as the first one, in making those calculations.

Consistency is not the hobgoblin of small minds, so don't be shy about demanding it.  Allowing bad actors to hijack notions of "cool" is neither savvy nor strategic, because that's how they grab enough air cover for doing decidedly "uncool" deeds. Questioning those lapses isn't some demand for "ideological purity," but a sign that you're paying attention! Don't forget, Obama's Justice Department approved the LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger that remains the bane of concertgoers' wallets to this day  -- just ask Bruce Springsteen.

Drop the power of perspective like a hammer. Wherever possible, challenge hype-driven assumptions, like the "devastating losses" inferred by the Politco article's subhead. How devastating is it, though, when Trump won by a mere 1.5 percent margin, and four of his five candidates fell short in their US Senate races? Raising these issues is more than some academic exercise. Doing so forces people to question self-serving corporate narratives designed to reinforce our learned helplessness.

Embrace the need for some disruption. The reality of many mass movements is that victory often follows action in the streets, rather than some black-robed savior striking a gavel out of sympathy for their interests. It is hard to imagine, for instance, what Parisian students would have gained, without the famous mass protests of 1968.

Follow your pushback, wherever it leads. Sometimes, a pointed question is all it takes to puncture a deeply-held assumption, as I learned during the election. I remember one such moment on Facebook, when someone asked if I was urging readers to abandon papers like the Washington Post. "No, but we have a right to demand better than the product they're putting out," I responded. "If we don't demand it, how are we ever going to get it?" You get the idea.

Get used to flipping the script. When we do, we win. As Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin suggests, resistance to fascism begins and ends in a complete sentence: "No!" Don't forget how much worse the first Trump presidency would have been, without the mass  marches and rallies -- such as in 2017, when Republicans tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Those tempted to ignore such developments should feel the heat under their seat; "Me, too" is the last thing we should hear from anyone claiming to fall in opposition.

Hold our allies as accountable as our opponents. The surest sign of a politico feeling too big for their boots is when someone like Fetterman begins to insist, "I'm just fine without you." That's the time to clear our throat, and remind them forcefully otherwise. Those who want to follow the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema into the Sellout Hall of Shame should understand what the price of occupancy means.

In the end, remember: failure isn't always final. Like many autocrats, Mexican President Luis Echevarria thought that repression bought relief from domestic troubles. Yet his failure to punish the perpetrators of the 1971 Corpus Thursday massacre -- in which 120 protestors died, including a 14-year-old boy -- stuck to him like flypaper. In 2006, he just escaped being placed under house arrest -- he was 84 at the time --  and, even in death (2022), regularly tops lists as Mexico's worst president. When he launched his political career in the 1940s, it's safe to say that he probably envisioned a slightly different outcome.

Just remember, last, but not least: don't worry about "how long" it might take. History rarely follows a straight, predictable line, and even MLK's celebrated "long arc" sometimes takes its own sweet time bending in the relevant direction. While there are some exceptions -- the last three presidential elections, for example, all following the same "lesser of two evils" script -- it takes time to undo the excesses of entrenched power.

After all, why else did Marc Bolan sing, "Change is a monster/Changing is hard," on "Dandy In The Underworld?" Because it just is; don't worry so much about how, or why, or what. It goes with the territory. Every minute counts, for sure. But "how long" we take matters less than the day we finally get there, so dig in. And plan accordingly. --The Reckoner

Links To Go 
MSNBC: Why It's So Hard to Have
Schadenfreude For Trump Voters:
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-voter-support-regret-policies-rcna185466

Museum Of The Moving Image:
The Sorrow And The Pity:
https://reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/3040/sorrow_pity

NBC News: NC Republicans Vote To Strip...:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/north-carolina-gop-lawmakers-vote-strip-powers-incoming-democrats-rcna181032

New York Times: ABC To Pay $15 Million...:

https://archive.ph/g1TGW

Politco.com: Is The Democratic Brand Toxic?:
https://archive.ph/KU2qy

The Power: How To Survive The Broligarchy:
https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/how-to-survive-the-broligarchy

"And, as the world stands on the brink with its superpower seemingly on the way to becoming an authoritarian state, 

it’s notable that two of the most powerful and influential men in it - Elon Musk and Peter Thiel - were shaped by a childhood spent under apartheid."

<"All The President's Men"
https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/all-the-presidents-men>