"Small acts of resistance": Retooling "what protecting democracy looks like" in a second Trump term

Next Monday, Donald Trump will become president of the United States for a second time. He has promised and threatened to be a dictator on "day one."

None of this was fated or preordained. An alternate version of this reality and timeline could easily exist if two million Americans made a different choice on Election Day. This is especially true if Kamala Harris received the same number of votes as President Joe Biden had in 2020 (Biden received approximately 81 million votes in that election. Harris received only 74 million votes in the 2024 election).

Trump will return to power on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Remembrance Day. This is a horrible coincidence of dates; Trump and King are two men whose lives and missions are antithetical. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King emphasized how we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Trump rejects such principles and values of social democracy and human dignity and rights. Trump’s life philosophy is based on selfishness, self-interest and corrupt power.

Although there are many different individual reasons for Trump's support and his MAGA movement, public opinion and other research point to a unifying theme: people are angry, discontent and upset at a political and economic system and larger society that they (correctly) feel no longer works for people like them. So they chose a candidate who represents “change” and “shaking the system up” — even if that change is destructive and “shaking up the system” means tearing it down to build an artifice to Donald Trump and all the horribleness that he embodies. For such a radical change to take hold across American society and life will require the creation of compliant authoritarian subjects who have been trained and conditioned into accepting (and yearning for) Trumpism and the new order of things.

In a new essay at the LA Progressive, Henry Giroux notes that “What we are witnessing today is the rise of a reengineered 'totalitarian subject,' forged in the wreckage of institutions that once upheld the common good, basic rights and civil liberties, replaced by machinery designed to sustain authoritarian rule":

This subject is governed by fear, surrendering their agency to the grip of cult-like devotion and the iron hand of strongman figures. It is a subject ensnared in a culture of ignorance, enveloped by the fog of anti-intellectualism, and animated by a disdain for difference and the Other. They are imprisoned in what Zadie Smith calls the dreams of a language of autoimprisonment and the blinding poison of consent. Their worldview is reductive, confined to rigid binaries of good and evil, where complexity is obliterated in favor of simplicity.”

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This is a subject that values emotion over reason, exalts a toxic machismo that glorifies violence, and harbors a seething contempt for women, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, Black people, and anyone who does not conform to the narrow, exclusionary ideal of white Christian nationalism. Their identity is an unsettling fusion of economic, religious, and educational fundamentalisms, designed to crush critical thought and enforce conformity.

The totalitarian subject thrives in a milieu of manufactured crises and engineered divisions, where cruelty becomes virtue and the lust for domination is mistaken for strength. This is not merely a political condition but a moral disintegration—a retreat from shared humanity into the sterile, unyielding embrace of authoritarianism. Under the GOP, the creation of the totalitarian subject — shaped by regressive values, stunted agency, and a warped sense of morality — intersects with a broader assault on the very meaning of citizenship.

What does resistance, opposition and trying to defend and renew America’s democratic life look like in this crisis era and beyond? What of the relationship between emotions and politics, “the personal and the political” in the long Age of Trump and MAGA America? Where do we go from here?

In an attempt to gain some perspective as we navigate Trump’s return to power and the rise of MAGA America, I recently spoke with Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization driving systemic change and holding power accountable through grassroots advocacy and legislative action. Since 1970, Common Cause has championed government accountability, ethics and the removal of big money from our nation’s political system. Today, the organization represents over 1.5 million members and 23 state offices. 

This is the first part of a two-part conversation.

How are you feeling as you reflect on the last year, the election and Trump’s imminent return to power? 

This is a tough moment, no doubt about it. However, I’m a person of faith, so I always believe that good will triumph in the end. However, we must do the work. When David fought Goliath, he was just armed with a slingshot and a few stones. He didn’t run and hide. This is the moment for us to come together and fight for what we know is right and just. The work of building a democracy as diverse as the United States of America requires all of us getting involved and paying attention. There are so many people who will be impacted negatively who may not be able to show up and so it’s on us to show up for them and ourselves. But Common Cause is here to remind everyone that we can create the future we dream of together. 

I often think about other tough periods in our history. I’ve had the honor of working with and being in community with some of the greatest civil rights leaders of our time. When I think about what they went through under even worse circumstances, I can’t possibly imagine giving up. Now, I will say that I plan to rest when I need to, but giving up just isn’t an option. I also find it more important now than ever to be in community with others so that we can support each other in these uncertain times. 

In the civil society space in which you and your organization work, how would you describe the collective mood and energy?

This is a heavy moment for all of us because we know what Trump and the Republicans and the larger MAGA movement and “conservatives” are going to try to do to our communities — to women, poor people, immigrants and other communities of color. We’ve seen this movie before and this is the sequel nobody asked for. We know what we are up against, but again, history has shown that when we come together, when we unite across backgrounds and languages and political parties, we can achieve the multi-racial democracy we deserve and achieve small wins that get us closer to that ultimate goal. 

What are your thoughts about Trump being inaugurated as president for a second time and several weeks after the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 coup attempt?

Like most Americans, I was relieved to see the election certified peacefully. The impacts of the Jan. 6 insurrection are still felt far and wide, and it’s important to tell the truth about exactly what happened that day. There have already been a lot of attempts to rewrite our history, but we absolutely cannot normalize or minimize what we all saw happen with our own eyes.

Ahead of the inauguration and the new administration, I’ve found myself both concerned and feeling defiant toward any attempt to do harm to our democracy and the people who will be most harmed by his policies. President-elect Trump has already indicated his goals to run our country and government no different than how he runs his businesses. He’s pledged to restore the Muslim travel ban, launch mass deportations across the country, and pardon Jan. 6 rioters, among other things. Recent Cabinet appointments have also shown the president-elect’s preference for elevating billionaires, corporate oligarchs, and others based on their personal loyalty to him. 

Many Americans are disengaged from politics following Trump’s victory in the 2024 election. This is especially true of Democrats and other pro-democracy Americans. Public opinion and other data show a widespread amount of malaise and disengagement and exhaustion not just from politics, but more generally.

Common Cause represents 1.5 million members across the country. These are locally engaged, politically active people who care immensely about this country’s future and the security of our democratic institutions.

While many people are preparing to re-engage in the political process with the new administration, many others are exhausted. Voter fatigue is real, and for millions — especially young people and people of color, namely Black women and Latinas — this last election was physically and emotionally exhausting. 

To these people, who are discouraged after the 2024 election, I’d tell them to take time for themselves to recover and recuperate. Once they’re ready, this country needs them to get involved, stay involved and bring other people into the political process. Voting is powerful but not the only way to create change. Taking care of your community, volunteering your time to ensure friends and family know their rights, standing up to hate speech, calling your local representatives and advocating on issues — this activism will be needed more than ever. This is what protecting democracy looks like.

The Age of Trump is not something sudden. It is the result of many decades and very deep institutional and systemic failures across American society and government. As I have repeatedly warned, the Age of Trump is far from over. It is a story with many more chapters. Where are we in that story as you see it?

Absolutely. There is so much complexity to where we are and how we got here. We are in the late stages of capitalism and our economy and our foundation as a nation were never created with the intent of having an equal society. It was always set up to have a wealthy, powerful elite group of individuals in charge. To preserve that social order, those same individuals who have benefited from this system are feeling the effects of change and they are afraid of what they see coming in the future. As a result, they are working to maintain power and control. You need look no further than the issue of money in politics. 

The 15th anniversary of Citizens United is coming up, the landmark court case that opened the floodgates for unprecedented levels of spending in elections. What has happened is our democracy has been turned over to those wealthy few who have the biggest wallets and can write the largest checks. So, companies and special interests can drown out the voices of everyday people — teachers, nurses, firefighters. And what happens is our elected leaders stop listening to us, the people. Instead, special interests — Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tech, you name it — have the ear of the president, members of Congress and even our local city councilmembers and mayors. It’s a system built on pay-to-play and it becomes a game of who can write the biggest check and the winner — that is the person or interest who is most important when it comes time to vote on legislation. It’s a system that has helped build a democracy that can be built around one person or ideology, as long as you fund their campaign, you can have your way. We saw that with Elon Musk in this past election, but the truth is this has been happening all along.

I think those in the media need to learn how to hold the new administration accountable without unintentionally spreading disinformation or hate speech. During Trump’s first term, the media covered every single inflammatory and misleading statement he made over his four years. In many ways, people became either immune or accustomed to it. 

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In the end, all that did was empower him further and create an environment where mainstream media journalists were accused of being biased against the President. All it did was make him stronger among his MAGA base. 

Over the next four years, journalists need to avoid this mistake. They must figure out how to report on the actions of the President-elect without amplifying his most egregious and outlandish claims. Essentially, we cannot treat his actions and statements as entertainment or clickbait. 

What does it mean to be a member of the “Resistance” against Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and American neofascism and authoritarian populism?

This is a very different moment we are in today than we were during Trump’s first time in the White House. The Resistance is not any one group. It’s an ideology that people buy into — a shared belief that fairness, equity and justice actually matter. It’s the idea that every person in this country deserves the same opportunities to have a good life, decent wages, a good education and live free from fear and oppression. It’s a belief that civil rights and human rights actually matter. The resistance is everyone who believes in those things and is doing their part in ways small and large to realize that belief. 

We know that the next four years are all about unfinished business and retribution. I hope that we have learned from the first Trump Administration that we can’t just be on defense. That’s not a strategy. Instead of letting Trump and MAGA extremists lead the conversation day in and day out, we need to go on offense. We have to decide what our non-negotiables are and start talking about what’s not being said — the enormous amounts of money companies are giving to Trump, money that is public and others that’s given in secret. We have to be able to connect the dots for the American people and ask why certain decisions are being made.

As compared to what recently happened in South Korea, the American resistance to Trump and his MAGA forces' threats and promises of autocratic rule modeled on Hungary or perhaps even Russia and a dictatorship on “day one,” is almost non-existent.. The mainstream corporate news media is already engaging in what historian Timothy Snyder describes as "anticipatory obedience." The Democrats are defeated and weak and resigned to finding ways to “cooperate” with the Trump administration, when possible, to advance their “shared goals” for “working people.” Predictably, big corporations and other moneyed interests are showing fealty to Trump.

It’s very concerning to see the way the media, in particular, is cowering from their role as defenders of the truth. From what we’re seeing at The Washington Post with how ownership and other senior leadership are influencing news and other reporting and coverage. More broadly, too many reporters are going soft on basic questioning and challenging Trump and the Republicans. It’s disheartening. It’s important that the media be able to provide context and multiple views on a story or issue rather than just parrot what Trump or any other leaders are saying.

We need more courageous leadership across the board. I look at people like Liz Cheney, who I disagree with on pretty much every policy issue, but I respect how she showed up for our country when it came to Jan. 6. That is courageous leadership. Look at the late President Carter. He risked winning a second term to do what he believed was morally right for our country, not only during his administration but in the decades to follow. We need more people who are willing to do what is right rather than what is politically convenient or financially beneficial to them. This is not an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em moment.” There is far too much at stake.

It is terrifying for most people to put themselves, their lives, and, in some cases, their bodies and freedom on the line. It’s understandable. That said, protest and mass mobilization are just one way to push for change. In fact, I would argue that it is often the small acts of resistance and defiance that move us towards change and help ignite and inspire others to act.