Recommended Reading: 'We Have Things to Lose'
This Week's Recommended Reading on Substack: Molly McKew, Scot Nakagawa, Jessica Valenti, Derek Beres, Joyce Vance, Peter Geoghegan, Kristin Du Mez, and Todd Miller
This Week's Recommended Reading on Substack:
writes that “We have things to lose, yes — and we don’t want to lose them. We think by not fighting, they can’t be lost. It’s a lovely idea, but unfortunately our desire not to lose things has been weaponized against us. Our adversaries make the right noises about taking things from us because they know no politician in a democratic system wants to deliver that message. And actually this is a remarkable thing about President Trump. He is very good at convincing people with a hell of a lot to lose that really they have nothing to lose. And this becomes transformative.”
writes that “during Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile (1973–1990), resistance wasn’t a headline-grabbing mass movement—it was a network of small, trusted groups quietly working together to undermine the regime. These affinity groups (grupos de afinidad) operated under the radar, leaning on trust, tight collaboration, and sheer resilience. They formed the backbone of nonviolent resistance, tackling oppression one neighborhood, one strike, one song at a time.”
writes that “For those of us in middle age or older, there wasn’t anything revelatory about the election; we’ve lived that betrayal for years. But to understand for the first time that America would rather elect a rapist than a woman is soul-crushing. Even worse: Realizing just how many men voted for Trump not in spite of his sexual predation—but because of it. As difficult as that epiphany is to bear, it did not take long for this younger generation of women to respond with a resounding fuck that and fuck you.”
writes that “the right has been preparing for the next republican president for four years. In the uncertain days following Jan 6, many wrote off a Trump repeat. But it happened, and we must now prepare. Unlike Trump’s previous haphazard appointment of cabinet positions, this time yes men won’t block his whims. That’s by design.”
writes that “this is one challenge, if not the key challenge, ahead of us. The cavalry isn't coming. We don't have, at least as of now, a Democratic billionaire championing the First Amendment and the free press. So we're going to have to build the accurate information airplane while we’re flying it.”
writes that “Trump’s unpopularity in Britain is far from universal. For some, Trump is a lodestar, the harbinger of a populist revolution that could be emulated on this side of the pond. Meanwhile, some of Trump’s biggest donors have been secretly funding a clutch of the most influential groups on the right of British politics for the last decade.”
writes that “we know we are called to be lights in the darkness, and we know there may be a cost. What that looks like will be different for each of us. What that looks like for me going forward isn’t entirely clear, but for now, it looks more speaking and more writing. If not to change, then to testify.”
writes that he “was searching for the source of change, how things really move, how they transform. It usually does not come from above, but from below, like a passionate song. I realized that what I was craving was the inspiration that comes from the borderlands, not as a place of chaos and violence—as Trump will now loudly and endlessly portray it—but precisely the opposite: a place of creativity, a fertile ground where solutions are found.”
To propose pacifism as the foundational theory of resistance to what is forthcoming is to embrace deliberate suicide and endorse the unopposed murder of our comrades.
I suggest we start our political re-education by reading the Harry Turtledove short story, "The Last Article," which illustrates our present-day reality more potently than any other text I know, whether factual or fictional. (The story is available on line.) Then I would emphatically suggest becoming a subscriber to, or at least a regular reader of, the World Socialist Web Site.
In terrible truth, what we are facing has no precedent in U.S. history, and the ecogenocidal future that is now inescapable will be, by far, more devastatingly horrible than most of us can imagine, all the deadlier for the fact Nixon's abolition of the military draft in 1972 is now having its intended outcome: by denying the 99.9 Percent military training, the U.S. Empire avoided the fatal mistake of Tsarist Russia, which was the mandatory military service that, in effect, gave our victorious proletarian predecessors the discipline and skill essential for successful revolution.