As the saying goes, you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. For months, people asked, ‘What can we do?’ and my answer has been remarkably consistent. STOP SPENDING. It’s a conclusion many have come to, but sadly, few want to play the game in any meaningful way. The Disney boycott was enlightening for me. Democracy has been dying in plain sight for all to see under Trump, but it took a comedian getting cancelled for the average American to react. You have to laugh or you would cry. Don’t worry, I have suited up for the pushback from this my final post on advocacy for economic disengagement.
Perhaps we've approached the protest wrong, and what we need is a comedian, other than Trump, of course, to lead the resistance? I reassert that economic disengagement is the ONLY ANSWER. Unlike a mass protest, I appreciate that there is little opportunity for Instagram moments from not pressing the ‘Buy Now’ button or pressing ‘Cancel my subscription’. The inability to recognise the changing political landscape seems crazy to me.
No placard or collective chants on the street will have the same impact as a strategic campaign of economic disengagement. Yet, for some bizarre reason, it’s not ‘sexy enough ‘ or performative enough to be attractive to people. I may be wrong, of course, and it might just be that the inconvenience of not spending in a 'me, me, me’ society is just too much to bear and is the real barrier to participation.
The failure to recognise the new environment Trump is creating to crush dissent is both naive and potentially dangerous. In his first term, amid the unrest that took place after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of law enforcement, he asked Former Defence Secretary Mark T. Esper, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” This, of course, happened during a time when adults were present in the room to protect him from himself. This is no longer the case. In the 1960s, mass protests had a significantly different impact on the government. There was no social media, and television was the primary vehicle for creating public awareness.
That’s all changed. Corporate media is a hollowed-out husk of what it once was. Millions have shifted away from what was at least a nod to fact-based reporting, preferring instead to take refuge in social media. There, they can immerse themselves in an ocean of their own truth mixed with ‘alternative facts’. Messaging delivered to them by malign actors, handing out free propaganda narcotics to millions who seem incapable of independent thought. These false information addicts then gather in their information crack houses with other like-minded individuals, growing angrier by the day, which is all by design.
For millions, truth no longer matters in this new world, yet activism appears to be failing to adapt. If your opponent has taken absolute control of the media narrative by taking both corporate and social media hostage, then your task to deliver truth to the masses is rendered almost impossible. What Trump has done is castrate the Democratic response by creating an increasingly hostile environment for any opposition to operate in.
It appears to me that there are no Democratic philanthropic donors out there willing to think outside the box and invest in a new approach to the problem. This is why the Democratic Party is struggling to find its voice. Trump has all the tech actors in his pocket; liberal voices have been forced to retreat to BlueSky, which has become an enclave where they will find little pushback and can all dream of rainbows and unicorns while democracy burns to the ground. To be clear, I don’t have a problem with BlueSky as a safe space for exchanging ideas and as a place to organise. It is simply not a space from which you can fight an election campaign.
What is truly bizarre is that if free and fair elections were to be held, and that’s a BIG question. I don’t doubt that Democrats would be the winners, and this belief will be reinforced further as the economy hits the buffers and people really start to hurt. As things stand, as I have stated many times before, Dems won’t win on policy and vision; they will win because they represent a protest vote against Trump. It appears that this is precisely the outcome the current Democratic leadership is prepared to accept, and that should be of grave concern to all Americans. If you, hand on heart, believe that the US can survive until November 2026, let alone 2028, I think you should take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself that question again.
Despite everything that’s happened, there still seems to be a reluctance to accept that everything has changed and that mass protests represent an elevated risk of state violence towards protesters. Of course, these are personal decisions that must be made based on a risk assessment of the threat. However, I would urge caution, especially if intending to take children to events. It’s a risk versus reward assessment, and all evidence suggests that mass protests only deliver change when they occur in a sustained manner, as seen with the Arab Spring in 2010. Even then, the rewards were small. Months apart, it could reasonably be argued that they are simply a day out with like-minded people, not that this is a problem if that’s how you prefer to protest.
Take a look at this report from the Council on Foreign Relations, headed:
The Arab Spring at Ten Years: What’s the Legacy of the Uprisings?
The graph below illustrates democratic progress from a massive protest movement.
Before you dismiss the analogy, the nations in which these protests took place had regimes similar to what Trump is seeking to impose on America, and his mental instability will truly test the US military in the months ahead. If you have any doubts, please take a moment to read the report. I fear that millions of Americans have become the frog in the pot of boiling water, convincing themselves that there is still time before an actual crisis point is reached. It’s a totally understandable human reaction; on the inside, the changes have been normalised by an administration that is masterful in its ability to manipulate the narrative.
On October 18th, corporate media will only focus on any violence that occurs, there will be limited coverage of numbers, and Trump’s social media tech bros will simply tweak the algorithms to diminish the perception of any large-scale public dissent. On the upside, I still think corporate media would report on it if the military started shooting people, so there is that. Everything else will be as if it happened in the dark from a media perspective, but it will provide all important Instagram moments.
Attending the protest to gain a sense of camaraderie and solidarity is absolutely understandable, and if that’s your justification, have a great day out. If the purpose is to effect change, then I hate to tell you that it will change nothing unless you are prepared to do it day after day. That’s not me saying it; historical data proves it. Tens of millions of people around the world protested against the Iraq War. Even more have protested against the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. This has a nominal political impact. Governments have become quite adept at ignoring protests.
It’s a simple matter of deciding what you hope to achieve through a risk-to-reward analysis. What I can tell you without fear of contradiction is that if Americans can reduce consumer spending by 3%, it will truly draw a line in the sand, reminding this government that it governs with the consent of the people. I hate to tell you that it’s the only viable option open to you, and if that means people shooting the messenger, then so be it.
We unfortunately live in a performative visual world where ‘our truth’ has to be shared in what has become a political theatre. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy:
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” (Macbeth)
Be in no doubt, there will be a time when Trump is heard no more, but the question is how much irreparable damage will be done by the time that moment arrives. He’s only the useful idiot delivering the messaging anyway. Liberal voices in this moment are passengers sharing accommodation with the working class, the working poor, minority communities and the vulnerable on the Good Ship Trump. All are relegated to an existence in steerage. There will be no places in the lifeboats when the ship goes down, so we need to shift from performative resistance to action that can have an actual impact.
Americans are still living in a representative democracy at this moment, and by virtue of this, they allegedly have the right to freedom of expression. My simple question is ‘For how long?’ Trump is closing the exit doors one by one and wrapping chains around the exits. As each day passes, the likelihood of resolving this issue through political discourse diminishes. There is no better example than the current negotiations aimed at averting a government shutdown.
Trump has really become adept at playing chicken, even with the slim majority he holds in the House. The Republican messaging monster is doing its thing as it attempts to drown Democrats in blame for shutting down the government. It has to be said that Democrats find themselves in an almost impossible position of allowing Trump to fire yet more federal workers. The question is, is he bluffing? In any event, we are set to see 100,000 federal workers resign tomorrow under the administration’s deferred resignation program. Everywhere you look, there is a sense of planned chaos.
I’m done discussing economic disengagement because, as someone commented on my post yesterday, which you can find below,
What's next in this struggle for liberation?
Let me begin right out of the gate by reiterating that the next No Kings Day will be OCTOBER 18. I apologise; I said yesterday that the date was August 18, which was clearly incorrect. Otherwise, we would have needed to jump into a time machine to attend. It was a genuine mistake that slipped through the net, and I have no idea where that came from. I, …
That reader said,
“A spending strike for Americans is never going to happen. Full stop.”
Current evidence suggests he may well be right, so there’s little to be gained from me banging my head against the wall advocating for something many find too inconvenient to participate in. In conclusion, I would say good luck countering this tyranny with the same old, same old. How’s it going so far?
Next, I’m turning my attention back to the economy because, oh Lord, is there a LOT flying under the radar at the moment due to all these distractions.
Martin, you’ve attracted quite a few trolls giving you negative comments. Much as it pains me to say it, you probably need to limit comments to paid subscribers. I’ve seen the troll patrols on other substacks that were open to all. Please don’t let a few negative comments change your focus. Economic Disengagement really is the only viable, peaceful option.
I wish I could repost this everywhere 1000 times, because I believe you were absolutely correct!