Thomas ZimmerMar 28

On No Kings day, remember:

The “Where are the protests?” lament after Trump took power was always based on a (willful) misperception – a myth propagated by a punditry vying for relevance, hellbent on presenting grandiose reckonings rather than careful empirical assessments.

https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/d7e07dc3-dad1-41e3-992a-28b4aa4e0b47

Why the Resistance Matters

Anti-authoritarian “neighborism” and cross-racial solidarity from below are a massive problem for the regime, exposing Trumpism’s weaknesses and ideological blind spots

Steady
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
From the start, protests have been far more numerous and far more sustained than anything we saw during Trump I – far more geographically widespread also, penetrating even the most rural, Republican-dominated areas.
Show threadThomas Zimmer
The gleeful aggression with which pundits from across the political spectrum jumped on the chance to declare that the (liberal) resistance was dead / had been pointless to begin with should have been a clear indicator that there was quite a bit of score-settling going on.
Mar 28 at 5:10pmIvory for iOS
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
There was also a gendered dimension to the critique – a distinctly sexist dismissiveness towards “wine moms” as the backbone of the opposition to Trump: Their political activism is still routinely derided as “cringe,” as a form of liberal hysteria, as fundamentally unserious.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
Most importantly, perhaps, the notion that there were no protests, no potent resistance to Trump, aligned perfectly with the narrative that the 2024 election had signaled a lasting rightward realignment, that Trump had a broad “mandate” to impose his vision on the country.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
If you’ll recall, the election was actually very close. Trump won with a narrow 1.5-point margin in the popular vote. And yet, the idea that America had experienced a political “earthquake” that demanded far-reaching interpretations became gospel almost immediately.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
Within days, the country’s leading newspapers and many influential commentators tried to outdo each other with ever more sweeping narratives, all propagating the idea of Trump capturing the "will of the people," all built on vastly inadequate, unreliable data – and a whole lot of personal preference.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
Trump’s victory, we were confidently told, was the result of lasting societal shifts and signaled a profound reordering of American politics, an “American realignment” – perhaps even the end of political liberalism and the beginning of a permanent Trumpist era in U.S. history.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28

The thing is: The argument that America had undergone a massive rightward shift was less a factual contention and more an ideological assertion, an article of faith. It has proven to be a stubbornly resistant myth that is exceedingly hard to kill – just like the idea that “there are no protests.”

https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/7edb91f9-c681-4769-b3cb-6eaebcc8ad4b

The Myth of a Rightward Realignment

Let’s discard some stubborn misconceptions about Trump’s support and what happened in the 2024 election that are obscuring our understanding of a profound de-alignment

Steady
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
Anyone who cared to look at the empirical evidence that was literally gathering in the streets around the country could have seen quite quickly that a lot of ordinary people cared little about the punditry’s handwringing and got busy organizing.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28
That has taken the form of mass protests, in a more traditional sense. Additionally, in reaction to the regime sending an occupation force of masked goons, a new form of resistance emerged: Communities responded with collective action through locally coordinated networks.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMar 28

Forget all the “protests don’t matter” and “No Kings is just silly” nonsense.

No one actually thinks that protests are some magical solution to save democracy.

But protests matter. Societal resistance has been hardening. And it’s a massive problem for the Trump regime.

Show threadMarkMar 28

@tzimmer_history Agree.

And don’t let protests be the totality of your resistance. Call and/or write your representatives.

#WriteYourRep #NoKings #resist

Show threadMartin Vermeer FCDMar 28
@MarkBrigham @tzimmer_history And organize. Communities are real, especially where national institutions are captured, dysfunctional and MIA.
Show threadFurao SentuMar 28
@tzimmer_history peaceful protest is actually more effective than violent protest. There is science about that shit. Also, revolutions can happen very slowly and have, most of the time, nothing to do with the romanticized form of the French revolution. Many of the quick revolutions and violent protests lead to no systemic change at all.
Show threadLee 🌏Mar 29
@tzimmer_history
Every time a force rises up, so does its opposite. As the USA drifts into Authoritarianism so does the public desire for more decentralised grass roots democracy.
The assertion of a swing to the right by Trump, Musk, and Co was always an attempt to manifest a swing to the right.
Show threadLee 🌏Mar 29
@tzimmer_history
Trump's victory was only a victory for lies.
But you can't run a country on lies, sooner or later you hit reality and they all fall apart.
Show threadClaire, The Ultimate WorrierMar 28

@tzimmer_history trump basically got extremely lucky that much of the coalition of people who had voted for Biden had stayed home while basically the same core group of MAGA die hards from previous elections were most of the people voting for trump

and it was extremely obvious this was the case but business leaders and the press all decided this was the end of the culture wars and it was time to stop pretending anyone cares about minorities