A March in April

I’m not at a protest today, though I feel I should be. We shot our TV show last night. Up early for a flight. Airports and car services and not enough sleep. So instead of marching, I write today from my back porch, heartened by images of all so many great Americans taking to the streets, funny signs belying their fury.

Like you, I don’t know where any of this is heading. I know that things are bad and getting worse. I know that people are starting to push back. I know this is the first week that most Americans saw tangible signs of the destruction being wrought in their name. And I know the coming week promises more of the same: more chaos, more scandal, more economic warfare.

My favorite sign of the day. Photo by George Conway.

Hopefully, “economic” is the only kind of warfare we experience in the weeks and months to come, but I don’t know. Retired general Michael Hayden posted an ominous message on Bluesky last night that read, “All members of the American military take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And that is what we are required to do,” in case you’re wondering why I had trouble sleeping.

Things are collapsing and they’re collapsing quickly. I’m guessing the Trump people feel like they have to enact as much of their agenda as they can before the midterms arrive next November*. They’re obviously aware of the political churn they’ve stirred and they’ve certainly anticipated some version of this moment. What can we expect them to do? It seems like they have two choices. They can either slow down, regroup, and try to marshal support for their antidemocratic policies or they can damn the torpedoes and press full steam ahead. Everybody knows they are incapable of executing the first option, which means they’re almost certainly committed to the second.

Regarding the tariffs, Trump himself wrote (in all caps, ‘natch), “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE!” Personally, I believe him. It appears that Trump has become so ensorcelled by his own bullshit that he may have met the ultimate sucker for his cons – Donald Trump, himself. If that’s the case, he won’t be deterred from this course of action, which means we can anticipate him doubling and tripling down on this insanity.

Will his cabinet continue to go along? I don’t see a lot of cause for optimism on that front. We already know his chief criteria for selecting the goons currently marauding across the Constitution: loyalty. Does anybody think Howard Lutnick or Linda McMahon or Sean Duffy or Ka$hÔ Patel is going to stand up to Donald Trump? Does anybody really think Marco Rubio will plant a magic bean and grow a spine?

We may have more luck on the Congressional side of things. A handful of Republican senators joined the Democrats to pass a resolution revoking the new tariffs on Canada. The resolution passed by a vote of 51-48 but, as the AP reported, “is not expected to go anywhere in the House.” There is some grim irony in the fact that the man more responsible for Trump’s second term than anybody, Mitch McConnell, was among the Republicans who voted for the revocation.

Another excellent sign. Photo by Dana Stevens.

To be honest, I’m not even sure what I’m rooting for anymore. Let me revise that: I know exactly what I’m rooting for but I don’t know the best way to get there. I’m rooting for MAGA to be toppled like so many Confederate statues. My question: can we topple the form of the thing without invoking the actual thing? In this case, the “actual thing” would be some version of a second civil war.

Is it better for things to get very bad very fast so the work of rebuilding can begin as soon as possible? Or is it better to muddle through the next few years, hoping against hope for a return to sanity that doesn’t necessitate American collapse? Or, by doing so, are we merely prolonging the inevitable? Biden engineered an economic soft landing following the pandemic. Is there anybody out there who can navigate a constitutional soft landing for the nation? To be honest, I don’t think so.

So, here we are, on a bright and brilliant April day. The people are in the streets and the President is on the golf course. In his first Inaugural Address, he warned of American carnage. In his second term, he brought it. Where this goes from here, I have no idea. Nobody does. Maybe that’s the scariest thing of all.

*At this point, I’m assuming we will still have midterms and I’m assuming they will be fair. I’m not sure either assumption is correct, but I don’t see how else we proceed.