Look around. Day to day, steadily more Americans understand that we have to get Beyond Donald. It isn’t a done deal though it is getting there. But then what? 

“Don’t muddy the waters with such a question,” some would reply. “We have enough on our minds. We have enough to do right now without worrying about what happens beyond Donald. We can think about after Donald when Donald is no more.” 

I get that impulse. But I also think to ignore what’s next involves a big risk. It may get us past Donald but no further. The day after Donald, it may leave us with a condition other than what we need if we are to go further forward. It may leave us in a condition other than what we would have achieved had we thought about what’s next earlier. Why risk that? Let’s think about Beyond Donald.

Broadly speaking two paths Beyond Donald compete for our allegiance. Following the First Path, its advocates urge, will diminish, defuse, and finally utterly demolish Trump. Trumpism will be dead. We will return to life as we earlier knew it. We will re-establish pre-Trump sanity. Our next President will no longer be an abject, overt, racist, misogynist, perpetually lying, militaristic, ecology-destroying, Fascism-seeking, psychopathic thug. We will go back to Democracy as we knew it pre-Trump. We will enact new federal programs to ameliorate and indeed even reverse the ills that Trump, Musk, RFK Jr., Vance, and their billionaire masters unleashed. We will restore a degree of social calm. We will reclaim a degree of economic stability. We will enjoy our achievement. So says the advocate of the First Path.

With the Second Path, its advocates urge, Trump will be gone but struggle will continue. We will reject Trump but we will also reject life as we earlier knew it. Life that led to Trump. Life that was profoundly unjust, inequitable, exploitative, and anti social. We will establish higher standards. We will embrace reason and compassion. We will of course work to reverse Trumpian harm, but beyond burying Trumpism and dancing on its grave, we will seek positive solidarity, diversity, equity, self management, internationalism, and ecological wisdom. We will embrace such values not just in our heads and hearts, but in the institutions we seek and create. We won’t settle for acquiescent calm. We won’t settle for somber stability. Pursuing Path Two we will seek another world that is possible and worthy. We will dance to Trump’s and Trumpism’s demise, of course, but we will also fight on for more.

So which path for resistance captures your imagination? I favor Path Two which in no way denies the need for massive, unified collective resistance so as to stop Trump. But if Path Two needs massive, unified collective resistance, why bring up future aspirations at all? 

The answer is well known. We have to build resistance able to pressure, impede, and finally remove Trump and his agents. That is clear enough. But what additional immediate choices can we undertake to reach a condition aimed at full success after Donald?

First, briefly consider elites who reject Fascism but have a different view of full success. Some will be loud, militant, and in some cases quite effective at seeking to get past Trump. We already see that, especially late at night. In fact, without such elite involvement, getting past Trump would be far more difficult. But most such elites will also want to keep the uprising against Trump from unleashing awareness and program poised to go further. Anti Fascist elites will want to overthrow Trumpian agendas, yes, but most of them will also want to preserve current defining institutions. They will want the period after Trump to look like the period before Trump and they will want it to stay that way. They will want acquiescent calm. They will opt for Path One to get back to pre-Trump business as usual and they will try to subvert any attempts to pursue Path Two toward a new way of life amongst new institutions. 

What makes that observation complex but not dismissive is that the resistance can greatly benefit from and may even require elite involvement to get past Trump—for example to win elections, to convey information widely, and even to mount pressure—yet most elite involvement will ultimately try to reign in our activist agendas. This is the seeming contradiction of Path Two advocates wanting prominent performers, athletes, professionals, politicians, and soon maybe even some capitalists to join the resistance to Trumpism. But to want that isn’t ultimately a contradiction. We want elites to resist because before we can continue on after Trump we have to stop Trump, and the involvement of anti Fascist elites, however limited, can help with that preliminary step as we ourselves pursue Path Two.

Second, consider exhausted well-meaning citizens. Many will also eagerly seek, or at least willingly settle for simply getting rid of the horrors Trump has imposed. They will not automatically rush to fight on after Trump is defeated. To create conditions that inspire them to persist is a task for pursuers of Path Two. To instead shun them or to create conditions that cause them to drop out would hurt and perhaps even demolish Path Two’s prospects. And as counter intuitive as some seem to think it, the same holds for teaching a great many people who have voted for Trump, or who have even worn red Maga hats. Path Two won’t win without reaching plenty of them too.

So, what about you? I hope you won’t want to embrace the status quo ante that brought on Trump’s pursuit of fascism in the first place. I hope you will welcome and even urge the widest possible opposition to Trump, including from some elites, but that you will also continue on beyond Trump, including against the opposition of some elites who earlier helped eliminate him. 

But what implications should our desire to continue on beyond Trump have for our current practice against Trump? What is your take on that question? What are some things you think we should think through, urge, and do now to have our resistance confidently continue beyond Trump? No Kings is an excellent sentiment. Its demonstrations have been terrific. But when you think about it, the slogan sets a very low bar. It could end us up how Path One advocates desire, settling for the status quo ante. But if that is a possibility, then what more should our demonstrations aspire to, urge, announce, demand, and pursue to instead advance Path Two?

Resistance will likely continue beyond Donald if its participants realize that pre-Trump conditions bred Trump. Resistance will likely continue intelligently and effectively beyond Donald if it has insights into where it wants to arrive. In that case, its participants will work to discern how to fight Trump, MAGA, and Fascism in ways that simultaneously build capacity and also desire to continue on after the immediate battle is won.

Some things to consider to not only resist Trump but to prepare to continue beyond him might include:

First, we should talk about current ills in ways that reveal and develop desires for positive visionary aims for the future. As examples, we should talk about poverty and affordability in ways that address the underlying structural drive to profit and that emphasize the need to tax away billionaire wealth on the path to what we will determine to be a desirable way to allocate incomes in a better future. We should talk about sexual violations of women and children and gender violence in all its forms in ways that target institutional roots of misogyny and not just individual culprits. We should address violence against immigrants and racism in all its forms in ways that emphasize respect for and positive pursuit of diversity beyond Trump. We should address Trump’s constitutional violations and authoritarianism in ways that point toward new participatory and pro-collective, self-managing political norms and institutions for beyond Trump. We should address Trump’s militarism in ways that not only urge peace but also move toward dismantling imperial war-making capacity. We should address climate and other ecological crises in ways that challenge corporate responsibility and begin to seek positive modes of production, consumption, and allocation for beyond Trump.

Second, we should work toward connecting resistance struggles around each active area of concern with resistance struggles around all other active areas of concern. For example, we should speak, demonstrate, and demand gains of different sorts in mutually supportive ways. We should work to move activism that is against genocide and for peace, that is against impoverishment and for equity, that is against ecological suicide and for sane husbandry of our environment, that is against rape and child trafficking and all gender injustice and for feminist enrichment, that is against ICE and racism and for diversity and inclusion to each and all advocate for and provide aid to the rest. That is, we should overcome atomization with sincere mutual aid, informed solidarity, and intersecting program.

Third, we should create lasting local grassroots organization in communities, schools, and workplaces. For example, we should see our dwellings, neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces as sites where we are not only present, where we are not only bossed or administered, where we are not only denied dignity and exploited, but as sites where we need to organize to develop our own priorities and to then fight for them against and also after Trump. We should work carefully and patiently toward building lasting organization. Listening before asserting. And we should embody in our movements and organizations the seeds of the future that we desire.

Finally, in order to win more than to only stop Fascism, we will need to reach out to constituencies who are not yet participating in resistance and even to constituencies that currently oppose us, to recruit them to the on-going fight we must together continue to wage and finally win after we dance on the grave of Trumpism.

So let’s take Path Two beyond Donald. To become free at last.

---