We have to realize that we have a new reality and that progressives need to change their approach. A proto-fascist movement in power that is not committed to the democratic rules of the game and that will use any means to attain power. This means that the usual approach of letters to the editor and writing to our congressperson is useless. It is time to organize a resistance like the resistance movement in France after it fell to the Nazis in 1940. We have to stop this catering to interest groups that have hijacked the progressive agenda to take care of their own particular concerns such as the concerns of the black bourgeoisie that has little to do with black masses, transgender folk, ethnic identity politics, etc. We have to focus on the fundamental conflict of the haves versus the have nots because that is the fundamental basis of politics. The Democrats have become the party of particularisms and have long forgotten how to talk to working people. It has to stop its condescension, snobbery, and focus on the simple agenda of improving the lives of regular people. Biden tried to do that, as did Harris, but they came too late. There are lots of poor whites, not all men are predators, not all minorities are the salt of the earth. We need to get back to class-based politics and stop talking about white privilege and focus instead on class privileges.

The Trump victory was a victory of billionaires such as Bezos and the owner of Tesla. When Trump starts to implement his austerity program to generate a surplus for the billionaire class, we must have a resistance movement and a resistance strategy in place to throw salt into the wounds of the lumpen that supported Trump. That means that “progressives” have to be as gladiatorial as a kid in the schoolyard confronting bullies. Who amongst the chattering classes has ever punched anyone in the mouth? We need a more combative progressivism that will come most likely from folks in the labor movement or folks who have had a life of physical struggle. We must be willing to defend democratic principles using whatever means necessary because the opposition will use any means necessary. You can’t fight just with verbiage against a movement that has proven that it is willing to take a baseball bat to your head as it did on January 6, 2021.

Therefore, we need to begin to think of a resistance movement that will defend and expand social provision beyond the New Deal and the neoliberal state. That is the defensive strategy that also must include defending progressive legislation, the rule of law, and an adherence to truth, facts and science and to the relative autonomy of the Department of Justice. Beyond that, we have to have an offensive strategy to reverse the rot that has come to the surface of our society in the form of adherence to conspiracy theories, communication agencies and agents committed to these theories and the perpetuation of other lies in the service of profits. We need to strengthen the FCC, bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and stress scientific education in the schools with a heavy stress on logical deduction and induction and what constitutes scientific analysis versus pseudo-science or faith.

This rot did not begin with Donald Trump. It has a long pedigree at least as far back as Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Reagan’s Silent Majority, the rise of Christian nationalism, and the emergence of the Tea Party Movement. Accompanied by the decline in manufacturing and a neoliberal strategy that shipped millions of jobs overseas to low wage countries such as China, men could no longer be the sole breadwinners in families and, whether they wanted to or not, women had to enter the labor force to generate sufficient income to support their families. In black communities, the decline in manufacturing had a devastating effect on black families resulting in once stable two-parent households becoming single parent households headed by women. The erosion of the status of men is something that “progressives” need to take seriously into account as they develop political strategies as well as a strategy to improve the socioeconomic status of women that has done very little to advance women other than those with college degrees. We need to stop thinking about men and women in simplistic stereotypes which place them in ideological silos that advance the interests of the chattering classes and no one else. The problems of men and women are coexistent. Men’s “issues” are women’s “issues” and vice versa.

And, beyond all else, are we capable of taking a look at ourselves and our shortcomings instead of name-calling others as an ignorant great unwashed? In its insularity, ideological silo-making, and avarice that pass for “progressivism, wokeism, identity politics, political correctness, feminism” these and a whole plethora of other “isms” have contributed to the political rot on which Trumpism rests. To pretend otherwise is to contribute to the problem and not to its solution.

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