You get focused to resist and the target moves. It doesn’t just move. It morphs. Should you set aside one focus to pick up another? Or you get focused to resist and the target moves. It doesn’t just move, it morphs. Should you hang on to your valid, important focus and ignore distractions?
It is hard to play whack a mole with a morphing mole. Worse, it is self-defeating to do so. It is what Trump wants. As he moves chaotically he wants us to also move chaotically.
But, the new target, war on Iran, is so grotesque you might say that, “I must refocus. I must chart a new course.” Or, instead, you might say, “My old target is so grotesque. I must maintain my focus. I must maintain my course.”
And then you may say, “My head hurts and I feel so powerless.”
A simple truth, hard to abide, is that we need to see the forest, not just the trees. Yet, we also need to address the trees, not just the forest. What?
No Kings offered a possible answer. Focus on the orange one. He is the forest. Stick with that. The whole of it. But that has problems.
First, the trees keep growing. Misogynist and racist slurs and violence. Executive orders destroying social programs. Tariffs taxing the poor. Arrests and deportations fascistically violating rights. Profit seeking growth trampling ecology. Voter suppressions entrenching authoritarianism. Wars killing, killing, killing. The carnage persists. Each mole is too big to be stopped by the subset of us that pick that mole to focus on.
Second, if continuing as we are, we do remove Trump, ghost Trump, totally end Trump, we may sensibly celebrate that achievement but settle for pre-Trump business as usual. Back to an awful past. Back to the future.
So how do we unify to be sufficiently strong against the whole forest, yet also diversify to be strong against the trees? And how do we defeat Trump to roll back Trumpian fascism but also persist beyond Trump to win a new society?
There are big questions which, however, we ought not put off answering until it is too late for our answers to matter. Beyond No Kings, what is we do a little of our own morphing? Beyond No Kings, how about if our touchstone is no polity punishing people. No economy erasing people. No families fracturing people. No schools stultifying people. No health care harming people. No countries crushing people. One big movement. And how about that that movement has parts, of course, that focus mainly on Trump’s morphing moles, but where each such part emotionally and materially supports all the other parts? Anti-ICE supports anti-tariff. Anti-tariff supports anti-misogyny. Anti-misogyny supports anti-censorship. Anti-censorship supports anti-big pharmaceutical. Anti-big pharmaceutical supports anti-war. And so on. All of them and more form a circular mutual aid relationship. And all of them emphasize the positive—not only what they are against, but that they want. Not just anti but also pro. One big movement of mutually supportive movements.
Might those steps end Trump, advance many entwined agendas, and also continue on beyond all that to keep on pushing to end racism, sexism, authoritarianism, classism, ecological insanity, and war in all its forms?
Might to attain one big movement of mutually supportive movements be a convincing answer to the big questions? Might we then unify and also diversify consistent with whacking the many moles, removing the mole master, and also producing instead of pre-Trump business as usual, a new world that is both possible and worthy?
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2 Comments
Hi Nekto,
I write a 600-word article, perhaps the shortest I have written in fifty years, trying to briefly address feelings of angst, frustration, confusion, and you reply that it is vague. Is that helpful?
And yet, despite its brevity the article does make two main strategic points. To have an effective movement we need to overcome fragmentation. Different strands need to mutually aid one another, not silo from others, much less take potshots at others. Do you disagree? And second, we need to have a positive, not just negative messages. DIsagree? What I find disconcerting is how many serious, committed, and highly informed opponents of this war, and of fascism, can write five times or even ten times as many words without talking to their audience’s doubts and concerns, and without offering any meaningful strategic proposals.
I am trying to communicate a message to, what, maybe 8 million, we can hope 10 million or more who will join the No Kings demonstrations in a couple of weeks – and, if that audience isn’t wishful thinking enough, to I suspect tens of millions more holding back, but potentially joining.
You want a pro-socialist mass movement to rise up. Great. What is that? In the world of social struggle, there are few words as vague as the phrase pro-socialist. I try to make what that may be, even what I think it ought to be, evident, albeit not in every article.
Does to speak of people who actually do use the term socialism about themselves and who talk to millions, unlike you and I, and albeit without the clarity and meaning that I and I think you probably feel we ought to seek—dismissively, as if their efforts are worth little or nothing, strike you as a way to help with the tasks we face?
Dear Michael,
With this vague agenda, the Left will surely lose. Even though it reminds “a thousands of cuts” strategy, in reality it’s a handful of mosquito bites. If you talk about a movement, it should be something of the size and influence of LFI in France. Only this kind of opposition can possibly prevent our accelerating transition to autocracy. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the power of organized labor. Yes, a general strike advocated by Kshama Sawant (https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/16/we-need-a-general-strike-to-stop-ice-terror/) is a powerful weapon, but even this (which in itself is a big ?) will not turn the tide. Yes, Democrats will probably win the next elections and, possibly, elect a handful (at best) of progressive candidates, who will follow Sander’s and AOC’s liberal, social-democratic agenda. And all their efforts will be conveniently blocked by a few conservative Democrats as usual. This is an old game. Unless the true, pro-socialist left organize independently while there still is an opportunity to do so, and the electoral victory of the Democrats gives a good chance to do it, the Left in this country will share the fate of the Left in Russia or maybe in China. What are you waiting for?