Actual rioting, rioting committed or provoked by those supporting or in the pay of the government, or totally fabricated reports of rioting can serve equally well as a pretext for bringing in police, the National Guard or even the military, and the presence of those forces, especially if they’re aggressive, as they’re wont to be and possibly are ordered to be, will likely inflame passions and lead to conditions which this government would only be too eager to characterize as civil unrest requiring the most drastic measures. At that point, the government may use the crackdown to arrest and possibly execute those it views as its enemies, even if they had no connection to the protests. When that happens, we can consider ourselves to be living in a police state, no less repressive than that of North Korea, Russia, or Myanmar. We may very well end up that way regardless of whether there are protests or not, but why accelerate the process by providing the government with opportunities to seize complete control?

While I’m skeptical of the benefits of taking to the streets and fearful of the possible consequences of doing so, I’m not suggesting that we just give in and accept the inevitable. There are, I believe, more effective, less perilous ways to resist, and they consist of applying pressure to those who support and enable tyranny. Polls tell us that many of Trump’s actions are very unpopular. If that’s true, why aren’t there numerous campaigns underway to recall the lawmakers who empower him, or at least to primary them, not from the right but from the left? We’re also told that many Republican lawmakers privately disapprove of Trump. If so, what is being done to get them to act more in accordance with their consciences? We know Republicans are capable of standing up to Trump—just the other day five Republican senators blocked his “big, beautiful tax bill.” Unfortunately, they favor an even more disastrous version of the bill. But if some Republicans can muster the courage to defy him from the right, isn’t it possible for others to defy him from the left?

Lawmakers who have defaulted on their oaths to protect the constitution and the people of this country should be confronted with hard questions, inundated with mail, email, texts and phone calls from ordinary people and from very prominent ones they may find it hard to ignore. This won’t be accomplished by vaguely telling people to call “your congressman,” but by organized, sophisticated campaigns that people can plug into and be part of. People are eager to do what they can, as the wildly successful rallies of Bernie and AOC show, but the avenues to have an impact are too limited. If it’s not possible to move lawmakers directly, what about applying pressure to the corporations and organizations that bankroll them? Can’t we make them suffer financially for their sins? How about the media groups that normalize the outrageously lawless actions of this administration and has us focused instead, in May 2025, on the Democratic cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline in the last year of his presidency, as if it’s the most pressing issue facing us today. Can’t we send a message to the sponsors of these distractions that it’s not what we expect from them when the survival of our country is at stake?

Campaigns of this kind can only be organized by people with extraordinary juice, resources, and know-how. As individuals we’re invisible to behemoths like Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook and can’t pressure them to stop supporting a repressive regime, but well-organized campaigns can make it easier for millions to quit those platforms. That wouldn’t be ignored. In order to achieve such results, alternative platforms would have to be made available that would make it feasible for people to switch. Such entities wouldn’t have to be created from scratch because Costco, Blue Sky and Substack already exist and may be able expand or create reasonably functional subsidiaries. Sure, it’s an enormous task, but if the future of our country, maybe of the planet itself depends on it, isn’t it worth the effort. Of course, we needn’t start with the hardest challenges to make businesses aware that it’s as dangerous for them to ignore the voice of the people as that of Trump. Maybe small, local businesses and concerns should be the first targets. I don’t know. I’m not a strategist, just someone grasping at straws as I watch this disaster unfold.

“He’s gone off the deep end,” you’re saying, “coming up with totally impractical ideas.” But let me return to my original point. The advice of Holder and Gallego to take to the streets is disturbing because it’s reckless and an abdication of responsibility. They’re saying, in effect, “We give up. It’s all up to you.” But they are people with some juice. Maybe a senator and a former attorney general don’t have that much juice, but Holder can make a phone call to Barack Obama who has a little more juice and connections with many other juicy people. Gallego, as well, has many contacts who, in turn, have many other contacts. Why are they sending us out into the streets instead of using the power they have? You may accuse me sloughing off my own responsibility to act by insisting that others take action while I myself do nothing, and you may have a point. But I’m not so much unwilling to act as unable to see a meaningful course of action. I don’t expect the powerful and connected to do everything, but I wish they’d use their influence to help establish mechanisms to allow the rest of us to participate in the project.

Just a word about my choice of “I’d Love to Change the World” to introduce to this post. I was thinking of using the Doobie Brothers’ Takin’ It to the Streets, because the title was the perfect, but the song itself wasn’t germane to my message. Instead, I opted for a favorite of mine since my long-ago, long-haired, dope-smoking days, which feels more appropriate. Alvin Lee says the world has gone crazy, and he’d love to fix it if he only knew how, but since he doesn’t, he’s leaving it to others, no doubt to the respectable sorts who, unlike the freaks and hairies, dykes and fairies he probably counts himself among, seem to be in charge of things. The drumbeat of slogans—tax the rich, feed the poor, world pollution, stop the war—intensifying into a scream by the last verse, is relieved by the wistful chorus, floating on the wings of the guitar solo, I’d love to change the world, But I don’t know what to do, So I’ll leave it up to you. Maybe Alvin Lee wrote this song in an attempt to do something even though he doesn’t know what he can do, and that is the spirit in which I write this post.

May, 2025