The Dead End of Capitulation
The more the rich and powerful feed Trump's malignant wants, the more he demands. This must stop, replaced by defiant solidarity.
I’ll never get over the sickening sight on Inauguration Day as the billionaires stood behind Donald Trump falsely mouthing his oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. There was Jeff Bezos of Amazon. There was Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. There was Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Google. Maybe they believed their kowtowing in advance would ensure the security of their fortunes and the well-being of their companies.
How little they knew, how profoundly they underestimated, the reality of this malignant, immunized man whose narcissistic delusion about his own gifts and the depth of his grievances know no bounds. Did they not hear him when he said “I am your retribution”? Did they think they could escape his malignant whims? Did they not grasp that he meant it when he imagined his own brilliance, ignoring what virtually every economist said, then passed punishing tariffs and ignited global trade wars?
Did they really expect that their million-dollar payments to Trump’s inauguration fund would be sufficient protection money rather than merely wetting the beak of the ravenous beast? Did they think after the Supreme Court foolishly granted him near-total immunity that he would not act even more corruptly and recklessly? Did they not know that once they bowed down to him they’d be expected to bow lower and lower and swallow every indignity and every sign that they were mere vassals at the service of a mad monarch?
With the exception of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s top donor and fellow destroyer of worlds, I take no pleasure in their declining fortunes. They have joined the list of more than 77 million Americans who chose to fuck around and are now finding out what they did as the economy faces a downward spiral. Never mind that they had already shown how little they cared about the survival of our democracy and the basic principles of equality, justice, free speech, due process and the rule of law by handing the match to a sociopathic arsonist who revels in destruction and the pain of others.
In the weeks that followed the obscene return of Trump to our Oval Office, the list of rich and powerful who imagined that their wealth and power and overt obeisance immunized them from Trump’s sick impulses and vengeful grasp for total control has been shrinking. The repellant kowtowing of top law firms like Paul, Weiss and the discouraging attempts to appease Trump by universities like Columbia have been revealed as shams: The more they give, the more he takes. Wet his beak and he’ll only grow hungrier and more unsatisfied. There’s no such thing as an agreement that concludes the transaction with this man.
The defiance of Trump’s demands by Harvard University this week has already been a source of inspiration. Less than 12 hours after Harvard’s president released its rejection letter to Trump, Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman sent a note to her campus insisting that Columbia would reject “heavy-handed orchestration” from the federal government and would not allow it to “require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy.”
The New York Times published a story on Wednesday noting that the nine law firms that committed nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono lawyering for Trump are now learning that Trump “has a far more expansive view of what those firms can be called on to do” to serve him. “The emerging gap between what the firms initially though they agreed to and what Mr. Trump says they can be used for shows how the deals did little to insulate them from his whims,” the Times wrote.
Surprise, surprise. Capitulation does not free you from a man who rejects the Constitution, defies the Supreme Court, cares not one whit for due process and revels in the utter injustice of kidnapping a Maryland resident and holding him hostage in a foreign concentration camp without due process or any evidence of crimes committed.
Yes, we are in a constitutional crisis that is requiring a federal judge to plan contempt charges against this authoritarian regime that ignores court orders. Yes, this is an emergency. Yes, we are suffering the consequences of normalcy bias, when far too many seemingly intelligent people failed to heed the warnings and refused to believe the scale of danger and the potential of disaster.
I’ve been reflecting in the last few days on the words of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker who surely grasped the growing emergency as he evaluated the accelerating authoritarianism in the context of Nazi history. “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic,” Pritzker said in February. “All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”
A month later, Pritzker had this to say at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in support of the LGBTQ+ community but with resonance that extends far wider:
Bending to the whims of a bully will not end his cruelty. It will only embolden him. The response to authoritarianism isn’t acquiescence. Bullies respond to one thing, and one thing only: a punch in the face.
This is where we are. I’m not advocating that we all starting punching people. I’m insisting that we can punch the bully in the face through solidarity and defiance and courage. That means joining forces by the millions to demonstrate our collective power—to “hang together” as Benjamin Franklin urged.
Eighteen universities in the Big Ten are hanging together to demonstrate their version of resistance. They have established an academic alliance to defend academic freedom in response to the “escalating politically motivated actions” which represent “a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education including the autonomy of university governance, the integrity of scientific research, and the protection of free speech.”
Their resolution reverberates as a kind of academic NATO pact when it asserts that the “preservation of one institution’s integrity is the concern of all and an infringement against one member university of the Big Ten shall be considered an infringement against all.”
The response to authoritarianism isn’t acquiescence. Bullies respond to only one thing…
We are suffering from far too many people refusing to believe that we could be where we are now. We are at risk of losing everything we hold dear to a tyrant determined to feast on the ruins of public liberty. The hour is late, but it’s not too late to fight back and give this regime a proverbial punch in the face.
Please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $50 a year or just $5 a month, if you’re not already. This helps sustain and expand the work of America, America, keeps nearly all the content free for everyone and gives you full access to the comment sections.
Great article. The last three months have been brutal, when you have election deniers heading the FBI and DOJ - on top of the other incompetent cabinet secretaries - it's going to be a LONG, PAINFUL process to get through this. Obviously, the country we love is in crisis, I hope we have the wherewithal to keep up the resistance and will eventually rid the country of the MAGA cancer.
Kudos to the Big Ten for taking a preemptive stand against what is coming down the road.
There are more and more signs of hope every day. People who voted for the felon for the economy are learning that he didn’t have any idea of how to build on the already strong economy that was left by the Biden administration. He believes that he knows better than anyone, and he won’t listen to those with experience.
The protests against him are growing, and soon will reach the 3.5% of the population that it takes to effect change.