Resisting without disengaging

January 17, 2025

Given our political minority in the federal government, we have fewer tools available for resisting those who enable Trump. The problem becomes especially acute when a handful of billionaires control information and commercial platforms that have insinuated themselves into our daily lives.

Facebook and Instagram became essential tools for maintaining family and social communications.

Researchers, scientists, and journalists integrated Twitter into their professional and academic lives. Citizens relied on Twitter for newsfeeds and emergency alerts.

Amazon forced local businesses to shutter, leaving Bezos’s company as the only viable option for securing daily necessities. Bezos saved the Washington Post, only to hand the keys over to Trump in the last six months.

ChatGPT is quickly overtaking daily communications and newsfeeds in a way that is neither transparent nor conducive to truthful political and social discourse.

Calls for boycotts are understandable. In a world where billionaires seem not to care about negative public opinion, sending an economic message is one of the few ways that we can get their attention.

And yet, rooting out Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Washington Post, Prime, and ChatGPT from our lives is easier said than done. Although I have shuttered my Twitter, Instagram, and WaPo accounts (and don’t have a Facebook account), I understand and respect those who believe they cannot leave those platforms.

And yet, if “personal inconvenience” is the standard for failing to hold Musk-Bezos-Zuckerberg-Altman accountable for enabling Trump, then we have lost the powerful tool of boycott—one of the key strategies of the Civil Rights era.

A reader forwarded me a Facebook post by the brilliant writer Rebecca Solnit, who addresses this very conundrum. She wrote:

People often suggest we quit our platforms; I stopped using Twitter because it's become a heavily manipulated right-wing hellscape, but the idea we should all go silent and be unable to communicate with each other just as an incoming administration that would love us to be silent, unconnected, and disengaged arrives seems like an incredibly bad idea.

Yeah, that boycott FB starting Sunday thing going around: No. Nope. Definitely not.

I've known Zuckerberg was evil and FB was a mess since at least 2016 (and have been telling you so on this very platform) and I'm not going anywhere. A lot of boycott ideas amount to "disengage, stand aside" and I want to see everyone do the opposite. There are boycotts that have an impact; this does not look like one either in impact or scale; a mid-size bunch of anti-Trumpists being very quiet is not powerful.

P.S. Don't click on ads and do keep criticizing Zuck and Meta. Be noisy.

I admire Rebecca Solnit greatly, but she is writing from the perspective of a person who is using Facebook as a platform for political activism—a truly noble endeavor that she should continue. (Same with Heather Cox Richardson.) But as I said to the reader, many people use Facebook to doomscroll through pointless and mind-numbing memes.

Mark Zuckerberg understands only one metric: Facebook users. If that is the language he speaks, then that is the most effective language for gaining his attention. If everyone who uses Facebook solely to check on Kim Kardashian and cats gave up Facebook, Zuckerberg would melt into a puddle.

Solnit says that the idea of a Facebook boycott won’t have scale or impact but will merely be “a mid-size bunch of anti-Trumpists being very quiet [which is not] powerful.” She may be right—initially. But the bus boycotts in the Civil Rights era began when a handful of brave souls refused to give up their seats on segregated buses and when they chose to sit silently at segregated lunch counters. See the two photos at the end of this post about the Montgomery bus boycott and the Greensboro lunch-counter sit-ins.

When the Montgomery and Greensboro protests began, there was no certainty that they would achieve impact or scale. Indeed, Montgomery and Greensboro were preceded by dozens of similar acts of resistance that are forgotten in history because they failed to catch fire. But those earlier, forgotten acts of resistance were necessary predicates for Montgomery and Greensboro. They showed the way. They spoke to possibility. The created the opportunity to learn how to resist more effectively.

We will never know whether our efforts at resistance will be effective if we give up in advance due to worry that they will not achieve “scale or impact.” An act of resistance is as much about the resister as it is about the target of the resistance: We resist because we do not want to enable a system that supports a man who openly muses about suspending the Constitution and becoming a dictator on his first day in office.

Solnit characterizes boycotts of social media in a way that I believe poses a false dichotomy. She writes, “A lot of boycott ideas amount to "disengage, stand aside.” Boycotting is not “disengaging.” It is a radical act of resistance. Think about the Black men and women in Montgomery who walked to work rather than ride segregated buses. (See photo below.)

No one—especially me—is telling you to “disengage.” Resisting by boycotting is not disengagement. Resisting can also take the form of remaining on Facebook to raise the alarm and criticize Trump's policies.

With all of that said, I do not presume to tell anyone to leave any social media platform. It is a difficult, nuanced decision with multiple dimensions. Abandoning Facebook may cut a lifeline to a family member who has moved to another state. Leaving Twitter can cut off academics from established communities. Giving up Prime may impose hardship in grocery deserts and for homebound or time-constrained consumers who desperately need baby formula and prescription medicine.

I get it.

But we must be cognizant of the fact that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Altman are rich because they have commoditized us—they capture and sell information about our attention, shopping habits, viewing habits, health, food choices, and personal identities. If we decide to continue their enrichment by allowing them to sell every scintilla of information about our lives, then the tradeoff must be more important than checking out the latest gossip about Prince Harry.

My point is this: We must be intentional about our choices in resisting the incoming administration. Those choices affect not only the targets of the resistance but also shape who we are.

Rebecca Solnit and HCR remain on Facebook despite Zuckerberg's surrender to Trump. That is a good thing for our democracy. I remain on Substack despite the weekly letter from a reader reminding me that Substack hosts a blog authored by a neo-Nazi. My wife, Jill, just decided to pull her blog off Facebook because of Zuckerberg’s recent changes to the terms and conditions of use and because of his blatant support for Trump. (See Every Day with Jill, Facebook Boycott?.)

See also Barbara McQuade in The Contrarian, Meta’s Abandonment of Fact-Checking Empowers a President Who Traffics in Lies.

But in this mixed-up, difficult, confusing situation, don’t let anyone tell you that you should not resist because “It won’t matter” or “It won’t scale.” If the Civil Rights Era resisters had followed that advice, Jim Crow laws would still be in force across the South.

If you choose to give up Facebook as an act of resistance, do so not because it might change Mark Zuckerberg but because it will change you. And in the process, you may change history.

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Update on Congress

It was a busy day in Congress with the main item of business being “capitulating to Trump.” Speaker Mike Johnson removed the long-time, well-respected head of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner. Why? Because “Mar-a-Lago had issues.” See Talking Points Memo, For Turner, Maybe The Writing Was Always On The Wall.

As noted in TPM,

Turner has been vocal about the U.S. preserving its relationships with NATO allies and supporting Ukraine during Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country, the latter of which has made him an outsider among MAGA Republicans.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement that said, in part,

Mike Turner is a serious, thoughtful and highly-principled leader, whose work as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee has been extremely impactful. . . . Mike Turner has robustly promoted the safety of the American people and the Free World and his unjustified ouster is likely being applauded by our adversaries in Russia and China. Shameful.

Rep. Turner offended Trump by not objecting to the 2020 count of electoral ballots and was vocal in criticizing Trump over the January 6 insurrection.

Turner was replaced by a Trump loyalist, Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas, a MAGA Republican out of central casting. He is a former rodeo performer and singing cowboy who claimed that Joe Biden’s election based on fraud, opposes same-sex marriage, and supported Trump's ban on travel from majority Muslim countries in 2017.

Meanwhile, in the confirmation hearings, Trump's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, opposes raising the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour since 2009). For a party that ran on helping the working-class afford groceries, keeping the minimum wage at the same level for the last 15 years seems like a kick in the teeth.

In 2024, the real value of the federal minimum wage will be at its lowest level in over 70 years. (If it’s not updated, the value of the minimum wage tends to fall over time, due to inflation.) See Economic Policy Institute (7/14/2022), The value of the federal minimum wage is at its lowest point in 66 years.

And Bessent claims that failing to extend the 2017 tax cuts would lead to “chaos.” See HuffPo, Confirmation Hearings For Trump Cabinet Picks: Latest Updates. As a reminder, those tax cuts disproportionately benefitted the super-rich and corporations. See Newsweek (10/9/2019), Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts Helped Super-rich Pay Lower Rate Than Bottom 50 Percent: Economists. (“As a group, and although their individual situations are not all the same, the Trumps, the Zuckerbergs, and the Buffetts of this world pay lower tax rates than teachers and secretaries.”)

Lest there be any confusion about Trump's plans to help the working class, Bessent evaded questions about cuts to Medicaid and Head Start by saying, “I will get back to you.”

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Update on Inauguration Day / Martin Luther King Day livestream

As an alternative activity to the Inauguration, three Substack writers will be hosting a livestream on Monday, January 20, 2025 from 11:45 am to 1:00 pm Eastern.

I am pleased to announce that Jess Piper, the author of The View from Rural Missouri on Substack will join Jessica Craven (Chop Wood Carry Water) and me for the livestream.

Jess told me she taught Letter from Birmingham Jail in the classroom for 20 years. She will be reading selections from the letter and providing background commentary.

Join the livestream through the Substack App. There is no “link” in advance. Just open the app and you will see a notification that we are “on air.”

And if you needed additional motivation not to watch Trump desecrate the Constitution and a “God Bless America” Bible (only $60 plus shipping and handling), Trump will also host the CEO of TikTok at the Inauguration, at the very moment that the Trump administration will be tasked with banning TikTok for failing to cut its ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. See USA Today, TikTok CEO expected to attend Trump inauguration as ban looms.

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This is just creepy.

Trump announced that he had appointed three aging white male actors to be his “eyes and ears” in Hollywood to help restore the town to its “former glory.” See Entertainment Weekly, Donald Trump announces Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and Jon Voight as 'Special Ambassadors' to Hollywood.

Each has been a vocal supporter of Trump, although Gibson has also attacked Trump's opponents. According to the EW article, Gibson said of Kamala Harris, “she has the IQ of a fence post.” Hmm . . . Mel Gibson has an upcoming moving scheduled for release called “Mermaid.” It would be really unfortunate if Gibson’s crass comments made people stay away in droves, right?

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Concluding Thoughts

I will hold a Substack livestream on Saturday, January 18 at 9:00 am Pacific / 12:00 noon Eastern.

It seems as though the “Great Capitulation” continues at an astonishing pace. Although worrisome, I doubt that it is as widespread or deep as it seems. True, oligarchs and corporations have sadly and predictably moved to protect their monetary interests. And we knew that Republicans in Congress are a skulk of cowards. But the grassroots volunteers who formed the backbone of the 2024 election remain in place. They aren’t going anywhere.

We are about to emerge from an “interregnum” between Election Day and Inauguration Day. It has been a confusing, chaotic, and bewildering period. But we are about to move out of the “performative politics” stage and into the stage where the health, safety, happiness, security, and dignity of all Americans will be affected by what happens in Washington.

We must move strongly into active resistance and opposition—even when those actions seem not to pay immediate dividends. No effort is wasted. We will win in the long run, and our unavailing efforts will matter just like the Civil Rights workers whose names we do not know. Their efforts were not wasted but were foundational to the progress that came later—sometimes years or decades later. Let’s emulate them, let’s honor them by following in their silent footsteps.

Talk to you tomorrow!

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Daily Dose of Perspective

In February and March of 2024, Jill and I drove down the Mississippi from Minneapolis-St. Paul to New Orleans. At every opportunity, we visited museums dedicated to civil rights. The two highlights were the he National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, and National Museum of African American History & Culture.

I have included below two pictures taken at the respective museums. The first was taken by my wife, Jill Bickett. I took the second photo. Both exhibits were powerful and moving. I hope you find them helpful in reflecting on our own resistance.

Montgomery Bus Boycott Exhibit at The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. Depicting women walking to work in the homes of white Southerners who forced their “help” to sit in the back of the bus. The boycott lasted over a year and ended when the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public transportation violated the Constitution.

Below, a stool from the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC, site of the “sit-in” protesting segregated dining facilities. National Museum of African American History & Culture.

After I observed Andromeda with the naked eye on Wednesday night, I searched for our neighbor galaxy in vain on Thursday evening. Unable to spot it with the naked eye, I broke out my binoculars. Even with the aid of binoculars, the massive galaxy appeared as a “dark smudge.” I then trained my telescope on the galaxy and took a one-hour exposure. The result is the pleasing photo shown below: