That’s a good description of our leaders’ working ideology, if it can be called that. I’ve been saying around the house and with my friends for months now (a little too late, I know) that Trump is literally trying to kill me.
There are so many ways he’s working to dismantle the health and safety of the world—as fragile as it already was. Global warming is among the most serious, and predictably, Mr. Trump is accelerating past tipping points and gunning it over the precipice. He’ll be shining a big orange grin all the way down as we pound on the windows, trapped in the back seat.
Global warming alone is enough to end our civilization. A more democratic country’s media would focus more on that essential issue, but that isn’t the country we live in. But that isn’t all we have to fear. Mr. Trump and his associates are pushing us toward the brink by dismantling public institutions across the board. What I feel now isn’t hope. It’s rage. Then desperation—because I don’t know what to do. The authors of this article suggest we need to build a movement. How?
As an educator, I always want to go back to my roots. Public education is still undergoing its slow death rattles—its bleeding nearly complete. Soon, it’ll be privatized by the same people who’ve been helping destroy it. And any hope of independent thought and equity in K–12 education will be gone.
The psychopaths in charge understand why education is such an important target. If you control what people think from a young age, you’ll have a firmer grasp on them for life. If you instill “free market” values instead of values of solidarity and community, then you’ll raise good little workers, not union organizers.
If you teach kids that our system is good, without room for criticism or real analysis, then you’ll have a generation of unquestioning servants—rich and poor—who will sustain the greed and exploitation of our times. Continue this failed experiment until there is nothing left, and the wealthy retreat into their doomsday bunkers while the survivors contemplate the ruins. There’s a reason Vladimir Putin said wars are won by teachers.
Public education is only one of many arenas under attack. Public health, science and research, and—most critically—climate research are all being hampered. So if the reins of public education are out of our hands for now, what can we do?
The answer is: we need to organize. We need to identify illegitimate power and undermine it. We need to educate the ignorant and excoriate the liars. We need existing and new organizations to quickly adapt to the urgency of the times, and to mobilize as many people as possible.
This is an all-hands-on-deck situation. Nobody can afford to sit it out.
You can start within your browser. Look up local organizations. Ask to volunteer. Go to a meetup. Do something. That’s how we win, if we can win at all.
Survival won’t come through violence—the state will always outgun us. But sustained, mass movements—just like the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s and ’70s—taught us what’s possible.
The risks? Alienation, job loss, a quick death at the hands of an American-flag-waving fascist.
What do we risk if we do nothing? Certain destruction. What we gain by fighting is a future for all humans. There has never been a more urgent or moral cause than this.