UNFTR Weekly Roundup

Max Notes

The “Breaking News” alerts tracking crazy shit happening in Trump land have already begun. Elon Musk spoke to Zelenskyy from Mara Lago. There was an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump. Jack Smith is freezing the Jan 6 case against Trump. Here we fucking go.

Americans have always suffered from electoral amnesia but we’re about to get a stark reminder of how raucous the Trump years were. Only this time it won’t just be the bizarre things he says, it will be the blistering speed with which the alt-right leadership accomplishes the Project 2025 agenda.

During our post-election live stream with Nathan J. Robinson I bemoaned the idea that Project 2025 has become somewhat of a punchline on both sides of the aisle. In reality, very few people really understand what the plan details or just how attainable most of the goals are with full control of Congress and a supportive judicial infrastructure. With the House days away from being firmly back in Republican control (a certainty) the dystopian vision brought forth in this plan is viable.

I’ve seen a lot of talk already about what we can do to halt the worst instincts of the Trump team in a second term, including pronouncements from the ACLU that they’ve studied the plan carefully and are prepared to battle the administration in the court system. Other groups are planning to rally and protest in the streets. The trouble with both of these strategies (and both are necessary forms of resistance) will be volume. The sheer number of proposals contained in Project 2025 and the level of preparedness on the part of the Republican Party will sap our strength and resources; it will simply be hard to challenge it all.

Their preparedness will be our pandemonium. The Distractor in Chief will lead a seemingly nonsensical parade of outrageous and dizzying headlines to keep us off balance. We’ll lose track of the legal challenges faster than we lose them in court. We’ll lose track of who is protesting what, where and when. The GOP will deliver presents to the 1% like it’s Christmas every day and the stock market will thank them in spades and compound the bruising effects of inequality and over the next couple of years even the ill-informed MAGA masses will descend into despair and disbelief.

There’s a bottom to this. The path they’re charting is as unsustainable as it is brutal. And when we hit this moment of inevitability, we will find a way out of this mess. It won’t be in the courts or in mass movements, however. It will be through some small act of resistance that takes on far greater meaning than an amicus brief or rally cry at a protest. It will be something they miss and take for granted that so offends our sensibilities it awakens us to the madness of it all.

In other words, their grand plan to overwhelm us to divide us will ultimately deliver an unscripted moment that galvanizes the masses. It’s why small and very personal forms of resistance can sometimes be more powerful than a march. The question is, what comes next?

Revolutions are born in unscripted chaos. Revolutions live on when there’s a plan to take the reins.

If you’re still mourning this election then you weren’t paying attention. The time for mourning is over. The time to plan is now.

Other things I’m obsessing over…

Only this.

-Max

Chart of the Week

Ted Cruz, a Republican wins the U.S. Senate seat in Texas. Ted Cruz- 53.5%. Colin Allred- 44.5%. Ted Brown- 2.4%. Total vote reported 11,241,919.

Source: New York Times

They want Ted Cruz? Let them have him. I know he’s gross. You know he’s gross. They probably even know he’s gross. But he’s there until Trump selects him to replace either Alito or Thomas. (Stranger things have happened.)

Headlines

Nathan’s DNC Autopsy

This is Nathan J. Robinson’s election post mortem that we referenced in our conversation. He echoes many of our sentiments and then some.

From the article:

“Many of Harris’s mistakes were similar to those Hillary Clinton made in 2016. Like Clinton, Harris cozied up to billionaire donors. Mark Cuban, for instance, said he was delighted that Harris was abandoning Democrats’ commitments to progressive principles and letting the business community propose the policies it wanted. Like Clinton, Harris and Tim Walz made hubristic campaign stops in solidly red states like Texas and Kentucky rather than spending the final days laser-focused on crucial battlegrounds. Like Clinton, Harris emphasized celebrity endorsements while failing to successfully court unions. (Most notably, the Teamsters declined to endorse her after she refused to pledge that she wouldn’t break a national railway strike.) Like Clinton, Harris focused too much on the danger of Donald Trump (which is very real) and not enough on the reasons why she would be good at being president herself.”

Current Affairs: Once Again, the Democratic Leadership Has Failed Us All

A Reminder That Liberalism Is Not Progressivism

There’s more at stake than just our politics. Centrism and so-called liberalism aren’t even delivering incremental change for the better any longer. In fact, they’re preventing radical forces from taking hold and halting global catastrophe.

From the article:

“No doubt, forms of collective action and group formation do develop around voting. MAGA is a form of passive fandom and spectatorship, but it is also an organized and complex movement comprising a range of institutions from the parish and the podcast to the foundation and the boardroom. As the implosion of Democratic support among Arab American and Palestinian American voters suggests, in the shadow of a U.S.-sustained genocide in Gaza, these are not just census categories but also political identities and their electoral defection is also a kind of praxis.”

In These Times: Liberalism Will Cost Us the Earth

I Want You All To Read This

While this is what passes as a “humor” column, I want you all to read this with the utmost seriousness. Take heed of how they talk on the right. How fun this is for them. In response, don’t get angry. Don’t comment or retort. Don’t feed the fire. Just file this away. Don’t get mad, get even.

From the article:

“My condolences to those who want boys to wear skirts and play ball as girls, to those who get laid fewer times in their entire lives than the number of pronouns they need on official forms, and to those who are destroying women’s sports by allowing men to swim in their pools. And, to the pediatrician Assistant Secretary for Health Richard Leland Levine, who is out of his mind and, in lieu of therapy, expects us all to be crazy enough to call him Rachel Leland Levine.”

American Spectator: A Long Letter of Condolence to All the Losers

This Week on the Pod

Hey Unf*ckers. Max here. I wound up crushed at the ol’ day job and a bit under the weather heading into the weekend; no doubt coming down from the highs/lows of the week. We’re going to be dropping clips from our Live Stream with Nathan Robinson this week on the pod and reading a brilliant essay from News Beat’s Rashed Mian. I just haven’t had the opportunity to cut up the interview and my voice has betrayed me. So we’ll have a couple of drops early in the week along with a new episode next weekend as we push ahead.

Resources

Pod Love

“Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh sits down with political analyst Krystal Ball, host of the show Breaking Points, to discuss why Trump’s authoritarian, populist rhetoric may have struck a chord with voters. Then David Sirota speaks with Jeff Weaver, architect of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) two presidential runs, to hear how Sanders built a similar multiracial coalition of working class voters during his campaigns and why those voters may have now migrated to Trump.”

Lever Time: How Democrats Can Win Back the Working Class

Book Love

“This is Lenin’s seminal text on social revolution and how to achieve it, published some 16 years before Russia’s October 1917 Revolution. His plan to overturn the Czar’s ruthless autocratic regime proposes the establishment of a cadre of ‘professional revolutionaries’ with the necessary skills and experience to counter the regime’s secret police. Lenin derides trade unionists as ‘wretched amateurs’ arguing that a struggle for simple economic betterment is not enough, nor are patchwork reforms - what is needed is the complete overthrow of the political system. Lenin’s ‘professional revolutionaries’ are not so much ‘shock troops’ of violent rebellion as educated activists who will awaken the workers’ class consciousness, leading them to reject western-style political factions and to work within the Party to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat. Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the October Revolution and the ensuing upheavals of the twentieth century.”

What Is To Be Done? by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

**Unf*cker Comment of the Week**

From Dan P (who asks THE central question we must answer):

To be absolutely clear, I did vote for Harris. However, and this is my point, in the ongoing absence of a serious reorganization of its priorities, there is no way in hell I would vote for a Democrat ever again if another choice were to become viable. Hence the pressing question: why continue to waste precious energy, time, and resources propping up a party that refuses to take our (in my view, very reasonable) demands seriously? If millions of ordinary working people are abandoning the Democrats, either to stay home or vote for Republicans instead, why shouldn’t we put our energy, time, and resources toward organizing a third party around a truly popular political program for progressive and democratic change?

Progressive Corner

Progressive Spotlight: Briahna Joy Gray.

The leftist political commentator is known for challenging the status quo and conducting insightful interviews that often center on power dynamics in politics.

Progressive Organization of the Week: Center for Reproductive Rights.

“The Center for Reproductive Rights is a global human rights organization of attorneys and advocates working to ensure reproductive rights are protected in law as fundamental human rights for the dignity, equality, health, and well-being of every person.”

Check Out the New UNFTR Directory of Progressive Resources for More