A main reason for starting The Thermometer is to argue for a mass uprising. Other people have said this but it needs to be said more. Most people who do not like what Trump and the Republicans are doing are waiting for the midterms. This is a really, really bad idea. Waiting gives them more time to do damage. Also, they are evil but not stupid: do you honestly think they will be content to wait for the midterms and get voted out?? These are not people who believe in democracy, the Constitution or America. They will be planning in a variety of ways either for the midterms to not happen or to go their way, whatever it takes.
Trump is evil, incompetent, stupid, and a lifelong criminal. He will do nearly anything rather than give up the White House. No amount of criticism or protest is going to move him. He simply will not respond until he is forced to.
Republicans are not going to force him to do anything.
If Democrats were to win majorities in the House and Senate, they could control, impeach and possibly remove him. Those are very big “if”s.
We have had many demonstrations and protests, and we will have more and I hope bigger ones. This is vitally important, showing how many of us there are and that we are mad. It is not enough.
The legal system is another vital part of the resistance with many notable achievements. It cannot stand on its own. Increasingly, Trump is ready and willing to defy the courts. Without a mass uprising to force obedience, the courts will be toothless.
There are numerous alternative media and online conversations. These report and spread important information, and also let us know we’re together. Almost all of these pretend that we are still somehow living in a Constitutional order. Finally a few have been pushed to say that they are worried. This is long overdue. We have not been living fully in a Constitutional order since 2016. Democrats persist in trying to follow rules in a knife fight. This is the way to oblivion.
We need to get very large numbers of people to protest, and train ourselves to make demands of the government and NOT BACK DOWN UNTIL THOSE ARE MET. If we do it once, we can do it again. If we cannot force Trump to agree to our demands, he will have to be forced out.
THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION.
Trump will never give up or back down on his own. He must be forced out.
How?
I do not know. I have never done this before. I am advocating NONVIOLENT approaches only. The silver lining here is that Trump has already shown that he is a coward and a bully, and he will back down. Even in the horrible budget bill that just passed the House, numerous parts were passed over his objections. In some ways that made the bill even worse, but it did show some of the limits of his influence even over Republicans. The bad news is that it confirms that many of the Republicans are spineless, evil or both.
My best hope is very large numbers of people converging on Washington and bringing the government to a standstill. They cannot arrest two million people, for example. The logistics of such an effort will be very challenging — two million extra people cannot be fed, housed or find bathrooms without some very good advance planning and execution. We’ll do what we must.
The Thermometer 