How to Stop the Descent into Madness

To the degree you're just a spectator to this crisis, you're a contributor to it.

As I observed yesterday, we have entered a new phase of national crisis. Confronted with accelerating madness, lawlessness, corruption, cruelty and destruction, we cannot, must not, continue as we have been. We must respond to the worsening situation with greater urgency, greater numbers, bolder actions…and we must candidly assess what has and has not worked in the past and try new things where required.

What follows are some thoughts about that response, some guidelines, some specific actions to take, some ways we must reset our outlook. These are fragments, in no particular order. Choose among them. Embrace what you can and what you believe in. Add your own thoughts in the comments.

• Resistance is not something you feel. It’s something you do.

• Activism is an imperative for each of us.

• Civil disobedience is a choice more of us will have to make.

• Speak louder. Turn up the volume. Whatever you have done in the past, do more.

• Always challenge their lies. Even when it is uncomfortable. Whether you are a journalist or you at a dinner with friends or a school board meeting. Challenge the lies with the truth. Make it uncomfortable to promote or embrace MAGAganda.

• Compromise does not work. They always take advantage of it. They always break their promises. Look at recent compromises by presumably well-intentioned Democratic Senators. How have they turned out?

• Bending the knee does not work. They always demand more. What is more institutions that do compromise with them normalize the administration’s bully tactics and sell out other institutions and their core constituencies—whether those be students, faculty, legal clients, corporate clients.

• Meeting fascists halfway does not work. It only gets you a step closer to authoritarianism.

• Say no. Do not cooperate. Do not approve their nominees for any jobs. Do not approve their budgets. Do not do anything unless their are rock hard promises of gains to be made. Not ever. Every compromise is corrosive.

• Trump is making new anti-MAGA activists every day: families of the deported or those brutalized by ICE, those who will not be able to afford healthcare, those who can’t get VA support, those whose cities or institutions are being denied resources, those targeted by hate, those who are the victims of corruption. Engage them. They will be among the best allies in bringing down MAGA. Support them.

• The goal is not to win MAGA votes. That has been proven over ten years to be a sucker’s game. The goal is to end MAGA. To discredit it. To burn the fields and salt the ground.

• Wherever possible make it clear to companies and their leaders and to politicians that support for MAGA will come with a cost. Boycotts work. Making it clear that they can’t just flip a switch and say “never mind” for all the mayhem and vileness they supported. Being MAGA must be seen as a bad career choice with real and lasting consequences.

• Reveal the human costs of what they are doing wherever and whenever you can. Do it at the grassroots level. With your family. With your friends. It will be awkward. Silence is worse. Do it at school boards. Do it at town council meetings. Do it at town halls with congress people. Do it on interactive media. Do it in chats. Bring receipts.

• Be active. More active than you have been in the past. You can always do more. Volunteer. Donate. Canvas. Run for something.

• This battle will be won at the community level. That is where the costs of their actions will be clearest and the story will be told in a human way. Stories about people are always the most powerful stories.

• Choose new leaders. Choose new ideas. Don’t relitigate defeats. The past is past.

• Demonstrate more. But demonstrate more visibly. Bring millions to Washington. Do it regularly. It is too easy for the MAGA leaders to tune out what is far away from them.

• Strike.

• Use every available platform.

• When they seek to intimidate, push back harder. Make it clear that you will endure losses and hardship in order to defend the country.

• Take risks.

• Be a witness. Every one of us has a camera in our phones and a link to multiple social platforms. When you see the costs of terrible policies—from ICE round-ups to white supremacist violence to destroyed environment to the homeless—chronicle it. Make it public. Share it with just your friends and family and you will magnify its impact many times over. Harness network effects to magnify the magnification.

• Remember silence and half-measures and weakness and thinking the best of them and “institutionalists” got us here. They thought they were living in a past reality. They were wrong.

• We can’t triangulate our way out of this. Tune out the political consultants who are really stalking horses for the elites who want to make sure their interests are covered no matter who is in power.

• Zero in on that last word: power. This is not just about politics. We have an oligarchy in America that thinks they can ride the Trump train and then hop off when it has taken them as far as they can go and then comb their hair the Democrat way and work their deals with them for a while. They believe it because it has worked for half a century. It is time to make an agenda that reins them in from fairer taxes to campaign finance reform…and it is time to do what candidates like Mamdani and AOC and others have done and send the message that we do not need or seek their approval or their money.

• To underscore this: We can all list major policy positions for which there is the support of a supermajority of Americans (fairer taxes, healthcare for all, education reform, protecting the environment, common sense gun reform, etc.). Yet, none of these can pass our Congress. This is a sign the system is broken in a way that goes beyond politics. The donors have the final say and time after time they overrule the vast majority of American people and our collective interests. They and their greed have gutted American democracy. We will not get it back unless we defeat them.

• Does that mean to target billionaire greed? Gilded ballrooms? Sweetheart deals for Trump and his friends? Corruption? You bet it does. Those are hugely and rightly unpopular.

• Strength wins. Playing offense wins. Clarity wins.

• Solutions win. But don’t fall for the nonsense that Dems do not know what they are for. What we are for is very clear. Democracy. The rule of law. Affordability. Opportunity. Decency. Economic growth that benefits all of us. Real security. The things we have always been for. The things they are attacking every day.

• Don’t let them stigmatize what we are for or choose our language. Woke is good. Diversity, equity and inclusion are good. Supporting liberal values is good. Socialism is not a crime and we could learn a lot from our closest allies in the world virtually all of which have social democratic governments. (Being for society and for democracy…both good.)

• Call outrages outrages. Don’t mince words. Don’t both-sides the indefensible. Call out media that does. And if they continue to do it, unsubscribe. We live in a world of countless media sources, do not support those that are actively making our lives worse. (Does that mean you should not support the Washington Post or the LA Times or Fox or X or the new CBS News? That’s right. You should not. Tune them out.)

• Identify races you can help impact in 2026 and engage. That is the nearest and most important electoral battle to be fought (unless you have a special election near you.) You can’t help everyone everywhere. Be strategic. But do something.

• Only support candidates that promise accountability for MAGA and all MAGA law breakers. Without accountability the abuses will continue. Does that mean a new Democratic Congress should impeach Trump right away? Yes. Yes, it does. Does it mean it should launch investigations into corruption, abuses at ICE and DHS, murders committed by DoD, etc.? Yes. All of that. Right away.

• Accountability needs to be a centerpiece of 2028 as well. We can’t just turn the page. They can’t just get away with all their many many crimes.

• When it comes to rebuilding the institutions they have destroyed we can’t just hit reset. We need new ideas, big bold new ideas focused on a new era of US leadership and growth. We can’t just “go back to Biden days.” We shouldn’t want to.

• Choose fighters.

• Fight to win not just to fight.

• Movements need leaders and specific goals. Find them. Embrace them.

• We are at a watershed moment in US history. 2028 will be the first presidential election in which the majority of voters will be born post-1990. That means Millenials and Zoomers—all heavily predisposed toward Democrats—if they turn out will decide the election. Understand and embrace that. Similarly, within a decade and a half of that the majority of Americans will be from groups we used to think of as minorities. That is what the current white supremacist nativist backlash is about. It must be made clear to all those group, our new American majority—Millenials, Zoomers, women, people of color, children of immigrants—that there is only one political party in the U.S. that cares about them and will protect them and advance their interests.

• Choose the supermajority agenda—the ideas we already know a supermajority support and the emerging new majority in American politics. The arithmetic is on our side if we do.

• There will be some Boomer leaders of value who understand the issues and can fight the fight. Embrace them too. But understand that this watershed is not a choice, it is inevitable. MAGA is the last gasp of the Boomers and the old white male majority in America. It is reactionary. Choose the future.

• Do something constructive every day. Do something more today than you did yesterday.

• Reject those whose failures paved the way for this.

• Don’t let them own patriotism. They are undermining American ideas, ideals and institutions. We are fighting to preserve them. Next year, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, is one in which they will seek to twist that story. We must combat it at every turn.

• The old Republican lies—they are better at the economy, better for the budget, better at national security, for less government intervention in the economy, more patriotic, better for our international standing—are now all clearly and easily refutable. With straightforward facts. Learn the facts. Make the case. Reject the arguments. On each of those points not just Trump but the Republican Party of the past half century has almost exclusively made things worse.

• Set up a Democracy Savings Account. Set money aside out of each paycheck. No matter how much it is…it will help in 2026 and 2028 campaigns and via supporting activist organizations.

• Set your ego aside. Reject the folks for whom this battle is all about ego. Reject the culture of much social media that is about triggering or I-told-you-so-ing or snark. Stay constructive. Stay fact based.

• That does not mean lose your sense of humor. You’ll need it. Oh, and by the way, ridicule drives MAGA crazy.

• If you have a better idea than these, go do it.

• I’m not your mother. Neither are other folks on the web. Don’t offer comments saying “please do more of this” or “please do my research for me” or “I wish you’d focused more on this.” I’ll do me. You do you.

• Get off your ass.

• Don’t just do the easy stuff.

• Don’t let MAGA own or infilitrate your school or church or synagogue or town council or book club or barbecue.

• Those of you in the media—ask the hard questions and then rediscover the lost art of follow-up questions. Challenge White House and MAGA attacks on the media. Don’t cover events that restrict entry. Stand up for the first amendment, Stand up for each other.

• That said, remember, we are the media now. Legacy media are shriveling in importance. Social platforms are driving the debate. Streaming video clips will be to 2026 what network news was thirty years ago and what early social media was perhaps 15 years ago. Stay current and use the tools that will reach the most people.

• If we can block their actions between now and when we win, we should.

• If we can reverse their actions, we should reverse them.

• If we can force out their leaders, weaken their organizations, erode their influence, we should.

So…there you have it…a few thoughts off the top of my head. There will be more. You can add more. But the main point is, things are getting so much worse that the onus is on us to do as much more as we can. Our sense of urgency and discipline will determine whether MAGA is the end of the US as we have known it or a dark chapter that has reminded us what we really stand for and what the value of our institutions has been and should be.