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Donald Trump’s allies before he returned to the White House promised a campaign of shock and awe, but we are almost six months into the second Trump presidency and what has been playing out is a tug of war where Trump pretends that his victory against American democracy is a foregone conclusion while the people fight back.
Sarah Jones talked about this dynamic on Monday’s Chew’s Views and said:
I'm so impressed by the people who continue to get out and protest, who call their representatives and their senators the states that are standing up. That's another way, we have all these ways of fighting that they didn't have in Nazi Germany.
And I just wanna make that clear. There's so much fear and I share that fear. I'm not going to whitewash that I'm not gonna pretend it's not there. It is there and it's real. But there are also differences in comparison what was going on in Nazi Germany, and that's important. We have state-controlled elections here.
We have governors in some blue states who are willing to stand up and do things to protect their people. And yes, these are all going to be fights, it isn't oh, they're gonna stand up and that he's going to give in. That's not going to happen. It's going to be a battle for sure, but it's really important to have people willing to stand up.
And so when I saw this initiative, I thought that's what people need. They need to know that they're not alone. When you see somebody else speaking up, and I'm sure everybody has this example in their personal life, when somebody, or you've read someone or you listen to someone speaking up, it emboldens you and it gives you the sense when you know you're not alone in a fight, it helps you rise to the moment.
And so we all have to remember constantly that we are not alone. And I think, when we look at presidents who've really roused the American people and help remind them of who they are and what they can do, the two that come to mind for me at the moment, there's many of them, but I would say at the moment, JFK and Barack Obama.
And both of them got into the whole thing about standing up and about. Barack Obama? Yes, we can. You just, he would always say, it's not about me, it's about you. And that was to empower each of us. We are the power of this country, and that is very true. It's baked into our system.
He's (Trump) trying to take that away. He and the Republican Party and their, and this, I would say corrupt Supreme Court are trying to take that away from people. And it's interesting. That doesn't mean that, oh, go ahead. No, you were gonna say that doesn't mean it doesn't mean that it's gonna work. And I think that's how I ended this piece.
It 's a battle. They want win this battle, but we are fighting back. This conclusion to this fight is not, it's not a foregone conclusion.
Trump isn’t taking power as much as he is hoping that people and institutions voluntarily surrender their power to him. We have seen law firms, media companies, and some universities cave to intimidation tactics and surrender power.
The vast majority of Americans have refused to surrender the power. Trump sent troops to Los Angeles to intimidate, but Californians battled back and didn’t give up their power.
The beauty of the American system is that the power of the people is built into it, and no president can remove it.
It will be a long battle, but as long as the American people continue to fight, Trump’s intimidation tactics will fail.
What do you think about the fight the American people are demonstrating? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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