During the first Trump presidency, it became normal for a lot of us to call our representatives and senators regularly as a way to try and generate resistance to the worst impulses of an impulsive man. I called my rep and senators at night to leave messages with their teams because I hate talking on the phone, but I still did it.
I kept at it during the Biden presidency. As the US helped facilitate Israel’s genocide, I called my representatives a couple times, urging compassion for the people of Gaza and the implementation of a ceasefire.
I still sign every online petition that comes my way, but I gave up on calling their offices almost immediately. For some reason I have yet to understand, despite having one of the nation’s highest numbers of Arab Americans and Muslims, Michigan’s congressional and senate delegations—with the exception of Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress and one of just a handful of Muslims—are incredibly indifferent to the plight of Gaza and Palestine more broadly. Dan Kildee and Andy Levin were two exceptions to this, but Kildee retired and Levin was primaried out by AIPAC’s preferred candidate, Haley Stevens—currently the slight favourite to replace Gary Peters in the Senate.
Today, as the United States inches closer toward forcible regime change in Venezuela, I wonder what any of this is for. I could call my representatives—after all, we’re only minutes away from the end of the business day and I could safely leave a message without stoking my anxiety of speaking with a stranger.
When I try to understand the difference between the popular uprising in response to the first Trump administration and the relative absence of such a sustained movement in the second administration, the only logical conclusion I can make is that many, like myself, thought that the first administration was an aberration. A setback, yes, but a bump on the road to progress.
What are we to make of this new order under a second Trump White House? And what are we to make of things when the greatest selling point that Democrats have to offer, by and large, is that they aren’t Donald Trump?
Whatever happens in 2026 (or 2028), our country’s trajectory has been permanently, if not irreversibly, altered. Any legitimacy in our claims to exceptionalism have become increasingly absurd as comparisons between the United States and repressive regimes like China and Russia become more and more apt and our ruling class of billionaires gets wealthier by the millisecond.
“This is not who we are”?
It sure seems like it.
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