[Illinois congressman Sean] Casten, like several of his House Democratic colleagues who spoke to CNN, said he has been surprised and heartened by how many constituents have been calling into tele-town halls, and by the responses he has been hearing: “In three weeks, the public mood has gone from apathy to fear to anger. And I think the next thing in that cycle is action.”Timothy Snyder's words -- "Do not obey in advance" -- are the obvious repsonse to this.
But Casten said that activist leaders have told him and colleagues that they fear protests against Trump might eventually be used as a predicate for declaring martial law. Other House Democrats echoed this privately, and several left-leaning activist group leaders told CNN directly that their own safety concerns for participants have risen since the president’s blanket pardons for January 6 rioters.
But why not obey in advance when you assume a crackdown is inevitable? Because maybe it isn't inevitable, or isn't inevitable now. Maybe the president isn't prepared to declare martial law yet.
Also, Trump is in power not because his base voted for him -- we know the base will be delighted if there are tanks in the streets -- but because a certain percentage of normies who don't worship him thought he'd make America calm, stable, and prosperous -- no inflation, less crime, fewer border crossers. They didn't vote for Trump out of a desire to live in a militarized dystopia.
Trump might believe that cracking down on protesters will be popular -- and maybe you believe that, too. You might recall the 1970 Gallup poll in which 58% of respondents blamed the student demonstrators themselves for the four deaths at Kent State University on May 4 of that year, while only 11% blamed the Ohio National Guard troops who did the shooting.
But we live in a different America now. Most Americans have some form of skepticism about power and authority. They think the system is rigged, even though they don't agree on who rigged it. It's no longer the case that normie Americans automatically trust the people in power and believe that prostesters are insolent rabble-rousers who deserve whatever they get.
Look at these results from Pew. The right-wing media demonized Black Lives Matter for years after the 2020 George Floyd protests, and yet BLM retained majority support:
The right's message all through the summer and fall of 2020 was that every George Floyd protest was a city-destroying carnival of violence, and that Democrats loved the chaos -- and then Joe Biden got 81 million votes and Democrats took both houses of Congress.
Trump can try to make himself a military dictator, but I'm certain he won't have popular support for that. And how likely is it that he'll have the troops to crack down on everyone everywhere?
And he might not declare martial law. He might be saving martial law for a later date -- my guess is he doesn't want to do it until the 2026 midterms. He might not get the full cooperation of the military, where he hasn't purged every non-MAGA officer yet.
We need to speak up as long as we can. I think the many protests that are taking place today will be large and noisy. That's good. They can't arrest us all, and they don't really seem ready to shoot us yet.
