"THEY JUST WANT TO OVERWHELM US" SHOULDN'T BE AN EXCUSE TO DO NOTHING

A couple of days after Donald Trump's inauguration, a scholar named Jennifer Walter posted this at Threads:

As a sociologist, I need to tell you:

Your overwhelm is the goal

... The flood of 200+ executive orders in Trump's first days exemplifies Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" - using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn't just politics as usual - it's a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.

... Media theorist [Marshall] McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.

She recommended staying engaged and active, while developing ways of coping with the excess:

Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can't track everything - that's by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.

... Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.

... They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance.

Many Trump opponents are quoting Walter's advice, which I think is quite useful. I hope it helps.

But now along comes Ezra Klein with a dangerous variation on this message. In the opening essay from his latest podcast, Klein in effect says: Trump is trying to overwhelm us. If we respond at all, he wins.

... If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

... The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think.... Don’t believe him.

Klein's argument is that Trump simply can't do all the things he wants us to believe he can do.

Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency.

... the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”

Yes, but the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in.

A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

Yes, but now Trump has Elon Musk and his goons going through the budget line by line, in search of anything that's "woke" or pro-trans or pro-immigrant or that acknowleges the mere existence of racism or climate change.

Klein wants to tell us that Trump categorically cannot get away with everything he's attempting to do, but even he knows better. So he argues that Trump probably can't get away with it, which is the next-best thing:

Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it.

Of course they have the stomach for it! Klein writes, "The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t," but press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the policy was still in place, and only the memo was withdrawn.

Klein is correct to say that the courts might really rebuff Trump on a number of these policies. But Trump is flooding the zone for attorneys and judges, too. Meanwhile, real damage is being done that probably won't be reversible even if courts rule against Trump and Trump obeys the rulings. The U.S. Agency for International Development has effectively been dismantled. What reason is there to believe that it can be reconstituted? The veteran career employee who was in charge of the federal payments system has been forced out, and Elon Musk -- who said in 2023 that he wanted Twitter to expand its services to include online banking, while predicting that it would become a universally adopted financial app that would replace ordinary banking -- is now in charge of the payments system. Does Klein think that the former employees who are being forced out will all get their jobs and simply repair everything that's been broken so we won't even notice that it was ever in a state of Trumpian/Muskian chaos?

I know I should think of Ezra Klein as part of the problem. But he's posturing here as an ally. He's saying that the proper strategy against Trump is to avoid responding at all. That's a message that could easily resonate with do-nothing Democrats who are already reluctant to take bold action. As it is, some of them are boasting about how non-reactive they are. Here's Hakeem Jeffries:

Speaking to reporters Friday, the Brooklynite invoked Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge to defend his strategy, arguing it is better for Democrats to pick and choose their fights and focus on a clear message.

“One of the reasons that [Judge is] a great hitter is that he does not swing at every pitch. He waits for the right one and then he swings,” he said. “We're not going to swing at every pitch. We're going to swing at the ones that matter for the American people.”

I assume Democrats in D.C. read Ezra Klein or listen to his podcast. Jeffries and others already prefer not to rock the boat very much, and now here's Klein telling them: Rock the boat? Don't do it at all! It's what Trump wants you to do!

Jennifer Walter is right: Develop strategies so the flood doesn't cloud your mind, but keep fighting.