It's time to give up on 'Normal'

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We’re not going back to normal. Round 1 of anti-Trump resistance was rooted in defending democracy, with the implication being that the pre-Trump era was the form of government we must hold onto and get back to. That effort slowed and halted some of Trump’s advance, but despite winning battles it ultimately lost a winnable war. The version of normalcy embodied by the Biden administration, and more broadly the rhetoric and vision embraced by the coalition opposed to Trump failed to capture the public imagination, and, this round, their votes.

That’s because normal isn’t good enough. After decades of candidates who were largely cut from the same cloth, who were all willing to continue with business as usual, someone came along who promised to shake things up. We can yell ‘til we’re blue in the face about how Trump’s promise to ‘drain the swamp’ is as dishonest as it gets, and many have. Doesn’t matter here. It was a winning argument, largely because people were tired of Washington, tired of both parties, tired of normal. The promise of ending business as usual was a winning argument, and if we want to beat back fascism for good we have to contend with that.

There’s a large group of people who, understandably, just want to go back to how things were. Maybe life was good for you. Ten or twenty years ago life was certainly better for millions of people. But the political life of the United States, and much of the mainstream media, neglected the fact that life also wasn’t too great for millions and millions of working-class people. The stereotypical vision, that some pundits and outlets have embraced since the onset of the Trump years, is a hardworking farmer in Indiana who just can’t make ends meet anymore. And that’s real, there’s plenty of those folks out there. But there are also millions of families in big cities, medium towns, and suburbs who aren’t the prototypical white guy on a farm or in a factory, who are also struggling to feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads. The working class of all stripes has been struggling, and has been passed over by the onslaught of capitalism.

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Now you and I know that Trump doesn’t intend to do a thing about it. There are a handful of nefarious actors, including JD Vance, who understand to some degree that giving concessions to people who aren’t rich will help Republicans and allow them to enact the rest of their fascist agenda. But Trump prefers endless handouts to the rich, and padding his own bank account. So, right now, any sort of resistance against Trump needs to make a positive argument that we are the side that’s fighting for people who are struggling. Then we have to live that message, have to demonstrate it everywhere we can.

It’s tempting to be lured in, even now, by the ease and simplicity of making a ‘back to normal’ message. And people do want normalcy in some ways. They want economic and psychic stability. But we won’t get that by going backwards, and any messaging that implies the past is the right direction to head in is a losing message and an impossible message for the left; it’s easily co-opted by fascists who want to drag us back into the past for its inequality and racism and sexism, but who can easily use messages of stability and normalcy to lead people there. We see how brazenly they lie and co-opt every day. They talk about going back to some golden era when America was safer and crime was lower, but the truth is that crime rates are near a 50-year low. The right doesn’t care. Alongside certain corporate, conservative media outlets they spread fear and panic in disregard for the truth.

Fascists aren’t the only force that makes the ‘back to normal’ messaging impossible. Climate change is bringing an end to normality as well. Some people in LA know this already. Some folks in North Carolina, Florida, and numerous other parts of the country know it. Preaching about going back to normal isn’t just a losing message because millions don’t want to go back to business as usual, it’s also simply not possible. We’ll continue learning that lesson in increasingly painful ways until we dramatically change course.

And we’re on the brink of a course change, of something dramatic, of either a nightmare or a better future. What’s most obvious at this moment is how we sit on the precipice of disaster, of being violently dragged back a hundred years or more by vicious, cruel fascists. The nightmare looms large, filled with mass deportations, the rich getting even richer, and the full erosion of democratic norms.

But, if you look closely, you’ll see the potential for a different, radical future. Millions of people are developing class consciousness in fits and starts, and are eager for action and even revolution. They may not know exactly what that means, but the yearning for change is breaking containment, is being articulated in the rage and desperation of millions of people. It manifests in little videos, graffiti, quiet acts reaching out toward a better world. Sometimes it bursts through in bigger acts of resistance, in people blocking ICE from seizing their neighbors, in mass uprisings against police murders.

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This undeniable yearning for a better world is inseparable from the fury at the current state of things. The boundless anger at our healthcare system, the rage at rents and the cost of a home going up and up and up, the quiet resentment at little things like phone bills and internet providers – all of this is why people think normalcy is broken. And they’re right. The status quo was never made for most of us, and now it’s progressed to the point of exploiting 99% of us for the benefit of a handful of people with more money than entire nations. Each transaction, each purchase, each facet of our lives is increasingly structured to extract as much as possible, even if that means eating away at the very foundations of society and the very foundations of our lives.

So we must present something better, a vision and a practice for a society that’s far better than this normal. We must present a vision of a world where you’re not tethered to your job with the ball and chain of homelessness, or lacking medical care, or going hungry. There’s a world out there where you can have time, where work doesn’t eat your entire life. There’s a world where you have time to spend with family, time to dream, time to explore or make art, or time to simply “waste" with friends and neighbors, as Lauren Grubaugh Thomas recently said. We have to present a vision that transcends the narrow confines of capitalism.

As the quote, often attributed to James Baldwin, goes “I do not dream of labor.” Instead I dream of communities filled with loved ones, filled with spaces we share and food we grow together and joyful children who are looked after by the whole village, as they say. I dream of harmony with nature replacing the endless extraction of nature’s resources. I dream of the end of hunger, of clean water everywhere, of the profit motive no longer ruling our lives. And yes, it will take work to get there. It will take organizing, struggle, dedication and more. It will take demostrations in our neighborshood and workplaces, practices like mutual aid and strike funds and worker cooperatives and generally living out our solidarity right here and now.

But in all that, a vision is required. Something far better than normal, something far grander than the status quo. A vision that moves people. A vision of a world where we control our fates and practice real democracy and have control over our workplaces instead of spending our lives being bossed around. All of us who want to beat Trump, and fascism more broadly, must see how a powerful vision is needed. It’s not enough to just be against the worst evils of the regime, we must propose an entirely new approach, aiming towards a future where everyone is taken care of, where everyone has everything they need, rather than just aiming to go back to the ‘90s. The train of history is constantly moving forward, and we have to steer it towards a livable, sustainable future that puts life over profit. We have every material thing we need to make that world a reality, if we build and organize for it. That future is avaiable to us, but the past is not. There is no going back.

Three books for these times:

Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1922-let-this-radicalize-you

Starting Somewhere: Community Organizing for Socially Awkward People Who've Had Enough by Roderick Douglass: https://bookshop.org/p/books/starting-somewhere-community-organizing-for-socially-awkward-people-who-ve-had-enough-roderick-douglass/22079492

Jackson Rising by Cooperation Jackson: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1188

And my two previous article have numerous links at the end that I hope prove helpful right now: