I Don't Give Two Rips About Your Fake “Resistance”

An open letter to the author of the New York Times anonymous op-ed published earlier this week.

Dear Self-Important, Anonymous Insider:

You clearly want everyone to consider you the hero. You call yourself “the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” the “adults in the room,” and the “steady state.” You treat yourself like a bulwark against national and, presumably, global anarchy that would ensue if President Trump had unrestricted access to enact every whim crossing his mind. But we ordinary Americans see you for what you really are: complicit.

Do you really think that, because you’ve stopped the President from calling an airstrike on Ciudad Juarez, or whatever, we’ll forget you’ve helped preside over the most capricious, lawless, harmful executive administration in generations? If you’re part of the administration, you were there when ICE forcibly separated refugee children from their parents at the border. Or when NATO basically promised to keep going without us. Or when the President cuddled a dictator in Helsinki.

By any reasonable standard, America’s place in the global network is less certain, less stable, less worthy of praise than it was when your President took office. He’s backed us away from climate accords, despite global warming having a more robust scientific consensus than Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics. He’s alienated trade partners in East Asia, the EU, and even North America. He’s made our diplomatic position with Iran more precarious.

Don’t get me wrong. President Obama has plenty of problems history will hold him accountable for: deporting more immigrants than any President in history, or signing death warrants on foreign nationals with drones, or basically holding the door for financial industry insiders after they imploded the economy in 2007 and 2008. Things weren’t sunshine and free beer three years ago. I don’t have rosy-eyed false memories.

But the administration you serve, which has enacted policies I can only assume you approved if you have the kind of authority your op-ed purports, has made things objectively worse. In an attempt to recreate supposed lost greatness, which perhaps existed during the Eisenhower administration, you’ve severed America’s ties to the global community, and to reality. America, and the world, don’t look like they did in the 1950s.

For starters, back then, America could unilaterally do whatever it wanted, largely because Europe and Asia were busy filling bomb craters from World War II. Only America had the manufacturing and agricultural capabilities to rehabilitate the world. But those conditions don’t exist anymore, and won’t again without major global conflict, which nobody should wish for. This is worse than naive pining for the past. It’s a complete divorce from reality.

You can claim that President Trump’s presence allows you to do some abstractly defined good for America, provided you restrain his impulses. You cite three specifically: “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, [and] a more robust military.” I think you’re full of beans. Effective deregulation? This presidency wants to return asbestos to the market. Asbestos, a known carcinogen at any quantity! Whose life is improved by this?

Your tax reform promised every American a $4000 pay increase. Instead, America’s largest employer, Walmart, offered its seniormost employees a one-time $1000 bonus. Your tax “reform” has resulted in the most massive concentration of wealth and resources in history. But like massive tax cuts throughout history, the benefits don’t reach Americans with jobs. Or didn’t you notice the correlation with your recent freeze on federal workers’ pay?

As for your more robust military, are you serious? We proved in two things in Iraq in 2003: first, that no foreign adversary can challenge American military might without nuclear weapons. But second, we suck at nation-building and other cleanup operations after the shooting stops. Why bother making Earth’s most powerful military even more powerful? We need a more robust diplomatic corps to prove anything on the global stage.

Who, then, is your posturing for? Trump supporters, who already believe a “Deep State” conspiracy shackles their President from messianic transformation of the system? QAnon types, who think inside leakers have magic powers? Democrats, who want someone to restrain Trump’s racist rambles and nationalist gut reactions? None of these types will thank you for what you’ve done. You’ve only succeeded in digging your grave a little deeper.

In short, your “resistance” actually worsens ordinary Americans’ lot, jeopardizes our standing internationally, and makes cataclysmic collapse more likely. You strutting across the pages of the Newspaper of Record, patting yourself on the back because things would be so much worse without your intervention, only reveals the depths of your Administration’s moral bankruptcy. You aren’t the resistance, friend. You’re just another collaborator.