Redefining Class Solidarity
Or, how to unite we masses to preserve our freedom
I’m thinking about politics again. Actually, I haven’t stopped since the last election when I decided to start following breaking news again. I am…
concerned.
It’s not so much the gutting of federal agencies or the about-face in foreign relations or the jingoist renaming of large bodies of water — well, it’s not just those. It’s where all of the rapid-fire executive orders and DOGE slashing seem to point. It’s the larger goal they are meant to accomplish.
Here’s an example of something the Trump administration did that got me all up in arms:
This document, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government, scares me almost as much as it makes me angry. I had a hard time reading the whole thing, reading it hard, because my heart started palpitating, my blood began to simmer, and my head threatened to explode. But I did it. Read the details. I am a details person, but strangely, the minutia of this document are not what concern me.
Side note: I find it fitting the title at the top of Defending Women is shouted at us in all caps, just like Trump’s tweets.
You want to debate how or if people who are transgender are included in sports? Fine, I get it. According to a 2024 survey, less than one percent of the U.S. population identifies as transgender. Out of the 510,000 athletes competing at the collegiate level, there are fewer than 10 who publicly identify as transgender in the entire country. But let’s definitely pass blanket policies about gender and allow this tiny, niche issue to decide an election for us. I’d wager we could address the specific instances of ten people on a case-by-case basis.
My point is not that trans women should or should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports. My point is that, on a policy-making level, this doesn’t even rate as a problem. It’s a distraction. As are all the other minutia brought up in the document, like bathroom access.
The bottom line is, this language:
“My administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
co-opts women’s rights for the explicit purpose of dividing us as a nation.
Let me get this out of the way, so I can continue with a clearer head:
Fuck you. I do not need to be defended by the likes of the Trump administration as a woman. Or as anything else for that matter. I’d sooner find comfort in the protection of vultures as I lay bloody and broken, dying on the slopes of the ideology wars being stoked by our government.
It’s a distraction.
It’s an important civil rights issue, but right now, it’s a distraction. It takes a real polarizing issue and turns it into the Wizard of Oz:
“Look over here, at the big scary social issue! You masses! Yell at each other on the internet! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, who is not-even-all-that-quietly killing government checks and balances to consolidate his power.”
I picked gender and trans rights because it is my pet issue, but I could’ve just as easily started this rant with immigration, inflation, education, abortion. No matter which side of any of those issues you sit on, think about which one makes you the maddest. That’s your personal distraction.
They are effective distractions because they are not imaginary issues; they are real, and they are worthy of our attention. Just not right now. Right now, we have a more urgent problem — one that affects more than just 10 people in the U.S. This divide, this problem, is one the Trump administration is hoping we’ll ignore if they keep us busy enough fighting with each other. It threatens 99 percent of us.
The wealth gap.
What does my agnostic, liberal ass have in common with my conservative Christian neighbors who voted for Trump? We are not in the top one percent, wealth-wise. I and my neighbors have this in common with MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES, including Enrique Tarrio, the ex-Proud Boys leader pardoned for his part in the January 6 mess at the Capitol.
I mention Enrique because I find his behavior and the fact that he was excused for it particularly abhorrent. But he and I have the fact that we both have to work for a living in common. And that is huge in this moment.
I’m not just talking about reaching across the aisle.
I’m pushing for us to ALL reach across ALL of the aisles. I’m not saying, at this moment in political upheaval, we should embrace each other and stand around singing Kumbaya as one big happy fucked-up family. I’m saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And while I do actually envision a future in which all of the world’s people work together and embrace our differences as a good thing, it’s going to take a long while to get there. For now, we need to simply look past our differences, ignore them for a while, to focus on what threatens all of us (anyone who doesn’t have the funds to steer an election, anyway).
We can fight about gender issues, race, and immigration LATER.
They are vital issues, but right now, we need to be focused on the most imminent threat. Right now, those of you who voted for Trump because you thought he’d help the economy or reinforce your vision of our country, I beg you to let that go and see what the Trump administration is really up to, what they really want.
They don’t give a shit about you or anyone but themselves and their power. They don’t care about the issues they champion; those are just vehicles to them. They are consolidating power by using efficiency — something everyone in our productivity-obsessed national culture can make an excuse to support — as a red herring to remove people and programs that stand in their way of total control. Trump and Musk are running this country like they would a corporation. Which makes sense. That’s their background.
And if they can keep us arguing about all of this shit which, despite its actual importance, is peripheral to their goals, maybe we won’t notice we’re rapidly headed toward oligarchy. From Merriam-Webster:
oligarchy
noun
ol·i·gar·chy ˈä-lə-ˌgär-kē ˈō-
government by the few (The corporation is ruled by oligarchy.)
a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes
I can hear my Trump-voting friends (Yes, I have those. Reaching across the aisles, remember?) response: I’m being dramatic. Trump can’t actually take over the government and suspend presidential elections.
I went down a rabbit hole trying to determine if there are any loopholes Trump could exploit to delay elections.
Would it surprise you that the answer I came up with was, “probably not, but it’s complicated?” Here’s a decent article about it. The bottom line is, he is probably not going to show up on our TV screens one day and declare himself dictator for life, but like the frog slowly boiling in the pot, our democracy could be gradually being dismantled, brick by brick, while we are too busy yelling at each other.
Side note: You know I’m worked up about something when I start wildly mixing metaphors.
Maybe Trump is just an egomaniacal buffoon with a decent amount of pull and business savvy, and he’ll be out of office in four years. Perhaps, though, at the rate he’s rapid-fire edicts, the damage will have already been done. He’ll have what he needs.
Cutting the IRS’s workforce so dramatically, they can’t investigate tax fraud issues sure is a big help to him, Elon and the rest of the one percent. The likely end result: the rest of us will have to wait longer for any kind of service from the IRS, while the upper one percent, with their lawyers, will be able to cheat with impunity.
Pushing for tariffs that ultimately burden those of us who work for a living alongside his first-term Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which permanently lowered the corporate tax rate by 14 percentage points doesn’t hurt the elite position either. Unfortunately, just because you name it the “Super Happy Fun Everyone Gets Money and a Job” Act, doesn’t make it so. What’s that saying about lipstick on a pig?
Have a look at this document, which in the title, misleadingly claims to “restore a government that answers to the American people.” The very first bullet claims that “all executive power [is vested] in the President meaning that all executive branch officials and employees are subject to his supervision.” This document assumes that the President alone embodies the will of the people, which isn’t true, no matter who is president, but is an especially dangerous assumption given this particular president’s power ambitions.
Crippling agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (enforcers of anti-trust and consumer protection laws) and the Securities and Exchange Commission under the auspices of efficiency will make it even easier for Trump and Elon to consolidate power and the country’s wealth toward themselves more quickly and with even less scrutiny.
What will they do even more power and wealth?
When we sidle up to the 2028 elections, how will they be able to influence those? Presidential campaigns have long been run on money. If nothing else, these policy changes will exacerbate the wealth gap, making the top one percent richer and the rest of us poorer. At worst, we, as the actual people not proxied by Trump, will lose our power to resist this degradation in any meaningful way.
Who is going to suffer…
…when Trump, Elon, and the rest of the one percent have gobbled up even more ostentatious wealth through tax law either changed in their favor or flagrantly ignored for their benefit? Who is going to reap the rapidly diminishing returns when the public education system is gutted of funding and support and a large swath of our population cannot afford to have their children effectively educated?
ALL OF US
You, me, your obnoxious Proud-Boy neighbor down the street, your weird trans cousin, the Muslim families your kids go to school with, the immigrants who mow your lawn, your pediatrician, the scruffy panhandler on the corner you don’t make eye contact with, your church community, your mom, all of us. Some of us sooner, some of us later, some of us more than others, but we will all suffer, except the top one percent — people for whom private jets are mundane; people who have so much money, they directly influence policy with massive campaign contributions; people who can afford to send their kids to private schools so elite I don’t know the names of them; people so incredibly rich, economic downturn does not touch them.
They do not care about you. They only give lip service to caring when it serves their election goals. They will not save you. They do not hate you. Worse. They are indifferent to you. To all of us.
It seems super fucking fatalistic and depressing, I know.
They have the power. They are the ones running our government right now and are in the process of firing everyone in their way of total control. I’ve been stewing about how to be helpful, effective in resistance. It’s hard to see how anything we, as individual people with no direct government influence, do is anything but the spinning of wheels, cocked up way off the ground, while the cart is moving in the other direction. But that’s why I’m writing this.
I was inspired by a few stories I read recently, of federal employees pushing back in any way available to them — through mass emails of THIS IS NOT NORMAL. Through protest, through relentless re-hanging of “No place for hate,” signs. Some of these efforts have been derided by the Trump administration — scoffed at as ineffectual whining. When did protests ever change anything? Here are some quite famous instances that protests had a profound effect on history.
For now at least, we still have our voice. We can still loudly dissent. As those small acts above inspired me, our acts — writing and sharing, posting signs, talking to our neighbors about it — can inspire others. They can ripple outward, they can give psychic strength to those few in government who are trying to protect our rights and agency right now.
If this gives you an urgency toward making yourself heard, hell even if it just makes you want to put a bumper sticker on your car, know that that piece of resistance is important. Think about how you feel when you see a sign that supports your values on someone else’s lawn — good, right? Like you have solidarity, like you could create effective action. These feelings lead to actions. In yourself and others you influence.
But I ask you, I plead with you, just for now, set aside your feelings about vouchers/immigration/gender, etc, etc, etc. Take that urgency and pour it into supporting what affects 99 percent of us.
Let’s join together, as the working class…
… as people who have to work to live and are affected by economic volatility and can’t use their wealth to direct public policy to our liking — to protect our country’s democracy. To protect the separation of powers, to protect our right to argue and vote on all that other stuff we disagree on. Pay attention, not to the minutia, but to the patterns of what is going on, where it is leading.
And whether or not I have it just right in all of this rambling analysis, I stand by my assertion: We non-one-percenters need to band together. I know that’s broad. I’m not pretending there’s no difference between white collar and blue collar working people. But for this moment, we are the same enough. Our interests align. The threat, the call, is coming from outside our 99 percent house, and we need to answer that call by putting our differences aside and standing up to it.
Now, if you want to argue that you’d LIKE to live in an oligarchy, well, that’s a whole ‘nother essay.
