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Michael Froomkin @mfroomkin.bsky.social

Timothy Synder meditates on the sheer destructiveness of the Trump-Vance cabal, and then reminds us that resistance is both patriotic and constructive. snyder.substack.com/p/look-on-my...

But for the rest of us there are two important lessons. One is that resistance is patriotic. Everything that we do to oppose American authoritarianism we do not just in the name of defending freedom, but in the name of preserving America as such. In the swirl of destruction that is underway, it is impossible to know what will crack first, and how the collapse will begin. But what we do know is that the thing that comes next, the better America, can rest only on the labor that we perform now, on the good that we do now. The other lesson is that resistance is constructive. It can seem difficult to resist merchants of calamity such as Trump and Vance. No one action seems to stop them. But every act of resistance creates the possibility that the country itself can survive, and every moment of hope creates the foundation for a better republic. The actions we take have to be actions against, against what is being done to us now. But by their nature every strike, every protest, every act of organization, every act of kindness and solidarity are also actions for, for a future in which the United States continues to exist, and in which the learning from resistance becomes the politics of freedom.
sep 1, 2025, 1:42 pm • 6 1

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