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So what form does the resistance take?

Darat said:
I remember people here saying that Obama was ruling by decree given the claimed high number of EOs he signed.... They seem to have no such opinion in regard to Trump.
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It's the most surprising thing since it last rained in the morning in the Peak District
 
Darat said:
I remember people here saying that Obama was ruling by decree given the claimed high number of EOs he signed.... They seem to have no such opinion in regard to Trump.
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EOs are executive decree, and they're within the purview of the executive to issue. It's the same problem regardless of who's in the office, but the perspective that using EOs makes the president a fascist dictator is a new take on the problem.

Also worth considering that a substantial number of EOs from each president in the past few decades have been reversing the EOs of prior administrations. I'm not going to go count, but IIRC something like 100 of the EOs from Trump in 2025 were reversing EOs from Biden and Obama. That sort of thing makes it rather difficult to ferret out what orders are actually alterations - if Bob says "all must do X" and Alex comes in the next year and says "Nobody is required to do X" is that really a problem?

At the end of the day, the issue should come down to whether or not the orders being issued are within the actual authority of the executive to issue.
 
Emily's Cat said:
EOs are executive decree, and they're within the purview of the executive to issue. It's the same problem regardless of who's in the office, but the perspective that using EOs makes the president a fascist dictator is a new take on the problem.

Also worth considering that a substantial number of EOs from each president in the past few decades have been reversing the EOs of prior administrations. I'm not going to go count, but IIRC something like 100 of the EOs from Trump in 2025 were reversing EOs from Biden and Obama. That sort of thing makes it rather difficult to ferret out what orders are actually alterations - if Bob says "all must do X" and Alex comes in the next year and says "Nobody is required to do X" is that really a problem?

At the end of the day,
the issue should come down to whether or not the orders being issued are within the actual authority of the executive to issue.
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I agree that in one sense the legality of an EO is the criterion on which it should be judged. You can't arrest or impeach the giver of a legal order for giving it. But legality does not make bad good, stupid smart, or wrong right, and we can still criticize them, still accuse the giver of those EO's of doing too much of it for the wrong reasons. Idiotic orders are still the orders of an idiot. That's an issue too.
 
It's also an issue that they lack staying power. Laws that go through congress are hard to fully revoke. Executive orders give legally binding directives, but are often subject to revocation if the next administration isn't privy to keeping them in effect. Their use for expedience often ignores that issue.
 
Emily's Cat said:
EOs are executive decree, and they're within the purview of the executive to issue. It's the same problem regardless of who's in the office, but the perspective that using EOs makes the president a fascist dictator is a new take on the problem.

Also worth considering that a substantial number of EOs from each president in the past few decades have been reversing the EOs of prior administrations. I'm not going to go count, but IIRC something like 100 of the EOs from Trump in 2025 were reversing EOs from Biden and Obama. That sort of thing makes it rather difficult to ferret out what orders are actually alterations - if Bob says "all must do X" and Alex comes in the next year and says "Nobody is required to do X" is that really a problem?

At the end of the day, the issue should come down to whether or not the orders being issued are within the actual authority of the executive to issue.
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para 1 - Do you really think it's a new take? Fox News and other right wing media are rife with references to Obama being a tyrant for his use of EOs.

para 2 - 78 Executive Orders were rescinded by trump using a single EO - 14148.
 
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I don't see it as changing gears, rather adding another prong of attack.
Every movement needs a peaceful political wing as well as a pool of individuals willing to cause disruption and destruction of property and profits to make it too costly not to negotiate and compromise.
 
I don't know what you mean when you say peaceful. It needs to be at least something like this:
Wait...is THIS how we win against Tr*mpism? (Parkrose Permaculture on YouTube, April 15, 2026 – 9:58 min.)
7:57--> We're not here with our heads in the sand insisting everything is fine. We're not Chuck Schumer saying, "No, no, no. this is politics as usual, and let's just vote the Republicans out in the midterms and everything will be hunky dory."
No, we're not. We're not being polyanas. We're not having toxic positivity. We are understanding the severity of the moment, and we are choosing not to give up. We are choosing to seize that moment and to claim it for us, the American people, and then work to build the future of this country that we need and deserve and we can achieve.
We're not saying that things are easy. We're not saying that they're hunky dory. We're acknowledging that things are really hard and we are really strapped, and we're saying in the midst of all of this turmoil and the way that things are feeling really awful and that real harm is being done, we are refusing to accept this as normal, and we are refusing to accept it as the future of this country.
Scot* goes on to talk about messaging and how we want to frame our conversations, so that courage can be contagious and the stubborn refusal to give up can be contagious.
He says, ""I haven't given up" defines itself against surrender. "I refuse" is an identity. It is who you are, not a description of your stamina.
Movement communicators need to make this shift consistently and consciously. You are not the person who kept going despite everything. You are the person who refuses, full stop."
This part right here, the deepest driver of the refusal identity, the '◊◊◊◊ you, make me' identity, is the belief that it matters. Small concrete winnable arguments are not distractions from the big work. They are the mechanism by which the refusal spreads.
Courage is contagious. Right? People who experience collective efficacy recruit others.
People who experience only sacrifice do not. Joy in this moment is not denial. It is defiance. It's the insistence that we will not become the grim version of ourselves that they need us to become.
This is the part of the story where we find out who we are.
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* Scot is this guy:
Make the Refusal to Quit Go Viral by Scot Nakagawa (Anti-Authoritarian Playbook on Substack, April 7, 2026)

The Problem We Need to Name​

Something has gone subtly wrong in the culture of democratic resistance, and it is costing us.
Exhaustion has become a virtue. In movement spaces - in our meetings, our social feeds, our conversations - the dominant signal is overwhelm. And because human beings are profoundly social creatures who take their emotional cues from their communities, something predictable has happened: people perform exhaustion in order to belong, and then, inevitably, they begin to feel what they perform.
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It's how some people in this thread want the resistance to feel. It's the point of Stout's false claims: All the protesters are boomers! There aren't any young people!
However, at this point, the MAGA minions appear to be the ones who are exhausted – and it's not from winning.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
I don't see it as changing gears, rather adding another prong of attack.
Every movement needs a peaceful political wing as well as a pool of individuals willing to cause disruption and destruction of property and profits to make it too costly not to negotiate and compromise.
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Every movement needs terrorists willing to harm civilians so they get their way?
 
The Great Zaganza said:
What do you think the Proud Boys and Oathkeeprss are?
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Terrorists, same as several other groups that regularly enact violence against people and property in support of their pet cause.
The Great Zaganza said:
The difference is weather property or people are being targeted.
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I don't draw nearly as strong a distinction as you do. I'm pretty sure if I burned your house down as a "protest" against the government, you wouldn't be so sanguine about it.

I would previously have assumed this doesn't need to be said, but it's 2026 so... I would never under any circumstances burn down someone's home. This is purely a hypothetical used for illustrative purposes.
 
In Capitalism, we are supposed to "leverage all our assets".

An Amazon warehouse worker has the means and skills to burn down a $500millon building.

I think this fact should be reflected in the compensation if you have your shareholder's interests in mind.

It's a fundamental mistake to not share your profits with those who can make sure that you have no profit at all.
It's as if CEOs had never heard of the Ultimatum Game.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
Tell me EC: what kinds of property damage are worse than hurting and killing people?
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There is really no need to to make those distinctions: while harming people is obviously in a higher class of 'bad', both are reprehensible.
But I also dislike the watered-down use of the word 'terrorist' that is so common today.
 
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