As we prepare for 2026, remember we have the power to make our future |
When we talk about opposition in politics, sometimes it’s just a policy disagreement – but in the current political crisis in the US, the opposition has become the opposite of the Trump administration in meaningful ways. It had to because this is not only a policy conflict.
Between the administration and the opposition are actual opposites of principle: among those committed to inclusion and those to exclusion; truth and lies; kindness and cruelty; the protection and destruction of systems that in turn protect the climate or public health.
It seems possible that what will ultimately emerge is a clarified sense of principles and a deeper commitment to them (which is why part of the conflict is over American history itself).
On one hand, there are the heads of the federal government and their spokespeople, whose lies are part of their disdain for the electorate and the rule of law. Those lies also get served up as the justification for their cruelty – the cruelty directed toward federal workers, immigrants, children in this country in need of food and healthcare, including vaccines, and the millions of people currently starving or devastated by preventable disease around the world since Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” gang destroyed USAID.
Politicians’ lies were once decried and punished when detected, in a process that often led to contriteness and apologies from the liar. Even the act of lying was a furtive one when people feared detection and its consequences. Now lies are the backbone of the Trump administration’s utterances – from likely lying about the inhabitants of the small boats they are blowing up in the Caribbean, to lying about vaccines, the economy, climate, polls, laws, history, race, immigration and pretty much everything else.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt specializes in grotesque falsehoods in praise of Donald Trump’s health, intelligence, success, and popularity. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health and human........