My pinned tweet says that I will neither participate in nor condone the normalization of Trumpism. I might have to keep it posted for the full four years of the (first) Trump presidency. After all, the normalization of the Trump regime is fully underway, from calls for a peaceful transition of power to those for unity and healing across electoral allegiances. President Obama described the election as an “intramural scrimmage” insisting that “we’re Americans.” As the recent Hamilton furor demonstrates, dissenters have to prove their civility, casting their criticism of the Trump-Pence government in polite and respectful terms, pleading with these newly elected leaders to consider that the United States is a country of diversity and difference.
But we have to ask ourselves what it means to plead thus with an administration that seems fully committed to white supremacy, misogyny, and virulent nationalism. Do the times demand of us civility or civil disobedience? And what does the peaceful transition of power entail when the new state that is taking shape is premised on the show and force of violence?