A Brief Taxonomy for Understanding the Resistance
The key question dividing anti-Trump forces is how badly is the system broken.
As the Trump regime accelerates its consolidation of regime change, the resistance has still yet to find its groove. This is partially due to a Democratic Party that has been unable to transition from a political force that contests elections in a democratic system to one that can lead a fight against fascism, as well as to a pro-democracy movement that has struggled to find an effective strategy to meet the moment. Additionally, the pace of the consolidation in areas including destroying key state functions, coordinated political attacks on universities and law firms and a 21st century American Gestapo presence on many of our streets has kept the resistance on its back feet.
Despite this, it is possible to see the resistance to the MAGA fascist ascendancy as falling into two separate camps leading to distinct strategies and perhaps goals. The first are those who see American democracy and the Constitutional system as being in acute crisis and are desperate to find a way keep it together. We might call these people the KITs for “Keep It Together.” The second group sees the same situation and understands American democracy and the Constitution to be broken beyond repair. We call this group the IAONs (pronounced eye-on) for “It’s All Over Now.”
The KITs and the IAONs share a sharp disdain for the MAGA movement, but their orientation and understanding of the scope of the problem leads them to very different places. The KITs still hold out hope the guardrails, many of which we have learned look formidable but are made of Styrofoam, will still hold. The KITs also spend a lot of time trying to both figure out what went wrong in 2024 while trying to find the magic Democratic Party formula for 2026 and 2028. They still treat the Constitution as a sacred text and overlook how that document is at the root of so many of the crises we now face.
IAONs understand the problem similarly, but differ from the KITs regarding how far the crisis of democracy has gone. For IAONs, the US is no longer a democracy, and the Constitutional era is over.
These two groups are both concerned about MAGA fascism but because their diagnosis of the problem differs, they arrive at significantly different remedies. For the KITs the remedy is relatively straightforward and is largely an intensified version of the strategies liberals and Democrats have embraced for decades.
Implicit in the KITs approach is the idea that the system is still strong enough that a good Democratic administration and a toning down of the rhetoric will bring us back to the halcyon days of, who knows, 2012, 1998, 1961 or some other unspecified period. Ironically, the KITs promote a kind of shadow Make America Great Again, but their vision defines American greatness as a period sometime between the end of World War II and the rise of Donald Trump.
The IAONs do not have such a straightforward strategy for defeating fascism. On the one hand, this has made their position less appealing, but it also reflects that they are wrestling with a much more difficult question. By rejecting the succor of the KITs view of the current crisis, the IAONs may alienate may establishment liberals who are desperate to believe this will all go away in a few years, but may also be confronting a daunting reality that cannot be wished away.
IAONs see the task facing the resistance as a holistic one that goes well beyond defeating MAGA at the polls, governing better and deradicalizing the Republican Party. While the KITs center those goals, IAONs see them as insufficient strategies and the remnants of the political system that no longer exists. IAONs are more likely to understand the challenge as longer term, requiring new strategies, new political movements and ultimately new political structures.
At first glance it may seem like KITs and IAONs are two sides of the same coin and any dispute between them reflects the narcissism of small differences, but there may be more to it than that. The first step to meaningfully resolving any political, policy, or perhaps even personal, problem rests substantially on identifying the problem properly and as early in the process as possible. That is true here as well.
It is also true that while KITs and IAONs may share a disdain for the MAGA movement and even agree on some big picture strategies such as attending marches or voting Democratic, there are key differences, with reasonably high stakes, as well. For example, if the KITs are right, IAON radicalism that refuses to reinforce or put faith in existing institutions or to continue to worship the Constitution could accelerate the fascist ascendancy, thus rendering IAON vision not a keen analysis, but a self-fulfilling and terrible prophecy.
On the other hand, if the IAONs are right then the ongoing KIT minimization of the problem is so damaging that eventually it comes way too close to complicity in the rise of MAGA fascism. From the IAON perspective, believing that the institutions are strong, Constitution still relevant and we are a few good elections away from ending this, is dangerously wrong-headed, understates the problem and leads to a strategy that cannot work.
As you have probably gathered, I lean more towards the IAON side. While I do not believe the KITs are consciously complicit, they too frequently come too close. Normalizing the fascist rantings of people like the late Charlie Kirk, using language like “controversial” or “unconventional” to describe Trump or the MAGA fascist approach and obsessing over finding the secret code to electing Democrats are all strategies that lead away from confronting the reality of the problem. The IAONs may have not yet landed on any good solutions, but they are at least focused on the right problem.