The New Battlefields
Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda won’t face its toughest tests in Washington.
If there is a battle coming to defeat Donald Trump’s campaign to concentrate political, social and economic power in his own grubby little hands and in the soft fat paws of his acolytes, it’s not likely to be won or lost in Washington.
The battlefields are more likely to be Bakersfield and Butte and Biloxi and countless other American towns and cities than inside the Washington Beltway.
Regardless of how they voted, most Americans will start to feel the effects of Trump’s ill-considered and ignorant social and economic policies in their local HEB and Homegoods and Home Depot, not in their stock portfolios or in the pages of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.
Perhaps it is irony, or perhaps it is justice, and comparisons to fellow autocrat Vladimir Putin in Ukraine aside, Trump is most vulnerable in the territory he won. The revulsion law enforcement officers have showed after he pardoned his pet thugs who attacked their comrades on Capitol Hill may be just a preview of coming attractions.
If the supine Republicans in Congress pass his tariff, health care, immigration and other policies, he and his acolytes won’t feel the effects. Most of them couldn’t find the produce aisle, the prescription counter or the paint section, anyway, and if it costs more to clean the bathroom chandelier and the gilded toilet at Mar-a-Lago, well, there can always be a new crypto coin.
What’s likely to come, depending on what Congress does, has already arrived in California’s Central Valley, America’s vegetable garden, and elsewhere.
https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/01/kern-county-immigration-sweep/
https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/161317/farm-workers-ice-raids-food-prices
If Trump’s tariffs take effect and his targets retaliate, as they’ve said they will, higher prices and shorter supplies will extend beyond the lettuce and celery fields.
https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2025/01/22/what-next-for-the-us-dairy-workforce-under-trump/
It’s not clear, however, if vanilla ICE will be coming for the 118 H2B visa holders who work at Mar-a-Lago.
There’s another reason why he and his acolytes might have a tougher fight in Cedar Rapids than they do on Capitol Hill.
The national media, for all the talent they still muster, have become a form of entertainment and understandably lost the trust of the vast majority of the American people.
https://www.cjr.org/political_press/white-house-press-corps-gears-up-second-trump-term-lahut.php
Fortunately, there is a profusion of growing local news organizations, sites, bloggers and writers that cover stories the national media don’t, have close ties to their communities and, not least, can provide on-the-ground experience, editing and coaching for people who want to help rebuild and reinvent an essential elements of democracy for this century.
It’s one thing to read or hear pronouncements from the media elite in Washington and New York, and another to hear the news from a reporter you saw at the diner after he or she spent the day listening to people huddled in the church basement next door waiting for an immigration raid. Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt.
A third reason why any battle for the future will be decided on local fields is that both major national political parties have grown as distant from their longtime constituents as the national media have. Not only do both parties need a new generation — or two — of leadership, they also need leaders whose roots remain planted in the country and haven’t been transplanted to Washington.
Democrats started missing the beat more than 40 years ago:
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnwalcott/p/listen-to-the-music?r=zhhc&utm_medium=ios
Despite occasional burps of independence, notably under the bright lights of Senate confirmation hearings, most of the Republican Party has surrendered to Donald Trump. He and his broligarchs are even further removed from the American people than the Democrats are.
Trump told the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that he has launched “nothing less than a revolution of common sense”. If there’s a counterrevolution of real common sense, it’s likely to start in towns and counties and cities around the country, not in Washington or Silicon Valley.
That would be consistent with America’s history. The 250th anniversary of the start of the first American Revolution against imperial rule will arrive less than three months from now. The shots heard ‘round the world were fired not in New York or Philadelphia, but in Lexington and Concord, not by big shots, but by farmers and wheelwrights and carpenters.
An 18th Century influencer named Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet titled Common Sense. Much of it is as relevant today as it was when it was published 249 years ago:
“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2548496-common-sense
A few further thoughts about the media:
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnwalcott/p/midnight-at-the-oasis?r=zhhc&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnwalcott/p/message-to-the-media?r=zhhc&utm_medium=ios
Hello John! You might remember me. Our respective parents were close friends. Glad to see you are still in the game. You’ve got a new subscriber.