Nobody Can Save Us But Us

Democrats are not going to stop Trump, or Trumpism, on our behalf. We have to do that ourselves—and we can.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

My first thought after Donald Trump got shot was probably the same one many of you had: we’re fucked.

The image of a bloodied Trump angrily pumping his fist as he was helped offstage was a political gift that a lot of candidates would probably sell their souls—or whatever politicians have in place of souls—to get. The shooter’s bullet tore through Joe Biden’s already-faltering campaign and gave Republicans the chance to reframe Trump as a noble warrior for the people—even as someone touched by God. Millions of people looked at Trump on that stage and thought, “It’s over. We’re fucked.”

As I said, I was one of those people. And that certainly might be true, at least in the specific context of “who is going to win this election.” But there are two reasons to resist this feeling.

The first is a simple one: it’s objectively impossible to know where any of this is headed. History is shaped by complex, long-term shifts, but it can also turn on unforeseen shocks. The attempt on Trump’s life is proof of that—and of the need to retain some humility in the face of the upheavals of the world.

But the deeper reason to try and avoid descending into complete hopelessness is this: to accept that “it’s over” is to accept the idea that we have no agency in this world outside of the ballot box—that we are wholly at the mercy of a political system that cares almost nothing about us; that we are doomed to sit back helplessly as our so-called leaders smother us with a pillow.

We should refuse, as much as possible, to buy into that idea. That is what both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and the parties they lead, want us to think. But that doesn’t mean we have to agree. Instead, let’s let this crisis, and the crises to come, be a reminder that nobody is coming to save us from on high—that, if some kind of fascism is coming our way, it is up to us to join forces and save ourselves, and each other, from its clutches.

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After all, if we simply took our cues from Democrats, we’d be throwing in the towel right now. Democrats have spent years telling us that Trump will wipe out all traces of liberty and democracy if he ever gets his hands on power again. But now, months before the election, their message appears to be, “Never mind.”

The party has abruptly junked its rhetoric about the threat Trump poses, in an apparent concession to the nonsense Republican talking point that Trump was shot because of Democratic incitement. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot,” Biden warned in a speech in January. Now, the party is busy sending the chief enemy of freedom its best wishes in these difficult times. Prayers up for Satan, everyone!

You could be forgiven, watching Biden’s speech from the Oval Office on Sunday, for thinking that he wasn’t so worried about the fate of freedom and democracy after all. “Some have a different view as to the direction our country should take,” he said. I guess that’s one way of putting it.

One House Democrat gave the game away on Sunday.

“We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency,” the Democrat told Axios while explaining why the push to get Biden off the ticket has cooled in the wake of Trump’s shooting. Good to know.

At this point, you have to draw one of two conclusions. Either Democrats never believed what they’ve been saying about how terrifying Trump is, or they do believe it and don’t really care that much. It’s all good as long as they can retain their committee chairmanships and keep doing insider trading, right?

Whatever the case, the ultimate message is the same: Democrats will not stand in the way of a Trump presidency, and they will put themselves before any of us. We cannot look to them for a way out of this.

Nor can we look to the press, which is eagerly embracing Trump’s framing of his assassination attempt. “On the eve of a Republican National Convention built on themes of victimhood and political persecution, Trump came inches — literally — from martyrdom,” Axios wrote. “Today, we’re all MAGA,” a column in the UK’s Spectator intoned. (Fact check: false.) MSNBC pulled Morning Joe off the air entirely on Monday morning, lest someone on the show say a mean word about Trump. We can surely expect endless commentary on his “changed” persona and newly spiritual outlook at the Republican National Convention this week.

Nor can we look to any part of the establishment to be able to have the conversation about “political violence” that we need to have. We are told to think about political violence as something that happens to American politicians. But the truth articulated by Martin Luther King in 1967 still holds today: the U.S. government is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

Watching Democrats fall over themselves to condemn political violence against Trump while they are presiding over genocide in Gaza has been infuriating in a way I can’t quite articulate. Isn’t the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians using American bombs political violence? Isn’t the suppression of dissent against that genocide political violence? Isn’t the violence caused by guns in this country a political choice? Isn’t police violence against Black people political? Isn’t the war on trans rights a kind of political violence? Or the exploitation and degradation needed to keep this country’s elites happy? Or our lack of a real social safety net, and our contempt for the poor and unhoused, and the ravages of climate change?

We can’t expect the powerful in this country to have this kind of framework. If they did, they would be undermining the very system that keeps them where they are. And they will seek to maintain their status no matter what befalls the rest of us.

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So that brings me back to where I started. There is a seductiveness in just saying “we’re fucked.” If you can’t control what’s coming, you’re absolved of the responsibility to do anything about it.

But we’re only fucked if we go along with the narrow, self-serving definition of democracy and justice that people in power, from both parties, want us to embrace. They want us to think that the only path to a better world, or to change of any kind, runs through them—and that any other route is illegitimate.

We know that’s not true. It’s never been true. It wasn’t true for enslaved people, or women, or queer people, or people with disabilities, or workers, or any of the people who have taken their future into their own hands and forced a more just society into being. It’s not true now for the brave students protesting genocide, or the activists trying to stop Cop City, or any of the millions of people around the world standing up to U.S. domination. And it won’t be true for whatever new waves of resistance emerge in the next few years.

There is nobody who can save us but us, and whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump is the president in 2025, there will still be nobody who can save us but us.

So let’s push past “we’re fucked.” Let’s push past “it’s over.” It’s not over until we say it’s over. Now we just have to figure out what the hell we’re going to do.