We are all looking for ways to resist the normalization of President Trump and, more importantly, the hateful trumpism he has unleashed in civil society and which threatens the fabric of the republic. He and his supporters are doing absolutely nothing to try to bring the country together and repair the rifts he opened or exacerbated. This, even as hate crimes are escalating and that it is his moral responsibility as head of state, not to mention politically expedient to try to pull together some governing mandate for his administration, especially as he enters office with historically unprecedentedly bad favorability ratings. From the Trump supporters I have engaged in the past few days, the message is clear. Trump and his supporters couldn’t care less about us. We are seen not just as defeated, but as dismissed and irrelevant. They don’t see themselves responsible in the least to over half the citizens in the republic who did not vote for Trump and over half the electorate that voted against him. Such is their commitment to American values and to democracy.
There is one particular way we can make our resistance felt, through establishing a habit of speech and of writing that marks him with an enormous asterisk. We all know the figures. Clinton’s popular vote totals keep climbing, approaching an advantage of 2 million, a margin larger than that which elected JFK over Nixon and Nixon over Humphrey, and more than triple the popular vote advantage achieved by Gore over Bush. And this on the heels of a true Head of State who addressed all Americans with respect and commanded a majority of the popular vote in both elections. Not just a plurality, mind you, but a majority. And he never stopped appealing, in the face of fantastic slanders and irrational hatred, to his opponents and their supporters for more engagement and more civility. In his wake we face what is nothing more than a legal hijacking of the republic by a disdainful minority that wants us silent and invisible...at best. Let’s remind them at every turn that they are a minority and that the President has only technical legitimacy. At every turn we should say and type “MINORITY President Trump.” Were it possible to articulate an asterisk in speech, I would add that as well.
Speech acts can be powerful. They can both shape popular sentiment and motivate material political organization. Let’s make sure that Minority President Trump never forgets that he is beholden and responsible to all Americans and that the majority of us object to all he stands for.
Good luck, Minority President Trump. As Proverbs 11:29 teaches: “He who troubles his house will inherit a whirlwind (עוכר ביתו ינחל רוח).” We are the whirlwind that you have set loose. And your minority will not silence us.