Toward Ecosophy

I got forwarded a link today to one of the latest vagaries of the soi-disant "Resistance" -- for those who don't keep track of US political chatter, these are the people who haven't yet got over the fact that their candidate lost the 2016 election. You can read the original here if you like; the short version is that some of Donald Trump's opponents have convinced themselves that if they all stop spending money, that will bring the US economy to its knees within a few days and force Congress to either impeach Trump or force him to resign. 

Yeah, I know. Do you remember when you were two, and Mommy wouldn't give you a bowl of ice cream, and you told her that you'd hold your breath until you turned blue if she didn't give it to you? I thought of that too. 

What's more, they're not just going to stop spending money -- no, they're all going to run out and buy all the things they'll need for the next month, and then stop spending money. No doubt the retail sector of the economy will be shaken right down to its core by getting all that money in advance.

I'm frankly starting to wonder if somebody in the Trump administration is cooking up schemes like this and the comically inept project to cast a hex on Trump I discussed here a while back. I can't think of a better way to keep the Democrats busy spinning their wheels, so they don't do the things that might actually win them the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election: that is to say, figure out what cost them the 2016 election and stop doing it; and then get busy with some old-fashioned grassroots organization and outreach aimed at winning back the voters they ignored just that once too often. 

On the other hand, I really do hope that the people who are proclaiming this business on Twitter go ahead and follow through on their plan. Three or four days into it, when it starts to sink in that a few tens of thousands of disgruntled Democrats changing their buying habits won't even rise out of the statistical noise, it might just begin to sink in that we don't live in a tantrumocracy, where whoever shrieks the loudest about their hurt feelings gets to tell the rest of us what to do -- and that if you want to make change happen, you really do have to learn something about practical politics, roll up your sleeves, and get to work making the machinery of representative democracy do what it's there for.