“We Are Now The Resistance”
That’s what my friend wrote after the Trump Triumph (or the Donald Debacle, in her view).
The reference was obvious. The Resistance in Europe during WWII was a loosely organized, fervently supported, ferociously suppressed opposition to Hitler’s invasion. Especially strong in France, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark, it flourished underground in a population being occupied and oppressed by a foreign power. (How much it may or may not have actually accomplished in the fight for liberation is a matter to be debated by historians, but that’s another story.) Many of its members died, caught and executed by the Nazis. Many of their family members also died, also executed by the Nazis in retribution and as a way to inspire fear among the survivors who might be contemplating joining up. Whole villages sometimes paid with their lives for the deed of a single captured suspect —guilty or not. Houses were burned, razed, vengefully obliterated by the storm troopers (SS), and, sad to say, even sometimes by regular army soldiers acting under orders and under threat of being shot for “insubordination”.
My wife was born in Belgium. Her father had been granted American citizenship because of service to the AEF in WWI. She was ten years old when the Germans came. Her family included seven brothers and sisters. They fled Antwerp for the Ardennes countryside where they hoped to find a food supply for such a large family. As an American their father was denied the right to work. The family joined the Resistance. As a child on a bicycle, my wife-to-be put her little dog (and a few eggs or potatoes begged from sympathetic farmers) in its basket, and she could travel unmolested from town to town — Han-sur-Lesse, Rochefort, Dinant — with a memorized phrase in her mind (“Do you have any large potatoes? Ours are almost used up.”), providing a communication link to the guerillas plotting to blow up a bridge or a stretch of railroad tracks. Did she truly understand the risks? Was it right of the family to put her at risk? Hard to say.
When the B-17 crashed on a nearby hillside and ten dazed flyers emerged, there was no question among the villagers in Éprave what to do. The Americans were hidden in the deep woods (that also concealed the wreckage, and kept the Germans from finding about them), fed from already scant food supplies, and eventually passed along to other underground rescue groups and returned to England. All ten, plus all nine family members, plus who knows how many other villagers, could have been shot if one single member of the chain had been a weak link. Inspiring story. Frightening.
To compare that story to the prospect that Americans who didn’t want Trump will now call themselves “The Resistance” is to compare small acts of petty non-cooperation to the heroism we can now look (safely) back on with pride. Is that presumptuous? Of course, but at the same time there are parallels : lessons to be learned.
First, each member of the Belgian underground was an army of one, making a personal decision. Few farmers in the Ardennes were tempted to favor German rule over joining the Resistance (although there were some). Placard-carrying rallies in the streets were out of the question, for obvious reasons. You did your thing, as unobtrusively as possible, hoping that all the small things would add up. Going public about what you were doing was not an option.
Second, you tried hard not to know too much. Fear of torture — not for yourself perhaps, but that you might not prove strong enough to protect your friends. You kept a low profile and did as much good as you could within the boundaries of the rules imposed by the occupiers. If you compared notes with anyone else, you did it only when you were quite certain of where they stood.
Thirdly, you didn’t expect quick results. A train wreck on a remote stretch of track in the woods was a victory, but it could only be celebrated in a candle-lit root cellar with a few trusted collaborators. The Germans would never acknowledge that it happened. There were no medals. No applause.
Does any of this apply to unorganized resistance to Trump?
If you hope to block him, the most effective tactic is to be a Wallenberg and not an Eichmann. If you are a cop and you are told to stop and frisk middle-eastern-looking men, you can just not bother. If you are a clerk at the immigration service office asked to pry into the family relationships of people applying for asylum, you can “forget” to fill out that part of the questionnaire. If you are an employer requested to prepare a list of employees with “Mexican-sounding” names, you can misplace that request in a pile of other papers. If you are asked by your employer to eavesdrop in the workplace to spot “illegals” you can wear blocking earbuds (or better yet, quit that job and look for another one). If there is a directive instructing all Muslims to register, you can buy yourself a chador and add your name to the list. (Some Germans actually did wear yellow stars.) I t will take officials a long time to do all the resulting research necessary to clear 40 million people. You can wear middle-eastern clothing, and say “Inshallah” whenever you get a chance. If you are drafted to build a wall, you can forget to put the cement in the mix, so that even a child will be able to push it over. At the very least, if everyone around you is extending a stiff-armed salute, you can make sure your middle finger is the stiffest part.
And you can restrain your impatience. Our Constitutionally-protected institutions grind slowly, and they can be made to grind almost unbelievably slowly if the bureaucrats in charge of staffing them choose to deliberately procrastinate (think Mitch McConnell). This is only going to be (if we’re lucky) a four-year aberration, after which we will have a chance to go back to our normal way of governing, with a normal chief executive, and experienced professional politicians in charge. Donald damage cannot be entirely avoided, but it can be considerably ameliorated by thoughtful foot-dragging. The key is not to be impatient and get steamed up. Do your own thing, on your own.
The big thing will be patience. You are not likely to convert any rednecks, or any of the “Put her in Jail” or “Build that wall!” crowd, even after the election emotions calm down. Time and lack of results will have to do that. But you can try to make friends across no-man’s land, against the day when we go back to thoughtful government rather than reality-show excitement. You are not in the Ardennes. Your life is not in danger. The lives of your family and friends are not in danger. Your house will not be razed (although it may be repossessed, which will give you, if you happen to be the repo man, another opportunity to mess up some paperwork and produce unending and life-saving delay). Your village will not be deliberately destroyed. You may lose your job, infuriate a superior, frustrate a wall-builder, but these are not fatal.
So go and do your thing, and keep quiet about it. The Force is with you.
Vance Weaver 