If We Adjust to Trumpism, the Republic Is Lost

In a speech last Friday, Attorney General William Barr attacked opponents of President Trump who think of themselves as engaged in “resistance.” The language of resistance, Barr said, suggests that the current administration is a military occupation rather than a democratically elected government. And people who think of themselves as members of a resistance will prosecute their “scorched earth, no-holds-barred war” against the administration “by any means necessary,” in the process “shredding … norms and undermining the rule of law.”

Barr’s complaining that Trump’s opponents are shredding norms and undermining the rule of law is a bit like a Visigoth’s complaining that his enemies lack respect for the city of Rome. But the attorney general is far from the only person to criticize the practice of calling opposition to the administration “resistance.” Some, like Barr, think that—is melodramatic. The archetypal (nonfictional) example of something called “the Resistance” operated in France during World War II. However awful the Trump administration is, it is not Nazi Germany, and the people opposing it are not risking their lives in clandestine meetings, one step ahead of the Gestapo. So it is easy to think that people who regard their anti-Trump activism as resistance have lost perspective.