# Resistance

## Metadata
- Author: [[Kimberley Strassel]]
- Full Title: Resistance
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- They view everything to do with Trump in black-and-white morality. You either hate the man, or you are as bad as the man. ([Location 44](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=44))
- To the Resistance, any praise—no matter how qualified—of Trump is tantamount to American betrayal. And by extension, any criticism of the Resistance is equally heretical. If ([Location 49](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=49))
- Not a few historians have made the comparison between Trump and Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh chief executive. ([Location 55](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=55))
- It is instead the reaction to Trump that is new and alarming, and that threatens to leave enduring marks. The term the haters have chosen for themselves—the Resistance—says it all. Throughout history, political resistance movements have existed to undermine occupying powers, as the French Resistance did in response to Nazi Germany. The very word suggests illegitimacy—a movement organized against an authority that has no right to rule. Yet whatever your views of Donald Trump, he won his election fair and square, under an Electoral College that has governed our system from the start. ([Location 65](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=65))
- This is instead a book about the more radical elements of the Resistance, and how their reaction to Trump is causing significant damage to our institutions and political norms. ([Location 84](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=84))
- I predict that for the sin of writing a book that is not unrelentingly, remorselessly, and absolutely critical of Trump, the Trump haters will attempt to portray this as some sort of Trump apologia. In doing so, they prove yet again that the truest haters aren’t interested in debate or ideas or in restoring “norms”—as they claim—but only in engulfing the Trump administration in flames, and tarring and feathering as many of their critics as possible. ([Location 87](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=87))
- Trump will be in office for at most eight years. We will be living with the wreckage of the Resistance for much longer. ([Location 97](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=97))
- Paul Krugman, the NYT’s reliably incorrect economist, offered his own apocalyptic prediction. “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.” ([Location 137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=137))
- Trump critics declared an end to democracy as we knew it, under an administration primed to commit every manner of crime, abuse, and offense. No claim was too wild. Trump would strip women, the LGBT community, and voters in general of their rights. He’d deport the Dreamers and block liberal groups from providing any women’s services. Progressives predicted Trump would encourage reprisals against Muslim citizens. ([Location 139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=139))
- These warnings didn’t fade. As recently as June 2019, presidential candidate Joe Biden in Iowa explained that Trump “poses three fundamental threats to America” and that one of these was to our “democracy.” “Everywhere you turn, Trump is tearing down the guardrails of democracy,” said Uncle Joe. “We’re at a moment when we need to reset constitutional norms in this country.” ([Location 149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=149))
- Over the decades, the press and liberal elites had grown accustomed to setting the rules of the game, scolding Republicans who failed to play by them, and accepting the ensuing apologies. Trump, infuriatingly, refused to play. ([Location 155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=155))
- Every presidential election matters—but some matter more. The 2016 election mattered lots, coming as it did after eight years of Barack Obama’s experiment with liberal government. The 44th president had proven one of the more radical in modern history, relentlessly pushing to expand the size of federal government, regulate or take over private industry, and stock the courts with activist judges. A Republican Congress had nonetheless forced him to do much of this via regulation and executive order—all of which could be undone. ([Location 159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=159))
- Democrats had soaring ambitions for a Hillary Clinton presidency. She would cement Obama’s gains and put the nation irrevocably on a path to progressive enlightenment. Obama had given the federal government sweeping new control over private health care; Clinton would use anger over the resulting soaring prices to pivot to true, government-run care. Obama erected a hulking new bureaucracy to micromanage the energy and finance sectors; Clinton would cement those regulations for eight more years, making it impossible for Republicans to dismantle them. Obama raised taxes on the wealthy; Clinton would make that the new norm and continue to grow the size of government. A Clinton administration would protect Obama’s legally dubious moves: the Paris Climate Accord, his executive immigration orders, his crackdown on religious freedom. And the granddaddy of ambitions? The Supreme Court was finally, tantalizingly up for grabs. A Republican Senate had blocked Obama from putting his nominee, Merrick Garland, in the seat of the recently deceased Antonin Scalia. Clinton would see that nomination through. For the first time since Nixon, there would be five reliably liberal justices on the Court, potentially more if another conservative retired or died during a Clinton presidency. Trump’s victory demolished this dream. ([Location 163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=163))
- And the rage only increased as the election results sank in. It suddenly crystallized for Democrats not just that they’d lost, but just how true it was that Trump wasn’t the typical Republican president. Republicans always run on lower taxes, fewer regulations, and smaller government. But the left and the media had become good over past decades at browbeating Republican candidates and presidents out of a truly conservative agenda. They’d barrage them with criticism in sensitive policy areas like the environment, or health care, or poverty programs, and the GOP would step back. Republican leaders changed things, but only slowly and around the edges. ([Location 183](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=183))
- And that is why it is so important to make distinctions. Here’s an important one: Not everyone who passionately dislikes Trump is part of the radical Resistance. Plenty of average Americans don’t want this president and are committed to seeing him leave office. But they want to see that happen via the ballot box in 2020; they are not willing to break all the rules to get an earlier result. ([Location 218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07QWKNQCT&location=218))