On Tyranny Lesson 2: Defend Institutions

Again, I feel that our American friends can answer this question more accurately. It seems to me that the answer is: Yes. All of them. From dismantling to defunding, from accusing individuals and organizations of crime or of being traitors, to banning specific news agencies from access because they refused to print “Gulf of America”, it seems like everyone and everything is under constant attack. I cannot keep track of it all. I think the answer is to support institutions financially where feasible. This is where I’ve read that the strategy has to be to pick some of your favourite institutions to support and support those ones. And to encourage fellow citizens to do the same.

As a Canadian, I can’t really speak to the US institutions currently being gutted by the US administration. I don’t know what they do in detail, but I do have a basic understanding of how government institutions should operate and why they are in place and why they should be defended. So it is disturbing to see so many institutions losing employees and the funding needed to keep them functioning. The rapid-fire wrecking ball being taken to everything all at once makes it feel more like a “coup” under the guise of “efficiency.” Defending them seems almost impossible. But I like what Snyder advises—choose one that you care about and help defend it, whether it be big or small.

When this all began years ago, I was alarmed at how many libraries in the US were being attacked as part of the “culture wars.” I know from history that the moment you start banning books and restricting what people can read, you are starting down a dark path. I am perturbed that in Canada, there’s also been an increase in targeting books in libraries. The people attempting to censor and restrict content in Canadian libraries have been emboldened by the successes in the US.

Personally, libraries played a big part in my childhood and my education. It was one of my favourite places to go. To hear that there is increasing demand for book banning in Canada, and even violence towards librarians and libraries, is dismaying to me. But I recently read an article that provided some insights to me on ways to possibly defend libraries and other institutions. It noted that some of the “activists waging this war will run for school or library boards.” What could a defender do to help? Run for the school or library board too and displace these activists. Deny them a place at the table. The other thing the article noted was the name of some of these activist groups. Being aware of their activities in your community can help you counter their messaging and stop them from spreading misinformation and gaining support.

Just as with Lesson One, engagement and knowledge are key. It also takes commitment, energy, and support from those around us. I have to say I’m energized by the people who I see are out there subscribing to independent and reputable newspapers and blogs, or making phone calls, or helping educate others. It’s encouraging because I think every small step counts! I’m curious to hear what institutions you all are wanting to defend and why.

A Canadian institution currently under threat of attack is the national public broadcaster CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), which is a Crown corporation.

Public media organizations serve the needs of citizens and embody a set of core values that include commitments to independence, the public interest, impartiality, universality of service, diversity, accuracy and high journalistic standards. They have a duty to inform, educate, entertain and engage. They also play an essential role in reflecting the diversity and creative cultures of the countries they serve.

Most importantly, public media organizations have a duty to support democracy by informing citizens and holding governments to account.

The Conservative Party of Canada has repeatedly made calls to defund the CBC in favour of private ownership of media companies (https://www.conservative.ca/cpc/defund-the-cbc/). Currently, over 70% of Canada’s media is controlled by a handful of corporations, many with ties to U.S. hedge funds (https://www.cmcrp.org/media-concentration-2020-update/). Without the CBC, foreign and corporate interests will dictate Canadian news. This is a very dangerous prospect.

Jim Morrison is quoted as saying, “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”, suggesting that media can shape people’s beliefs, change their perceptions and control their behaviours. Indeed, we have seen the effects of biased traditional and social media platforms that spread disinformation and cause family members, friends and neighbours to have completely different realities. Evidence has shown that disinformation has lead to the destruction of democracies all over the world.

It is absolutely imperative that we support public media organizations that serve the needs of citizens and not of billionaires, corporations or individuals with their own agendas.

With the upcoming election, it might be of interest take this attack on the CBC by the Conservative Party under consideration.

Yes, it’s all under attack. One of the major goals of Project 2025 is to make the government a business, with a CEO instead of a President. Everything will be privatized. And we know, based on our miserable health care system that privatizing things that should benefit all citizens does not work.

They just cut the Department of Education by almost 50% — it went from 4183 to 2180 employees. 🙁 They are going to destroy our National Parks — open them up to timber and oil drilling. With no regard for endangered plant or animal species. Or protecting the environment.

The media has already been destroyed — they are just an echo chamber for Trump. CNN even admitted during the election that they held Harris to a higher standard than Trump — asked her harder questions, pushed harder for answers that they wanted. It was despicable to watch.

The arts are under attacked. Book bans, libraries being defunded.

It’s all just horrifying.

My answer to the first question (as others have already noted) is ALL of them, every possible democratic institution in the U.S. That is a feature, not a bug, an intentional strategy to limit people’s capacity to respond effectively.

Sadly, I believe much of the ground work for this assault on democratic institutions in the U.S. has been going on for years, but incrementally, making it harder to see where we were headed. I see multiple examples, a politicization of the courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, the efforts to defund public media and the obeisance of media in general to this administration, effective gerrymandering of legislative districts and the Supreme Court decision with revoked Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Under this administration, the entire justice system has been subverted and any semblance of equal justice or obedience to the rule of law is effectively non-existent.

I appreciate the idea of choosing one institution and focusing one’s efforts and resources there. That seems to me an effective frame of reference and one that makes resistance workable. In this case, I think it is more effective to know all one can about a limited example rather than trying to keep up with more than one can truly follow. If you have the resources and bandwidth to do more, then do that but don’t let oneself become overwhelmed.

I absolutely feel that many of our democratic institutions are under attack. As Ann said, they’re trying to run the country as a business, as those in power only understand that sort of success (and they have also failed in their business models at times, but were rich enough to recover; most of us in the U.S. aren’t as fortunate, should our protective institutions crash and burn).

So much is under fire at the moment that I won’t attempt to name them all. The most obvious one is our very Constitutional structure—the checks and balance system that was created to keep any one branch of our government from taking complete control. In the first few weeks of this administration, laws have been ignored, legal judgments have been discarded. Musk, unelected and unqualified, has been given the keys to the kingdom, and is privy to personal information that should never have been open to him. Trump, with the aid of his party, successfully planted Supreme Court justices and nominated other judges wherever he could in his first term that he assumed would cater to his own desires, and now hopes to reap the benefits (keep in mind that he always assumed that he was going to win that second election, and had been making his longer-term plans back then); the House and Senate have been made one party, as far as influence goes, and are so far being led by the nose to support whatever the Boss wants. Then there’s the muzzling of the press (like banning AP from the White House press conferences; Bezos, a visible supporter of Trump, changing his tune about editorials in the Washington Post that he owns so that there will be less criticism of T) and the allowance of misinformation and lack of fact-checking that the public has bought into (thanks, Zuckerberg, et al), it’s all changing the shape of our country, bending it to a certain direction.

They hope to demolish the Dept. of Education, which supplies the funding for so much in public schools, which will weaken the education of many underprivileged students; and the less broad a child’s education is, the more indoctrinated they may become to whatever is being fed to them instead; there is a real threat to take away funding for Medicare and Medicaid, despite promises made (cynically, I often think of LP’s Madness of Crowds, where somehow the lives of the elderly and the disabled became less valued; and then I think of places like Nazi Germany, where similar things happened in reality); our environmental duties as caretakers of our country and citizens of the planet are being belittled — there are so many things going on right now that it gives me whiplash when I read the daily news.

What we can do about it all is to be aware; don’t look away. Maintaining democracy needs to be an active process. Think things out; do something proactive, be it donate, contact your representatives, attend local meetings on events that affect your life or those of others that you care about, protest what doesn’t seem right to you. Be informed. Make sure you know what you’re talking about and why you’re taking an action, then do what you can, and spread the word where you can. We all have different strengths, but we can all do something, I believe.

I think you’re wise, my Canadian friends, to be paying attention to what’s going on here, and where you might see parallels in your own country. This sort of thing is insidious, and creeps up on you. Every election is important, from local to national, and some things are best nipped in the bud if possible.

Well, here is an example from hours ago. “The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration. Citibank revealed in a court filing today that it was told to freeze the groups’ bank accounts at the FBI’s request. The reason? The FBI alleges that the groups are involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”” (https://newrepublic.com/post/192660/trump-fbi-charge-climate-organizations)

So canceling federal grants is not enough. Harassment and possible jail time for non-profit organizations that applied for and received funding. This is just insane. I have volunteered with Habitat for Humanity!

What can be done? I guess it will come down to donating and volunteering for legal organizations at this point. It seems that the courts are the only path to stopping the administration from targeted attacks on institutions at this point.