The cavalry isn't coming

Ordinary Americans are going to have to lead the opposition to Donald Trump.

Image by Midjourney

The historian and journalist Claire Berlinski has kicked off what she promises will be a series of posts this week to try to explain the astonishing lack of opposition to Donald Trump’s and Elon Musks’s lightning-fast dismantling of federal agencies and steamrolling of the judicial system. Why are so many institutions—not just government agencies, but also universities, law firms, and other private companies—rolling over and giving in? And why, she asks, citing the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, aren’t Americans pouring into the streets, given the country’s long history of liberal democracy and its self-image as a global promoter of democracy? Her answer:

It’s not just that far too many Americans don’t see that what Donald Trump is doing is wrong. It’s that so many do, but have decided that glum passivity, fatalism, and cowardice are a proper American response.

I began wondering how far back this could be traced. When exactly did this mood of cynicism, of learned helplessness, take root? The financial crisis? In the ‘80s, when irony became our dominant emotional tone? Watergate? Or did it go back further? When exactly, I wondered, and why, did virtues like courage fall out of favor?

She goes on to argue—in part, through a rather interesting exchange with chatGPT 4.5—that what’s going on is a kind of “moral, intellectual, and cultural rot,” the result of a rise in political tribalism, the erosion of a shared standard of truth, and moral relativist thinking.

I should, in fairness, hold off on judgment here until Claire has published the rest of her posts. But I don’t think you need to galaxy-brain an historical exegesis of the disintegration of civic morals to account for Americans’ passivity. There’s a much simpler explanation.

People expected a fall in the stock market to deter Trump’s push for tariffs. They expected him to stick to at least basic constitutional norms. They expected the courts to block him where he didn’t, and they expected him to abide by court decisions. They expected large private companies and in particular law firms to stand up to him. It’s not that they “have decided that passivity, fatalism, and cowardice are a proper American response.” They just took it for granted that their institutions would stand up to a concerted assault. They expected the cavalry to come.

The cavalry isn’t coming. The capitulation of the law firm Paul, Weiss is especially troubling. If lawyers are reluctant to bring cases against the administration or defend people and organizations targeted by it, then whether or not judges rule against the administration, and whether or not it abides by their rulings, becomes moot. Functionally, the legal system as it pertains to the government will simply cease to exist.

Americans may have been prepared for the idea that their country was becoming less of a democracy. They weren’t prepared for the idea that the rule of law might no longer apply. That the rule of law is sacrosanct is one of the core American beliefs, and when that crumbles, people are left helpless. They just don’t know what to do. They have no historical precedent. They haven’t had time to get used to what’s happening. And nor have the institutions or politicians who should be leading the opposition.

With any luck, this will change. What Micah Sifry calls “The Defiance” (as opposed to “The Resistance”) is beginning to appear. But the cavalry won’t come. It will have to be ordinary citizens who mobilize and drag the political and business leaders along with them.