If Not Now, When?

Reports that, in protest against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime, shopkeepers in Teheran’s Grand Bazar are on strike and have shut their shops left me seriously dejected. Much as I empathize with the Iranian people, my thoughts on this occasion were closer to home. What I found disturbing is the comparison between the shopkeepers’ coordinated and highly effective action and the far more limited protests in which we are currently engaged.

The Grand Bazaar covers a vast area of Teheran and the many thousands of shops it contains sell a huge variety of goods, including food. Moreover, similar shutdowns have taken place in other Iranian cities.

No government, whatever its philosophy, can ignore that type of situation, no government can temporize. Whether democrats, fascists or communists, those who seek to run the state must have a functioning state to run. Paralysis concentrates their minds. This may well be the time to bring that about.

Why now? Trump’s approval rating is steadily falling, protests are building, and resistance is gaining momentum. Every day we get reports of measures taken by state governments and ordinary people to protect immigrant communities. Every day, more and more experienced officials resign, leaving the federal government in the hands of those whose malevolence is offset by their incompetence. The Epstein files continue to haunt Trump and his Attorney General and have fractured the MAGA coalition, causing even Marjorie Taylor Greene to desert her erstwhile idol. And even Congress is showing some feeble signs of emerging from its catatonic state to reassert its constitutional rights.

Moreover, the attacks on our laws and constitutional order are not unexpected. Trump and his minions have been behaving outrageously since the start of his second term. As I said in my Substack letter of August 29, 2025 entitled A dose of Realpolitik, Trump could be expected to act like a cornered rat as a result of the Epstein fiasco and to redouble his outrages. What I did not anticipate, though, is their scope and their lightning speed. Everything, everywhere, all at once.

In those long-ago days of August, masked and armed military personnel had not yet invaded multiple American cities, or detained and arrested immigrant and citizen alike. But, as The Wall Street Journal reported last Saturday, since July there have been thirteen instances when immigration agents fired at or into civilian vehicles, killing Renee Good and another person and injuring eight people, including five U.S. citizens. Since then, Trump has invaded a sovereign country declaring himself its temporary president. He has practically put NATO allies on a war footing, ready to defend Greenland from an invasion by the U.S. The ever-servile Department of Justice has opened investigations of people specifically named for that honor by Trump himself, including Senators Kelly and Schiff, former President Bill Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And just in the past two days, Trump has posted on Truth Social that midterm elections may be unneccessary, a method he often uses to test the waters, that is, see what the reaction would be to measures he is actually contemplating.

The lawless actions of the Trump administration have already exceeded all bounds and crossed several red lines, but show no sign of slackening. I believe that we are now in a desperate race which may well determine our future. It is unlikely that protests will reach critical mass, that Congress will wake up fast enough to be effective, or that the courts, which always proceed at a glacial pace, will clip Trump’s wings in time. Before all that happens, Trump may realize his ambition: king - no, emperor!

Decisive action is now required. But where are our plans for strikes which will bring the country to a standstill? A general strike is too much to hope for, but shouldn’t unions in essential industries prepare walkouts? Why are planes still flying - more or less on schedule? Why doesn’t silence reign in our ports as cargoes remain aboard? And why, after marching, people reward themselves with a latte at Starbucks?

It would be naive to think that Trump would fail to declare martial law if his regime were seriously threatened. But at that point the military might be more likely to refuse to obey his orders, and other decisive action might be taken, than while the destruction of the country we know proceeds incrementally.

As always, I find in Shakespeare the best way of expressing what I am trying to say:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our venture.”