I have always admired and liked Corey Booker. Even thought he’d make a great President. He’s smart. He cares. He has fire. He’s likeable and telegenic. And I was impressed this week when he made his marathon speech on the Senate floor (without a catheter, no less).
After the Senator from New Jersey’s impassioned, 25-hour excoriation of the current administration and plea to save American Democracy, I then expected the news to be chock full of excerpts from his address. I expected there to be massive amounts of commentary on his dramatic act of defiance and what might come next. I assumed that there would even be numerous televised interviews with him after he recuperated from his day of non-stop communication.
I was wrong. Maybe it was the myopic limits of my own news consumption, but there just didn’t seem to be that much coverage. I saw a few Facebook posts, some of which quoted print articles. But not much buzz on NPR or even the Newshour. And mere mentions on local news. I was puzzled — until I woke up and remembered what century I’m living in and what our information consumption habits have become.
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Grandstanding with a heartfelt speech in the hallowed halls of government might be great for a Frank Capra movie — but now, really? Most of us are addicted to the little streaming devices in our pockets and exist in the bubbles of confirmation we can readily access from them. Most of us have developed a natural distaste that goes beyond boredom for the formal pomp and circumstance of formal politics. Many of us don’t even really trust anything speechified, anymore. Maybe we’ll swing back, but only time will tell.
So, while Bernie Sanders and AOC draw big crowds at rallies (like Trump did) and make those in attendance feel united and strong, there must be more effective ways to get emotive yet informational messages out to the public. Not in a cheesy, lifestyle-influencer, podcast-bro, celebrity endorsement kind of way. But something that economically (in both senses) resonates, and makes people — especially people who put the current regime in office — stop and think. Because in the end, all the activated progressives in the world won’t stop the Executive Order policy juggernauts recently unleashed unless the people who form Trump’s base come to realize that he is not making their lives better or righting the wrongs they feel have been done to them. Only when those folks, and the folks who have just let the GOP slide into unrecognizability, decide that they don’t want Trump ruining our country will his choke hold loosen.
What does that look like? I think it looks like countering propaganda with…propaganda. PSAs or ad buys that show the ways in which Trump hasn’t kept promises – his history of bankruptcies and cheating people — how he’s violated the Constitution and his Oath of Office — how checked out, uninformed and untethered to reality he often seems — his personal profits from the Presidency — his cozying up with dictators (no tariffs on Russia or North Korea)– his weaponizing the government to go after perceived enemies — his past and present policy failures — all of it! Take a page from the Lincoln Project. Get it out there streaming. Get it on the legacy networks. (Trump is currently running “energy dominance” T.V. spots). Pay for digital billboards in U.S. cities that update how the stock market is tanking day by day — new retaliation tariffs – the rise in food prices – increasing levels of unemployment — the number of people deported without due process. Hammer it!
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I think that only once there’s a multi-platform blitz (sorry for the analogy) of carefully researched and documented Truth, will people wake up. And only when people wake up and revile him will he maybe back down. Of course, this will all be called lies — but we can counter with unimpeachable data sources to debunk the actual lies that have been coming from him and from his administration.
Will it push him to put on the brakes — or call out the goon squad — we don’t know. But I can’t help but believe it’s a chance worth taking.
So, let’s say goodbye to the decorum of polite 20th Century dances of disapproval and meet the moment with the same…or even better…tools that are being used to subdue us into accepting this prevaricating, pre-fascist, patrimonial mess.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2025.
