Never Let Anybody Tell You to Shut Up
Trump. In a week there is enough evidence to know that he truly is the narcissistic child and xenophobic race-baiter we saw during the election and that wasn’t just reality TV to get him elected.
Here is a quote you should regret believing
You should all take him literally. He has appointed Steve Bannon (ex head of Breitbart) to the National Security Council and the principals committee attending every meeting whereas the Director of National Intelligence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are only invited now as required.
Steve Bannon has said the media is “the opposition party” and “should just shut up.” That is precisely what one would say and do if his objective was to centralize government control, make executive decisions themselves, silence critics and do whatever he wanted.
So it is now your duty to speak up. It is an obligation. You saw what yesterday’s collective response to the Muslim ban on our country did. It gave air-cover for more and more people to speak out. It got people to turn up at airports. It got judges out of bed to stop the order. It forced the government to back track. But I still think the administrations strategy is to do outrageous things and then accept the small push back to slightly-less-outrageous things and we say, “oh, ok, they listened.” We can’t accept that.
So Trump has started his ban on Muslims and without even bothering to consult with his departments that would need to carry out this order. He has begun pushing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which would strip healthcare insurance from almost 20 million people.
He has insulted Mexico and offended China and cozied up to the Russians, hinting that he would consider lifting sanctions. He has announced he will cut foreign aid to countries if they could possibly used to aid women’s productive rights in poor countries who lack access to proper care.
We should take him literally.
“But wait, Mark, you’re a VC — why are you suddenly political? Shouldn’t you just talk about term sheets and funding?”
Aren’t we past that? This is a human issue. We all need to speak out. This is not about Democrat or Republican — this is about an aspiring authoritarian who seeks to control our country.
“But isn’t this all just talk? Don’t we need to take action? Aren’t we just talking to ourselves in our bubbles?”
Stop. This logic is a false. First, for every person who speaks out you give air cover to others to speak and know they aren’t alone. Plus, with your logic then you might as well never vote, either. If we speak — if we ALL speak out — then you will start a movement. Plus, speaking out does not mean you aren’t willing to also take action. Action without words is also sub-optimal.
Think about this — Trump’s entire power base comes from his ability to speak directly to large audiences with no media filter. Isn’t speaking out EXACTLY what we should be doing right now?
“Aren’t you overblowing this? Surely this is just Trump bluster.”
Donald Trump has no attention span and no interest in managing the details of our country. He is assigning this to people like Steve Bannon who don’t share my value system as an American.
As a Jew I am particularly heightened to central authoritarians who preach to the masses of people and incite hatred and violence of “the other.” I grew up being taught constantly about the Holocaust. As a child you read the pages and pages of accounts of smart, successful families who watched what was going on around them and didn’t take action and thought, “Why didn’t they do anything about it?”
Many Jews (and many Germans, Poles, French …) didn’t do anything about it because they simply couldn’t believe after the pain and loss of WWI that somebody was really going to be as extreme as Hitler was. They didn’t believe that their neighbors would abandon them in a time of crisis. They didn’t want to speak up because speaking up always has risks … unless everybody speaks up.
I’m relieved that more of my friends and peers are starting to speak out. Here’s Fred Wilson’s “Make America Hate Again” and Brad Feld in “Unsettled and Disgusted.” Some people like Hunter Walk have written less about it on blogs but has been hugely active in social media and in taking part actively and I appreciate Hunter so much. Chris Sacca, Roger Ehrenberg, Manu Kumar, Jason Hirschhorn — many of my friends are becoming more publicly vocal.
We need all your voices. Words lead to actions. Actions leads to resistance.
Silence cedes the national conversation to Trump. Not today, motherfucker!
