Hey, Matt Rothschild here, and welcome to another episode of the Wisconsin Forward Podcast
on the Civic Media Network.
Today we're going to be discussing the huge issue of our time, how to combat Trump and
authoritarianism right here in the United States.
For answers to this crucial question, we first go to leading scholars of authoritarianism,
including Ruth Ben-Giath of NYU, author of Strongman, and Yale's Timothy Snyder, author
of Antirini, and Harvard Stephen Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die.
I've taken excerpts from recent interviews I found with them online, and I think you'll
appreciate them.
Then I talk with Dave Zyron of the Nation in the Progressive Magazine, and after that,
I bring you two folks you probably know from the Civic Media Radio Network, Trig V. Olson
of the Lincoln Project, and Dom Salvia.
One of the wisest voices on Trump and authoritarianism is NYU historian Ruth Ben-Giath, the
author of Strongman, Mussolini to the Present, which I just read recently.
In it she writes, pro-democracy movements that claim the mantle of moral authority and
show care and solidarity in the face of plunder and violence can have an impact.
In fact, even a relatively tiny percentage of the population, often just 3.5 percent
according to the political scientist, Erica Chenowith's study of successful civil resistance
movements, can make a difference if they mobilize on behalf of democratic values and
situations of tyranny, creating a big tent opposition movement, she writes, that includes
progressive faith traditions and organized labor, two sectors of civil society that privilege
values guided action would be key.
Individuals can refuse to betray others, deciding not to stay silent and hide away as
writes vanishing abuses are perpetrated, as some people disappear being visible on behalf
of others becomes even more important.
She continues, so does having conversations with family and community members who still
support Trump and explicitly raising with them questions of dignity and decency and the
betrayal of national and self-interest by this administration.
As the government paralysis deepens and affects everyday life, these conversations will likely
become easier.
Each time we show solidarity with others, she concluded, or support those who are protecting
the rule of law, helping the targeted or exposing the lies and the corruption, we are standing
up for democratic values of justice, accountability, equality, and more.
In doing so, we model the behaviors the authoritarian state wants us to abandon.
Listening with others, we transform our individual righteous indignation into a potent moral
force for good.
And here's Ruth Ben Giat in her own voice, talking recently on the David Pakman show.
I think one of the things that Strongman do, they try and wreck what I call horizontal
bonds, individuals bonds with each other, with their communities.
And what they want is the mass and the leader, everybody's loyal only to the leader and
they're adulating the leader.
And so one thing that has allowed people to get through difficult times is communities,
is networks, is relationships.
So this is a good time to embed yourself more into your community, to perhaps repair relationships
with your family members or others.
And that includes people who haven't been able to speak to because of political things.
Maybe there have been turned against everyone and against logic by disinformation.
As the fallout from these policies becomes more clear, that's an opportunity for everyone
to go in there and try and speak to these family members or community members or friends,
but it's going to become more obvious that Maga is not about making the nation great
again.
It's about ruining the nation.
Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, the co-author of the really important book How Democracies
Die, picks up on this idea that we simply must get involved and join one organization
or another, whichever one moves us.
Here is speaking on the daily blast to the new republic with Greg Sargent.
They'll have to be engaged and they have to be engaged in person, not just online.
So there's no single strategy, there's no single organization, there's no single movement,
there's no single cause.
But it's incredibly important that people be involved that they speak out.
Whatever the issue is that they care about and there are 200 that one can think of, people
need to join organizations, attend protests, write letters to their congresspeople.
Their expert on authoritarianism is Timothy Snyder, famous for writing on tyranny, 20 lessons
from the 20th century.
In that book he writes, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable
the destruction of our institutions.
Courage does not mean not fearing he writes or not grieving.
It does mean recognizing and resisting right away.
And the 20th lesson of his 20 lessons is simple, be as courageous as you can be.
Here's Timothy Snyder in his own words, speaking to Rachel Mano.
Number one, we should be aware that movements within this country, like the Civil Rights Movement,
and movements outside of this country, pro-democracy movements regularly succeed.
They regularly are in moments like this, troughs like this, valleys like this, where it
feels terrible, and yet nevertheless they can succeed.
The second thing to remember is that this is how they want to make you feel, they want
to make you feel alone, they want to make you feel powerless, they want to make you
feel overwhelmed by the airplanes in the sky and by the angles of the photos of Trump
and by the gestures that Elon Musk makes and so on.
They want to make you feel that way, so catch yourself before you do.
And the third thing is, if you act, especially if you act with other people, with other
people, you admire who you think you're doing good things, you're going to feel better.
If you do the little things that you can do, you can catch yourself before you start
being dismayed.
Just me now on the Wisconsin Forward Podcast is Dave Zyron, a columnist for the Nation
and the Progressive, and host of the Edge of Sports Podcast.
Dave Zyron has been one of the boldest voices out of the gate, resisting Trump and the
authoritarianism that Trump has ushered in.
Welcome to the Wisconsin Forward Podcast, Dave Zyron.
Oh, it's great to be here, thanks for having me, Matt.
How do we really combat this authoritarianism that we're facing today?
Yeah, I think a lot of people have said, well, we don't really have an answer for what
to do, and I don't think that's correct.
I think we do have some readily available answers right in front of us.
I mean, first and foremost, I think we have to accept the cliche, and I'm going to
beat this cliche to death.
I don't even care that no one will save us but us.
I mean, if nothing else we've seen over the last several months, that the Democratic
Party is not going to save us.
These white shoe law firms are not going to save us.
The university systems are not going to save us.
Everything that we've sort of depended on as a kind of center of liberal framework for
how we think America's run is surrendering left and right.
And I think we have to understand that there's a difference between compliance and complicity.
Some of these institutions, and I'll say, I'll you say the mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser,
are fearfully complying with the Trump administration because DC has such little power relative
to Congress.
And there's real fears that home rule will just be stripped away from us.
Yet other forces, and I'll throw Chuck Schumer on this, I'll throw the administration
of Columbia University on this, are complicit with the Trump musk plan because they like
enough of it that they're willing to surrender our freedoms, even though they're doing it
without any sort of democratic way to challenge the fact that they're doing so.
It's there in their way they're acting authoritarian as well and speaking for us about what we
are willing to surrender.
Is it that they like it or they're just cowards, like the law firms are coward, like Columbia
is a coward?
You see, I don't buy the coward framework.
I do in some cases, make no mistake about it, but if you're this law firm, if you're
Paul Weiss, if you are also looking at the fact that like, well, if I don't get in good
with Trump, I can't get any of the tech billionaire clients that I may have gotten in years before
because they are clearly standing as one with Trump and they wouldn't dare anger Trump
by getting Weiss and hiring them on.
To use another example on this, I also think that there need to be able to get into government
institutions and do things like that.
I mean, they sold the hell out.
That's what Weiss did.
As far as Columbia University, there were so many avenues for them to resist what Trump
is doing.
They are refusing to do so for the simple reason that they agree.
They want these unruly anti-zionist students, including the Jewish ones, to be literally
not just kicked off the campus, but criminalized so it never happens again.
They're willing to trade the fact that they are destroying one of the great brands in
higher education.
If it means getting these students off their campus and getting this kind of activism
off their campuses, I mean, look, I'm from the neighborhood where Columbia University
is.
It's long been a cliche that they're basically a real estate hedge fund where people just
go to class.
Where do you go to class?
I don't go to class at Columbia.
I go to class at the real estate hedge fund.
That's the driving interest for them.
My God, no, Schumer, I think, is such a staunch anti-Palestinian.
It all comes back to Palestine and who in power in the Jewish community is willing to
weaponize our pain and our history to shred civil rights and who is saying not in our name.
That's the biggest, one of the most important splits happening right now.
But all that's a preclude to say, and I know that was long, that what we have to start
doing, those of us who can, those of us who for now are safe and believe me, I'm very
much emphasizing that for now part is we need to act in a spirit of non-compliance.
We need to not agree with what is happening right now.
We need to stand up for it to it whenever we can and non-compliance is an incredibly
effective action in the face of fascism historically, particularly in the very early days.
And what would that mean, non-compliance for someone who's listening to this podcast
and who agrees with us about the danger that Trump is posing and the need not to comply?
How do you not comply?
Well, there are a lot of ways to not comply.
I mean, first and foremost, if you have a child who goes to a school, you check with
that school to make sure that they have a mechanism in place if ice comes calling.
If there's a parental network, you can be a part of.
Or in your neighborhood, if you have an organization like we have one here called Casa de Maryland,
most places have now immigrant services organizations, is do you have a network of some kind,
some sort of emergency network where if ice does come a call and people can co out there
and do things that are completely legal, like videotape them, like ask to see warrants,
like ask to see their faces, like ask to see badge numbers, and getting all of this stuff
on tape.
What we're seeing is that often that causes them to scurry away as opposed to going through
their arrests.
I mean, making sure people know their rights, even though Trump has such a little respect
for those rights as we see.
So that's on the question of immigration.
I mean, in more noncompliance, can also mean everyday life, you know, like try to find
out in your community how you can actually support transgender youth instead of closing
your eyes while this extermination is policy towards them comes out of Washington.
You know, there are ways to practice noncompliance.
And I think the most important thing is to literally just look right in front of your
face at your community, find out who's organizing and work with them because we can't exist
siloed off from one another right now.
Our ability to come together collectively is essential to everything I'm talking about,
as well as essential to effective noncompliance.
And just the last thing to say about that is we don't have a national anti-fascist party
or movement in this country.
That really is going to have to be built, but we can't sit around and wait for it.
Like no one's going to save us but us.
And that's like the old June Jordan line we are the people we've been waiting for.
And I can see elements of a national anti-fascist movement here and there.
It's not a united coordinated movement yet.
But I think the seeds are there and actually the shoots are coming out of the ground.
And you've been helpful in cultivating that too.
What hope do you have ultimately that pro-democracy forces, anti-fascist forces are going to succeed?
You and I are both old students of Howard's in, the author of a people's history of the
United States, who had an understanding that people, if we organize, will ultimately succeed.
Where does your hope reside on that?
Well, I think it's so interesting that one of the things we have to know about Howard's
in, and I'm writing a book about Zen right now.
So I'm thinking about this stuff all the time, is that he lived through some pretty
difficult times himself, that he didn't really talk about.
Like the McCarthyite period in New York City, from 1945 to 1955, before he went to teach
in Spellman in Atlanta, Georgia, Zen didn't really write about those days, in part because
they were so incredibly trying and difficult, like getting accosted by FBI on the streets,
you know, sounds very familiar to today that happened to him multiple times during that
period.
Going to the Paul Robeson concert and peak skill on having his car smashed up while his
baby was in the back seat, you know, these were traumatic experiences, but what Howard did
was, he wasn't Pollyanna-ish, he wasn't, there's a brighter day tomorrow.
He took his politics and his, you know, optimistic politics as being rooted in history.
And frankly, I think that's our best guide, we're very bad at teaching history in this country.
We need to learn about how people resisted in different situations because it is not
a cookie cutter.
I'm very frustrated with people who have a checklist and say, well, Nazi Germany did this
and we haven't done this.
And it's like, that doesn't matter, that part doesn't matter.
The basic questions that matter are things like due process and the ability to express
yourself democratically in a country where that's increasingly going away.
Until it goes away, we need to read, we need to talk, we need to know our history because
that can be a guide for us, for action.
Absolutely, and we need to know, as you point out, that there have been other tough times
here in U.S. history where pro-democracy forces were under assault and we made it through,
but we don't make it through thinking it's going to happen without us.
I'm hoping that we win and so that what I just said, but I feel like I'd rather ask
that question and be prepared than to have it happen and for us to be caught by our short
hairs.
How bad do you think it could get?
I mean, again, when you look at history, I mean, you see how bad it can get, at minimum
martial law, the end of constitutional protections, we'll probably, we would probably still have
showcase elections where people have to bring their passport to vote, just complete facade
of democracy without a pro-democracy movement.
I think if we can rile people up and it's got to be, I think, strikes are so important
because of the dangers of going into the streets in this climate.
So I was heartened, I know it's such a small thing, but I was heartened when the student
from Tufts was kidnapped, abducted, right off the streets.
And her name was Ramesha Ostark, it's so important to say her name, that her union,
SCIU Local 509, immediately put out a statement, and I hope, and I think that that's inspiring
other people in unions to put out statements as well, or to pressure their union to put
out statements.
And let's remember why, or the reason that the Trump administration kidnapped her.
This is a Turkish student here on a valid student visa, doctoral student at Tufts, one of
the great universities.
Yeah, a full bright scholar who had signed on to an op-ed saying that Tufts should acknowledge
the Palestinian genocide and divest itself from companies with ties to Israel.
And for that, she was nabbed.
I mean, this is the country we're living in right now.
Yeah, it's astounding.
They are trying to change even the pretense of there being an American experiment.
They're done with that.
They want a new experiment, an experiment built on our backs.
So we're going to have to figure out if we're going to make it easy for them or not.
And I think we have the chance to do better than this.
Yeah, we can't make it easier for them.
We've got to stand up and make it as tough as possible and defend our democracy.
Dave Zyrin, thanks again so much for being on the podcast.
Thank you so much.
With me now is Trig V. Olsen, Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project, and a regular guest
on the Todd Alba Show on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Trig V, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me on, man.
Well, I thought you were just a guy to have on.
You know, you've written a lot about how we defend democracy and resist authoritarianism,
but things are getting bad fast here in the United States.
So how do we get out of this mess we're in and save democracy in America?
Well, I think there's a few things that we have to think about, you know, from our work
around the world.
There's sort of always this discussion about something called critical mass, which is
the point where those who are fighting for democracy become self-sustaining and ultimately,
you know, cracks the brittleness of the authoritarian.
You know, Donald Trump is kind of in this period and his autocratic enablers.
You know, the first step was gaining power.
The second step is establishing control and the third is then maintaining total power.
You know, they are receiving pushback.
I wish that there was more pushback.
Certainly, did judiciary and judges are standing up to them.
I think governors of some states are the key in this really is, you know, we just, we
need the masses to be focused on doing whatever they can themselves.
And you know, I hear a lot of people on the left talking about, in the Punditry class,
talking about the next elections in the 2026 congressional cycle.
And I think that's, it's kind of naval gazing at this point because the question that
I would ask people is, have you seen anything from Donald Trump and his enablers and Elon
Musk that would suggest that they're going to hand power over any power that they've accumulated
and they control Congress right now to, to people that are going to hold them accountable?
Well, that is kind of a bracing suggestion that they would either fix the elections in
2026 or cancel them.
Is that what you're thinking they might do?
Well, I mean, I'm not going to, I think, I think trying to ascertain or gauge your
guess about what the mechanisms will be, at a minimum, I think, you know, I mean, Elon Musk
could flood the zone with even more money than he has previously.
I think over the, you know, the next 18 months, you may see, if you're seeing the assault
you're seeing on the judiciary and on the, on the agencies, eventually you would assume
that you're going to start seeing that on, on mechanisms of elections and certainly on
the press.
So what I am saying is the elections are going to happen one way or the other whether they're
free or fair and not really another question, but for the time being, those who are on
the pro-democracy side need to be focused on how do we beef up, how do we protect the
guardrails of American democracy that aren't currently under assault and how do we defend
the ones that are, you know, part of fighting autocrats is staying a step ahead of them.
I also think that, that if you think about Donald Trump's relationship with the Republican
party and quite frankly with the United States now, it's an abusive relationship.
It has all the cycles of abuse.
It just isn't an interpersonal relationship.
I mean, you look at Lindsey Graham or Marco Rubio, right?
They are abused by Donald Trump and they, you know, and there is that whole cycle.
I mean, do you remember on January 6th when Marco and Lindsey were standing on the floor
of the Senate saying never again, count us out?
I'm off the train, Lindsey Graham said.
I'm off the Trump train.
I'm off the train.
And where is Lindsey Graham now, right?
He keeps going back to the abuser.
I think that's true.
Some supporters to a degree, right, like 10% of Wisconsin jobs are at peril with the tariffs.
Those people are being abused by Donald Trump, right?
Like they gave their sport, he wanted their sport, he took their sport, now he's sticking
it to them.
And how do we bring some of those folks around, Trigg Viet, on one civic media show, it
might have been Todd's show.
There was a progressive farmer from the Midwest who was surrounded by Trump supporters and
he said, you know, it's easier for me to convince people that they were lied to by Trump
than for them just to concede that they were wrong, flat out wrong, and made a mistake
in voting for him.
100%.
Well, I mean, do you get somebody to leave?
And I mean, all of us have had an experience.
I'm sure, unfortunately, at some point with somebody that we know and care about who's
in an abusive relationship, right?
Like you don't get out of it by saying they're a terrible person.
You get out of it by getting them to figure out the reasons why they need to get out.
And a lot of that is about asking questions.
It's not about arguing with them.
It's not about, you know, giving them facts or it's helping lead them to see within themselves.
What's happening?
And it's about getting them to take small steps.
And you know, one of the things I haven't really talked about it ever on civic, but one
of the things that I do is I work with, through the Lincoln Democracy Institute, a global
expert on micro behaviors.
And she does a lot of stuff with abuse, people who are abused.
It's about getting them to take small steps away from Trump, you know?
And that could be as simple as, hey, let's go to this meeting about how tariffs are going
to impact things or take a look at this article.
I'd really like your thoughts on it and not one that's over the top on Trump.
But maybe something that's just about the economics in the state of Wisconsin.
You know, I've also thought, I've all long thought that it's important to keep communications
open with people in our social circles who, you know, voted for Trump and not write them
off.
I know there's been a bunch of people after the election said, I'm done.
I'm done with these folks.
I'm unfriending them on Facebook.
I never want to see them again.
First of all, I think it's, it's bad politics.
And I also don't think it's great for human relations.
But especially on the political front, I mean, we got to bring some of those folks over
if we're going to, you know, save our democracy here.
And so part of it is maintaining a decent relationship, listening to them, and yeah, taking
a couple of these micro steps that you're suggesting, because otherwise, we're going
to push them even further into Trump's hands in a way.
Yeah, I mean, I've actually been working on writing some of the stuff up, and you know,
one of the things about Trump people, I write this, what are you trying to do?
Just rub the emotional and psychological certainty that keeps them locked in.
Create moments of doubt that force them to reflect, give them an off ramp that doesn't
feel like defeat to the point of the farmer that you're talking about, reinforce their values
while showing how Trump contradicts them, make them see Trump's weakness, not his flaws.
It's kind of deprogramming them from the cult in a way.
Well, I mean, the key thing is, first of all, you never shame someone out of their beliefs.
You can only get them to look back at the beliefs they held with shame.
Steck it of all, you have to figure out how you give them a safe space in which to be
communicating, right?
None of us likes to be lectured to.
None of us likes to be made to feel stupid.
And anything that you're doing that causes them to feel that way.
So you need to clarify, you need to contrast, and you need to connect to them.
Become the trusted person that they can go to when they're questioning.
Once you are that, you need to shift and contrast and reinforce.
So give them not about Trump, but things that reinforce the concerns that they're feeling
that are related to Trump.
Give them space to reflect, reveal, and process always.
Be couple from Trump, reframe it about something broader, America, Wisconsin values, the community,
other things that they care about, and start planning seeds of doubt, and then help them
reclaim, redirect, and release their identity.
Because right now, think about how many people we all know whose identity is closely tied
to their politics into things that have nothing to do with politics, right?
I mean, I say on Todd's show all the time, you know, the thing that's breaking Wisconsin
is we're no longer wearing green and gold on things like UW system or public education
or conservation and those kinds of partnerships.
We've suddenly become a place where everybody wears a red or blue hat.
That's, that is how autocratic actors, in fact, I mean, when you go to a country like
Putin's Russia, you can feel elements of Putin inside every element of society.
And that's what Donald Trump, two degree, you know, is trying to do, shows up at all the
football games, like he's, he's, he's, I'm nip ited.
And getting back to your point about guardrails, how do we protect the guardrails that exist
and those that are under assault right now, like due process, due process seems to be going
out the window if you're in an immigrant with, even if you have a green card, it seems.
So right, you know, what should someone do who's outraged by that?
I mean, as that one judge pointed out to Nazis, there were Nazis that were deported in
World War II who were giving more rights than these guys, right?
Like that's crazy.
You know, I can't, I don't like the process that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are using,
which is the whole reason I left the Republican Party and have a beef with Donald Trump.
They think rules are for suckers, literally.
No one wants to see criminals who have illegally entered the country wandering our streets.
But you don't just start putting people on military aircraft and flying them out and defying
judges orders.
Yeah, I mean, that was really brazen.
And I think there's going to be more brazenness from Trump and more disobeying judges orders.
You know, the old line from Stalin was, you know, how many divisions does the Pope have?
I mean, the Pope doesn't have any military force who's going to stop Stalin.
You know, the Pope can't invade the Soviet Union and prevent Stalin from doing it once.
I mean, how many divisions does John Roberts have and how many divisions does the Congress
have if they had a spine and there was opposition there?
So I would have a counter to that having spent a lot of time.
One is right.
How many divisions does the Pope have?
But Pope John Paul probably more even than Reagan or thatcher was responsible for the fall
of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the implosion of the Soviet Union.
That soft moral authority and power, power resides with people.
Can I just have your, your vision a little bit of a timeline where we're going?
How bad can it get?
My worst fear is tanks in the street, cancelling elections, tanks in the street, insurrection
act, going full throttle fascism.
What is...
Can I get that bad?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the short answer is, yeah, it probably can get that bad.
Is it going to get that bad?
You know, I'm an optimist and honestly, I learned that lesson over and over again, but
I'll tell you a story and maybe this is a good place to leave it.
Back in 1999, do you remember when Serbia was going on?
Yeah.
Because the guys slowed it down, malosevic, eventually during the Clinton area, we bombed
them and whatever.
I was one of the last people in Serbia with just a standard U.S. passport and I was there
to work with college kids, basically, students.
They were the student parliament, they had like a national parliament, I don't know what
it would be similar to, but they had been out protesting, malosevic, and they were
getting their heads beat in and I worked with these guys from Harvard who were the leading
experts on nonviolent resistance and what I knew was how to get young people mobilized.
And we went in and we trained these guys and I got on an airplane after two weeks to
apply out of Belgrade and I thought to myself, this place is never going to change.
Those kids, they're well-intentioned, but like this just, they're no way.
And literally 16 months later, I was sitting in an apartment in Vilnius, Lithuania watching
CNN with tears streaming down my face as those kids took malosevic down through peaceful
nonviolent resistance, millions of them on the streets.
And I learned through that, it can happen fast when the power of people and their desire
for freedom truly takes hold, their willingness to stand up is incredible.
Many and silence are the autocrats' friend and they instill that through fear.
You know, long ago in one of the most important moments in American history, Franklin Roosevelt
said, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.
That is truly the moment we are in.
This is our moment where we need leaders and people who will stand up, people have to
not be afraid.
That's how you fight it.
We've got to resist passivity and silence.
We can't be silent.
I think that's great advice, Trivielsen.
Thanks so much for being my guest on this Wisconsin Forward podcast.
You are very welcome.
Now I'm joined by Dom Selvia, host of the Dom Selvia Show on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Dom, I wanted your views on this issue of how we get past this period of Donald Trump
and authoritarianism.
What do we need to do?
How are we going to get through this?
Well, thanks, Matt Man.
Well, there's a lot going on right and my initial reaction to everything is always pushback.
It's always to pushback.
And that's just my natural reaction.
But I think there's a couple of specific ways to deal with this.
Number one, find your core principles and stand on those things.
And for me, it's truth.
It's reality.
It's the things we know.
And when we get administration officials trying to spin to us and lie to us specifically,
when we know we have the facts in front of us.
I think we stand up and we shout from the rooftops, know you're absolutely wrong.
And I think we have to in that same vein, compel our elected officials to do that for us.
They are our representatives.
And those are the ones that are supposed to represent us in Congress in the Senate.
And we got to get on them.
We've seen some of the action.
We've seen some folks going out to these town halls.
We know right now the reaction of Republicans is, well, we're not having a great luck
at these town halls.
Well, let's stop doing town halls, you know, those kinds of things or we hear all
there's just, they're just, you know, paid agitators.
That kind of thing.
Well, that's not the case.
I mean, these, these folks are getting hurt by this administration and they're showing
up.
They're showing up and they're pushing back.
Number two, a sense of humor.
I mean, I know these are, these are tough times, but you know, you got to fight, we got
to find the humor and the fun in them.
They're very serious at times, but we can't cry all the time.
Sometimes you got to laugh.
And number three, we mock.
I'm a big fan of the mock when you, when you mock these folks, it shows, you know,
you mock the bully or you know, you can certainly punch the bully back and I get that
rhetorically speaking, but when you mock them, oh, man, that's just, it just drives them
absolutely nuts.
They get off their game showing up, standing up, fighting back.
And of course, have enough sense of humor and mocking the hell out of them.
Well, that's how we'll get through.
That's great advice from Dom Selvia, host of the Dom Selvia show.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Wisconsin Forward Podcast.
My next episode will be about money and politics in Wisconsin.
What did we learn from the latest Wisconsin Supreme Court race and how do we solve this
problem of enormous obscene amounts of money in our political system?
