Be braver than the billionaires

They're cowards. The rest of us don't have to be.

We have now seen over the last 10 months that the people ostensibly in charge — the leaders of civil society, the titans of industry, the richest CEOs, the university presidents and ballsy businessmen and U.S. Senators — are mostly a bunch of cowards.

They’re all bark, no bite. They’re paper tigers. When push comes to shove, when the bully shows up and threatens them, when their backs are against the wall — whatever metaphor you want to use, when Trump decides to go on offense, they nearly all fold.

They’re misreading the moment.

Trump’s approval rating is hovering around 39%, per the latest YouGov poll. Said differently: 57% of American disapprove of Trump’s, the highest that number’s been since he took office a second time.

Among Americans ages 18-29, 61% disapprove. Among Americans 30-44, it’s 60%. 53% of men disapprove of Trump. (That number climbs to 61% of women, hell yeah.) ¹

He is not popular, what he’s doing is not popular, and aligning with him is not popular and will lead to backlash.

It’s also not necessary. Trump’s administration can do a lot of harm but at the end of the day, they lose a lot. As much as he’d like to be, the man is not king and in spite of their best efforts, the Republican Party will not permanently be in power (and don’t give in to the doomerism that convinces you otherwise). Their winning is not inevitable.

If you’re reading this, you probably agree with that. But you’re probably not a university president, or the CEO of Disney, or a U.S. senator (although you may work for one or want to be one someday!).

And maybe you’re looking around at the news the last two weeks — the assassination of Charlie Kirk and ensuing response; the silencing of Jimmy Kimmel; the insane regulations on vaccines; etc etc — and wondering: What the fuck am I supposed to do?

The country is crumbling. Everything feels bad. There is no one in charge, no one fighting, no one leading an opposition. It all feels hopeless.

Here’s my advice:

Do the next brave thing you can.

Maybe that’s something big!

File the lawsuit. Go to the protest. Run for office. (We’ll help!) Make the joke at Trump’s expense. Write the op-ed.

Or maybe it’s something small. Subscribe to the media outlet doing the good coverage. Cancel your subscription to the ones doing the bad stuff. Stop wearing your merch for the baseball team that held a moment of silence for a bigot.

Do the brave thing wherever you have the power to. If you run a company or a team, recommit to your equity and inclusion work. Align your team’s budget with your values. Give your employees permission to take time off work to protest or do their brave thing.

Maybe for you, bravery looks like reminding that asshole at the meeting that even if a bigot wins an election, we still live in a society and being a rude piece of shit is still frowned upon. Maybe it looks like being a little bit of a compassionate troll and kindly offering your condolences to someone mourning Charlie Kirk, and asking them what specifically he said or did that they admire — what quotes of his do they feel most spoke to them?

Your next brave thing could be about building community. Send a text inviting someone you only kind of know over for dinner. Offer to volunteer in your kid’s classroom. Go to the city council meeting, or drop off a lasagna for the new parent down the block, or volunteer at the local animal shelter.

Your act of courage could look like supporting someone else’s courageous acts. Donate to the mutual aid fund, or reshare the video of someone yelling at an ICE agent kidnapping someone off the street, or hand out lit on behalf of someone running for school board.

Not everyone can risk everything, and very few of us have fuck-you money.

But! It seems like the people who do have it aren’t using it to say “fuck you” — so it’s on the rest of us to say it, show it, shout it, scream it, until all this is over.

It is cliche to say it at this point but it’s true: Courage is contagious. Fighting back, sadly, wasn’t ever going to start at the top — we need bottom-up bravery.

Build small acts of courage into your daily life. Just as Mariame Kaba says “hope is a discipline,” so too is audacity. Treat it like exercise, or drinking water, or your cup of coffee — make “being brave” a habit.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying don’t be afraid. It’s totally justified to be afraid right now.

But bravery doesn’t mean fearlessness, despite what the thesaurus says.

It means doing the right thing anyway.

I’m also not saying you must put your job on the line, or stage a sit in, or become a full-time activist who gives up your life to fight fascism in America. Not everyone can or should shoulder that risk.

I am simply begging the question: What is the next brave thing you can do? And then the next, and the next? Keep asking, keep answering, keep being bold however you can be.

If nothing else, perhaps enough of us will be brave enough to inspire the billionaires to do the same.

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No book recs this week, because I got halfway thru a novel and then the primary plot point turned out to be a graphic description of a toddler falling out of a window. My post-partum anxiety can’t deal with that, so I stopped reading and picked up Elin Hilderbrand’s new book, which so far is pretty fun but I’m only about halfway in.

But a few other things I saved:

• A deep dive into when and whether young athletes should specialize in a sport — my kids are still too little to be into the youth sports world but I can see it lurking a few years down the road and it terrifies/fascinates me. [The Athletic]

• Paul Krugman on the serious implications of Charlie Kirk’s ideas about gender and women in the workforce and the economic conditions he was responding to is worth reading. [Paul Krugman]

• After you’ve read that, read Emily Amick on Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow who is the new president of Turning Points USA. Underestimate her at your own peril. [Emily In Your Phone]

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You can pick up a copy of my new book, When We’re in Charge in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.

Another option: Get your book along with an excellent I DO NOT DREAM OF LABOR tote bag at the Crooked Media shop.

1. I’m dubious of polling as a mechanism for measuring the horse race aspect of politics, and I think most message testing is pretty useless — mostly I treat polling as a snapshot of a moment in time & to give us sense of directionality. And through that lens, this is bad news bears for Trump!