The powerful hashtag #TheResistance has become a rallying cry for the frustrated grad students, snarky hipsters, and trustafarian millennials who make up the “We’re 24 and Oh So Smart” wing of the Democrat Party. Using it is the kind of hardcore, meaningful symbolism that will galvanize Americans to once again recognize how important it accept Gaia’s will that urban liberals rule over us. After all, typing #BringOurGirlsHome at the end of earnest tweets totally saved those Nigerian children kidnapped by … uh, … people who were not at all motivated by any particular religion and to say different just shows you’re an Islamophobe.
Yes, as America succumbs to the fascist Nazi badness of Donald Trump, who is totally a fascist Nazi bad guy because the words “fascist” and “Nazi” apparently now mean “Anyone I think is bad,” it’s clear that it is members of #TheResistance who will lead the way in effectively and meaningfully opposing our 45th President, Donald J. Trump (Oh, typing that still feels so good).
I spent some time interviewing members of #TheResistance, so let’s meet a few of these courageous heroes who will spend the next few years sacrificing themselves and sometimes putting at slight and temporary risk the subsidies their overindulgent parents give them so they can afford tuition or lofts in Brooklyn, all to ensure that Trump cannot to make America great again.
My first interview was with Kaden McKay, whose Twitter bio lists him as “Jon Stewart Superfan #1.” He arrived to our interview wearing a “#TheResistance” t-shirt. “It’s pre-vintage,” he said.
“But what if #TheResistance fails?” I asked.
“Then I can wear it ironically. Look, I had this original thought that electing Trump is like passengers on a plane electing a pilot from among themselves,” he said, pleased with his analogy.
“But when you get on a plane you understand the pilot will be in command. You agree to that; in our social contract one of the terms is that we have a voice in selecting our leaders. And a pilot is a technical expert who is highly trained to address well-understood in-flight scenarios using objective factors like air speed, weight, and thrust, while a political leader works with subjective policies and must negotiate with very different interest groups as he faces often unprecedented situations. Are they really comparable?”
“Uh,” Kaden considered. “Well, Trump is totally racist.”
Amanda Parsons, a 2015 Oberlin grad and post-modern artist, lives in New York. She has never sold a single one of her etchings, which focus on depicting characters from the 90’s sitcom Saved by the Bell in a “variety of confrontational settings involving white privilege, the construction of gender identity, and climate change.”
When I met her, she was finishing a phone call: “And Mom, you can tell Daddy that I totally kissed a girl last week. A girl! And I liked it! What’s he think of that, huh? Goodbye?” she said, hanging up her iPhone and smiling. “My bourgeois parents are totally oppressive with their asset privilege, but their $5,000 a month allowance doesn’t mean they can control my life narrative. Everything about me is a personal statement of nonconformity and rebellion, the same as all my friends. And we rebels all agree that it’s only a matter of time before Trump’s stormtroopers try to silence the voices of rebel artists like me.”
“You think Trump is going to send people to arrest you for your etchings?”
“Well, Trump and the Christians, probably. You know, he’s also going to cut subsidies to the NEA which is totally the same thing. I mean, since no one will buy our art the government needs to fund it. So, cutting art subsidies is pretty much the same as arresting people.”
“You mean, since normal people won’t pay for your art, the government should take their money by force and give it to you?”
“Yes, because not doing that is straight up fascism,” Amanda replied. “Probably sexist too. Yes, it’s definitely sexist too.”
Some are ready to take #TheResistance to another level. I met Kaden Wellington at Mister Tea’s coffee shop in Williamsburg. He limped in with one combat boot and one cast, dressed in a pair of vintage camo slacks and a t-shirt depicting revolutionary hero Keith Olbermann wearing a Che beret.
“Paul Krugman was right!” Kaden said loudly to nods of approval from the shop’s gender-ambiguous clientele. “Donald Trump is turning America into a dictatorship and since I totally believe that, I think our only option is violent resistance! So, I went to the nearest gun shop so I could fight back against the coming reign of terror. It was in Pennsylvania, which was a three hour drive in the Volvo my mom bought me.” He took a sip of his reeking kombucha tea, which was advertised as “Fair Trade, Eco Friendly + Trans Conscious,” and grimaced.
“Delicious,” he said. “Anyway, I asked what was a good gun for fighting tyranny and the gun store owner, who had a shirt on that I think referred to a cis-het porn site called ‘Molon Labe,’ pointed to what he called a ‘black rifle.’ Well, I told him that kind of racist label was problematic – duh – and he said, ‘Oh, you’re one of those. Maybe you should try something a little more your speed.’ So, after he showed me which end the bullet comes out of, I bought the gun, some CO2 cartridges, and some .177 pellets and went to the range. Well, take that, you trained NRA types with your combat rifles thinking you have a monopoly on rebelling against tyranny! Now we progressives are armed too! I’m totally going back to practicing shooting my gun again as soon as the pellet hole in my foot heals! Attica! Attica!”
Another member of #TheResistance is Amanda Kadenton, a sophomore at Gumbo State University, where xe – Amanda considers gender-based pronouns to be “history’s greatest hate crime” – majors in Deconstruction Activism and minors in Hip Hop Poetry. She’s ready to take concrete action against the Trump peril, as she explained while she marched around the quad carrying a sign reading “Don’t assume I’m a girl. Or a boy. Or both. Or neither.”
“I end all my tweets with #TheResistance. It’s important to make real contributions to the struggle against the climate of terror Trump has imposed on our college. Did you know there were 10 racist sexist homophobic Islamophobic hate crimes here since November? Okay, maybe all of them were committed by professors or students, but none of those heroes would have been forced to commit those hate crimes if they didn’t need to raise awareness of hate crimes Trump inspired! We will continue to be a beacon of free speech and free thought by eliminating all offensive ideas and words, which is the true meaning of free speech and free thought. Once free of dissent, we will be free to dissent regarding Trump’s dissent from our progressive paradigm of dissent. After all, dissent will be patriotic again in just a couple weeks. Well, some dissent will. Hey, do you have any weed? I’m out.”
Yes, Trump faces a great challenge with #TheResistance – putting up with at least four years of this nonsense without laughing himself into a coma.