Seven words for the resistance

Like learning to discern a wine's flavor, we must understand how we describe our objectives in order to confront Donald Trump's authoritarian rule

Expect subtle earthy flavors, we’re told, like forest floor or damp earth. Likewise, you have to get to know your objectives to confront the reality of Trumpian times. (Photo by Sai Balaji Varma Gadhiraju on Unsplash)

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Mastery of the Google Machine can make you seem smart, you know, but you can’t entirely fake it. That was clear to me this week as I tried to choose a bottle of gin from a small distillery and asked the expert living inside my phone about the quality of a label I was seeing for the first time. Here’s what it told me about the gin: “There’s a hint of fresh hay, melon, caramelized pineapple — think pineapple upside-down cake — and a faint terpenic air of woody rosemary… (and) a note of fresh-picked apple mint leaves.”

Mind you, I don’t really want my gin to taste like pineapple upside-down cake. But the critic advised that this gin belonged on my “must-try list” (which I had failed to make!), so I took the leap and bought a bottle. I am delighted to report that it was delicious. In fact, I will surely have a sip or two upon completing this column.

This experience reminded me of what I was told by a good friend who recently retired after many years as one of Upstate’s leading wine merchants and educators. As I congratulated him on his career, I added that I would miss his advice, since I’m not a very knowledgeable wine drinker.

“It’s interesting,” he said, “that people don’t gain the ability to discern wines until they have the language. It seems that you need to know the words before you can describe the taste and the aroma.”

This, it seems, explains why I did not know until just recently that a particular wine I enjoy is flinty, or even stony, balancing fresh green fruit, like gooseberry and apple, with white peach and herbal notes.¹ Once you identify those words with that wine, I now understand, you can begin to deploy the terms elsewhere. I look forward to one day soon looking over the rim of a wine glass and asserting, with some credibility and with no help from Dr. Google, that the newly-found wine I am drinking is indeed flinty, with perhaps a touch of gooseberry.

It strikes me as the kind of exercise that those of us who count ourselves among the Trump resistance ought to undertake in charting our course forward. Ever since just after the 2024 election, there has been a gnashing of teeth over the seeming inability of Democratic leaders to fight the outrages of the 47^th presidency. In the face of nothing less than an assault on our democracy and a string of policy decisions that are weakening America’s security, damaging its economy and hurting its most vulnerable citizens, why isn’t there a clear alternate agenda being aggressively promoted right now that can win the allegiance of voters who might be inclined to try to stop Trump?

We’ve heard the advice that Democrats should moderate the words they use so their priorities seem aimed more toward folks in a feedlot or a factory than a faculty lounge: Don’t warn of “oligarchs,” instead denounce “powerful rich people;” if you have a plan to combat drug addiction, call it that, but don’t couch it as a “strategy to reduce substance abuse disorder.” Nobody calls themselves “Latinx.” And people who are “poor” don’t get closer to escaping that plight if they’re called “economically disadvantaged.” Speak plainly, and carry a big campaign kitty.²

All well enough, but I’m less concerned just now with the politicians than the millions of us who are outraged, terrified and simply hurt by what’s going on. We are looking for ways to both comfort ourselves and afflict those comfortable with today’s status quo. So I’ve come to believe that whether or not the campaign strategists and candidates line up just the right poll-tested words, there are terms all the rest of us need to understand if we’re going to be effective citizens of the resistance.

For, make no mistake, this is a dire moment: The journalist and historian Garrett Graff wrote last week that we should no longer simply worry about America’s future, because the nation already has “tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism.” He wrote: “Everything else from here on out is just a matter of degree and wondering how bad it will get and how far it will go.”

So here, in the authoritarian America of Donald Trump, what should people of conscience do? I’d say that we first need to come up with the words to describe out intent.

Politicians have always tried to find the right terms that will motivate voters to support them. When I worked on campaigns in the near aftermath of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, political advisers suggested that practically every issue could be turned into a chance to denounce “Big Oil,” because Exxon and its ilk were surpassingly unpopular.

A few years later came the real turning point for American political rhetoric, though. In the fall of 1990, Newt Gingrich, then the House Minority Whip, sent Republican candidates a brochure entitled, “Language, a Key Mechanism of Control,” with lists of words to use in campaigns to “speak like Newt.” It urged defining Republican policies with such inspiring words as “prosperity,” “hard work” and “family,” and contrasting those by describing Democrats as “radical,” “pathetic,” “sick,” “traitors.”³ It took two more election cycles, but in 1994, behind Gingrich’s leadership, Republicans gained 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time in 40 years. With that, Republicans “changed the center of gravity” in the nation’s capital, Time magazine said, in naming Gingrich its 1995 Man of the Year.

Political rhetoric never recovered its civility. If Gingrich gave Republicans permission to use discourteous political discourse, Donald Trump two decades later pioneered shockingly uncouth mannerlessness. He warned of a “bloodbath” if he wasn’t elected, described immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the country, and labeled journalists as “enemies of the people.” He described Central American and African nations as “shithole countries,” and in campaign speeches repeatedly used the words like “crazy,” “corrupt” and “stupid” to describe opponents. Take note: In most corners of the corporate world, human relations officers would be required to discipline even top-level executives for the kind of language that Trump quickly normalized in public life.

Linguists say that Trump’s language gives his supporters a comfortable umbrella for their own anger and prejudice, providing them license to think and act on impulses that were previously considered taboo. By grasping the language, they come to know how to behave — or to embrace misbehavior as perfectly acceptable.⁴

Which brings us to what we of the MAGA resistance need to embrace now as a conscious strategy. Assuming Trump serves out his entire term, there are about 1,230 days until a new president takes the oath of office. We can only imagine the breadth of the decay and chaos that Trump will create between now and then, because — well, that’s just what he does. We will continue, then, to be outraged and horrified and hurt. So we need to strengthen ourselves, which I suggest begins with asserting the values that can sustain us through the difficult years ahead. I have some suggestions — and you probably do, too.

First, we need to practice perseverance. It is tempting to give up on discouraging days — say, when the president ignorantly attacks a useful initiative, like support for clean energy, or when wimpy-willed Republican senators grovel for the Trump blessing. But patient pressure can work. Plutarch, a first-century Greek philosopher, offered this observation: “Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little.” We need to adopt “perseverance” as a guiding principle of the resistance, and absorb all manner of activities beneath that objective.

Second, the resistance needs discernment. Not every nonsensical or offensive Trump initiative is equally deserving of our full-bore energy, and his tactic of “flooding the zone with shit,” as Steve Bannon infamously described it, means that there will be a lot more to revolt us than we can effectively repel. So we need to discern what has the greatest impact on our fellow citizens and act aggressively on those objectives, while leaving the other offenses to fellow resisters.

Third, we need to summon our energy. I think often of the people of Ukraine, who have been combatting Russia’s full-scale invasion for 43 months, but really have been targeted by Russia for more than 11 years (since the covert Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014). Think of how hard their life has been, and how often they have had to summon the strength to get through their bleak days in what had been a thriving democracy with a healthy economy. It is to America’s enduring shame that our elected government has nearly abandoned Ukraine’s. We need to mimic the energy of the Ukrainian people if we are to survive Trumpism.

Fourth, we need agility, so that our initiatives to counter Trump’s excesses aren’t hampered by inflexible devotion to old notions. Politicians are loathe to admit mistakes, but the rest of us shouldn’t hesitate to move on to smarter or newly revealed truths. For example: the United States has long been the best friend the state of Israel could imagine, but the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which now routinely and intentionally kills children, medics and journalists, does not deserve such allegiance. We shouldn’t hesitate to stand against Trump’s inability to hold a policy position when he’s confronted with a smarter and craftier person, which certainly describes Netanyahu.

Fifth, let us never abandon compassion, for that is what elevates humanity, and it is what underlies any progress that may reach our shared community of citizens. The First Epistle of John, a short book in the New Testament, puts the imperative pretty clearly: “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion — how can God’s love be in that person?”⁵ It’s astounding to see avowed Christians like House Speaker Mike Johnson advocate heartless cuts to public aid that feeds children, and to note Republican senators failing to stand up to the mindlessly brutal policies of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which will kill people. You wonder: How do those people reconcile their daily carelessness with their Sunday morning piety?

Sixth, our resistance needs optimism and reflection on all that is good. We can be disabled if we think of Trumpian outrages 24/7; we can be strengthened, though, by our love of nature’s beauty, our appreciation for loved ones’ devotion and our notice of the treasures that remain in this bountiful world. We cannot hope to regain our standing if we let slip away our appreciation for life’s many blessings.

Finally, we need bravery and engagement. You can’t look at the Senate hearing at which RFK Jr. tried to justify his anti-science and inhumane policies without feeling pride at the powerful challenges mounted by such figures as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Likewise, we all may be called to stand up to those who want to distort the truth or disable independent institutions. In school boards, college alumni organizations, local libraries and citizen forums of all sorts, we may all be summoned to bravery.

So let us consider and dwell upon these seven words: Perseverance. Discernment. Energy. Agility. Compassion. Optimism. Bravery. We might think of them as the seven terms of the resistance. As we absorb their meaning and imagine what we can do to realize each objective, we will be better empowered to fulfill the necessary role of concerned citizens in the long months that stretch ahead of us.

Like the students of wine who study the adjectives that denote flavor and aroma — who come to know what a wine is like that displays spicy notes of mushroom, vanilla and clove — we need to become knowledgeable about what these seven words can mean if we are going to become expert in resisting the authoritarianism that has now come to America. That’s not to say that a nice dash of gin won’t help. But it is in fighting under this banner that we will be truly rewarded.

1. That described wine is a Sancerre, from the Loire Valley. And the gin, since you asked, is from Hardshore Distilling Co., of Portland, Maine.

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/27/democrats-language-elite-politically-correct/

3. https://uh.edu/~englin/rephandout.html

4. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-hateful-rhetoric-connects-to-real-world-violence/#:~:text=Some%20individuals%20charged%20with%20terrorism,%2DSemitic%20and%20anti%2DAmerican.

5. I John 3:17 (New Living Translation)

YOUR VIEWS COUNT

Are there other key objectives that you think deserve consideration by the Trump resistance? We’d love to hear your views.

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ENDNOTE

THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. As we together navigate these challenging times, I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send me a message with ideas you’d like to see us address. I love to hear from readers.

-REX SMITH