When Is An Outcry Not An Outcry

The host specifically asked Nichols why there hasn't been "greater outcry."

Nichols was asked, "Is it because of what you just talked about? Because of things that are being done, are being done under the facade of these democratic institutions? Is that why for some people, it's flying under the radar?"

He replied, "Well, there's actually a worse explanation for it. You know, part of the problem is that tens of millions of people think it's perfectly okay now to use the instruments of government against people you don't happen to like."

"A big part of the problem is that some of what Trump is doing is just popular with a certain amount of people who don't think that these things could ever be turned around and happen to them, if those instruments of government were used against them," he added. "But there's a bigger problem, which is that we live with a very high standard of living on our our day to day life. Everything works. You know, our gas tanks are full, the grocery stores, shelves are stocked... and people just say, well, how bad could it be? And it doesn't get bad until the day it happens. And then I think people find themselves surprised."

There have been three (or is it four?) organized nationwide protests. A large number of angry town halls in some of the reddest areas of the country. Trump’s approval ratings are in the toilet.

Donald Trump only has a 36% approval rating on the economy in the new 2025 AP/NORC Center poll.

It can go lower.

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— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) May 10, 2025

Support for due process, even where non-citizens are concerned, is polling so high it makes one optimistic for the American experiment. And even the GOP controlled Congress is allowing witnesses to be grilled by Democrats, after 3 months of studied silence and long recesses. 

Should the outcry come from Congress?  The legislative body that, through the Senate, took 4 years to finally censure Tailgunner Joe, and then only after a lawyer asked McCarthy, “At long, have you no shame?” They’ve never been exemplars of courage. 

The courts are stopping Trump at every turn, and Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Sotomayor have spoken publicly, off the bench, about Trump’s threats to the Constitution. But that’s not enough outcry?

Do 300 million of us have to take up pitchforks and torches and surround the White House before it’s an “outcry”? Or will it only count when the “right” people are inconvenienced by supply chain disruptions? Well, wholesale destruction, actually. Until they speak out, are the trees falling in the forest not making a sound?

There are times when I remember Kissinger’s famous comment about Nixon’s “meatball mind.” Tens of millions of people in America always think it’s okay to use government power against someone else, and are always surprised when it comes ‘round to hurt them. The tale is as old as America’s original sin itself, the one that started with Columbus: slavery. And yet there is always an outcry from people who think we can do better.

And not being France, we really don’t have any history of torches and pitchforks or “Aux armes, citoyen,” to rally the overthrow of the government (more’s the pity, since French government to this day takes takes public displays of grievance far more seriously than we do.). So this is how it works, here. 

You’d expect an historian to have some grasp of it.