Resilience.
Anyone connected to EPRR (Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response) has heard that word a lot since the pandemic. Well, we heard it a lot before but, sadly, we either weren't prepared enough, or our best laid plans weren't executed.
Increasingly, we see this word attached to another word… climate.
Climate resilience is “about successfully coping with and managing the impacts of climate change while preventing those impacts from growing worse. A climate resilient society would be low-carbon and equipped to deal with the realities of a warmer world” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Resilience is what you're left with when it's clear that it is already too late to stave off some of the worst effects of climate change. Another word you might hear is “adaptation”. How can we adapt to a world that's more hostile to human existence than the world we've been used to during recorded history?
When we look at the (now inevitable) impacts of climate change, it's clear that this poses significant challenges for every day life, as, for example, supply chains break down and food just isn't as plentiful as we in the Western world are used to enjoying. Multiply this by water and energy (including fuel for transportation) shortages, mass migration, social unrest etc and it makes sense we need to prepare NOW for what might happen.
So, how do we best prepare?
At one end we have the “hyper-local” response - your “Doomsday preppers” ready for the total collapse of civilization (and, if course, a zombie apocalypse!). Their focus is often (but not exclusively) on “them and theirs”, their immediate family.
At the other end, we have the National or International responses to major disasters but the (valid) concern is the overly centralised response will be unable to cope with such a widespread need.
So, in the middle, we have a decentralised, community-level response.
How can we strengthen local community relationships, increase local preparedness, increase local food and energy production (eg solar power), reduce the need for long distance transport (eg reduce commuting by working from home or having local shops and farmer's markets) and so on. How do we give the community, as a unit, the best chance of survival WITHOUT, the need for resources from elsewhere that might not longer be available (or at worst, only available intermittently)?
So, what does this all have to do with Trump, the MAGA cult, and the rising tide of authoritarianism worldwide?
Well, another, less community-minded response, to resource shortages is to hoard all the resources for yourself and your selected cronies.
At the heart of any “conservative” movement (Republicans, Trumpers, whoever) is to conserve the status quo with them at the top.
The people with the power like having power and resources, and will wield that power to ensure things stay the same, or at least that they maintain their relative position at the top of the “food chain” (quite literally in this case!).
So, when faced with the potential for severe changes to the status quo, they aren't interested in making everyone more resilient and able to adapt to the changes… they want to get control of ALL the resources in order to be able to preserve their lifestyle for as long as possible.
They are the people in the crow's nest at the top of the mast of the sinking ship, assuring every drowning below that any stories of the boat sinking are “fake news”.
It's interesting, I think, to look at Trumpism, and the wider Authoritarian movement worldwide, as something logical and rational, even as we acknowledge that irrational appeals to our baser instincts are part of the arsenal they wield to influence their followers.
Understanding the logical and rational reasons someone might pursue a cause of action is always more valuable that just saying “they are all crazy” or “it's a cult”.
That said, it is still a cult in that it is, as with every cult, still for the benefit of the Leader and not the Followers, other than the cronies the Leader needs to maintain power.
It seems plausible based on the Project2025 “manifesto”, Trump will try to install himself as El Presidente for Life, and that he would be succeeded by the first female US President Ivanka Trump Kushner when he inevitably strokes out due to hypertension from too much Adderral or chokes on a burger.
Over the coming decades of their reign, asthe impacts of climate change manifest, anyone in the Trump cult who thinks that any resources will be shared with the masses isn't heading the history lessons of authoritarian movements, or indeed the history lesson of Donald Trump's entire life story.
In some ways, this is the ultimate con, the ultimate grift… tell everyone that climate change is “fake news” whilst you prepare to seize control of the levers of power to ensure that your own gilded lifestyle endures for as long as possible whilst not just Rome bu the entire world burns down around you.
Now… does that sound like Donald Trump to you?