When Kamala Harris said “we’re not going back,” she was doing more than repeating a campaign slogan. She was tapping into a belief, shared among liberals and Democrats, that progress can’t be stopped. 

This was a powerful and persuasive statement at the time. After the US Supreme Court struck down Roe, there seemed to be a righteous backlash against not only the court but against the former president who had stacked it enough to void the national right to an abortion. 

But progress can be stopped, indeed, it can be reversed, and the process of reversal can lay waste to vulnerable and marginalized people. Liberals and Democrats should not pretend otherwise, not when the greatest mechanism for progress – the federal government – is now being used to claw back advancements made since the 1960s.

I was thinking of this while watching a Tik Tok video that claims to explain why Trump supporters are still angry despite winning everything. Made by a former TV journalist, and viewed nearly 9 million times, it borrows a term from psychology: “extinction burst.”

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@ohhthatsrich

I just learned a new #psychology term that perfectly explains why #maga #republicans are still so angry, and it has shaken my #leftist brain to its foundation. #extinctionburst #politics

♬ original sound – Ohh that’s RICH

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According to the unidentified creator of the video, “extinction burst” is “when you have a behavior and a reward, and you withdraw the reward in order to change the behavior. When you do that, usually to change the undesirable behavior, the behavior itself increases in frequency and intensity for a short period of time till ultimately the subject changes that behavior and that behavior goes extinct.” He went on to say: 

“Extinction burst at the national level is much slower, but in this case we actually know what triggered it. It was Obama’s election in 2008. Sarah Palin, the tea party movement, the birther movement, and ultimately maga – it is a 10-year tsunami of rage in the face of inevitable extinction. This is why Republicans are angry. They know Trump winning can’t stop it and they know Trump in office can’t stop it. They can feel the inevitable extinction of their own terrible beliefs.”

He says that “extinction burst” explains why victory in November did not calm Trump’s supporters. The implication is that they continue to rage against the libs, because they know that even with control of all the levers of power, they can’t stop a greater power, which is the slow but inescapable flattening of America’s social hierarchies, which will result in “the inevitable extinction of their own terrible beliefs.”

The creator of the video, who goes by the handle “ohhthatsrich,” says the key to this is democratic politics. “The only thing that will stop it is if we let up. If you stop interfering with that undesirable behavior, it will go back to normal. So, no, you’re not crazy. Yes, you are doing the right thing. And yes, if you persevere, the extinction burst will end.”

This part, however, feels like an afterthought, as if it were something you think you ought to say but don’t feel it needs to be said, because, after all, maga people know the end is coming. That’s why they’re still big mad. Looming over the entire argument is magical thinking about the nature of progress, as if it were an act of God, rather than what it really is: a product of blood, sweat, tears and, sometimes, death. 

Demographics is not destiny, but that way of thinking, permanently emblazoned on the minds of liberals and Democrats in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s historic election, still commands their imaginations, such that they can watch Donald Trump break the law and violate the Constitution – criminal conduct that has already led to individual ruin and death – and still believe that he’ll self-destruct any minute now. 

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I think there are two kinds of magical thinking – that which comes from people who have suffered long-lasting trauma, like some sort of “socially accepted sadism,” as Richard Rorty once put it, and that which comes from people who have never experienced anything close to that.

The first kind is understandable. These folks must hold tightly to that magical thinking as a matter of survival, to defend themselves against psychic death. The second kind, however, is not nearly so noble. 

It is a means of avoidance, an escape, an expression of privilege. It’s when tyranny is so abstract, you can afford to talk about it as if it were a fever, a brief malady, a phenomenon that will burst any minute now. You don’t really need to act. It will go away soon. After all, the terrible beliefs of the Trump horde are heading for extinction. It’s inevitable.

This magical thinking will persist, no doubt, but perhaps it will weaken in useful ways as the fact of Trump’s tyranny sinks in – to the point where even the most privileged liberal understands that he’s no lame duck. Unless he dies in office, of disease or old age, he’s not leaving. 

To be sure, the prevailing wisdom is that can’t possibly happen. The 22nd Amendment says no one can be elected more than twice. But such belief overlooks a lot. Not only is Trump undoing progress – in terms of racial equity and justice, reproductive rights, LGBT-plus rights, climate change, the economy, everything – he’s undoing democracy, too. 

The White House said today that the court orders that are blocking his illegal federal funding freeze are a “weaponization” of the justice system that’s provoking a “constitutional crisis.” That’s the pretext for saying later that the only way to right such a wrong and resolve such a crisis is to ignore the courts altogether. In that case, no law will constrain him. No Congress will remove him. If he does not die, he will not leave.

I don’t know any more than you what to do about a demented criminal president. What I do know, however, is that few of us can afford to believe evil has an expiration date. It is evil, because it’s evil, and all we can do is fight it while understanding the cost will be great and dear.