Parallel Government?

Today, I was reading an article on Alternet on all the innumerable ways in which Trump is alienating the rest of the planet--including abandoning global trade agreements, torpedoing the nuclear treaty with Iran, insulting our allies by imposing punitive tariffs, and--worst of all for the future of the planet--withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. The article enumerates various ways in which these reckless actions are spurring other nations of the world to unite against him, leaving the US isolated in a hostile world. But there is one silver lining on the very dark cloud of Trump's chaotic reign and the profound threats it poses to democracy, the rule of law, and our common global future. To quote this article,

"To the consternation of the Trump administration, the next crucial meeting, a Global Climate Action Summit, will take place in September -- and guess where? --  in California."

This astonishing development--a major international summit meeting on US soil to enforce a vitally important global climate treaty from which the US itself has withdrawn, was the work of California's brilliant and courageous Governor Jerry Brown, who has led a coalition of state governors, mayors, and corporate leaders throughout the nation in affirming and implementing their intention to abide by the Paris accord, and to reduce or eliminate their dependence on fossil fuels in accordance with the agreement.

Reading about what Governor Brown and others (including our own Governor Kate Brown) are doing encouraged and inspired me, for according to Gandhi, when all other efforts fail to reform or transform a corrupt, oppressive, or morally bankrupt regime, the final stage of a nonviolent Satyagraha campaign involves what he referred to as setting up a parallel government. That is, rather than attempt the bloody mess of a violent overthrow (which almost always backfires, leading to a disintegration of social order into bloody anarchy, internecine conflict, and horrors beyond imagining), one leads and coordinates, among principled leaders in government and the private sector and individuals, a mass refusal to cooperate with tyranny, by setting up a parallel government--which can be a virtual government, without any fixed location as a target--to take over the tasks of maintaining a coherent and just social order, and even practicing diplomacy, until such time as the tyrannical regime fails due to its own internal contradictions.

World War II offered many illustrations of parallel government, through the establishment of "governments in exile" for France and other nations under Nazi occupation, including Germany itself. But Brown is pursuing something new: a nonviolent, virtual "parallel government"--not in exile, but within and beyond the scope of the current dysfunctional regime in Washington, consisting not only of elected officials (governors and mayors) but also of corporate leaders, the media, public administrators, foreign governments, and ordinary citizens, all resisting the Trump regime in myriad ways.

So this "parallel government" need not be a literal government, in the sense of elected officials deliberating on policy, to be administered and enforced through a network of agencies, adjudicated in the courts, enforced by police, and defended by armies. Rather, it is coalescing as a network of agreements, both explicit and tacit, that are perfectly legal, among foreign powers, state governments, cities, corporations, and citizen groups, and even among officials within the US Government who retain some integrity about their calling.  This, in turn, along with sustained nonviolent citizen resistance, may be the most effective way of creating a protective abscess around the infection of the Trump regime, until that regime is finally dislodged from power. whether by impeachment, resignation, or electoral defeat and subsequent arrest for high treason.