Tomás Ó Flatharta

Overview of “No Kings” Protests

This is a conversation between John Meehan and Paul LeBlanc in Dublin on Friday, the 20th of June, 2025.

Paul Le Blanc has for many years been a teacher and activist in Pittsburgh. His writings include “Lenin and the Revolutionary Party” [1990; new ed. 2015]

Link : Lenin and the Revolutionary Party

and

“A Short History of the US Working Class”. [1999; new ed. 2016]

Link : A Short History of the US Working Class

Paul Le Blanc, Wikipedia

Last weekend (Saturday June 14 2025) a large number of “No Kings” protests occurred in many parts of the United States. One participant was Paul LeBlanc. Would you like to give us an overview of the No Kings protests, describe the one you attended?

Paul Le Blanc: Sure I can speak especially about my own experience in Pittsburgh and in other cities and towns across the country.

The “No Kings” demonstrations were part of a wave of demonstrations that have developed over the past few months. The first big one was the April 5 demonstration, under the slogan of “Hands Off.” Hands Off the health care system, education system, various other things that are being dismantled or attacked by the Trump regime. In Pittsburgh, there was a massive demonstration. It was the largest that I had seen in the city up to that time, 8000 people minimum.

This was followed by May Day demonstrations. And Pittsburgh is not and hasn’t for decades been a centre of May Day demonstrations. But this was massive, the biggest May Day demonstration that I’ve seen. It wasn’t quite as big as April 5, but there were several thousand people participating. Again, it was focused especially on social issues and economic issues in the United States.  There was also some reference to foreign policy stuff — Palestine, Ukraine, so forth. 

The biggest demonstration of all was the most recent, the “No Kings” demonstration.  There were over 10,000 people protesting in Pittsburgh, and millions of people throughout the country: a massive outpouring of anger and rage and ridicule of Trump’s pretensions of being popular and powerful and so forth. People said “No Kings,” with many accusing him of being a fascist, a totalitarian, a dictator. Certainly, he’s authoritarian. There was general agreement on a defence of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and even of the US Constitution, which he’s walking all over.

So, this was massive, and pro Trump elements have not come close to mobilising anything on this scale. There’s a lot of anti-Trump sentiment. Trump claims that he has an overwhelming mandate from the American people, and that’s a lie. He tells all kinds of lies, makes all kinds of distorted claims. He did not get a majority, certainly not a landslide majority. He was able to rack up more votes than his competitors. But his mandate is razor thin, and I think the number of people who support him is dropping. I believe that he is eroding his own base of support with policies that are hurting all of us. It’s an interesting development, for sure.

Comparisons to Historical Movements

John Meehan: Now it’s clear these developments are a great encouragement to people outside the USA, because it’s an indication that Trump and Vance won’t have it all their own way internally. The issue is – seen from the outside – it’s great to see.  But what steps are necessary, in your opinion, to strengthen this movement, to see it develop further, and what are the institutional and political barriers in the way? Can a serious stop be put in the attacks Trump and Vance are making on working people’s rights, wars abroad and so forth.

Maybe, if I pitch it as a parallel, it might help. In the late 60s and early 70s, people outside the United States were very inspired by the depth and strength of the anti-war movement, and then a lot of related developments, like the rise of the women’s movement, popular culture and so on. And while it didn’t prevent, for example, the re-election of Richard Nixon in 1972 What did happen was that Nixon and his regime went so far beyond the bounds of what you might call standard capitalist structures. He met significant opposition from within the system, which culminated in The Watergate scandal. Nixon was driven from office. Now, one of the things that strikes me, certainly, and maybe I’m in a minority here – I can’t see any evidence of serious opposition to Trump fans coming from, broadly speaking, the type of forces which brought Nixon down.

Paul Le Blanc: That parallel is an interesting one, and it’s worth considering. But the situation is much more complex now than it was then.

First of all, it seems to me, we have to ask a question, what is the meaning of Trumpism? Why and how could this have developed? Because it goes against politics as usual. In the old Republican Party during the period of Nixon, there were conservatives in the Republican Party who helped to bring Nixon down, along with liberals and centrists in the Democratic Party. The situation is different now. It’s polarised. As a number of people have said, the Republican Party, the old Republican Party, doesn’t exist any more. It’s been taken over by Trump, Trump loyalists, Trumpism. The old-line, conservatives within it have either been driven out or have capitulated and betrayed their presumed ideals. They are just going along with Trump, whatever he says.

So that’s a new development, but there’s another new development, and that gets to the question, “How did Trump come to occupy the position of power and authority? What was his appeal?”

Trumpism and Its Appeal

The old political establishment — from Democratic Party liberals and centrists to conservative Republicans — has been discredited over the past several decades: facing problems, dealing with problems, failing to deal with problems, unable to deal with problems that are hurting large numbers of people, scaring large numbers of people and disrupting the American Dream that a majority of Americans believed in and felt they could finally start enjoying. That’s gone, and Democrats and the old-line Republicans have been unable to face this. They’ve lied about it, saying, “Oh no, everything’s fine.” But people knew everything wasn’t fine, and that has created a radicalization within the US population, within the US working class, within the electorate. Another aspect of working-class experience is that the labour movement, the trade unions that had been tied in with the Democratic Party, were unable to help workers. The unions were more and more and more eliminated as a force on the American economic and political scene.

People who are hurting and increasingly finding their lives disrupted are looking around for solutions. The solutions offered by the Democratic Party and by the old Republican Party don’t work anymore. They’ve lost credibility to a very large extent. And Trump presents a new way of seeing things, or a certain way of seeing things that has not been part of the American political mainstream. He makes all kinds of inflated promises while attacking and scapegoating people of colour and immigrants, saying that they’re the problem. Trump is projected as someone who is going to “solve” this problem.

A large segment of the American people – though not a majority – have been drawn to that outlook. Also a segment of the US ruling class (not all of it, but a segment) is drawn to that because they feel that Trump’s authoritarian policies can help to maintain a certain stability. The instability is threatening their profits and their system, so they’re prepared to go with him. That’s a source of Trumpism then, and that kind of situation didn’t exist in the same way during the Vietnam War period. So people back then could have illusions about the system’s viability, illusions that are harder to sustain today. This affects the kinds of politicians people are inclined to support and the kinds of solutions they look for. This poses a more complex situation than one that presumably could be resolved simply by ending the war, or even by ending the war plus providing civil rights legislation to advance equal opportunity for all.

Challenges and Opportunities for the Left

Equal opportunity for all and a better life for all, the things that have been central to the American Dream, are not in the cards right now. So there are tougher issues that people have to face and think through as they reach for solutions to their problems. Increasing numbers of people are facing these issues and thinking through their situation in a new way. There is a radicalization, and some of it has been drawn in a right-wing direction, but there are also more left-wing ideas that are in circulation now.

Bernie Sanders has been putting forward the idea of socialism as a solution. This has had a big impact. The way he has defined socialism is vague and fuzzy and — in my opinion — wrong. But the idea of socialism, of economic democracy, of the economy being controlled by the majority of people (that is, by the working class) is part of the solution.

That’s a difficult thing for some people to grasp or to feel comfortable with, but realities are fluid right now, and there is tremendous discontent. As the recent demonstrations indicate, there is a growing rejection of Trump’s so-called solutions, which are phony. So there’s a complicated process, underway. The process may stop or push back some of the worst of Trump’s policies. But that, by itself, won’t solve the underlying problems. Those problems remain. So what else is there to do? Some people are who are involved in the protests still have illusions about the Democratic Party. But in the minds of significant numbers of people, that’s not a credible solution to the problems we face. Then what is the solution?

Those of us who are socialists need to put forward socialist perspectives in a way that make sense to people. This needs to be tied to actual struggles to improve the situation and protect the interests of working-class people in the here and now. But this needs to be done with the understanding these are just initial steps, and we have to go much further. We need to have an economic democracy, and that’s socialism. The kinds of broad protests that have welled up in recent times need to continue. But by themselves they are not adequate. Struggles to improve people’s lives in the here and now are necessary, but people will come to understand that these – by themselves and in themselves – will not be adequate. A process is beginning to work itself through to a resolution.

Yet there is also a question in my mind, and in the minds of some others: Do we have time to push our way towards solutions given the climate catastrophe and other catastrophes that are unfolding?

It’s a complicated time, and we’ll see how it turns out. The struggle that has been erupting, the mass struggle that has been erupting, is very heartening. At the same time, a number of responsibilities are being posed sharply to those of us who are aware of some of the problems.

So that’s a long-winded answer to a good question.

Is the USA in danger of sliding from anti-democratic capitalism to a fascist régime?

John Meehan:People on the revolutionary left that we’re both familiar with, they’ve always been very careful to make a distinction between a capitalist, bourgeois democracy, on the one hand, even a very, very authoritarian one, and an actual fascist or Nazi regime. There is a qualitative difference between the two.  People with knowledge say, of the history, the real history of fascism – the Nazi regime in Germany – are very, very aware of that. The Nazi regime, in summary, meant the complete abolition of all rights of assembly, freedom, crushing of trade unions, so forth. It meant the abolition of any kind of free elections. So obviously, Trump has got in to power as a result of a capitalist election. He gained a majority of votes. The question I’ve seen posed by a number of analysts is, to what extent is that restriction – and it is a restriction – he faces electoral contests at one level over the next couple of years –  to what extent can the assault he has made on the rights and freedoms of people living in America be compatible with continuing a capitalist electoral regime? In the sense that we know it, it seems difficult from the outside to see that it is compatible. it’s pretty hard to see a regime like that simply steamrolling all opposition.

What are your thoughts on that?

Paul Le Blanc: Well, again, it’s a complicated, very complicated and internally contradictory reality that we’re looking at. If you compare Trump and Trumpism to the fascist movements of the past, to Hitler’s German Nazis and Mussolini’s Italian fascists, we see that he’s incoherent compared to them. He’s not disciplined. He’s erratic.

Trump clearly has authoritarian and fascist-like tendencies and is prepared to work with and help unleash fascist and neo-Nazi forces. They have in the past been marginalised on the far right, but he has been helping to bring them into the mainstream as part of his base of support. And he is increasingly challenging, and is inclined to challenge, any obstacles to his authority.

But at this point, we are dealing with something that is not yet a fascist regime. There’s potential for that, and it may evolve more decisively along those lines despite Trump’s own erratic qualities, incoherence and stupidity. On the other hand, these qualities may unravel his efforts to establish his authority and push forward the kind of things he’d like to see. His actions may unfold in a way that undermines his ability establish the authoritarian order he wants. It will be interesting to see what happens.

But there is room right now to protest against and organise against what Trump represents. And there are broad forces, not just on the left, that are in opposition to him. They involve more conservative forces that see Trumpism as a threat to stability and to any kind of coherent, durable system. So things are in play right now, and it’s not clear how things are going to turn out. Those of us on the left, I think, need to work with some of these forces as far as we can where there’s agreement, but at a certain point, we need to go beyond what some of these people represent, because they’re part of the problem. They helped to bring Trump into being through their own limitations and inadequacies. Especially problematical is their embrace of the capitalist system, which is generating all kinds of very terrible problems. We will be afflicted by such problems regardless of who is the leader of the country politically.

But I think that we’re in a dangerous period right now. Trump would surely like to be a dictator. He is an authoritarian. He is a fascist kind of person, but not a disciplined one. But there’s danger for sure.

One of the interesting things that I’ve grappled with involves looking at what brought Mussolini to power and Hitler to power. There were strong left-wing movements in Italy and in Germany, massive social democratic parties and strong trade union movements and growing communist parties. We don’t have that in the United States. The organised left is pathetic in terms of socialist, communist, even trade union strength. The trade union movement that is certainly stronger than the organised left as a whole, but it is much weakened compared to what it was in the 1930s, the 1940s, even the 1950s.

So what does it mean if the organised left does not pose a threat to capitalism in the way that it seemed to in Italy and in Germany back in the day of Hitler and Mussolini? That left-wing threat to capitalism was a major factor that many of us pointed to in explaining the triumph of Mussolini and Hitler. A strong left-wing movement seemed to pose a threat to capitalism, and then it failed to overturn capitalism. But it had posed a threat, and so capitalists were ready to back some kind of alternative to the communist and socialist parties. That alternative was developing in large part because masses of people were looking for solutions to the crisis of capitalism that the left failed to provide. So many went to the right, to Hitler and Mussolini and others like them. To what extent does such a dynamic exist given the weakness of the organized left in the United States?

If we look at the US left seriously over the course of the 20th century, we can see something very interesting. Although it was not as big as the organised left was in Germany and Italy and other European countries of the 19th and 20th century, it actually was a significant factor in helping to generate and lead forward the labour movement and various protests of the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. Left-wing people and organisations were central to the effectiveness of all of these social movements and social struggles.

However, most of them got sucked into the Democratic Party — this pro capitalist party, this powerful, influential, pro-capitalist party. The organized left was thereby compromised and weakened. However, many sensibilities of the left became the property of the Democratic Party. Culturally, socially, in some ways, politically, much of the old left-wing sensibilities, absorbed into the Democratic Party, have been generalised in American life. That’s part of what explains attacks by the right-wingers like Trump who trash the Democratic Party. Liberals are denounced as left wing. They are denounced as Marxists, as socialists.

Well, of course they’re not really Marxist or socialists. And yet, some of the sensibilities of the left, some of the perspectives of the left, have been absorbed into the liberalism within the Democratic Party. Despite elements within it of the left-wing perspective (seeming to promise so much to the working-class majority), the pro-capitalist Democratic Party is not capable of even trying to overturn the system that is generating the problems afflicting that majority: capitalism. While the United States today is quite different from Germany and Italy of the 1920s, we can find weird commonalities in aspects of their diverse political realities.

Alternative to Trumpism, Alternative to Capitalism

It seems to me that for the left to be able to develop an alternative to Trumpism, it must at the very same time be developing an alternative to capitalism. And that necessarily involves a break from this capitalist party, the Democratic Party. The contradiction of Bernie Sanders is, on the one hand, that seems to go in that direction, but then he pulls people back into the Democratic Party. He’s trying to be practical. He’s trying to be realistic. But ultimately, that is not going to be practical. It will not prove to be realistic.

We’ve got to find ways to go beyond that. That’s a challenge, I think, to the organised socialist left such as it exists in the United States. It is something that some activists are wrestling with and grappling with and thinking about.

Irish Links to the USA

John Meehan: Frankly, I’ve long learned, based in Ireland, I’m not going to speculate about  a job that has to be resolved one way or the other by socialists in the States.  That involves tactical decisions over organising completely independently from the Democratic Party or working with people in the Democratic Party on specific issues, halfway houses and so on. But it does appear fairly obvious that on the concrete issues, it’s clearly necessary for people from various spectrums of what you might call the progressive spectrum, to co-operate –  and that’s clearly happening in the No Kings movement, and that has different possible dynamics. The more it develops, the better is the hope for humanity, not just in America, but outside. Let’s look at how those things get linked to a small country like Ireland.  I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is that, as you’re aware, there’s a huge number of Irish people, Irish connected people, who have emigrated to the US over a very, very long period.  Since the 1990s a lot of Irish people went over who weren’t, let’s put it this way, weren’t fully legal.  A lot of that was overlooked in the more recent past, but now what’s happening is the exact opposite. A number of cases, individual cases, have emerged in Ireland, which have really shocked people.

And it is starting to have an effect on pretty broad layers of the population, including a lot of people who wouldn’t have been politically engaged at all. 

This is a young man who is from the north of Ireland and who went over a long, long time ago, and there was some minor issue about when he first arrived, about visa or whatever, but he’s paid his taxes, he’s worked, he’s got family commitments, all the rest of it, according to his account, and there’s no reason to disbelieve it.

He was on his way to work on a scooter. He was immediately picked up by immigration authorities.  ICE simply picked up, threw him into a detention centre, no beds, no medical treatment, no nothing. He was sleeping on the floor. He has various medical conditions, and he is a vegan. So his health and his levels of food starvation have increased. The man was shifted from locations near where he lived to a detention centre hundreds of miles away.

His partner went to try and visit him.  He was told by the people running the centre that in order to get a visit, there had to be a phone call and an appointment made. But whenever the partner or anybody else rang up this place, it was the classic user hostile system. Phone just rang, rang, rang, rang, rang, no answering machine or nothing. Yet, when his partner turned up outside the gates, she was told she couldn’t make the arrangement with him because they didn’t know whether he wanted to see her, and a phone call was necessary. Lawyers are involved in all of this.

Now that’s only one case. Saddest of all, in a lot of ways, the guy had no politics at all. He’s from a Unionist community in the north, and he and his family are looking for support from the Irish government, or the British government or any organisation willing to help. This is putting pressure on the normal behaviour of the Irish government.

Link

Every parent’s worst nightmare

Speaking more broadly here, in relation to the Irish government and the US authorities:

The Dublin government does three things : Surrender, Capitulate, Collaborate. The room for doing that in these situations, with so many cases spreading like wildfire, is disappearing at a rate of knots.

I’m guessing this is a phenomenon which is probably common to people from other countries, where their friends, relatives, etc., have tried to make a living in the States. In other words, the

decay of what you might call normal bourgeois standards is creating a backlash against the reputation of the USA. A number of people I talk to who are much younger than me, who, under normal conditions, would have been finishing up their studies, going for holidays in the States, they’re saying:  I’m not going anywhere near that place. I’m going to Canada instead! Anywhere but the USA!

Trump-Like Political Developments in Other Parts of the World

Paul Le Blanc:There are several things that occur to me in pondering what you’ve described.Trump and his followers may make various pronouncements and come up with policies based on those pronouncements that are simplistic pronouncements and simplistic policies. But when you try to carry them out, the human factor, in all kinds of crazy ways, suddenly comes into play. I mean, some of this is just stupid bureaucratic ridiculousness and incompetence.

Trump and Elon Musk and others have cut deeply into the governmental apparatus. They’ve been antigovernment in the sense of wanting to cut government spending, which means fewer people to carry out policies, and therefore all kinds of bureaucratic tangles and irrational tangles result. And that’s some of what I think of when you’re describing the situation of this one poor guy.

This means that much of the Trump agenda is not viable in a number of ways. It can’t be carried out. It undermines the US government’s ability to carry out a variety of policies, including Trump’s policies, in a way that makes some kind of sense, that’s coherent. Also this has the kinds of international ramifications that you’re talking about.

But another thing that occurs to me is that we can’t see what’s happening with the United States and with the Trump regime in the United States just as a US phenomenon. It has global ramifications in more ways than one. One is that this right-wing drift is happening in other countries. It is generated by the capitalist crisis. The crisis that brought Trump to power is helping to bring others like him to power.

What’s more, this development involves, in part, the failure of the socialist left of various countries to bring about socialist solutions. All-too-many within this left have been inclined either to be sectarian and ineffective, or — in trying to be effective — they adapt to capitalism. They are drawn into the dynamics of capitalism, and they become part of the problem. In sustaining and maintaining the problematical system of capitalism, they discredit their socialist solutions. In the eyes of many people, this “socialist” version of capitalism is not working, and so they look for alternatives on the right end of the political spectrum.

This is an international phenomenon. The specific form it takes in the United States does bring discredit to my country. Also, it has ramifications not only for the United States, but for various other countries as well. We can’t afford to see our problems in isolation. But the same goes for solutions.

I’m thinking about solutions for the working class, for the American people, for the left. How do we overcome these problems? It can’t be done in a single country. There need to be global movements, with components in various countries that are cooperating with each other and learning from each other and helping each other. They need to share commitments in favour of immigrant rights, in favour of human rights, in favour of workers’ rights, in favour of the environment. For example, and most obviously, effective defense of the environment cannot be accomplished in a single slice of the world. It must involve a global movement.

There are lessons to be learned from other countries. Let’s take Ireland as one example. And it’s not the only one. There are activists in Ireland working to develop an alternative to “capitalist politics as usual,” the kind of alternative that makes sense – insisting that people have to come before profit. Some Irish activists have put together a party that’s involved in trade union struggles and in social movement struggles and in electoral work, and they call their party People Before Profit. It’s not yet adequate, but it’s a beginning. There are things to be learned from that beginning, and good things are being done by People Before Profit. I’d like activists in the United States to be looking at what activists in Ireland are attempting to do. There are things to learn, and cooperative relationships to be developed.

In Germany, there is a party, Die Linke — the Left Party — that is also inadequate. Its inadequacies were beginning erode its size and effectiveness. But an infusion of new young activists, accompanied by serious organizing and strategizing, caused it to surge forward in the recent elections, and Die Linke is growing again. Just as I’ve met, learned from, and been inspired by young activists in People Before Profit, I have also met, learned from, and been inspired by young activists in Die Linke. Here too, I’ve met comrades who are alive to the problems in their country and around the world, and they’re attempting to do something about it as they fight in the here-and-now, in the interests of working class people. Here too, there are things to learn, and cooperative relationships to be developed.

You know, regarding the working class, I’m not just talking about factory workers, but the great majority of us who sell our ability to work for a paycheck, whether we wear a white collar or blue collar. And then there are the poor – unemployed workers. There are left wing activists in various countries, who recognise the rich diversity of the multi-faceted working class and build on that understanding, through a whole range of interrelated struggles. There is much to learn from the experiences and insights from activists of Germany and Ireland, but also various other countries of Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In almost every land, such people are wrestling with the kinds of things that we’re talking about and they are trying to find solutions. And we need to – and we can – find ways to be working together. Because these are global problems. This is a process. Those of us who want to solve the problems in our particular countries have to be struggling for that, but part of this involves working with others and learning from others in various other countries, because we’re facing a lot of the same kinds of things. So the international dimension that you were pointing to has multifaceted ramifications.

Hopeful Signs and Youth Involvement

John Meehan:I could tie this up with more hopeful signs. Let’s be honest, the way the world has gone is a horror story.  Genocide in Palestine – tens of thousands of people have been murdered by the Israeli regime. There is genocide in Ukraine. I believe the only reason Ukraine is not as bad as Palestine is because the Ukrainian state has the ability to fight back. Unfortunately, the Palestinians didn’t. And then you have this horrendous threat of the Israel assault on Iran, which is tolerated by the Western powers.

On the other hand, there are two examples from Europe, which may be what you’re pointing towards.  There are limits. There’s nothing inevitable about the advance of the far right. There are two interesting examples, one France, one Germany.  Elections were called in France by the Macron regime, which was an attempt to take advantage of the weakness of the left. All of the left realised they’d hit a red line here, and they had to offer some kind of an alternative to the advance of the far right. And they did it. To the surprise of a lot of analysts, bucking the trends, the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire), succeeded in bringing together most forces of the left and making a significant electoral advance – enough to put a stop to the seemingly inevitable march forward of Le Pen.

Now it’s not all over, but it did show to broad masses of people that if the left can find a way to unite and find platforms that are effective, it can make a difference. The second example is Die Linke in Germany. I think this was a really interesting phenomenon. A problem common across Europe is parts of the left that tail end racism. This happened to a big degree with one wing of Die Linke, the Wagenknecht party, which left Die Linke. It was very clear from the outside that Die Linke, cleansed itself, got rid of red-brown politics – was able to make a much better impact on the German elections.

They weren’t a contender for government or anything like that, but it was certainly enough to put a brake on the rise of the German far-right, the AfD. Before this election outside powers did not directly intervene in a powerful country like Germany. The German balance of forces had been established by the various forces in Germany itself. This time, the US Vice President JD Vance went to Germany and directly endorsed a clearly fascist party, the AfD.  That may have put the backs up a lot of people in Germany who weren’t part of the normal forces of the left.  Die Linke put up a very credible and strong performance in the recent general election.

Paul Le Blanc: Yes we must look for ways for the revolutionary left and other forces of the left can combine in a concrete way against the Trumpist far right advance.  Because, as you say, if we don’t do something about it, if we can’t push it back within a reasonable length of time, everybody’s in very, very serious trouble.

Building on that, I would give special attention and emphasis to one of the things that you mentioned. You were mentioning several things, but it seems to me this one element is very important. It impressed me greatly when I was in Germany recently, and that is a surge among younger people, people in the who are not experienced political people, but people in their 20s and 30s. Some already have political experience, and they all have a range of ideas. The surge of youth is around anti-racism and various other aspects of capitalist depression, the climate threat, and issues of democracy and human rights and social justice.

It was a surge of young people who not only were expressing what they thought, but going door to door to talk with more and more and more people and engage more and more and more people of various ages within this working class majority, and helping to mobilise on the basis of a doubling of the Left Party’s vote. That kind of energy, that kind of surge, that kind of sensibility, and that kind of organising work that some of the Die Linke comrades are involved in – that’s something to be learned from and to be built on, not just in Germany, but in Ireland and in the United States and throughout the world. It seems to me that is a hopeful thing and necessary component of turning the situation around in a way that’s positive.

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