This introduction to this special issue on "Thinking with Theory in Teacher Education" dedicates considerable space to broadly discussing the current U.S. political context to emphasize why, at this precise moment in history, educators, teacher educators, and educational researchers are in dire need of different ways to understand the world and our connections and interactions with/in it. The authors argue for the need to use these emergent understandings to become and live differently--as well as to shape systems of schooling and educate differently. They first situate this introduction in the global movement (at least in parts of the Western world) toward extreme right wing and ultra-conservative political ideologies. Drawing on the case of Donald Trump's election in the U.S., they present an argument that "good and common sense"--that is, rational ways of knowing--is woefully inadequate to build the needed justice movement to resist the implications of a far-right nationalist agenda for public education. They emphasize the need to shift from rational humanist ways of thinking to posthuman, materialist theories of difference that can help members of the education community to engage in new modes of thought and action to counter the growing movement of neofascism in some political circles in the U.S. and abroad, ultimately pursuing the interests of equity and social justice.