Very rarely am I stumped by a blank page. In fact, I recently told my business team that my favorite part of work is opening a fresh blank document and letting my brain do what, I guess, it was designed to do.
Today is an exception. I’ve been sitting on my porch swing with this blank page opened for thirty minutes. How do I talk about what it feels like right now in America? How crushing it is to watch this administration abandon our allies and blowtorch our economy? This week, the House passed the SAVE Act to send on to the Senate which, among sweeping voter suppression impact, would also mean every married woman who changed her last name (69 million of us) will be required to procure multiple documents to prove her citizenship in order to vote. It is dystopian.
Deporting students with valid visas for being “lunatics” is anathema. These tariffs will sink countless businesses (domestic and foreign), torpedo our trade channels, trigger unprecedented retaliatory tariffs, and undoubtedly send us into a recession. The insanity of Trump suggesting America might annex Greenland is staggering. In yet another executive order, he took aim at the Smithsonian, particularly the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and promised to “remove improper ideology” that tells the factual account of slavery and Black disenfranchisement. Trump gutted the IMLS, the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services; dozens of federal grants were cancelled as of today.
Every day brings a new horror. We can barely keep up with it all. We have not even caught our breath from the dismantling of the Department of Education before we have to grapple with the termination of USAID emergency food programs for the world’s most vulnerable communities.
He is turning the U.S. into a global villain, reversing basic civil rights, and ruling in the pattern of every autocrat that has ever preceded him, only more accelerated. He wipes out diplomatic norms every time he opens his mouth, and the United States is plunging from its global position of leadership and trustworthiness by the hour.
We are living in a nightmare.
So most days, I literally do not know what the fuck to do. If we attended to every democratic reversal, it would become a full-time job. Republicans are in lock step with nearly every molecule of it, and the Democrats appear mostly frozen in concrete. Legions of spiritual leaders have capitulated to MAGA ideals; our elders have betrayed the gospel for their thirty pieces of silver. It is scorched earth.
For an upcoming podcast, Amy and I interviewed Franciscan priest Father Richard Rohr, a genuine hero of the faith. Hearing a man of such integrity lament the anti-Christ horror of it all was weirdly comforting. Since we are gaslit every single day, a modern prophet wailing in the streets helps me remember that good people exist, we aren’t crazy, and this is not normal.
What do we do? Resistance is not nothing. In fact, it is our chief responsibility right now. We have several democratic tools at our disposal: join the marches, call and write our elected leaders, mobilize strategically for midterms next year. But those are bricks to lay on a more fundamental foundation required by every normal citizen. We must continue to say without equivocation:
- This is not normal.
- I will not go numb.
Authoritarians count on us to abandon both. As Steve Bannon called the first few months of the Trump administration, these “days of thunder” are supposed to knock us off kilter. They are designed to overwhelm the circuit boards. We are meant to become paralyzed by the chaos and unable to respond. Forced to pick which horror to respond to, the “lesser” breaches risk settling into a “normal” category when, in fact, if any of them were a stand-alone violation, the country would be aflame. Trump is counting on this mental overload to stunt any meaningful response. Chaos is a strategy.
None of this is normal. This is not politics as usual. We are not witnessing the next iteration of two parties with different ideas on how to govern. This is not just a bummer of a presidential term that we only must wait out. The world’s historians, analysts, and political experts are sounding the alarm: America is on a path toward authoritarianism. Empires fall, and we are not exempt.
This isn’t inevitable, although the days of thunder are supposed to make us believe we have no power. This predictable playbook is counting on our disengagement; in fact, our overstimulated nervous systems are a key component to a successful coup. This political objective requires ordinary citizens to become numb. Just overwhelm the public consciousness and usurp democracy in the vacuum. It is a tool of control.
These are the days the history books will examine. What did the American people do? How did they respond? How did they resist? This is our mandate. None of us wanted to be the American generation reckoning with an autocratic takeover, but here we are. We aren’t the first and we won’t be the last, but this is on our watch nonetheless.
So we say this is not normal, this is not normal, this is not normal. We say it to our families and neighbors, on social media and in our workplaces. We name each new horror and condemn it for the anti-democratic maneuver it is. We don’t let our cousin casually suggest that “The Gulf of America” is a cool move.
We resist any which way we can. My friend Emily Ley filed a lawsuit against Trump’s tariffs on behalf of her small business. Librarians are refusing to purge their shelves. Teachers are still teaching, well, actual history. Lawyers and judges are using the power of the courts to defend democracy. Many of our local and state elected leaders are fighting like hell to protect their constituents from authoritarian control. More than 1300 “Hands Off!” rallies flooded the streets in every state last week. Costco said we will NOT eliminate our DEI policies. A consumer boycott created a 12.4 billion dollar loss for Target for choosing the opposite.
Consistent public opposition matters. It strengthens insiders on the front lines of policy, it weakens the shock and awe impact, and it slows the momentum of Trump’s initiatives. Plus it creates solidarity where Trump is counting on our isolation. If the aim is to discombobulate our capacity to respond in mass, then respond in mass we must. The sum is greater than its parts.
This is not normal, and we cannot go numb. Create a judicious filter for how and when and where you get your news – the 24/7 outrage cycle is intended to stunt our response – but stay in the fight. Injustice is not inevitable, no matter how they want us to feel. Do your part, however small it is. You alone might not make a big dent, but all of us together create the resistance required to save our democracy. This administration is counting on our paralysis, so lace up your shoes, America. Let’s go.
