Some things are hard to acknowledge, because doing so sets you on an uncomfortable path of realizations that leads you to admit your world has been upended. You're forced to confront the discrepancy between the life you expected and the life that's actually available to you. And who wants to grapple with that?
Maybe it's a slow dissolving of expectations, like the process of coming out as L, G, B, T or Q. At some point you see that the relationships and roles you expected, and which were expected of you, aren't going to work out. And after some amount of pain, a new vision of your future crystalizes in a direction other than where you were accustomed to seeing it. That was my experience.
Maybe it's a gradual accumulation of horror as you discover, one clue at a time, that the person whom you married for love has deceived and betrayed you, and sabotaged your career, and implicated you in something criminal. The relationship that had occupied a comforting shape in your life becomes a sharp-edged void. That was a friend's experience.
Maybe it's an abrupt removal of the world you knew, as experienced by a resident of Vovchansk, Ukraine. Growing up in that town, she knew only peace, and she didn't believe Russia would invade until the shells started falling on neighboring apartment buildings. In the span of a day, they took her world away.
Maybe it's the erosion of hope after you're kidnapped by CBP agents and disappeared into their warren of detention facilities. As weeks extend to months without access to a lawyer or contact with your family, the guards who are supposed to be responsible for your safety instead deliver their punctuated cruelties. You're not allowed to bathe. Your hands are shackled behind you while you eat. You're denied your medications. One of your cellmates gets sick and is left lying in pain and squalor until the guards eventually take her out of sight, perhaps transporting her to medical care or perhaps leaving her to die in some other cell. At some point, you realize nobody associated with justice is going to save you.
Maybe it's the tightening constriction of an abusive state, like that which motivated a group of community leaders to write, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary..."
People are trying so hard to maintain their grip on normalcy even in the face of the unprecedented things that are happening. With few exceptions, Democratic politicians are willing to frame the current crisis as something that's temporary and that can be alleviated someday, when Democrats again control Congress or the presidency. Here at ground level, most people I encounter in daily life seem to take it for granted that we'll get through this, and I meet very few of them who are interested in putting effort into political stuff.
It's also my sense that many (most?) members of the Daily Kos community think federal elections will get us out of this mess. And I think that's unrealistic. And if it truly is unrealistic, we find ourselves on the path of uncomfortable realizations.
The war for everything, part 4
In his interview with Rachel Maddow last week, Gov. Pritzker described some of the ways the regime is likely to interfere with coming elections. He said they might deploy uniformed federal agents or members of the military in cities and perhaps near polling stations to suppress voter turnout through fear. He also said they might misuse the voter registration data they're trying to obtain from states. There are many additional ways the regime can sabotage the legitimacy of the election, beyond what Pritzker described. (I'll speculate about some of the ways in a future post.)
The small crowd outside Portland's ICE facility last night included a frog, a chicken, and a pink axolotl, all in close proximity. Miraculously, nobody was killed.
This post is part of a series:
Part 1: Smoke on the mountain
Part 2: Unmaking a forest
Part 3: When the water comes rushing in
One uncomfortable discovery we need to recognize, because it's undeniable, is that the regime does not believe itself to be constrained by laws, norms, institutional boundaries, or even the Constitution. Understanding that, we need to acknowledge that they will probably do everything in their vast power to ensure Congress remains under the control of their MAGA cult.
Another uncomfortable realization is that the regime is not going to stop in its abuse of power until they are stopped. And very few people have put forward a compelling scenario of how the other federal branches are actually going to stop them. The regime's abuses must be curtailed well before the election, or we most likely won't have a valid federal election in 2026, or ever again. Even here at this website, most people are ignoring that ticking clock.
Here's another uncomfortable one: the structural damage the regime is doing to our nation (social, governmental, economic, scientific, environmental, national security) is so extensive that it probably can't ever be repaired. If this regime isn’t removed soon, and their destructive actions countermanded, the United States we grew up knowing is basically over. Our hopes for a prosperous future will shrink and wither. We and our kids will be consigned to a radically diminished quality of life.
There are three main lines of discussion I’ve encountered regarding how we might get out of this mess. All of them are incomplete, in the sense that they don't describe an actual, realistic path to extract ourselves from fascist rule.
Approach 1: Put an enormous amount of effort into winning the 2026 congressional elections. Yes, we should absolutely do this. We should mount a coordinated voter engagement campaign that's ten times larger than we've ever done before. But the regime has already shown that it will do anything, legal or illegal, to keep itself in power, and they have also shown their intention to mess with elections in various ways.
Approach 2: Protest more and harder. Yes, we should do this, but it's not clear how it will actually constrain the regime or result in its removal.
Approach 3: Monkeywrench things and organize a lengthy general strike. I don't have the perspective to know whether this can be made to happen or not. It seems unrealistic, given the widespread political apathy I see, but maybe sentiment will become more heated as the economy is further destroyed.
This series of posts – The War for Everything – tries to describe a framework within which solutions can be found that will remove us from under fascist rule, now and permanently. The specific tactics that might be used toward a solution won't originate with me though. They need to be invented and promoted by organizers with a variety of backgrounds and constituencies, including the activists who make up the membership of Daily Kos.
The people who are trying to destroy our democracy don't frame their plans in terms of what laws and ethics say they should do. They plan their actions simply according to what the exertion of power will allow them to do. A theme of future posts in this series will be trying to understand the powers, objectives, and timelines of the various factions that make up the coalition of enemies our nation faces. The coalition can only be defeated if we understand the motivations, capabilities, alliances, and disagreements among all the factions.
Another throughline in the series points readers toward what I believe is the only peaceful way out from under this regime: mobilizing a grassroots movement that effectively pressures members of Congress in both parties to impeach, convict, and remove the guy while we still have time. Impeachment and removal isn't a complete solution to our fascist problem, but it's a necessary step if we're going to save ourselves. And it needs to happen soon, i.e. before the regime is able to fully consolidate its power to the point where Republican members of Congress no longer fear they can be removed through elections.
Now I turn the mirror toward you. This website is produced and read by activists. We are experienced in mobilizing our communities. You can learn more about the coalition to remove the fascist regime by visiting Citizens' Impeachment. The project needs letter-writers, coordinators, and local publicists. The project needs you.
