Tim Stevenson (bereal@vermontel.net) is a community organizer with Post Oil Solutions and is the author of Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age (Green Writers Press) and the recently published Transformative Activism: A Values Revolution in Everyday Life in a Time of Societal Collapse (Apocryphile Press).
ATHENS-"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part!" said Mario Salvio in his sit-in address on the steps of Sproul Hall at the University of California at Berkeley on Dec. 2, 1964.
"You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus - and you've got to make it stop!" said Salvio, an educator, activist, and leader of the Free Speech Movement. "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it - that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
We are faced with the choice of no-choice. The moment when protests, while admirable and worthwhile, are being outstripped in terms of being an appropriate response to the human cruelty and suffering that the Trump/Musk gangsters are increasingly and rapidly inflicting on us, the people. The moment when we need to state, in no uncertain terms, that we will no longer take it.
While not intended to minimize their importance, the protests that many of us have participated in are being overwhelmed by the daily depredations of this autocratic regime.
Despite our committed efforts and the displeasure that is being registered in significant demonstrations, as well as the stock market and the polls, this outlaw administration continues to:
• Arrest and deport innocent people without due process.
• Hollow out of the Social Security Administration, threatening the lifeline of monthly checks for millions of citizens.
• Fire thousands of government workers who provide vital services for people here and abroad.
• Dismantle our public education.
• Suppress our history.
• Assault the rule of law.
• Undermine our fundamental right to vote.
• Jeopardize our national security through the use of Signal to discuss war plans.
• attack our former allies with gratuitous insults and unwarranted tariffs, and threaten to subsume some of them into a MAGA USA.
Even my ability to present a coherent outline of their wholesale dismantling of our democracy is rendered pathetic by the shock and awe of its implementation.
It is time to get real. Not only to finally accept the inarguable fact that a fascist regime has ruthlessly supplanted our democracy, but that it continues to do so without missing a beat, despite our protests and the integrity of the courts.
Critically, much of the damage being done to our government and to countless good souls in the name of undocumented, evidence-free "fraud and waste" is not short term. Rather, it's irreparable (especially for the people who are being harmed), or it will take years to repair.
* * *
We must step back, catch our breath, and give ourselves some space from being driven crazy or distracted by the daily deluge of barbaric executive orders from the White House and the grossly incompetent, immoral, and illegal acts of Trump's minions.
Only then can we distinguish and fully appreciate the forest apart from the trees - to see that the larger issue is about an authoritarian way of life that is being imposed on us all, in a whole variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
This goes way beyond the typical wrongheaded policies we are accustomed to protesting in a functioning democracy. Rather, we're up against a comprehensive, well-planned imposition of a totalitarian way of life that represents nothing less than a transformative attempt to shape us in how we go about living both our public and private lives.
* * *
That is why I have called what we face a choice of no-choice.
Given the existential nature of the threat, we have really no choice but to adopt a response commensurate to the gravity of what we face - a pivotal action that, while decidedly nonviolent, non-property-destructive, and steeped in a practice of life-valuing behaviors, at the same time is equally effective in stopping this monster - and to do so before it becomes more fully established, locked into place in our nation.
In my humble opinion, the only response of this kind is to strike. To shut it all down. To refuse to participate, however passively, any longer. To no longer allow the purveyors of a dictatorship to become the American way of life.
Our democracy, or at least that which remains, requires us to do what is needed: to act for its well-being.
There is no question that what I'm suggesting falls outside of our customary zones of comfort and convention. I would be naïve in the extreme if I didn't acknowledge that what I'm suggesting involves a commitment that potentially invites significant disruption to our daily lives, personal hardship, risk, and perhaps even danger.
This choice requires us to step outside our usual way of doing things and undertake something with consequences that, while desirable and necessary, are unknown. They might not be pretty. We can easily conjure up negative possibilities.
But the fact is that the chances of success are good. Most importantly, and contrary to how Trump and Musk want us to feel otherwise, we are operating from a position of strength when we come together and act together.
Trump and his pathetic gang of stooges and sycophants, offer largely bluff with little if any substance. Their notable success has thus far depended upon a stunned body politic and the absence of meaningful mainstream political resistance.
As folks far wiser than I have observed, even in the face of a seemingly invincible entity - like a fascist government - the power that we, the people, have resides in our unity.
The system doesn't function without us.
We're needed to do the work and to consume the products, the wealth from which is then expropriated by the oligarchs. Even the Silicon Valley tech bros, with their AI visions of a completely automated universe, know this is fundamental to capitalism.
* * *
In contrast to other nations that have fallen prey to dictatorships, ours is unique in that our history from the very beginning has been characterized by a democracy.
True, there are times when it might be better appreciated more as a moth-eaten fabric than its official perky patriotic Fourth of July rendition. But the fact that many Americans take pride in being citizens of a democracy is an added advantage to organizing a strike for democracy.
Additionally, we can expect continued gross incompetence and egregious errors from the Trump loyalists, along with the suffering this will cause all Americans.
* * *
We have good reason to believe that a growing number of us are already thinking about a more meaningful response - especially as a matter of personal survival - as matters deteriorate.
The virtue in standing up and acting out was underscored recently:
• In special elections in Florida, MAGA candidates barely won in districts that Trump had taken in landslides.
• The Democrat candidate won in the watershed state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, a significant victory against the MAGA challenger for whom Musk had spent millions.
• U.S. Sen. Cory Booker spoke on the Senate floor for a record-breaking 25 hours, 5 minutes about democracy, an act that was liked on TikTok 400 million times!
• Trump's poll ratings continue at an unprecedented low.
• Demonstrations at Tesla dealerships wreak financial havoc for Musk, the world's richest man.
Finally, with community solidarity and mutual-care associations popping up and people coming together to take care of one another, the development of this democratic culture provides the necessary and realistic basis for not only collectively removing ourselves from participation in the fascist dictatorship.
It could also be the harbinger of a truly empowered democratic alternative that in itself would decisively advance that goal.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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