The Whispers and the Wire

On Confrontation, Arendt, and the Courage to Say No

Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And sometimes, when democracy is unraveling, it must be said out loud, in public, without euphemism or permission: this is not normal. This cannot stand. This must be stopped.

I've come to understand something lately, in no small part through my own circle of friends and colleagues—people I love, respect, and trust. They are thoughtful, decent, committed to liberal democracy. They are not the problem. And yet, they find themselves counseling me, gently but insistently, that my confrontational posture is all wrong.

“Mike,” they say, “you're alienating people who might still be persuaded. There are moderates in the Republican caucus. There are institutionalists who still care about the Constitution. If you push too hard, if you go public, if you name names, you'll scare them off.”

Instead, they urge backchannels. Whispered dinners with senators. Discreet calls with aides. A slow, quiet cultivation of influence. Be careful, they say. Be strategic. Work the system from the inside. Don't make waves.

But here's the problem: the house is already underwater.

The constitutional order is groaning under authoritarian pressure. The Supreme Court is being defied. Federal agencies are being turned into instruments of revenge. The president has accepted foreign emoluments in broad daylight. The machinery of the state is being repurposed to serve a single man and his personal empire. And while all of this happens in public, in full view, we're supposed to whisper our objections behind closed doors and hope, against hope, that someone on the inside is listening.

Hannah Arendt understood this temptation all too well. In her searing study of totalitarianism, she warned that evil does not always appear with a grimace and a gun. Sometimes it wears a suit, follows procedure, nods at reason, and advises patience. What she called the “banality of evil” was not the sadism of monsters, but the accommodation of bureaucrats. People who thought that, by staying close to power, they might temper its excesses. People who mistook proximity for influence.

I see the same instincts today. The belief that if we just stay calm—if we just keep our tone measured and our criticisms private—we can still steer this thing back on course. But steering requires a functioning rudder. And we are well past that.

There is a moment in every collapse when the people who see it most clearly are not those on the inside, but those willing to say, out loud, what everyone else is still trying to euphemize. And right now, we are watching too many of our institutions—and too many of our friends—default to a posture of submission disguised as pragmatism.

They want to preserve norms by not breaking decorum. But the norms are already broken.

They want to save democracy by negotiating with those dismantling it. But negotiation assumes shared premises. And those premises no longer hold.

They want to model civility. But civility, in the absence of moral clarity, becomes complicity.

Saying no to something that is illegal or wrong is not something that should be hard. And yet, in this moment, we've made it so. We've complicated the simplest moral act—refusal—into a strategic calculation. We've turned basic defense of the rule of law into a question of tactics, timing, and tone.

When did we forget that some things are just wrong?

When the president defies the Supreme Court, that is not a policy dispute. It is a constitutional crisis. When federal agencies become weapons of personal vengeance, that is not partisan politics. It is corruption. When the machinery of state serves a single man, that is not governance. It is tyranny.

These are not complex moral dilemmas requiring careful calibration. They are bright lines that demand clear refusal.

Let me be clear: I do not believe that confrontation is always the answer. I do not think that shouting is inherently virtuous. But there are moments—real, historic moments—when the center must be held not by quiet diplomacy but by public refusal. Not by strategy, but by truth.

We are in such a moment.

The fascist spectacle works by exhausting us. It manipulates our attention, floods our feeds, overwhelms our capacity to focus on what matters. And in that fog, it persuades even the well-meaning that maybe they should lower their voice. Maybe they should temper their outrage. Maybe they should play along, just a little longer.

But every time we do that—every time we delay, or equivocate, or euphemize again—we cede more ground to those who do not care about truth or law or democracy. Every whisper becomes a tacit endorsement. Every delay becomes complicity.

I'm tired of being told that moral clarity is shrill. That truth-telling is counterproductive. That public confrontation is a kind of gauche betrayal of elite consensus. I believe in truth. I believe in naming what is real. I believe that two plus two equals four, even when power insists it's five.

This isn't about my tone. It's about the terrain. And on this terrain, in this moment, silence is not strategy. It's surrender.

To those who still believe in democracy: stop whispering. Say it out loud. The center will not hold itself. It must be held—by those willing to speak, to stand, to confront.

The wire is still there. Walk it. Hold it. Name what matters. Before the ground disappears entirely beneath our feet.