We are falling now. Deeper and deeper. More people can feel it—the vertigo of watching institutions collapse, the nausea of systematic lies becoming official truth, the dread of violence becoming the language of political discourse. A siege mentality is taking hold across the country. People want to know: how does this end?
The truth is, it never ends. Civilization is a process, and it has no conclusion unless we end it. That is a possibility. But nobody should act like it's inevitable.
The question consuming every conversation, every worried text exchange, every family dinner where politics used to be forbidden: what comes next? The answer depends entirely on choices being made right now, by real people, about whether to maintain democratic culture or surrender it to forces that promise order through domination.
I'm not sure what my right-leaning friends want to have happen now. If I take their rhetoric at face value, it seems they want this big, amorphous group they call “the left” to culturally surrender and accept the return of some form of “traditional values” and power hierarchies in society. That LGBTQ people stop being LGBTQ. That people like me stop calling what Trump is doing—sending military into cities, snatching people off the streets without due process, cancelling visas and green cards for political opinions—fascistic. And that if I don't stop characterizing those things that way, I am complicit in any left-wing violence.
For me to concede this would be, as far as I can tell, to abandon the truth. To accept guilt for things I do not support and would never endorse—political violence. They want me to pretend that systematic constitutional destruction is normal governance, that authoritarian consolidation is just effective leadership, that the elimination of democratic constraints serves democratic principles.
But calling fascism “fascism” isn't incitement to violence—it's accurate description of systematic behavior that needs accurate description to be resisted through democratic means. When you eliminate the vocabulary necessary to describe authoritarianism, you eliminate the cognitive tools necessary to oppose authoritarianism. When truth-telling becomes dangerous, democracy becomes impossible.
This is a dangerous moment. A lot of people are afraid. And fear will be the end of us if we let it drive us toward the false comfort of submission rather than the difficult work of resistance. Fear makes people accept unacceptable compromises, embrace authoritarian solutions to complex problems, and surrender principles that seemed unshakeable when maintaining them didn't require courage.
I don't wish any harm on any American, for their views. Not even people I consider far-right or fascist. That would violate my core liberal commitments. Political violence represents the breakdown of the democratic discourse that makes liberal values possible. But people can demand hypocrisy of me, and I will not give it. Supporting universal human dignity means supporting it universally, even when those you're protecting want to eliminate the dignity of others.
The siege mentality creates pressure to choose sides in ways that abandon moral consistency. But the liberal commitment requires maintaining universal principles even when your opponents abandon theirs entirely, defending constitutional protections even when those protections benefit people working to eliminate constitutional protections for others.
So what comes next, America? Pogroms of trans people? Ideological tests for participation in civil society? The systematic elimination of anyone who refuses to say two plus two equals five? That's not America. I didn't support left-wing cancel culture or censorship culture, and I certainly will not support right-wing censorship culture when it comes wrapped in patriotic rhetoric and justified by assassination.
The choice remains ours, even in the fall. Even as democratic institutions collapse around us, even as violence becomes normalized, even as fear drives people toward authoritarian solutions—individual human beings retain the capacity to choose truth over lies, principle over convenience, courage over submission.
Civilization is a process that continues through the choices of conscious beings who refuse to surrender their consciousness to systems designed to eliminate it. The fall can be stopped, the institutions can be rebuilt, the democratic culture can be preserved—but only if enough people choose the harder path of maintaining their humanity while others surrender theirs.
We are falling now. But the ground has not been reached. The wire still holds for those willing to walk it. The choice remains available for those brave enough to make it.
Fear will be the end of us—unless we choose something else. The question is whether enough Americans retain the courage to choose democracy over domination, truth over tribal comfort, universal principles over authoritarian efficiency.
The process continues. The choice remains ours. And the civilization we preserve or destroy depends entirely on what we choose while we still can choose.
This is when the masses are going to need to see democratic governors pushing back and saying, Nope. Soft Secession through refusing/slowing down tax revenue transfers to Washington, making engagement with Washington very hard and painful for the Regime. It will make Blue States suffer but the line is crossed when Stephen Sadist incites violence against everyone non-MAGA 2d in a row on Fox, Trump says the same, Brian Killmeade floats killing the homeless by lethal injection and doesn’t get fired while Moran and Dowd got fired for stating facts. The Regime is backpedaling on Chicago bc they see the consolidated push back they are getting. So they pivot to Blue Dot cities in Red Southern States with black residents; Red Governors open the doors to beat up in the locals. It’s the Jim Crow Jesus Show. Bull Connor is back! We are officially entering the Reign of Terror. Kirk was a great excuse to accelerate this. Gonna say it again: SECESSION.
I have been following you for a while and love everything you write. The only thing I'm not sure I agree with you about is the left's use of the words "fascist" and "fascism" in speaking about Trump and his radical followers. While the words are technically accurate, they cause a lot of Trump voters to be defensive and angry and to dig their heels in even more. As a 78 year old retired psychotherapist, I have seen how people react to putting labels on them, and for all of my adult life I have resented Republicans calling we liberals "communists" and "socialists." I agree we have to know what we are dealing with in order to combat it, but I think a lot of us jumped on the words used by prominent historians and journalists who compare the Trump administration to other authoritarian ones past and present. I don't know if using other language might have been better, but I worry that both sides are now engaged in attacks, name calling and verbal warfare and I don't think that leads to anywhere good. I think we need to find new ways to engage, smarter ways where we can call out rationalizations and double messages on the right, while at the same time trying to find a way to talk to each other, at least the voters who are still open to discussion, without putting them immediately on the defensive.