Dictators, fascists, and oligarchs are indeed engaged in a hostile government takeover (HGT).
We know it already: appeasing a vengeful, dangerous, and narcissistic individual never works. Such an individual is now engaging in bullying the world, and in the process, he has already bathed his hands in the blood of children.
There will be more meaningless death unleashed at his and his supporters’ hands.
Those happily wielding the wrecking ball rely heavily on exhausting us. They love our anxiety. They love our depression. They want us to be frozen in fear.
Russel Vought, co-author of Project 2025 and now the director of the Office of Budget and Management (OMB), has said the quiet part out loud: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work… We want to put them in trauma.” (Italics mine).
Apathy, indifference, and exhaustion on the part of the people helps sustain and nourish the power of those who rule them.
Perhaps you will want to argue that you and I have no power.
Remember the Muslim Ban unleashed during the first weeks of Trump’s first presidency? Brendan Ballou was, at the time, a young lawyer in the National Security Division of the Justice Department. He writes:
My colleagues and I didn’t manage to stop the travel ban from being implemented, but we did narrow its scope to a handful of countries, whereas at one point it included whole swaths of the world.
Throughout, public protest on the travel ban was enormously helpful. Where we might otherwise have felt like lonely voices in a bureaucracy, public outrage gave us courage and the knowledge that we were, in fact, working in the public interest. Advocacy on the outside made advocacy on the inside possible. While protesters, online and in the street, had no way to know it, their work was enormously influential.
But let us assume the worst. No call we make, no action we take, no organization we donate to has a prayer against the forces arrayed against us.
Emanuel Levinas wrote: “To know God is to know what to do.”
May we, in knowing God, know what to do. Stop burning our planet. Protect the weak. Care for life.
- Make calls (here is a website that helps): https://5calls.org/
- Take action (here is a site that gives you easy actions to take with one email a week): https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/
- Donate: Here is a list of organizations fighting the hostile government takeover (HGT): https://www.advocate.com/politics/anti-donald-trump-charities
