As you move through your daily lives, you're running into people who are terrified for their lives. Some might believe they are paranoid or unhinged. Then you have a meeting and everyone makes the same jokes as they always do and people are complaining about TPS reports as if it's the most frustrating thing in the world. Did you meet your KPIs this week? You punch out. You talk to a friend who is understandably upset and complains about how hard the next four years is going to be until we can "hopefully get Kamala to run again and fix everything when she wins next time." Your friend is upset, but they see this as just a temporary setback until we can get back to the previous status quo.
Your mind is reeling.
It's like whiplash. Panic. Normalcy. Devastation. Joking. Unsettling feeling in the back of your mind. Relief. Hope. The other shoe drops, again… how many shoes are there and how do they keep dropping and where are they coming from?
You worry that maybe you're overreacting, or is it that you're underreacting? As you consider the thought, you remember the opening of 10 Things I Hate about You,
Chastity: I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
Bianca: I think you can in Europe.
And you wonder how you can be thinking about that at a time like this.
You begin to think, maybe it's not so bad after all?
Rule of Law
Many people have told me they are confused about how to feel about it all. None of this is legal. It's wrong. Surely our so-called democratic institutions are robust enough to save us from this, though, right?
Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids
Which is to say, nope.
I feel the need to also say here that this does not mean you need to give up all hope of things being better, but you need to have a sober understanding of what we're dealing with, because if there is any hope to be had, it requires you to do something. Yes, you specifically.
So, I have my own feelings about a term like democratic institution but I'm going to set those aside for a moment to deconstruct this concept. Democratic, by the people, simple enough. Institution, though, oof. Feels solid doesn't it? Like a stone building build on a strong foundation. Something that can weather the ages.
But that's not what a democratic institution is, is it? It's just people. You can put them in different buildings. They vote. They write laws. They execute laws. They discern laws. They provide guidance on laws.
But it's all just people.
These institutions? They're just people. Like any government, it's only ever as powerful as the will. of the people to uphold it.
When we talk about the Rule of Law, no matter your personal feelings about it– and believe me, as an anarchist, I have feelings about the Rule of Law– the entire framework of Rule of Law and these so-called democratic institutions is based on the concept, at least, that we collectively decide what the laws are going to be, and that's what shall govern us, and when we all participate in this structure, it works, more or less, in this fashion. It's all of us, working generally in unison to hold up this framework, with some added violence to enforce the rules and the framework.
As we shift into the territory of a grave threat of totalitarian rule, you are going to have to create new mental frameworks for how the world works. If you've spent your whole life in the US, you are used to the Rule of Law. You are used to thinking in terms of legal and illegal, of bureaucratic processes, courts and judges. Under a dictatorship, though, this mental framework is wrong.
Under a dictatorship, they arent playing by the same rules as you've been taught. Under a dictatorship, the lens they want you to look through is the dynamic of authority and control.
This is also not the right paradigm, though, because that's the paradigm they want you to see through, because it's a paradigm of oppression that puts them at the top of the hierarchy.
Instead of politics or bureaucracy, I want you to think in terms of power. Forces pushing against each other. Pressure points. Efficiency and breakage. Coalitions working together. Divide and conquer. Subversion which diverts oppressive forces away from harm. We will discuss concepts of power more in the future. But no matter which way you look at the structure, if you begin looking through the lens of power dynamics, you will have a much more capable mindset with how to resist, whatever resistance means to you.
Let's play a game
You can imagine playing a board game with house rules. Everyone agrees what the rules will be, and everyone is bound by them. There is no referee, and there's no one there to enforce the rules. You all just collectively agree to them and act in that manner. If someone messes up, everyone calls them on it. If someone takes issue with the rules, maybe they discuss it, and everyone collectively agrees to change the rules, but everyone still sticks to the rules… until they don't.
Everyone sticks to the rules… until someone rage quits and upends the game board, and the pieces fly everywhere.
What if you're locked in a room with someone and you can't leave, and one of the people starts acting on new rules? What if no one stopped them? What if no one stopped them because that person is a bully and dangerous?
What if that bully started recruiting others at the table to follow their lead? What if he made them his henchmen? What if they all started targeting you?
What if this was some fucked-up Squid Games-style board game with life and death consequences?
What if the bully pulled out a gun and told everyone to follow their rules, or else?
Does this feel familiar?
Does this feel authoritarian?
Because in the US, someone is no longer playing by the house rules.
Three branches
Most of my readers are from the US, but not all of them, but even USian readers might not fully grasp some of these details that seem obvious once they're pointed out, but didn't really seem relevant when everyone was playing by the house rules.
Briefly, the US federal government is split into three branches: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.
Here's the issue, though.
All those people that we discussed in the last post? The people who I said you need to start calling Nazis and fascists, because that's what they are?
They decided to rage quit the board game.
They decided to fuck up some shit.
And they decided they want to lick the boots of Nazis like Trump and Musk, and to put them in charge of things.
And we are all locked in the same room.
And those Nazis are about to pull out that gun.
Judicial Branch
People look to the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to decide whether governmental actions are legal, because as most of you are correctly saying, Executive Orders are not law. Just like you, I've been saying, do not obey these Executive Orders.
Yet, here we are, and people, institutions, and companies are obeying the orders en masse. They will be tested by the courts, and surely many of them will be found unconstitutional. Not only will the irreparable damage already be done by that point, but there's something that so many people fail to recognize:
All courts, including the Supreme Court, are simply advisory.
In other words, the Judicial branch has no enforcement mechanism.
So, an authoritarian can choose to ignore it, especially when they feel they are above the law. After all, the Judicial branch vis a vis the Supreme Court did recently affirm that the President of the United States actually is above the law.
No matter what the Judicial branch says or does, it can't protect you.
Legislative Branch
People rightly point out that although the fascist party controls the House, they don't control the 60 votes they need to pass legislation in the Senate. Although, to be clear, the Democrats haven't really been putting up much of a fight. But none of that matters because again, the Legislative branch, Congress, holds very little in terms of means of enforcement.
Congress essentially has a single tool at their disposal, which is the power of the purse. Congress is the branch that is supposed to control all the funds, which is intended as a check on the power of the Executive branch. However, these funding mechanisms have been compromised through various processes, but especially through the use of DOGE.
And moreover, the Executive branch isn't really spending right now, they are sabotaging. They are breaking things. They are getting around the so-called checks and balances held by Congress by hobbling the institutions altogether, which completly undermines the power that Congress holds.
Even so, that's it.
The Legislative branch now has, in essence, no enforcement mechanism.
Executive Branch
This branch, though?
The Executive branch doesn't just have an enforcement mechanism.
The Executive branch is the enforcement mechanism of the entire government.
Enforcement is the definition of the Executive branch. It's the military, intelligence agencies, and federal cops of every flavor, et al. The President is Commander in Chief, and the peak of the enforcement hierarchy.
The Executive branch is the gun, and it's being held by that bully, and all those henchmen are standing right next to him, and all the way down the hierarchy, grinning at you, because they're locked in the room with you, and they're on the side of the guy with the gun.
Methods of counter-enforcement
No. I just explained this. There is no such thing as counter enforcement. If they choose not to abide by court rulings, the court can't enforce a damned thing. Congress has already been stripped of its own method of checks and balances on the Executive branch.
So, the only thing within this paradigm of the Rule of Law that can stop the coup is the refusal of people within this hierarchy to be complicit, but of course, anyone who refuses is being purged.
This is it. This is their intention. They've said it over and over again for years that this was their plan all along. This is how dictators always take control.
This is not the end of hope.
However, this is the end of Rule of Law in the US.
Resistance
The only other thing that can stop him is massive resistance by the people– people resisting against the government itself. People resisting the monopoly of violence that is held by the government, and wielded by an authoritarian regime.
There isn't anything else that can be done, but this can be done.
And to be very clear, there is no mechanism with the framework of the Rule of Law in the context of the US constitution that can even handle this situation. Even if magically there was a will by Congress to impeach and remove the president, something the fascist majority party would never do, that doesn't remove the entire rest of the hierarchy that has been installed. You would simply be removing the head of a hydra.
There is hope.
But hope will only be found through resistance.
There is no going back. We've already passed the point of no return. The world will never be the same.
Stand your ground. Stand for something. Say something. Do something.
I can't decide for you what to do, and to be clear, I'm not calling for violence. I don't even know how to define violence. I'm calling for resistance. There are all sorts of ways of resisting. You have to choose for yourself. Here's one resource to get started.
Rebuilding without hierarchy
It is never too soon to imagine the world we wish to rebuild after we pick up the pieces. The world we just left behind deserved to be left behind. These so-called democratic institutions embodied the same oppressive forces that have just been unleashed and amplified. These hierarchical and oppressive forces were enshrined within the fabric of US Rule of Law.
I was never an accelerationist, but here we are, staring in the face of increasing destruction and oppression, and it, too, must not succeed.
Before resisting, remember what I say repeatedly:
The most revolutionary act is the refusal to be complicit.
It's never soon to create the world we wish to rebuild, even in crisis– especially in crisis.
In every moment, and with every step you take from now until your death, you will choose what world you work to create, and what world you choose to leave behind.
no ends, only means