Somebody Should Do Something
To quote the famous scientist Enrico Fermi: where is everybody?
Oh, I am well aware that there are groups of people protesting and doing what they can to fight back against the most lawless administration in American history and its jack-booted thugs that have gunned down American citizens and terrorized immigrants. But I also feel as though we’re all just standing around, watching a terrible incident unfold and its aftermath, and looking at one another asking, “should we do something?”
It’s a very difficult thing reconciling our belief that we Americans don’t put up with any shit and we love freedom so much that no matter what, we will fight with the angels on our sides, with the reality that overall, we’re not doing much of said fighting. We’re convincing ourselves that the midterms are going to be a blue tsunami, and that somehow, no matter what crooked schemes this criminal government cooks up, they are bound to fail because we will “vote like our lives depend on it.”
Problem is, we had that choice last time and we failed.
There were six million fewer voters in 2024 than the previous presidential election, and that means that no matter how clearly the threat was conveyed, people could not be bothered. It remains one of the most stunning failures that the American people re-elected a bona fide convicted criminal and adjudicated rapist to the White House. If we had any basic decency, we would be doing more than advertising these useless “No Kings” rallies months in advance and then spend the rest of the time breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back because of the crowd numbers. As we see this breathtaking criminality unfold and the absolute corruption of the entire federal government, how are these rallies not multiplying on a daily basis? I see faraway lands like Albania where people are doing just that and consistently so. I look around my own country and it's just business as usual. It’s all sports and entertainment and Apple product announcements.
It was a handful of Republicans who marched to the Nixon White House and demanded his resignation or face impeachment. He resigned. But today, Nixon’s malfeasance looks quaint compared to the open abuse of power that violates everything we claim to hold dear and true, and you can’t get a handful of people outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in their tens, much less tens of thousands or more. The lackluster response of the general public to this corruption is something to behold, and not in a good way. Like other rich and decadent societies before us, our idiotic belief in American exceptionalism is being disproved daily: we are corrupt, lazy, addicted to luxury and entertainment but still think things can be corrected with an election. Our nation is in a state of collapse, as has been the case other times in history when powerful nations reach this stage. We are not rising up to stop it, we are folding.
Not even the nation’s militias, whose broken clock is now showing the correct time, have uttered a word. Here you go, folks! Here is your tyrannical government and its stunning overreach, with the aforementioned jack-booted thugs (to use G. Gordon Liddy’s phrase) terrorizing communities acting out in a city near you. But not a goddamn word. American citizens have been killed but what’s topping the news is LeBron James joining a betting company. There are more opinions about that than the truth of ICE agents shooting our fellow countrymen and then mocking one of them as a “lesbian bitch” who deserved it. But have we risen up? No. Have we done anything like a general strike? Can’t tell at all. It’s all just some big inconvenience that we adapt to for a while because somebody will do something to end this and hold people accountable.
Right?