There’s no non-violent solution because violence is already occurring, it’s currently just single sided violence because one team has a blatant disregard for whether their actions are legal or moral and is backed by a system of power that has long enjoyed the privilege of immunity from consequences and is now under the command of a leader who indulges their ruthlessness. And it’s not just Americans who suffer, the regime is running wild internationally killing fishermen, kidnapping government officials, and starting wars while the folks we’ve given the power and resources to blame factors that they abused in the past when it favored them and their current state for doing nothing, but promise if we just struggle a little longer, next election they’ll bring about sweeping change. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but the people being incarcerated, killed, and abused in the interim are an unacceptable price to pay while we wait for that to happen.

I suspect that the next election will not bring about any change because we’re watching the set-up for it to be rigged in the favor of the opposition real time. They’ll win, it’ll get challenged in courts (that they control), and while a few might get ruled illegal, the time they have inbetween will only entrench them deeper and be used to codify their new rules. The Nazis followed a legal path to power, got it, then rewrote the laws in their image. The constant appeal to “trust the process, trust the system” is going to damn us all when the system is legally Christofascism. Appeals to the Constitution don’t mean anything when the Court that weighs the arguments can decide it means whatever they want it to mean.

Trump told us exactly what he was going to do to “illegal immigrants”, and we knew that meant actual illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, immigrants who’d gained citizenship, and any natural born American citizen a shade darker than milk. And he’s done it with gusto. Our leaders tolerated it and those of us who stood against it have done so at our own peril. Now he’s promising to come for the trans, the antifascists, and the anarchists. People who think that isn’t the entirety of LGBTQ, protestors, vocal opponents, and anyone Bernie level left or further is going to be in for a shock.

I also don’t think we’re going to put up much of a revolution if the police forces of this country get unleashed on us. It won’t require the military, the cops can crush us if allowed. We’ll just be fighting to protect our own until, at some point, someone with the power we’ve given them uses it to organize and clap back at a level that matters. Or we’ll die like John Brown, mouldering in the grave, but glory, hally, Hallelujah; ours souls are marching on.

This was all avoidable, we tolerated the “progress is a slow, hard struggle” narrative until it became too slow and now it’s about to be very hard.

I am not an elected official who has been empowered by the people I represent to use the resources of office to protect them when shit hits the fan. I cannot summon the National Guard to protect my people from the illegal activities of ICE. I do not have access to the funding and legal resources of that office to figure out how best to undercut and defy the regime in ways that actually hurt them to their core. I am not a public face of power that can go stand in front of a masked thug and both of us understand that if they shoot me the consequence of doing so escalates the conflict to a level even their masters would have to face. I’m just a dude who knows that a one man stand as a nobody is an invitation to annihilation and that I’m up against a hydra, not a snake. At best such actions might take out one head, but I’d die and the head would easily replace itself. For people such as me the significance of violence will arrive when it does and the choice is upon me to act in defense of others or not. That’s why I demand more of those who have put themselves in positions of leadership and authority to do more. Our enemy is not restrained by questions of legality or morality, they do as they please, when they please, and eventually if they go too far, they are the immunity qualified “law enforcement”, the judicial system, the legislative branch that will make it legal after the fact, and the executives ordering the action. Leaders who continue to play it safe and play by the rule book do so at our peril.

Reconciliation hamstrung any progress that might have been made after the Civil War. Confederate leaders were either mildly scolded, then allowed to become figure heads of the Lost Cause narrative, or slapped on the ass and told “good game”. The progress of the last 125 years, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the right to bodily autonomy, equality, queer rights fought long hard battles against conservatism, but after each victory came the mythology that achieve change one must suffer nobly, turn the other cheek, accept the violence and to fight back invalidates the win. Now we fight regressives, who not only want to halt progress, they’re undoing a century plus of gains that people struggled to achieve, both with peaceful protest and by meeting violence with violence. 

We’re not fighting for utopia. The long, slow, change you value that has taken over a century to achieve is being undone on the daily. They already destroyed abortion rights, now they’re re-enacting Jim Crow. They disregard due process and legal protections immigrants, illegal or legal, have. They arrest without warrants, they beat and kill for exercising your freedom of speech and assembly. They’ve gone so far beyond their norm they argue against the rights of the Second Amendment. That this is all being done illegally doesn’t stop women from dying in hospitals during miscarriages that should but can’t be medically dealt with, isn’t going to stop them from rigging the next election in their favor now and ignoring the lawsuits after, not to mention the damage they will do in the interim. It’s certainly not stopping them from murdering fisherman, starting a war with Iran, and kidnapping foreign leaders.

You don’t kill your way to a utopia, but they’re killing their way to a dystopia. If you see someone assaulting someone, do you wait for someone else to help, or do you accept the risk to yourself to limit the harm to the victim even if you know you’re going to get harmed in the process? I expect leaders to recognize the times they are living in, adjust their methods accordingly to protect their people from an increasingly violent and lawless aggressor, and expend every resource at their disposal to protect their people up to and including putting their lives on the line. They’re our leaders, we have them power and resources for a reason.