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.