I’ve never been politically active. It wasn’t until this most recent election that I ever even donated money towards worthy causes or campaigns. For a couple precious years we had the good fortune of living in a country that was stable enough to address the skeletons in its closet. During this time we witnessed the legalization of gay marriage, the establishment a quasi-universal healthcare system, and the awakenings of the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. These shake ups pissed a lot of people off, so much so that they were compelled to crawl out from under their rocks and bring to power the largest threat to democracy our young nation has ever known.

Trump may be a disease, but the threat that deserves the lion’s share of our attention is the rogues gallery of low-life/ high-status thugs who have co-opted his reign. In the past whenever the public took umbrage with the direction the country was going there was a teeny bit of confidence that making a ruckus and showing up to the polls could have some tangible effect. If plans didn’t pan out there, one could count on a system of checks and balances between the legislative and judiciary branches to level out any hasty decisions made by the figurehead du jour. Taking into account what we’ve witnessed in the last two years, with special attention to the recent retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, and the subsequent revelations surrounding his exit, faith in the established operating procedure is a virtual impossibility. The current environment in Washington is not unlike the wild west where outlaws such as Mitch McConnell & Co pull preposterous policies out of their withering asses without consequence. Those who were in the position to do something at the time did nothing about it; Overconfident in their prospects and blind to the storm that was coming. Two years later, the country has been handed over to them on a silver platter like the head of John the Baptist. The question remains if we as citizens, as allies, as people are willing to do what it takes to get us back on track. The state of affairs two years ago was far from perfect, but at least we weren’t throwing kids into cages or leaving toddlers to fend for themselves in court. The road back isn’t as clear as we hope it might be.

The findings of and the administration’s response to the Mueller investigation confirmed everyone’s suspicions that the 2016 election was massively influenced by enemy forces. What’s sadder is that it didn’t involve stuffing ballot boxes or hacking into voting systems, the worst of the damage was done by internet trolls. People on computers far far away driving the wedge even deeper between the left and right. This legion of cyber Iagos played us all like fiddles. We can’t trust anything we read anymore, and not in the way of having a healthy sense of skepticism, I mean it’s gotten to the point that one has to ponder if the aggressively misinformed individual with the pickup truck profile pic is a Russian agent. Their success is evident in the deterioration of our discourse and the venom that courses through comment sections and Twitter threads alike. This is psychological terrorism; genius as it is pernicious. How then are we supposed to put stock in an election? The answer is we have to show up, not just for the vote, but for the resistance.

We, for the most part, lead comfortable lives. We might work jobs we dislike or live in states that aren’t be suited to our lifestyles but at the end of the day there’s a machine at work that we continue to contribute towards. In between the hardships lie oases of pleasure that make the filler worth the slog but even these mediocre rewards are at risk of meaning nothing if the personal liberties we’ve taken for granted get stripped away. Everyone knows this on an intellectual level. It’s the sort of thing you bring up at dinner with friends whose convictions line up with each other’s. Everyone’s passionately agrees that something needs to be done only to return home that same evening and succumb to complacency. The way our society is structured, there’s no feasible way for most people to drop everything and strike (even though it’s our best shot) so our best and most convenient option is the vote but history shows we fail quite miserably when it comes to attendance. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy; No one shows up because it doesn’t work and it doesn’t work because no one shows up. It’s a cruddy system, sure; One that a turns a blind eye to partisan redistricting and encourages corporate influence. Many feel disillusioned, with good reason, but now is not the time to kick rocks.

People are protesting, sitting in, and participating but the establishment and far-right media are not giving these movements the credibility they deserve. As far as they are concerned these are the actions of whining art school kids whose prerogative is to stir up controversy in the name of not having gotten what they want. This level of condescension does a tragic disservice to our constitutional right of assembly. It’s baffling to see them equate a peaceful gathering like the Women’s March to the the chaos at Charlottesville where someone was actually killed. Drawing any kind of methodical parallel between these two is false equivalency designed to damage the perception of the former. It brings to mind this Parquet Courts lyric from the song “Violence”:

“Riot is an unfinished grave that was dug to deposit undepleted anger

Like barrels of uranium leaking into something sacred

It is a word to used to delegitimize your unrest

And to make your resistance into an overreaction”

The Trump administration is pushing people around and lying through their teeth because they’re not being held accountable, not because they’re masters of deception. In fact, they’re pretty terrible at it.

The 2018 election, to me, represents the last stand of the United States as we know it. If we can flip the Senate and the House we stand a fighting chance, if there’s any tell of foul play or manipulation, we were dead in the water to begin with and it’s time to start considering an exit strategy.

My grandparents came to this country to escape the tyranny of Castro in Cuba. As a result of their sacrifice and hard work they managed to embody the American Dream with dazzling success. They managed to build a foundation of steel for their children who translated their triumphs into the same for my generation. How sad is it that now I have to wonder about making a similar move to protect my family from yet another dictators thanks to that same demographic closing the door on the very principles that allowed them to flourish in this country in the first place. They’ve got their reasons, all rooted in trauma, but it’s hard for me not to think of them as traitors.

I can feel your eyes rolling. Another liberal threatening to immigrate to because the winning team isn’t their own. This is obviously about more than party affiliation. Take an honest look at what’s going on and at least try to realize that the looming shift in power is going to lead to a frightening reality for many people. I don’t want to risk my kid growing up under a government that legally prohibits him from being who he wants to be. I don’t want to live in an America where scores of women will have to put themselves in mortal danger to get proper healthcare. Call me spoiled but I got accustomed to the idea that everyone could get married to whoever they wanted. I got comfortable knowing that people in positions of power were being taken to task for their misdeeds. I took comfort in the promise of a cultural shift towards decency. If I can’t find that here I’ll work for it somewhere it’s actually possible and where my government won’t threaten me with violence for having these ideas.

Let me be clear I don’t want this to happen. I like living in the United States. I like my Netflix, and Record Store Day, and free refills. What a blessing to live somewhere where it’s not uncommon for people to stand for one another in the face of bigotry, some paying the ultimate price for speaking up. If the people in charge have more in common with these aggressors than the heroes, we’ve got to get them out before we descend into madness.

Register to vote for crying out loud and when the day comes actually do it. It’s simple enough but requires energy that may not be there but believe you me I’d rather spend the time do it than watch my home eat itself alive. Given the plethora of variables at play there’s no way of knowing how this is going to play out. The only thing that’s certain is that come November, we can’t go down without a fight.