By Jane Gordon Julien
Oct. 1, 2025
We are tired, we are all tired, and we are unsure of our next steps to save our country from being overtaken by fools and fascists, but here we are, and there they are, and somebody watched too much hypnotic, manipulative TV and elected them.
Turn the TV off. Get your news from respected news outlets, such as the Associated Press, which offers a free morning newsletter. I get my news from a variety of sources, none of them television.
Be an educated citizen, but be one quick. Because you are losing your voice in this new national order.
Legislators are no longer listening to the will of the people, which means your vote is becoming meaningless. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, wrote the British historian Lord Acton in 1887.
In Nebraska, Republicans passed a measure that would use public dollars for private school tuition, even though voters said no last November. Voters also approved sick leave for workers, and legislators limited it anyway. In Missouri, lawmakers scaled back abortion rights and sick leave despite the voters’ will.
Surveys have found that voters are getting nervous: if our elected representatives don’t listen to us, what recourse do we have?
Then Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called all our military leaders together, at great expense and with millions of our tax dollars, to tell them to embrace a military in which “you kill people and break things for a living.” We evidently no longer care to support an educated and trained military force. Instead, we are preparing the military for a repressive, Gestapo-like regime.
I am reading Erik Larson’s book, “In the Garden of Beasts,” about the experience of American ambassador William Dodd and his family in the early days of the Nazi regime. With every page I turn, I see the Trump administration’s playbook at work, and I am frightened for our country.
It’s easy to turn back to baking your banana bread, stretching into your yoga poses, having a beer with your buddies, and closing your mind to what is happening in the United States right now. We are in the early days of an authoritarian regime, and because we are not reading enough books and getting our news from long-respected sources, and because we are staring at the TV as if we are hypnotized, we are letting it happen. People are being violently attacked in the halls of the federal building in Manhattan, troops are being sent into peaceful cities – Portland, Oregon? – and if you can’t see we are moving toward a militaristic state, you’re not looking.
In 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “what kind of government have you created?”
He answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
We can. We must.
Election Day is approaching. I’m not sure anyone’s vote means anything anymore, but at least we still have a vote at the moment. There’s peaceful protest, but the administration is sending troops even to those, and people are getting hurt.
Fear is the dominating force of a fascist regime. Please, do not let fear guide your decisions. Do not believe that because you have money, or connections, or because you identify as a Republican, you will be spared.
Martin Niemoller was a Lutheran pastor who originally supported Nazi ideas in the early days of Nazi rule. But as time passed and he saw how despotic and repressive the Nazis were, he spoke out. In authoritarian regimes, speaking out will get you arrested or killed. He knew this. He did it anyway, because he was a man who lived according to a moral and ethical rule. A golden one. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
After the war, he wrote this poem. Read it. Protest. Vote. Call your congressperson. Go to this website and see how you can make a difference: https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/how-you-can-protect-democracy
For America’s sake, for our Constitution’s sake, for heaven’s sake, do something.
First They Came
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
— Martin Niemoller
Message here