Who Isn’t — and Who Is — Rising Up to Save Our Country

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It mounts. Quickly.

A woman killed by ICE in Minneapolis; a local man shot in the leg; a family driving home with an infant in the car, tear-gassed. Two demonstrators blinded after being shot in the face with a “less-lethal” munition in California. People roughed up and taken into custody for peaceful protest and for documenting ICE actions. A mayor and governor “under investigation” by the feds for questioning ICE tactics in their state. Top federal officials hounded and investigated for not rolling over. 

I was speaking to my neighbor about all this some days ago. I told him that for the first time I actually feel like we might be headed for civil war. He readily agreed and said he didn’t see that we could do anything about it.

Who Can Do What? 

Many feel impotent. They write to Congress, scream at town halls, march, share, boycott, post. Some are exhausted by it all, and not even sure if they’re making a difference.

Those who desperately need to keep their jobs have to watch what they say about Charlie Kirk, about ICE, even the smallest, most harmless comment. So any kind of protest — whether on the street or online — can be scary. Loss of employment, loss of vision… 

The rancid breath of Big Brother is everywhere.

We ordinary folks are great in number. But if elections are sabotaged, if our votes no longer matter, then maybe even our numbers no longer matter. Most of us can be shot down in so many ways.  

Most — but not all.

***

There are people — I think of them as the “Ten Percent” — who are fairly immune to these economic, psychological, and physical weapons. They can afford to do things the rest of us cannot. They are more potent. (I don’t mean that this amorphous grouping is literally10 percent of the population — just that they are far from a majority, but a lot more than the super-rich One Percent.)

And they are not MAGAs.

They’re the people who are blessed with a decent education, financial good fortune, comfortable lives, and positions of influence and authority. They’re found in banks, corporations, small businesses, law firms, and elsewhere. They are the most likely to grasp what is going on. 

But from my own observations, this class, aside from a small minority that is already mobilized, remains largely silent and passive. Perhaps, with markets and 401Ks booming, the dangers and depravities still seem far away and abstract. 

When enough of this “silent fifth estate” understand how powerful they are together and start to signal to one another that it is time to rise up in defense of freedom — that will send a message to the self-appointed enforcers of autarchy. And that will get the attention of those in the judiciary, law enforcement, and the military who have not yet seen what their duty is at this time: Now, before it is too late, they must confront their ultimate responsibility — and cease obeying unlawful, dangerous, immoral orders from above. 

Will the Ten Percent — the comfortable — boldly step up and demand that our government respect democracy and the basic rights and safety of the American people? You might think they’re all Republicans. But, according to 2024 Pew Research data, more than half of upper-income citizens lean or register Democratic. 

Let’s not forget the apparent inadequacies of our leading media to fully rise to the moment. What if at least some enlightened people in the monied class were to join those with technological know-how and create a whole new kind of media organization to meet this unprecedented emergency?

In the latter years of the Soviet Empire — at a time when the overlords in Moscow controlled all the newspapers, all the radio and TV stations, and all the publishing houses — word of a stubborn resistance was spread through typewritten manuscripts, written in secret and smuggled from hand to hand (and sometimes from abroad) by indefatigable opposers of tyranny. This underground network — known by the Russian name for those precious manuscripts, “samizdat” — kept alive a spirit of independence in a truly totalitarian state. Can we do less in an (as yet) far less dangerous situation? 

If enough people make a principled stand, at some risk to their personal well-being, more and more will join them. Then the dictators and would-be dictators will wake up to find they are losing their audience. I’ve seen it happen elsewhere in the world throughout my journalism career, and it’s an astounding and heartwarming phenomenon. There’s no reason it couldn’t happen here. 

And if we do it now, things needn’t become as violent as they are in Iran. 

For reasons that probably vary, but likely have much to do with not having found themselves directly in Donald Trump’s crosshairs, this group, the Ten Percent, has been, so far, passive. But it only takes a few determined (and well-organized) people to light a fire under the rest.

***

What MAGAs Don’t Know Hurts Everyone

Most of the complaints that animate the Trump base are essentially based on fiction.

Even at their imagined worst, the problems that MAGAs fulminate over do very little harm to anyone. How many people can point to grievous injuries they have suffered at the hands of the tiny number of trans people in America? 

And what about the so-called antifa agitators? It’s easy enough to start believing the country is crawling with agitators, subversives, and “domestic terrorists” when the authorities label as such anyone who doesn’t share the Trump regime’s agenda and dares to be vocal about it. But the folks out in the streets in numbers look to me just like ordinary Americans understandably alarmed and distressed by the federal government’s Gestapo tactics. 

If “antifa” were a force to be reckoned with, one might ask the MAGAs, wouldn’t such a powerful president as Trump — with ICE, the FBI, CIA, and DOJ at his beck and call — have smoked out at least a few by now? Wouldn’t there have been trials and convictions? Wouldn’t there be some sort of footprint, even a tiny one? 

As for undocumented immigrants, studies show that the vast number of jobs they fill hold little or no appeal to native-born Americans. On the contrary, the whole country is harmed by the deportation of hundreds of thousands of these hardworking immigrants (especially low-paid farmworkers and caregivers to the young, old, and sick).

The MAGAs have been captured by a cult — and manipulated by a small number of people. We know who they are: the likes of media mogul Rupert Murdoch (remember him? Still stoking chaos at 94!), richest rich person Elon Musk, and a pack of formerly unknown and undistinguished people, now suddenly famous influencers. With the assistance of various offshore actors, including bot shops organized and directed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China. 

This fabrication of artificial enemies and nonexistent threats, the constant warnings about shadowy forces moving against all-American values and institutions, would not be possible, however, without the passivity of what I described above as the powerful but so far unengaged Ten Percent. 

To be sure, those who fervently believe themselves under siege from imaginary enemies are themselves victims — victims of those who manipulate their unreasonable fears to seize more power and riches. 

And we all pay the price: eroding freedom of speech, health care, and government services; loss of life through preventable disease; disastrous effects of preventable climate change. 

How to Get the Ball Rolling

Anyone who has lived through the reign of a true despot knows that if you ignore the news, the news will not ignore you: It will come kicking in your door. 

It’s never been easy to stay fully and deeply informed about significant news developments.

But now, thanks to Donald Trump’s chaos buzzsaw, it’s become nigh impossible. He’s fully capable of reversing direction on something huge, like a potential nuclear conflict, three times in a single week. 

Staying up to speed would be a full-time job for anyone, which is why, increasingly, many of us turn to headlines and brief summaries from media gatekeepers or influencers to feel like we know what is going on. 

And some of us, who would rather not know the worst, favor tuning out altogether, or self-medicating until the nightmare is over. 

But Trump has a knack for throwing gasoline on simmering issues in international affairs, domestic governance, legal and law enforcement tactics, economic regulation — just about everything that touches our daily lives.

If we are to defend ourselves against the fast-arriving totalitarian state, we must prioritize and focus our energies. Consider how much time we allot to following the “leading drama” of the moment. If, for example, you have a television on for many hours a day, you’re getting a lot of speculation and a lot of repetition, often on a single inflammatory incident — while actual answers and fresh analysis are rare. 

Your social media platform is rigged by algorithms to feed you not news that you need to function as a citizen in a democracy, but “news” tailored to enrage you, and to keep you reading more of the same on the same site.

If you reallocated some of that time to searching out news items typically relegated to the “back pages” of the remaining media that still try to bring you some real news — “boring” but important items about corporate and government actions that directly affect your pocketbook and your health care and your children’s education — you might find things that move you to action, that are worth sharing and spreading. 

Any officeholder will tell you: Pay attention and voice your concerns. When people in “positions of authority” know how their constituents feel, they respond. Corny, but true. You — especially that Ten Percent — have the power.

*** 

The other day, we had a massive Verizon outage. My Verizon phone and internet access were out for roughly a 24-hour period. 

For some, this would be catastrophic. Fortunately, I have prepared backup systems, like a second carrier, internet hotspots, and so forth. But for many people, an outage like that means you’re totally cut off. 

Which reminds me that shutting down our ability to communicate with each other is a weapon an authoritarian carries in their pocket. 

It’s not too early to start thinking about how to function in an “information emergency” — whether caused by a tech accident, a natural disaster, or the malign actions of an autocrat. And since we can’t count on our more reasonable leadership to bring this up, we all have to do it ourselves and begin sharing tips. 

The Mystery of Greenland

Did you feel like you missed something when Greenland suddenly zoomed into first place as the most important thing in the world, somehow the most urgent issue on the national agenda? I certainly did. I mean, we get it: geographic importance, access to minerals, yada yadda. But that’s nothing new: In 1946, President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million in gold for it.

It’s so important to always ask the “Huh?” questions — which too often our leaders and major media fail to highlight. 

So I appreciate that a correspondent for The Guardian has found the answer. And you’d be shocked — shocked — to discover that it was a billionaire, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, who put the Greenland bee in Trump’s bonnet. 

If this bleeping bleep hadn’t made a case for how important Greenland supposedly is, Trump would never have gotten the idea at all, according to former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton. 

That was in 2018, but the notion continued to rattle around in Trump’s not-overfull mind ever since, says Bolton: “Bits of information that he hears from friends, he takes them as truth and you can’t shake his opinion.” 

Lauder was of course doing his patriotic duty, while helping himself to the proceeds. Trump’s spiraling threats have coincided with Lauder’s acquisition of commercial holdings in Greenland. And his role in a consortium seeking Ukrainian minerals “appears to have spurred Trump to demand a share of the war-torn country’s resources.”

How do you like your corruption served? And could any of this possibly be introduced as a problem to MAGAs upset about people who are “woke”? I mean how much fodder do our “opposition” leaders and marketing experts need to work with before we get people to actually wake up to the giant con job that accompanies the Trumpian shakedown of democracy? 

Bite Your Tongue

While Trump & Company enrich themselves behind the scenes, the assault on true patriotic values — such as the rights reserved for “we the people” in the US Constitution — continues apace. 

To take just one example: Thank you for your service — unless you’re a military correspondent. Not only are Trump and his enablers pressuring government-employed journalists to act as propaganda agents, but now they’re being grilled before they even get in the door. Applicants for positions at Stars and Stripes, the long-independent US military paper, must now pass an ideological litmus test. They have to explain how they will support Trump’s policy priorities. 

And consider the unprecedented raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter — beginning at 6 in the morning — and the seizure of her files, laptop, phone, and even her smartwatch. She was accused of “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.” 

I’m assuming many of my readers already know about this outrage, but then again, to underline a point I made above, there’s so much Gestapo-type behavior unfolding that we simply can’t note it all. Even worse is the danger of how quickly what once might have stoked outrage, reaction, and counteraction now becomes normalized. 

Some Heartening Stuff

However, it’s equally important to remember that not all news these days is bad news. Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia, lost another case. She wanted to imprison, for five years, a man accused of pointing a red laser beam at a helicopter containing Donald Trump — a homeless man who was just playing with a cat toy key chain. The jury took all of 37 minutes to acquit him. This is reminiscent of yet another terribly important case, this one against a man who assaulted a federal officer in a bullet proof vest by “forcefully” throwing a Subway sandwich at him. 

More good news, but of a different kind: Every single week we see more and more pushback from across the American landscape. The resistance is growing, and for this we must take heart and derive energy for the part we must play.

From every kind of person, every profession, every locality, we see someone bravely stepping up to be counted. One aspect is how activists are turning the tables on repressive forces. 

While ICE and other elements are hiding their own identities and trying to discover those of protesters, some protesters are turning the tables on ICE, shining light on the faces and names of bullies who hide behind masks while doing their dark deeds. Using burner phones and donated dashboard cameras, these volunteer truth-tellers record the masked agents in action, and compile lists of names and badge numbers.

Bravo to you, and you — and you. You’re American greatness in action. 

And Finally – A Parable From Nature

When all this gets you down, you can always turn to something uplifting. At times, a momentary escape reveals useful parables. With that in mind, check out a 2023 episode of Sir David Attenborough’s nature-documentary series Planet Earth III. 

Off the southern tip of Africa, a pod of Cape fur seal pups are taking their first dip in the ocean. Suddenly, an apex predator appears: a great white shark.

The pups seem doomed. Of course, any one seal, even a large bull, will be no match for a great white. 

But then something happens that the 99-year-old Attenborough had never seen before: 

The adult seals band together to form a large churning mob — and launch themselves at the iconically terrifying beast. 

The determined mob harasses the attacker until, bewildered, befuddled, and perplexed, the shark literally turns tail and flees.

Numbers count.