It's for real now

Standing in the way is what must be done

This is an image from Zez Vaz, a cartoonist and illustrator from Porto, Portugal. I visited Porto a few years ago, near the end of the COVID shutdown, and think it would be the kind of place I could run off to if (or perhaps when) things in this country go seriously off the rails.

It appears to be trending that way now, unfortunately, but a lifetime of being an American—and all of the deep roots that have come with that—haven’t given way quite yet. So I suppose I’ll have to stand my ground, just like the Chinese dissenter did in Tiananmen Square back in the uprising days of the late 1980s.

The President of the United States apparently thinks that any action taken in the name of “saving a country” means that no laws are being broken. That’s some authoritarian shit, and it remains to be seen how far the people of this country will allow that to be pushed.

Some lower courts have, and will continue to, throw up obstacles to his overreach. Whether he decides to obey the court’s orders is something that we’ll know soon enough. But the republicans in Congress seem to have abdicated their constitutional duty to serve as a check on the executive branch, and the supreme court has already green-lighted some of the nefarious things he is certainly planning to do.

But at the most basic of all levels, it’s We The People who are going to have to rein in this demented coterie of authoritarians and their spineless republican accomplices. Those who are more than happy to go along with the “Gulf of America” nonsense are likely to let just about anything slide. But those like me, who would rather attempt to swim across the Gulf than call it by that ridiculous name, will be the key to holding off the advancing cybertruck brigade.

The Pam Bondis and Emil Boves and Eric Adamses of the world are ready to fall into line and do whatever they are told to do, but the Marian Edgar Buddes and Danielle Sassoons of these times must continue to stand up and say no. What’s being done in this country is wrong, and we must be willing to put ourselves on the record to make this point clear.