Do NOT wait until you are under the heel of fascism to decide how you will react.

Decide NOW what lines you will not allow yourself to cross. You may not have any control over the plot of this story we call life, but you DO have control over the character you will play in the story. The best time to decide how your character will be remembered is NOW. Everyone needs to give it thought BEFORE the chips are down or the shit hits the fan…

Because if you wait and make the decisions when THEY come to threaten and intimidate you, then you WILL regret it the rest of your life.

Before Jan 6th I warned that Trump supporters would be called upon to do violence… many of those fools regret that that they did not set their ‘red lines’ before it came to that. In coming months and years we all are likely to be faced with ethical dilemmas. Do we play along, or do we resist…? IF we resist, what sacrifices and risks are we willing to accept? NOW is the the time to decide what sort of person you want to be- because if you wait until the last minute when you are confused, rushed and scared you WILL lose your soul. And there is no easy road back from that path. The moral injury from failing to make these decisions well ahead of time is severe and often fatal- and it is a lifelong injury that you will NEVER fully recover from.

If you take only one thing from all the pages of words and rants I have made over the decades here please let it be this….”YOU may not have any control over the plot of this story, but you DO have the editorial control over how your character is written” – if you do not at least try to exercise that control, then at best you will be forgotten by history, but more likely you will be condemned by it.

Decide who and what you are NOW while you have the luxury of time… because that time is rapidly running out.

Do not repeat the mistakes of others who were destroyed by fascism in the past… even good men can wake up one day and realize that they were collaborators in crimes against all the values they once held. That is a death of the most insidious sort.

This is not just more R.L. hyperbole, this is history playing a very old tune once more- and most of those that dance to it will, in the end, wish they had chosen death instead. We, however, KNOW how the melody goes, we know from history what the finale is, what it always has been. The performers have not even altered the lyrics… its all the same and we ALL know this damned tune all too well. You do not need to be a hero, you do not need to sacrifice your life or your family- it can be enough to simply refuse to sing along with the mindless masses.

From “They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
by Milton Mayer:

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

“Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

“But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

“You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

“What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know.”

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

It is my fervent hope that years from now that we all can look at ourselves in the mirror without wishing we had slit our own throats at the start of this chapter of history. There really are fates worse than death, and one of the worst is to live a life knowing you betrayed all the values you once believed in. A life consumed by shame is worse than death. A life where you let the evil of others redefine you is a sin that cannot be undone, and can never be atoned for.

Take time now to decide who and what you are, and PREPARE yourself to defend your identity. You will NOT likely have that luxury for much longer.

I am an atheist, but God help us all make it through what is coming, and I hope we recognize ourselves- and each other- when it is over…

Stay strong, and stay true to your ideals…. unless you are a willing MAGA collaborator… if you are on the side of evil, then you truly are better off dead- you may not understand that now, but you will when your grandchildren ask you questions you are ashamed to answer.

The end…?