“It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”

We are no longer teetering on the edge of authoritarianism. We are here. And the most horrifying part is we’re still going to work, booking vacations, making dinner plans, as if nothing has changed.

I keep hearing people say, I just don’t watch the news it’s too depressing. I need to get away from it all. But there is no “away.” There is no escape from what has arrived and is hardening in place.

Washington, D.C., is now under the control of the U.S. military and the Justice Department. ICE is prowling our neighborhoods, snatching people off the streets and deporting them. Universities are cutting deals with the federal government. Law firms are agreeing to stand down in the fight against totalitarianism. And presiding over it all is Führer Trump, stealing billions through crypto while keeping it deregulated so the grift never ends.

A few years ago, if someone described these events happening in another country, you’d call it what it is: a dictatorship, no different in spirit from the Soviet Union. Now it’s here, and we are sleepwalking through it.

So what do we do? We don’t shut up. We don’t go quiet. We talk about it relentlessly. That might make you bad dinner company, but fuck being polite. Now is the time for getting into good trouble. Support the few brave legislators willing to fight like those in Texas. Vote for leaders with the courage to stand up like Zohran Mamdani in NYC [and Omar Fateh in Minneapolis]. And fight voter suppression with everything we’ve got.

The National Guard deployment in D.C., just like the one in L.A., is not about crime. If it were, they’d be fanning out in the states with the highest rates of crime (top 10 per capita are Louisiana Alabama, South Carolina, New Mexico, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas Missouri, Maryland, Alaska) but 8 of those 10 voted for Trump. This is about crushing blue states, silencing opposition, and tightening the grip on power.

Their playbook is almost comical it is so well known by everyone with a 5th grade education: militarize the cities, suppress the vote, muzzle the media, attack the universities, eliminate dissent. The only way to stop it is to fight like hell, organize, take to the streets when needed, and flood the polls.

We have no choice. Lose this fight, and we lose the country. And right now, we are getting our asses kicked.

– Jason Duchin
via social media
August 13, 2025

Duchin’s wake-up call reminds me of Maarva’s posthumous speech from the Star Wars TV series Andor. As I’ve said previously, I can think of no any other TV series that so powerfully captures the political zeitgeist we’re living through, one dominated by the rise of fascism in the U.S. And to be clear, Andor is not predicting this tragic turn of events; rather, as Melanie McFarland accurately observes, it is powerfully reflecting it. For as both Jason Duchin and the Andor character of Maarva remind us: Fascism is here and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.

And yet we must resist. We must wake-up and, in Maarva’s words, “Fight the empire!”





Now there are many ways to fight the empire, and personally I’m into non-violent resistance. And by “empire” I’m referring to Chris Hedges’s understanding of the American Empire.

It’s the same empire that poet Mary Oliver identifies – one that needs to be named, resisted, and transformed.

Related Off-site Links:
Hello, Fascism – Christopher Impiglia (Common Dreams, August 13, 2025).
Trump White House Says Military Occupation of Nation’s Capital Set to Expand – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, August 13, 2025).
The Militarization of America – Marianne Williamson (Transform, August 13, 2025).
Trump’s Military Occupation of D.C. Egged On by Corporate Lobbyists: Report – Stephen Prager (Common Dreams, August 13, 2025).
Trump’s D.C. Takeover Is an Ominous Move – Chauncey DeVega (Salon, August 12, 2025).
Trump Isn’t Liberating D.C. He’s Subduing It – William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift (The Bulwark, August 12, 2025).
Black D.C. Is Center Stage in the Opening Act of Trump’s Authoritarian Rehearsal – Stacey Patton (Newsone, August 12, 2025).
Federalizing Fear: Trump Turns D.C. Into a Stage for Authoritarian Power – James Greenberg (James’s Substack, August 12, 2025).
“This Isn’t Normal!” Secret Pentagon Plan for Troops to Put Down Local “Unrest” Nationwide – Jon Queally (Common Dreams, August 12, 2025).
Trump’s Takeover: ACLU on Federalizing D.C. Police and Deploying 800 National Guard – Democracy Now! (August 12, 2025).
Trump Is Testing Martial Law in D.C. – TrumpFile.org (August 11, 2025).
The Rule of Law Is Dead in the U.S. – Elie Mystal (The Nation, July 30, 2025).
The Fascists Are Trying to Break You, Good People. Don’t Let Them – John Pavlovitz (The Beautiful Mess, July 17, 2025).

UPDATES: DC Residents’ Anger at Fed Presence Grows as Poll Shows “Overwhelming” Opposition to Trump Takeover – Brad Reed (Common Dreams, August 20, 2025).
“No Trump! No Troops!” Thousands March in Chicago as President Threatens “War” – Jon Queally (Common Dreams, September 8, 2025).


See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Inauguration Day Thoughts
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• “He Is Enacting an Authoritarian Agenda”: Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement

See also:
• Trump’s Playbook (2016)
• Progressive Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump
• Progressive Perspectives on the Election of Donald Trump
• On International Human Rights Day, Saying “No” to Trump and His Fascist Agenda
• Trump’s America: Normalized White Supremacy and a Rising Tide of Racist Violence (2017)
• “We Have an Emergency On Our Hands”: Marianne Williamson On the “Freefall” of American Democracy (2020)
• “Fascism Is Upon Us”
• Trump’s Legacy
• Progressive Perspectives on the 2020 U.S. Election Results
• “As Much the Sounding of An Alarm As a Time for Self-Congratulations”
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy
• Republicans Pose an “Existential Threat” to American Democracy (2021)
• Chauncey Devega on the Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult (2022)
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking American Democracy
• “How Can One Overreact to a Mortal Threat to American Democracy?”
• Historian Nancy MacLean: The Threat to American Democracy Is at “Red-Alert Stage”
• “Come for the Racism, Stay for the Autocracy”
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Presidential Election

Image: Soldiers drive a Stryker infantry carrier vehicle in the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday parade on June 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)