Morning Muse: It's June 12th And We Are ButtFucked Still

You know what keeps me up at night: Will we fucking fight back hard enough to save ourselves from this authoritarian shitstorm, or will we just roll over and let democracy die with a whimper?

I wake up to the disgusting smell of gassy pricktatorship. Not because I've been gassed—though plenty of Americans have been—but because the very air we breathe has become toxic with the ass-stench of creeping fascism. Every morning I wake up and taste the metallic tang of fear on my tongue, wondering if today's the day we finally stop pretending this is all fucking normal. Maybe it is because Trump does that little dance where he looks like he’s jacking off two really HUGE dicks. I am not the only one that sees this right? I mean, it isn’t just me right?

Listen, I'm not here to sugarcoat this bullshit or wrap it in pretty academic language that makes you feel comfortable. This isn't some abstract political theory—it's a goddamn alarm bell shrieking in the darkness, and most of us are still hitting the snooze button like we've got time to waste.

The Psychological Mindfuck of Normalized Authoritarianism

Here's what's really fucked up about our current situation: we've become psychologically conditioned to treat an attempted coup like it's just another fucking news cycle. The human brain, that magnificent bastard, has this survival mechanism where it normalizes trauma to keep functioning (Stockholms Syndrome). It's the same reason abuse victims stay with their abusers, why people in war zones eventually stop flinching at explosions. We've been gaslit so thoroughly that we're treating the systematic dismantling of our democracy like it's just another episode of a really shitty reality TV show.

This captures something that should make your skin crawl with recognition: "The intentions of this president are not a mystery." No fucking kidding. We're not dealing with subtle dog whistles anymore—we're getting air-raid sirens blasting fascist anthems, and somehow half the country is still debating whether they're hearing music or just construction noise.

But here's where the psychology gets really twisted: we've been conditioned to focus on the wrong fucking question. We keep asking "What is Donny McCrappants going to do next?" when we should be asking "What the hell are WE going to do about it?" It's like watching a house fire and spending all your time analyzing the arsonist's technique instead of grabbing a fucking hose.

We should all get it—understanding that the real story isn't the wannabe dictator's latest tantrum. The real story is whether we're going to let him succeed. And right now, that answer is written in the sweat-stained palms of every American who's ever had to choose between comfort and courage.

The Philosophical Shitstorm: What Does Resistance Actually Mean?

Let's get philosophical for a hot minute because this shit matters on a level that goes way beyond politics. We're living through what philosophers call a "crisis of legitimacy"—that moment when the social contract gets so fucked up that people start questioning whether the whole system deserves to exist at all.

Think about it: every government, every authority structure, every system of power only works because people agree to let it work. The moment enough people say "fuck this," the whole thing crumbles like a sandcastle in a tsunami. That's both terrifying and fucking beautiful, depending on which side of history you want to be on.

We talk about "protesting against him works" and "organizing against him works," but what does that actually mean in philosophical terms? It means we're engaged in what Gramsci called a "war of position"—a battle over the very definition of what's normal, what's acceptable, what's American. Every time someone gets arrested at a protest and then gets released because of public pressure, every time a court blocks one of Donald McDumpstain's fascist orders, every time regular people refuse to comply with authoritarian bullshit—that's not just political action, that's an assertion of human dignity against the machinery of oppression.

But here's where it gets really heavy: resistance isn't just about stopping the bad guys. It's about proving to ourselves that we're still human, that we still give a shit about something bigger than our own immediate comfort. Every act of resistance is a declaration that we refuse to let our souls be crushed under the boot of authoritarianism.

The ancient Greeks had this concept called "arete"—excellence of character, the idea that humans become fully human only when they act courageously in the face of adversity. Right now, every American is being tested. Every day we don't resist is a day we fail that test, a day we let our humanity wither just a little bit more.

The Visceral Reality of Street-Level Resistance

Let me paint you a picture of what resistance actually looks like, because it's not the sanitized, Instagram-friendly version you see in movies. It's showing up to city council meetings when you'd rather be home watching Netflix. It's calling your representatives until your voice is hoarse and your phone battery dies. It's organizing voter registration drives in communities that have been ignored for decades.

Resistance smells like coffee and exhaustion at 2 AM strategy sessions in church basements. It tastes like the bile rising in your throat when you watch jackbooted thugs tear-gas peaceful protesters. It sounds like the crack in a teenager's voice as they speak truth to power at a city council meeting, knowing their words might follow them for the rest of their lives.

We need to be talking about Marcelo in Massachusetts, Carol in Missouri, a four-year-old girl in California, Antonio in Albuquerque. These aren't fucking statistics—these are real people whose lives hang in the balance while we debate the finer points of political strategy. Marcelo probably wakes up every morning wondering if today's the day ICE comes knocking. Carol might be a woman who couldn't get reproductive healthcare until people fought for her rights. That four-year-old girl in California is growing up in a world where her very existence is treated as a political football.

When we hear that "protesting in the streets works," we're talking about the raw, primal act of human beings refusing to be invisible. It's about making your body a shield between injustice and its victims. It's about risking tear gas and batons and arrest records because some things are worth more than your personal safety.

The Brutal Mathematics of Organized Resistance

Here's the thing about resistance that nobody wants to talk about: it's fucking hard work, and it doesn't always succeed. We need to be honest about this—"they don't always work"—but then we need to absorb the gut punch of truth: "pushback is the only thing that ever does work."

Think about the mathematics of authoritarianism versus the mathematics of resistance. Authoritarians have the power of the state: police, military, courts, bureaucracy. They can make laws, enforce them with violence, and convince people that resistance is futile. But they have one crucial weakness: they need compliance to function. Every act of resistance, no matter how small, throws a wrench in their machinery.

The psychological research on this is crystal fucking clear: authoritarian movements depend on creating a sense of inevitability, of making resistance seem hopeless. When people start fighting back—when they see that resistance is possible—the whole edifice starts to crack. It's like a dam with a small leak that suddenly becomes a catastrophic failure.

But here's the brutal truth: resistance requires sacrifice. It requires people to risk their comfort, their safety, their livelihoods. It requires the kind of sustained, organized effort that makes your bones ache and your spirit want to break. The people we're fighting for—Marcelo, Carol, the four-year-old, Antonio—they're free because other people decided that their freedom was worth fighting for, worth organizing for, worth risking everything for.

We need to be fighting "in the courts and in the states and in Congress and in every other place" where we can "say no." That's not abstract political theory—that's a call to arms. It's saying that every institution, every level of government, every space where power operates is a battlefield where the fate of democracy will be decided.

The Sensory Assault of Democratic Collapse

You want to know what the death of democracy smells like? It smells like the leather of jackboots, the acrid smoke of burning books, the metallic tang of blood from broken protest signs. It tastes like the salt of tears shed by families torn apart by deportation raids, the bitter ash of hopes crushed under the weight of authoritarian bureaucracy.

The sound of democracy dying isn't a single gunshot—it's the slow, grinding noise of institutions being hollowed out from within. It's the whimper of journalists self-censoring, the silence of politicians who know better but choose cowardice over courage. It's the absence of dissent, the vacuum where voices of opposition used to ring out clear and strong.

But resistance has its own sensory signature. It sounds like thousands of voices chanting in unison, like the satisfying thud of a gavel blocking another fascist order, like the rustle of petition pages being passed from hand to hand. It smells like the sweat of honest work, the coffee brewing in late-night organizing sessions, the ozone charge in the air before a storm of change.

This truth is crystal fucking clear when we talk about the "movement against him" as what "will determine our fate as a country." Movements aren't abstract—they're made up of real people with calloused hands and tired eyes and hearts full of stubborn fucking hope. They're composed of individuals who've decided that their personal comfort matters less than the collective future of humanity.

The Existential Choice: Compliance or Courage

Every American right now is facing the same existential choice that people throughout history have faced when confronted with authoritarianism: Do you comply and hope it doesn't get worse, or do you resist and accept the consequences?

This reality is laid out in stark terms: "What is this country going to allow him to do." Not what is he going to try to do—we already know that. The question is what WE are going to allow. Every day we don't resist is a day we give our tacit permission for democracy to die a little more.

This isn't hyperbole, and it isn't hysteria. This is the cold, hard fucking reality of living through a democratic crisis. The German people in the 1930s faced the same choice. The Spanish people during Franco's rise faced the same choice. The Chilean people under Pinochet faced the same choice. Some resisted, some complied, and the outcome depended on which group was larger and more determined.

The psychological research on authoritarian compliance is fucking terrifying. Stanley Milgram's experiments showed that ordinary people will commit atrocities if they're given permission by authority figures. The Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated how quickly people will abuse power when they're given the chance. But here's what those experiments also showed: resistance is possible. In every case, there were people who said no, who refused to comply, who chose humanity over authority.

We need to understand that "the strength of the movement against him" is the determining factor in our country's fate. That strength isn't measured in polling numbers or social media followers—it's measured in the willingness of ordinary people to put their bodies on the line, to risk their safety and comfort for the sake of something larger than themselves.

The Brutal Optimism of Necessary Resistance

Here's the thing that keeps me awake at night, staring at the ceiling while my heart pounds with a mixture of rage and hope: the truth is brutal and clear. Resistance works. Not always, not immediately, not without cost—but it fucking works.

Every time a deportation raid gets stopped by community organizing, every time a fascist rally gets outnumbered by counter-protesters, every time a court blocks an authoritarian order because lawyers fought tooth and nail against it—that's proof that we're not powerless. That's proof that democracy isn't dead yet, that the American experiment in self-governance still has some fight left in it.

But optimism without action is just masturbation. Hope without work is just wishful thinking. We don't just need to believe resistance works—we need to understand that resistance is "the only thing that ever does work." That's not a comfort, that's a fucking challenge. It's saying that if we want to keep our democracy, we're going to have to fight for it every single day.

The people we're fighting for—Marcelo, Carol, the four-year-old girl, Antonio—they're not free because of some abstract political process. They're free because real people with real names and real addresses decided to get off their asses and do something about injustice. They're free because someone somewhere said "not on my fucking watch" and meant it.

This is the brutal optimism of necessary resistance: the recognition that we have the power to shape our own fate, coupled with the knowledge that exercising that power requires sacrifice. It's the understanding that democracy isn't a spectator sport—it's a contact sport, and right now we're getting our asses kicked because too many people are still sitting in the stands.

We need to absorb this simple, devastating truth: "pushback is the only thing that ever does work." Not thoughts and prayers, not voting once every four years and then going back to brunch, not hoping that someone else will save us. Pushback. Resistance. The active, sustained, organized refusal to let authoritarianism win without a fight.

And right now, the future is watching to see if we give a shit enough to fight back.

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Citations:

1. Milgram, Stanley. "Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View." Harper & Row, 1974.

2. Gramsci, Antonio. "Selections from Cultural Writings." Harvard University Press, 1985.