If we can’t learn to wade through discomfort together, we’re fucked (and not in a hot way). A rigorous, relational essay from deep in the void.

Those of you who know me know that, these days, I really try not to tell people what to do. I do try to share, let’s say, a glass of water, and then let you decide if you want to drink it or not. But I’m actually horrified by some of the spineless shit I see every day from “good” people and I need to address it. With that said, I do want to counter that by sharing that I’m also heartened daily by those who have a legit ethical center they move from, and a connection to their souls and humanity that can’t be bought, sold, seduced, or coerced.

Yes, this essay is me calling you in to look deeper inside yourself to see where your heart is at and observe whether it aligns with your actions, words, and how you show up in the actual world with actual human beings, not just online. It’s not too late to change, but it will require rigorous honesty and the courage to sit in uncertainty and discomfort.

If you’re down for that, keep reading, and please observe any resistance in your body as you do. That’s valuable information for you. Not to have an excuse to shut down but a reason for you to get curious.

America has always been a white supremacist war machine. This isn’t rhetorical excess; it’s historical description. Settler colonialism, genocide, chattel slavery, imperial expansion, policing, and militarized capital are not deviations from the project of the United States. They are the project.

If authoritarianism feels newly visible, that perception often tracks proximity to whiteness and the insulation it has historically provided. Don’t get defensive if you’re white. I am also white. A white woman. And gay as the day is long. Stay with me. This is your work if you feel on guard. I ask that you lean in and listen. This essay isn’t here to soothe, but to orient.

Because for Black, Indigenous, queer, poor, disabled, surveilled, incarcerated, and colonized people, the authoritarian state has never been abstract or looming. It has always been intimate, bureaucratic, and violent. What is experienced as a “shift” by some is, for others, simply the expansion of who is no longer protected.

Let that land. Privilege is a real thing. This might be a familiar cue that causes you to double down or collapse into shame, avoidance, or guilt, and I ask you to resist that inclination and to stay with me. I’m not calling you out; I’m trying to call you in. I’m here with you. And if you’re already in here with me feeling like I’m preaching to the choir, hell yeah. It’s going to take a fuck ton of us to reach a tipping point.

At the same time the war machine rages on, this country has always been a site of resistance. This is nothing new. This is also America. Every right we have, and that is now being stripped away, was fought for by those who came before us. Abolitionists, labor movements, civil rights struggles, anti-war coalitions, queer and trans insurgencies, Indigenous sovereignty movements, and more. These have not followed empire as a moral correction. They have existed alongside it, in constant friction and opposition. Empire and resistance are not sequential chapters. They are shaped in relation to each other.

What is changing now is not the nature of the machine, but its affective regulation. Shame (oh, and idk legit understandings of basic human rights) had become a somewhat reliable governing mechanism, and that is dissolving before our eyes. Being a racist, misogynist pedophile (pretty sure Jesus Christ wouldn’t condone this btw) no longer carries the public shame or consequences it once did.

Ethical legitimacy has thinned to procedure. Consent matters less, if at all. Power gives zero fucks about being loved or believed and is very comfortable with simply being obeyed. ICE operates as a racialized state violence apparatus with tactics, logic, and outcomes that mirror historical fascist regimes. I know you know who I’m talking about. And if you believe otherwise, you have more research and soul searching to do, and I pray you do it.

Donald Trump did not invent this violence or the playbook they are following. He accelerated and clarified it. He exposed that shame only constrained power when power still depended on broad consent. By making hatred abundant and spectacular, he gave social permission for what had long been structurally encoded. He keeps shifting the window of tolerance, altering the meta-narrative so cruelty no longer requires disguise.

His aspiration toward dictatorship is not an aberration or a personality flaw. It is a symptom of declining imperial legitimacy. If he vanished tomorrow, the conditions that produced him would remain intact. This billionaire mafia is global and deep. This is not a conspiracy theory. The Epstein files are showing how far-reaching and horrific its tendrils really are. Again, not new.

This is the world order that has been operating behind the scenes forever, to some degree or another. What’s new is that they care less that we know it. For example, Trump’s posturing regarding Venezuela seems part of his ongoing attempt to position himself alongside authoritarian psychos like Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin.

What we are living through is not classic authoritarianism announced by one obvious rupture, but authoritarianism braided into normalcy through a daily ritual of shock, rupture, and controlling the narrative around what’s so clearly unethical and fucking illegal. This is what my dude Michel Foucault was talking about: the sneakiest power operates from within by making it feel “normal.”

It’s administered through courts, zoning laws, algorithms, debt, student loans, SNAP benefits, health insurance, border regimes, gerrymandering, passports, pop culture, the news, social media echo chambers, bots from Russia on X (yeah Elon we remember that), law enforcement budgets, the 1% owning literally everything, including the media and government.

No tanks required. This is precisely why older resistance strategies often fail. The machinery has learned how to absorb critique, metabolize outrage, and aestheticize dissent without changing structure. It also knows how to use us against each other. They do not think of us as citizens but as consumers. Data. We are simply pawns in their game.

This is why what we consume, what we purchase, how we think critically (or don’t), and how we relate to each other matters. It fucking matters. We have power. And this is where accountability matters. Treating whiteness (and domination more broadly) only as a system of protection lets individuals off the hook for how that system is reproduced internally, relationally, and daily.

Whiteness, for example, is not just enforced from above. It is maintained through habits of perception, fear responses, entitlement to comfort, disavowed aggression, the rewriting of history, and the reflex to identify with power rather than interrogate one’s alignment with it.

We are not responsible for the systems we were born into. But we are responsible for what we do with what those systems have installed in us. Internalized supremacy doesn’t only live in white people. It lives wherever proximity to power is mistaken for safety, wherever domination is normalized as realism, wherever hierarchy is defended as human nature, wherever discomfort is treated as injustice, and wherever solidarity is abandoned the moment it costs something.

To be clear, accountability here is not about shame or purity, it’s about refusing the fantasy of innocence. Structures persist because they are reenacted through choices, silences, self-protections, and the stories people tell themselves about what is “reasonable,” “inevitable,” or “not their problem.”

This is not about America “becoming” authoritarian. It is about the collapse of its ability to convincingly pretend it isn’t.

That collapse creates danger and opportunity. Danger, because naked power is volatile and we can all see the damage escalating faster than we can metabolize. That’s part of their plan. But it’s also an opportunity, because clarity breaks spells. The “American dream” is one of the spells that was cast and is being broken. And this country needs a thorough and searching moral inventory followed by changed behavior, amends, and reparations in order to survive.

But we can’t do this unless we’re willing to look at what’s been intentionally kept vague within ourselves, and the ways we’ve co-signed on it, knowingly and unknowingly, through conditioning, manipulation, and the rewriting of history to serve a white narrative of superiority. We have to see our part in that in order to make the choice to show up differently.

The task is precision, coalition, and a form of accountability that operates both structurally and internally. Clarity is key. Resistance that refuses the myths of the empire and the comforts it offers in exchange for complicity.

If you often find yourself asking, “I wonder where I can start. What can I do? The problem feels too big,” this is your answer. Go inward. Look at yourself. Be real about your own shit. And call others into conversation when you clock theirs.

Please do not let your husband say that racist or transphobic thing at the dinner table and pretend it’s funny. It’s not fucking funny. Unless your life is in danger, and that’s another story and a very real reason not to speak up. Again, these are not black-and-white situations. Please hold the gray area with me. You must keep yourself safe. But safety and discomfort are not the same thing. And I’m definitely talking to white folks in positions of privilege, safety, and power. Step up.

Please do not let your kid watch that show or film where sexism is obvious without unpacking why that’s not okay and taking the time for them to understand. Please do not let your friends say what’s happening in Gaza or the Congo has nothing to do with them because of x, y, and z. And for the love of God, please don’t let your grandfather say something antisemitic and pretend it’s okay because he’s old. It’s not okay. Ever. I don’t care how fucking old he is.

I’m not saying you start a fight with everyone. You must stay safe and take care of yourself, especially if you’re a marginalized person who is being targeted right now. But again, there is a difference between keeping yourself safe and keeping yourself comfortable. We need to learn the difference and learn how to wade through discomfort together.

We need to learn how to have difficult conversations in ways that are productive and learn how to traverse conflict in a healthy way. We can learn how to listen, ask questions, and pull this stuff apart together. Together. We must get better at relating and communicating. I know you know this and I know you know that there are tons of books on this. Please read them. Not just Instagram memes. Practice with all the people you encounter every day, and not just online. We are all donzo if we don’t learn how to listen, communicate, and repair with each other.

You don’t have to nail this; you just have to have the humility and willingness to learn and unlearn while in relationship with others. We can do the internal work and take action in the world. We must do both. Billions of lives are at stake. This affects the entire world, not just America. Please don’t wait to care or take action until your neighbor, your kid, or your lover is a casualty.

Empire has become very good at making us feel helpless and surviving critique. What it struggles to survive is organized clarity paired with personal reckoning and decentralized, community-driven power. We need to be people who no longer outsource responsibility upward while continuing to reproduce the system below.

You have that power. I have that power. It starts where our feet are and asks that we meet it honestly, one day at a time, with both compassion and devotion to what’s good for all, not just a few. This is the terrain we are actually standing on. I hope you meet me here.

Note: Again, none of this is new. This analysis draws on decades of scholarship, resistance movements, and lived experience that I’ve synthesized. If you’ve been following here, you know I regularly name queer and BIPOC thinkers and organizers I’m indebted to, because that is essential. The number of people who could be referenced is endless.