The Limits of Tyrants

Last week’s blog post, “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror,” was a form of immediate first aid for the psychic wound of Election Day and the appalling surrender of the American people to a fascist candidate……and not just any old fascist candidate, but one who had already been in office and shown us very clearly who he is and how bad he intends to be.

Now we move out of the teeth-gnashing phase of acknowledging what we just did to ourselves, and on to the struggle ahead.

In the coming weeks I will get into the nuts and bolts of what I believe the Democratic opposition in Congress can do, what blue state governments can do, what the courts can do, what the press can do, what civil servants and businesses and healthcare workers and teachers and soldiers and cops and artists can do….and above all, what all of us ordinary citizens can do. Much of that material will be drawn from my book, Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm, a handbook for surviving a second Trump administration that I published last summer and hoped would not be needed. (Buy it please and I’ll stop this pledge drive and send you a tote bag.)

But first we need the philosophical underpinning for this whole endeavor. To crib a famous line from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “Assembly of Japanese bicycle requires great peace of mind.”