© Peggy Weis 2025 with permission
When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941
In Shanghai during the extended Covid lockdown—as reported by Evan Osnos for The New Yorker—people were singing on their balconies and also demanding supplies. Government drones hovered in the sky: CONTROL YOUR SOUL'S DESIRE FOR FREEDOM/DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS TO SING they broadcast above the heart throbbing sound of resistance.
We are bloodied but unbowed I told an EU friend this morning when she called and asked why we were not all on the streets protesting. Patience, dear friend, we are recovering from the trauma of the coup. Our soul's desire for freedom will not be eviscerated so easily.
I only speak to myself and for myself. I cannot answer for my neighbors, or the nation, or our politicians. From my vantage, it's a calamity from close-up or far away, certainly. And it isn't the outcome I had hoped or planned for all my progressive life. "I will never believe my government again," a young person told me the other day as we discussed ICE raids nearby. "We were supposed to be the good guys. We weren't supposed to hurt civilians, men, women and children."
Such cruelty is hard to witness. Yet many good people are working to help the detainees in my locale. As best they can. And that is the most we can do right now, as we still feel endangered. In this chaotic moment, it is not difficult to imagine the worst.
Let's say, for example, that we own our home and the home is comfortable, capacious. We are affluent, comfortable. And one day an official in a uniform barges in and says, "This house is condemned. You have to evacuate." So we evacuate. But there is no compensation, no assistance, and maybe there is nothing wrong with the house except that someone else covets the house. What do we do? Where do we go? How do we resist once we are homeless and incapacitated, weakened by our unexpected circumstance? Or, an email arrives at our place of work and announces "termination," as though we were vermin infecting the office. In an instant, our life has been hit with a wrecking ball. How do we recover and move on?
So, patience, dear EU friend. We are taking a breath, protesting as best we can in this moment. The citizens of these United States have faced many challenges over the years. This one is cataclysmic, worse than anything in my lifetime. But now that we fully understand what has happened, we will find the courage to open our windows and sing.