You Are Not Overreacting

What's happening is real. But there is still time to save our country.

Democracy has collapsed.

According to the POLITY project, a respected international database that tracks regime changes and democratic decline:

“The USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy; it has experienced a Presidential Coup and an Adverse Regime Change event.”

The constitution is being dismissed by the executive and legislative branches. Judges will not be able to keep this crisis at bay forever. Every day, we face a barrage of disastrous and disheartening news. The ‘zone is being flooded.’

They want you to drown in this.

The despair, the frustration, the creeping sense of inevitability—it is all part of the design. The more disoriented you are, the less likely you are to resist.

So here is what you must do: Acknowledge what is happening.

Say it out loud: Our republic is crumbling. The institutions meant to stop this are either too complicit or too weak or too scared to intervene.

An official photo posted on the White House social media accounts.

These are facts. But they are not fate.

Our freedom relies on refusing to surrender to what has become normalized. Be horrified at the severing of life-saving services by the wealthiest man on Earth. Be outraged at the erasure of any history that is not white and male. Be livid at the illegal deportation of people under false pretenses. Be alarmed as universities are bullied into submission. Do not let them make this normal.

In Germany, 1943, students wrote:

Nothing is more shameful to a civilized nation than to allow itself to be “governed” by an irresponsible clique of sovereigns who have given themselves over to dark urges – and that without resisting. Isn’t it true that every honest German is ashamed of his government these days? Who among us can imagine the degree of shame that will come upon us and upon our children when the veil falls from our faces and the awful crimes that infinitely exceed any human measure are exposed to the light of day?

Those students were soon after arrested and executed.

We’re in this together. If you’re scared, please know that I am scared too. We’re all scared. If you feel lonely, if you feel anxious, if you feel angry, you’re in good company. Those feelings are the normal response to overwhelming disaster. Those feelings are helpful; they prevent you from surrendering to apathy.

It’s not too late to act. You’re right on time. History is made by people just like us—those who refuse to mistake silence for safety. It's made by teachers who refuse to censor the truth; by workers who walk out; by students who organize; by neighbors who look after each other when the state stops trying. The moments that matter rarely feel grand. They feel small, local, fragile—yet, they are everything.

The current moment requires action. Messy, hopeful, defiant action. It needs people who are willing to care loudly, even when they are told that to care is meaningless, or naive, or hysterical. Every regime that consolidates power begins by training people not to believe what they see. As George Orwell wrote in his novel 1984,

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

There is no cavalry, no perfect leader coming to save us. But together, we can save our republic and build something beautiful.

So go out. Organize locally; protect one another; speak the truth, even when your voice shakes. Remember: authoritarianism thrives when we forget we have power. They want you to forget all the ways you can engage.

I know it’s hard to make any of this feel like it matters—but it does. Even if protest doesn’t immediately change the political landscape, resistance to inhumanity is an active, important reminder of who we are and what we value. If you value hope, if you value kindness, if you value the possibility promised by the American Dream, then invest in it.

Who would we become if we gave in?