So, here’s the bad news: fascism isn’t coming to America; it’s here.

We are long past the warnings of an approaching existential threat looming on the distant horizon of our story. The nightmare is no longer a future improbability but a present reality.

The current President kept his 2024 campaign promise to be a “dictator on day one,” wiping out decades of protections and partnerships with the stroke of a pen.
He filled his Cabinet with the absolute moral dregs of humanity, people committed to nothing but him, and the power and wealth that sycophantic devotion affords them.
He and his soulless accomplices have quickly dismantled every system and safeguard that, up until a couple of years ago, were established givens.

And the only question left is: do we have the strength to stop them?

History is a really good teacher.

If we pay attention to her, she reminds us that populations don’t become monstrous overnight, that nations don’t abandon humanity in a single moment, and that generational human rights atrocities don’t form in an instant or a vacuum.

Collective sickness is never sudden. There is always a slow, deliberate, almost imperceptible pattern, and we’re seeing it now:

Manufacturing fear: misinformation, fake emergencies, and abject lies all designed to create an unnecessary urgency in the heads of easily manipulated people and to make them feel hopelessly assailed.

The crafting of surrounding enemies: encroaching threats to tangibly embody the nightmares they have made in their heads; someone to go to war against, to take back their country from—someone these leaders can save them from.

The weaponizing of religion: making the manipulated believe that their mission is not just important or right, but holy; that they are being obedient to God while eradicating other human beings.

In that state of frantic, perpetually terrorized self-righteousness, they begin to allow everything. They can justify all manners of cruelty, all denials of care, every act of violence, because they are purifying and protecting their divinely curated country.

Once this happens, once-ordinary, rational, even compassionate people begin to lose their ability to see the humanity in front of them—it’s too late to help them see clearly.

This is how holocausts and genocides happen.

This is where historic national malignancies grow.

These are the first steps down a road that at the beginning seems unthinkable.

Decent Americans, we need to listen to History right now.
She is warning us that we are on the precipice of a free fall.
We can’t afford to go to sleep now.
We need to wake ourselves up.

America is not yet near where Germany was at the peak of Hitler’s power, but Germany wasn’t always there either, and that is the point.

That hideous transformation (like so many before) required targeted propaganda, fake news streams, dehumanizing rhetoric from leadership, an uninformed electorate, coercive religion, and a marginalized population to serve as the focal point for the holy war.

Most of all, it required a large number of decent people to be silent, which is why we will not.

It would be completely irresponsible and reckless to suggest that the United States in 2026 is Germany in 1941, but it could very well be Germany in 1933.

We cannot let the myth of American exceptionalism numb us into imagining we are above devolving into inhumanity. We have every ingredient in place to abandon the best of ourselves and to become something monstrous, something History records as yet another shocking failure of the center. It can and will happen here unless we refuse to allow it.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that America will give birth to something as tragic and sickening as we have seen. Still, we’re stupid and arrogant if we don’t believe ourselves capable, and that we aren’t already seeing the warning signs of bigotry and prejudice irreversibly taking root.

The question is whether or not we have enough good people who are willing to push back and to move together across lines of politics and religion and race and nation of origin and orientation and to declare our independence from fascism.

Do we have the energy, the diligence, and the courage to join our disparate voices into a single, furious choir that refuses to stop singing songs of freedom for everyone?

Do Americans have the attention span and intestinal fortitude to fight as they’ve never had to fight before because they’ve never had to go to war with their government in this way before?

Will we refuse to tolerate injustice in the name of national greatness or divine will, to reject and oppose denials of people’s worth and humanity even when it comes from our party or our church or our families?

And perhaps most of all, do we have the humility not to imagine that we are too intelligent or spiritual or informed not to become as monstrous a nation as we have seen others become?

My money says we do.

Yes, the bad news is that fascism is here, but the good news is that so are we.

Dictators don’t oust themselves, horrible regimes don’t leave on their own, and oligarchs don’t tire of devouring up nations, but fortunately, decent, brave, and organized human beings like us aren’t gonna wait around for that.

We have a month left to transform the what is into the what will be.

May we be our best selves in this moment, so that History one day tells our story as one where disparate humanity twisted the plot.

Now that fascism is here, let’s make sure we drive it back to the hell it came from.

We can. We must. We will.

Take heart, good people.

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Warning: this piece contains language regarding sexual assault that may be triggering or uncomfortable to some.

In October of 2024, a then 20-year-old young woman alleges she was brutally assaulted by 7 of her Cornell University classmates, at least one of whom she considered a friend.

Right now, in the wake of her decision to speak publicly and file suit in an effort to bring her abusers to justice, she is being assaulted a second time by a similarly grotesque mob:

A sitting president, himself an adjudicated rapist, is expressing sympathy for the accused, with no such regard for their accuser.

Men all over the country are flooding social media with their crude Neanderthal hot takes on her supposed culpability. 

Conservative male content creators like Matt Walsh and Michael Tracey are assassinating her character in tweets, YouTube videos, and reckless think pieces, championing countersuits and calling for her doxxing.

And women like Megyn Kelly are leveraging hours of programming on their massive platforms to perpetuate a narrative that is right out of the misogynist’s playbook: blame the victim.

Kelly has spent the past two weeks running extensive hit pieces on Jane Doe, criticizing her drinking habits, doing drive-by psychotherapy, and questioning the two-week delay in Doe’s reporting of the incident, despite Kelly herself seemingly taking a full decade to disclose alleged sexual harassment by then Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.

Rather than educate her audience on the pressures women face at every turn; the sexism saturating media, the Evangelical Church, and the GOP ecosystem; and the widespread sexual violence permeating our culture, Megyn Kelly would rather throw raw meat to the snarling, unevolved rabble.

Kelly, like all perpetually performative Conservatives who continually sermonize about “protecting women” in college sports, doesn’t seem at all interested in defending them when they step off the field and onto their campuses. Once they have exhausted their use as pawns in a Right-Wing culture war, they’re thrown to the wolves.

As thousands of women take to social media to declare solidarity with Jane Doe (#iamjanedoe), counting themselves among the 81 percent of women in the US who testify to having been sexually assaulted or harassed in their lifetimes, they too are being met with ridicule, insults, and vulgarity. 

This is why more survivors of sexual assault don’t come forward; because they know that in doing so, they will find themselves facing violence and indignities from strangers that compound their wounds and amplify the shame of their initial trauma.

They understand that they will face a microscopic scrutiny of their dating histories, clothing choices, and public conduct that places the burden of the violence visited upon them squarely on their shoulders and never on those who authored it.

The United States has a long-gestating rape culture that ensures that the Jane Does will always be hounded and that the Cornell 7s will always be sheltered. This not only makes survivors more reticent to report their trauma, but it emboldens unwell men who are more apt to act out on the monstrous things in their minds, believing accountability will never come.

Until this nation stops electing predators and politically rewarding abusers, they will continue to be prolific in their atrocities.

Until men of conscience police the men around them, no rapist will ever feel as unsafe as those he harms.

Until law enforcement and university boards decide to root toxic masculinity from their ranks, survivors will continue to remain silent. 

Until internalized misogynists like Megyn Kelly stop partnering in their own subjugation, young women will continue to question their worth and carry unnecessary shame.

Until Conservative parents stop coddling their sons and diminishing their daughters, campuses and workplaces will be where young men believe they can embrace the darkest evils harbored in their hearts.

And unless we abolish a pervasive rape culture that extends all the way up to the Supreme Court and the White House, every Jane Doe in America will know that if they do choose to expose the unspeakable violence committed against them, they will be further assaulted by a sprawling crowd who would rather practice or excuse violence against women than confront it.

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I am a beta male.

Sometimes, I’m apt to forget that. 

In the course of my ordinary days, I rarely question whether I’m masculine enough.

I usually move through the world thinking I’m a reasonably normal adult human man, believing I’m adequately meeting the job description: doing my work with care, being a loving and emotionally available husband, showing up faithfully for my kids, helping the people in my path as best I can. 

Thankfully, I have Conservative, self-identified alpha males to remind me otherwise.

Like self-appointed testosterone police, they fly into my mentions to make sure I know just how deficient in being a dude I actually am.

They relentlessly ridicule me for protesting a pedophile president, for calling out Evangelical misogyny, and for condemning frat boy college rape culture; these things all supposedly revealing my shortcomings as a card-carrying man. 

They deride me for being afflicted with toxic empathy as I advocate for survivors of sexual assault, openly grieve children being blown apart by bombs my taxes paid for, and call out the monstrous violence of masked thugs brutalizing my neighbors

I try to explain that I can’t help it, that I was raised this way, that I am a product of my upbringing.

Looking back, I can see that my parents and mentors apparently all failed to make me into a “real man.”

I grew up believing that a woman’s consent trumped anything; that I should yield to her will regarding her body, no matter what the circumstances.

I was taught that I was solely responsible for my choices, that it wasn’t a woman’s job to dress or act in a way that ensured that she would be safe in my presence; that my presence should guarantee her safety.

I was raised to believe that real men have the courage to stand alone and speak out when every other man around them is devolving into the worst of themselves.

I was indoctrinated by leftist propaganda into thinking that the true measure of a man is whether he can hold on to his convictions when no one else shares them.

By his example, my father told me that a man wasn’t ashamed to show emotion around his children, was easy with his affection, and made sure no one around him felt alone or unloved.

And it seems in all of these cases, I was duped and lied to, led astray down the path to becoming the sad, sorry, unmanly wuss I apparently now am. 

Maybe there’s still time for me. Perhaps if I were stronger and worked harder, I could be like the alpha men who mock me. 

Maybe like them, I could completely subjugate my identity and my voice to a lift-wearing, makeup-caked serial predator.

Like them, I could also stay silent while thousands of rapists and pedophiles are being protected from accountability by the leaders I chose. 

Maybe I too could blame the survivors of sexual assault, instead of the monsters who desecrated them.

If I were as rightly manly as my conservative critics, perhaps I could be as comfortable as they are with the government taking away a woman’s autonomy or disregarding her elemental freedoms.

Given a proper manosphere deprogramming, perhaps I could join the sprawling ranks of perpetually insecure man-children who’ve never been able to find a fully formed understanding of what it means to be a gentle man and a loving human being. 

Immerse myself in the Evangelical ecosystem long enough, and I might evolve into a knuckle-dragging amber-trapped caveman who is terrified of strong women and intimidated by any expression of sexuality that doesn’t fit my brittle Old Testament sensibilities.

Spend enough time in Republican politics and I too may one day be tough enough to fall prostrate before a man who has verbally, emotionally, or physically violated nearly every woman in his path, and to still pretend I’m strong.

I’m pretty sure too late for me, though.

At this age, I might be resigned to my soft, swishy sissified state: just another weak, soy boy, leftist cuck of a man striving to live with decency, self-control, and compassion; to be someone a woman doesn’t need to fear being around when alone or vulnerable.

I might just have to settle for being a father whose son would never be silent when anyone else was in danger.

I might be doomed to be a dad whose daughter feels respected and loved by him because she’s watched him respect and love her mom as an equal.

I may be resigned to being a husband whose partner in life has never felt the pressure to be any other kind of woman than the woman she is.

Yeah, I’d like to fight it, but I confess that the overcompensating alphas are right; I’m a beta male.

Guess I’ll just have to live with that.

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“You shouldn’t let politics get in the way of your relationships.”

As we approach one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s 250-year lifespan, I see this sentiment pop up on social media a good bit in think pieces and news stories: the idea that family members and friends are too important to lose over a political position, a party affiliation, or a ballot choice.

This may have been a reasonable and healthy idea back when we had parties and candidates who genuinely desired the common good; when we were debating methodology or financial approach to solving problems that we all agreed were problems. It made sense to preserve relationships when we imagined that our fathers, cousins, neighbors, and lifelong friends cared about diversity and justice and personal freedoms and helping people as much as we did.

We are way past that.

For a decade now, Donald Trump and his surrogates have offered an openly nihilistic, misogynistic, hate-poisoned vision of an intentionally divided nation without empathy for the poor or the sick. Their movement has been a naked declaration of white supremacy and intolerant nationalism; a movement completely devoid of policy and oriented solely around those it would exclude and punish and banish.

And that is what so many of the people we once shared this life with have chosen, many for the third time now. That doesn’t just point to political fissure or ideological misalignment, but a complete moral incompatibility.

Year after year, we have witnessed those we love repeatedly confirm their deviations regarding affordable healthcare, human rights, environmental protections, body autonomy, foreign genocide, sexual violence, and the legal and moral standards leaders should be held to.

This is no longer about policy differences, not simple disagreements on the humane and responsible way to deal with collective national challenges. It isn’t a matter of agreeing to disagree on less-than-critical subjects where a stalemate is acceptable.

The coming election (much like our political sides in this iteration of America) is about whether we will embrace or reject unapologetic racism, rabid nationalism, mindless homophobia, the dehumanization of immigrants, narcissistic greed, and the coddling of sexual predators.

And these things are worth cutting people off, severing ties, and muting on social media. They have to be if our values matter to us.

The lives of millions of flesh-and-blood human beings hang in the balance as we enter the voting booth: their freedom to make healthcare decisions for themselves, their access to fundamental liberties promised in the Constitution, their agency to govern their own destinies, their basic sense of safety from harassment and harm and violence. 

If there was ever something that justified a deleted contact number, an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table, an exodus from a church, or the termination of a friendship, it is this.

If we aspire to being decent human beings, at some point, we need to choose whether we will lean into our deepest convictions or preserve relationships with people whose presence increasingly causes us to compromise, conceal, or deny those convictions.

We need to decide whether we will keep a tenuous peace with those we share blood and tradition with, but little else, or whether we will step out into the raking light of full authenticity and fight for the things that break our hearts and boil our blood, for the human beings we know are and will be under great duress because of the choices our loved ones and friends have made.

The choices we make in November are far more consequential than merely altering the balance of power in Congress, flipping key seats, or ousting incumbents committing malpractice. 

The tangible impact of our votes on people of color, on LGBTQ human beings, on the sick and the poor and the elderly, on our immigrant communities (let alone the rest of the world) is beyond what we can comprehend right now. 

The outcome in November will determine the opportunities people have to earn a living wage, to feed their children, to choose their homeland, to define their gender, to live free from violence at the hands of their government. This isn’t politics, it’s elemental humanity.

I’m not saying we should disconnect from everyone we know who doesn’t perfectly align with us politically, as learning to bear with reasonable disagreement, hearing another’s perspective, and finding compromise are often necessary and helpful. But when the misalignments are philosophical, ethical, or moral, we all need to ask if that’s cause for distance or disconnection.

If we haven’t gotten there yet, many of us may decide that we cannot forgive or abide those close to us who have repeatedly chosen leaders and policies that have caused so much unnecessary sorrow to so many human beings. We might decide that we no longer desire relational or physical proximity to people who have allowed our nation to be handed over to such a cancerous malevolence, and who did so with perverse joy and unrepentant cruelty.

If that isn’t reason to end a relationship, nothing is.

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