It is hard to wake up from a nightmare when you were never asleep to begin with.
I fight denial every day. My mind keeps reaching for the escape hatch—this can’t be real, this has to end, this is temporary. But it isn’t a dream. It isn’t temporary. This is real. We are living in the upside down, and the ground beneath us is still giving way.
One hellacious year is behind us. At least three more loom ahead. And I know—deep down, with a certainty that makes my stomach turn—that things in the United States are going to get far worse before there is even the slightest chance they get better.
I can’t fully comprehend what that future holds. I don’t think any of us can.
This has been a year of nonstop atrocities and war crimes carried out in our name.
A year of a government that murders its own citizens and shrugs.
A year of the systematic looting and strip-mining of the country to enrich the wealthiest, the cruelest, and the most corrupt.
A year in which the medical and educational foundations of the United States have been deliberately sabotaged, leaving permanent damage in their wake.
A year of betraying allies while openly courting dictators and adversaries who dream of our collapse.
A year of carefully laying the groundwork to ensure that free and fair elections will never threaten power again.
A year of constant humiliation—of waking up every morning ashamed of what America has become.
My father served in the U.S. Army during and after World War II, at a time when the United States understood fascism as an existential threat. He served when this country believed some evils must be confronted, not negotiated with, not normalized, not excused.
Today, the United States is no longer resisting fascism. It is practicing it.
I’ve managed to stay sane by leaving—by traveling the world, chasing moments of awe and beauty, and quietly scouting places that might one day become permanent refuge if fascism fully takes hold at home. But no matter where I go, no matter how breathtaking the landscape or how kind the strangers, the nausea over what is going on at home never leaves. America follows me everywhere.
I grew up in a country that believed in progress. A country that valued science, expertise, and truth—not as luxuries, but as necessities for survival. A country that at least pretended to be moving forward.
I never imagined I would live to see that discarded so casually. I never imagined I would witness the most severe assault on secular democracy in our nation’s history.
Yet here we are.
I still believe that the decency of the American people outweighs the cruelty of the loudest. I still believe goodness exists in greater measure than hatred, ignorance, and fear. But belief alone is useless. Hope without action is surrender.
History does not reward complacency. And it does not forgive those who watched the darkness gather and did nothing.
The truth is brutal and unavoidable: we handed the country over—to Nazis, to pedophiles, to traitors, to criminals—and we told ourselves it couldn’t happen here.
It did.
The only question left is whether now—finally—this is the moment we take it back.
- Only Twenty-Five Percent - January 15, 2026
- Zuromin Hour - September 5, 2025
- When Life Gives You A Rotten Orange - November 12, 2024
Thanks for posting this… “History does not reward complacency”… I love it…. As Princess Leia said: WE ARE THE RESISTANCE.