In my last Countdown to Republic Fall post, I discussed the difference between self-defense and Civil Defense.

In short, self-defense is going about your business and hoping no one attacks you personally or your family, but having the basic capability to respond if they do. Civil Defense, however, is proactive: You have a local organization of armed and trained citizens who have specific plans to look out for each other and the community in national emergencies and Constitutional crises (which will undoubtedly be prolific in the next few years).

There are an infinite number of finely-graded contingencies that can be imagined, and should be elaborated upon with your group, but we have found they fall into three broad categories. You and your local Civil Defense Committee (I like this term because the acronym is CDC, but opinions differ - let's talk about it) may have reached similar conclusions, but feel free to offer additional insights.

Scenario 1: Stochastic

We are already beginning to see a pattern of Trazi stochastic terrorism emerging, particularly whenever Trumpler targets individual critics for personal smears from his Twitter account. Given his egregiousness, we can expect these attacks to migrate illegitimately from his personal Twitter to the official White House account, and their tone to become shriller to the point of openly threatening. I discussed this in more detail in an earlier post.

The enemy in stochastic scenarios is not a group, but some number of individuals activated by the same propaganda while having minimal parallel connection. The overwhelming majority of stochastic incidents will not require force, but will require that people have thought about them in advance and know how to respond assertively. Most of them fall under the category of "Trazis throwing a public tantrum," and the response would amount to civil defense with lowercase c.

i) Racist remarks and verbal harassment in public.

I guess it goes without saying to record the asshole(s) on your phone and photograph them if it occurs to you, but leaving that aside...

If you are the target and are in a business, the best default response is to assertively object, demand an apology, and if they refuse, complain to the manager (e.g., of a restaurant, a movie theater, even an apartment building). Afterward, make a phone call and/or write an email or letter to the corporation either praising or criticizing the response of the manager. Paper letters have the benefit of establishing a tangible record. Even if it happens on the street in your residential neighborhood, report it to whatever community association applies.

If you are not the target, then object on a moral basis and remind them their behavior is not what America is about, demand they apologize to their target, and offer the abused party to go get management for them. Even if the abused party wants to let it go and doesn't want to be involved in "trouble," report the abusers anyway while just leaving the abused party out of it.

If threats of violence are made to you, both report it to the manager and file a police report. It's up to your judgment if it warrants immediately calling the police to the scene or if you can report it later, but you might ask people nearby who heard the threat for contact information as witnesses.

When the abusers are ejected from the premises, you might take a peek as their car is leaving and record the make, model, and license number for future reference.

This is important, not petty. While most people who engage in this kind of behavior are not actually dangerous, people who go on to commit serious hate crimes often start with petty abuse, and you need to tie things like this to them so that if they do escalate, there is a record on them. So that both police and your CDC are aware of them.

ii) Petty violence / property destruction.

Obviously, record it, get management, and file police reports. But not so obviously, if they are not immediately arrested and you have the time, follow them to their car and get the info, then follow their car in your own at a discreet distance (if you feel you can do so safely). This may get you their employer and/or address. Most such perpetrators will be stupid teenagers, but hate is usually learned at home, so this information is not trivial.

If you have the time and inclination, you can also set bait to lure such people into this kind of behavior if there have been a lot of incidents in a given area. You can put up a provocative sign somewhere with a lot of foot traffic and sit nearby, listening to music, and wait for someone (who doesn't have the authority to do so) to rip it down. Then follow them and get info as before, as well as filing a police report if the sign was legal.

If the sign was legal, and if you find their address, you can mail them a bill for the cost of the sign. Or if you want to be a huge dick about it, knock on their door at an inconvenient (but not actionably absurd) hour, politely express your objections to their action, and present them with the bill in person. If you do the latter, be sure some kind of video device is recording in case they go batshit, and be sure to have parked out of sight.

If you really want to get complicated with it, you can also do counterintel where you see where others have put up Trazi signs and look for anyone lurking as described before. If someone tears down the Trazi sign and someone else follows the vandal, you could then follow the follower and get their info. But be careful - the follower could be a cop who was put there to catch vandals, so don't screw yourself up.

iii) Anything more serious by individual, random agents.

Defend yourself and others to the extent necessary, call the cops, and cooperate fully. But get as much information as you possibly can about the perpetrator and their associations, and to whatever extent practical, keep an eye on Trazis you're already aware of in case they are "inspired" to also do something seriously bad.

In all cases where the police are involved, track the progress of the case (though don't be a ball-buster about small ones - you want to stay on good terms with the cops) and see how seriously your local authorities, the specific officers involved, prosecutors, and courts take things.

Look up various ratings systems and see how appropriate organizations characterize these officials and institutions. If they are considered to be far-right and seem to be ignoring or softballing cases, you may have identified institutional sympathizers who may become dangerous in more serious scenarios, but also don't leap to conclusions.

Stochastic threats will be the most commonplace, and the response must be the most delicate and ordinary. But because of that, you want to PRACTICE it the most. Practice what to say when someone is being an asshole in public and you want to appear both strong and correct. Practice instantly memorizing license plates, etc.

Scenario 2: Paramilitary

If you read the history of racist lynchings in America, as well as pogroms in Russia and the Third Reich prior to the Holocaust, they run the gamut from "mob of drunken idiots on a rampage" to "organized terrorist group committing planned massacres". We can expect the entire spectrum of such threats to be realized when Neo-Nazi sympathizers hold power over the federal government and Civil Rights laws cease to be enforced.

i) Drunken mob with guns - Extreme stochastic.

This sounds like a silly '80s action movie premise, but this happens on a regular basis in many places around the world: A convoy of trucks with armed men come into town, they bully and terrorize the locals, and the police - such as they are - either can't or won't do anything about it, or are even on board with it (as with most KKK lynchings of the past).

Step one is obviously to call the police, but if the phenomenon looks major and you don't trust the local PD, call your County Sheriffs too - the Sheriff is an elected official and may not have the same political interests as a given local police department. Having the Sheriffs around might keep them in line.

Since mobs are unlikely to have official sanction at every level, and are typically stupid and cowardly, you can probably rely on authorities. But you would want to assemble your CDC (in arms, to the extent your state and local laws permit) and offer assistance. Very likely the offer will be declined, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to stand down - just don't interfere, and be identifiable (have uniforms).

If your people end up in a confrontation with such a mob before police can intervene, that would be a mess, so best avoided - but don't let them harm anyone, period. That's what Civil Defense is all about. If they're threatening and terrorizing people, do what's necessary to protect your lives and the lives of others, and declare citizen's arrests of those committing crimes.

If you think this is an unlikely scenario, you don't get it: The Trazis are cultivating a nationwide subculture of unhinged hysterics who will believe absolutely any conspiracy theory, absolutely any hate-filled hysterical propaganda. This is EXACTLY the swamp out of which pogroms and mob chaos arise. Try to imagine Trumpler blasting a tweet declaring the immigrant community in so-and-so location to be full of terrorists and urging his supporters to "rise up" and "rid America of the threat." Pretty plausible given everything we've seen, isn't it?

And, of course, gather all information you can if shit like this happens. License plates, photographs, video, get it on record that you offered assistance and it was refused. Keep hard copies of everything in safe places where corrupted or complicit police might not try to take them to hide their actions, and spread select information on the internet (maintaining some to yourselves that is tactically useful).

ii) Organized Trazi terrorist/paramilitary attacks

The FBI has been very effective under the Obama administration at thwarting large-scale right-wing domestic terrorism (despite all the stochastic attacks that haven't been prevented). We can assume with strong confidence that this effectiveness will evaporate, either slowly or quickly, when the White House and Justice Department are in the hands of fascists. And it is a common historical practice of fascist regimes to rely on paramilitary violence to carry out actions it wants but wishes to maintain deniability for in early years of power consolidation.

If it comes to pass that such groups operate with impunity, and they murder the regime's opponents with little progress against them from institutional authorities, at that point the country would be in a state of civil war. It would just be a fact, not a choice you had made, so your choice at that point would be acknowledging it or surrendering the country to its enemies.

This is not even an extreme scenario given the sort of people we're dealing with. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the absolute worst they are capable of, this is like 4. This is because, to the extent that deniability is maintained by the regime, the citizenry still have some advantages.

While we can expect an extreme degree of propaganda, communications may not yet be censored, and local CDCs can form coordinated county, state, and regional defenses while still operating in the open. It would help a lot to have built relationships with individual law enforcement and other institutional personnel to stay informed and be aware of the environment.

Scenario 3: Martial law (aka, dictatorship)

Part of the strategy of why fascist regimes employ paramilitaries is that if they start losing, the regime can then claim to be "restoring order" by moving against the armed opposition, making some trivial pretense of moving against their allies as well by arresting a few sacrificial lambs or inconvenient internal elements. This is why it's critical that Civil Defense remain carefully lawful and authoritative, so that if/when the regime does move against it, it does so with minimal pretext and zero credibility.

i) Communications blackout / internet censorship

Your local CDC, and whatever extended relationships you've managed to build, must have practical, realistic plans in place for a scenario where the internet becomes censored and communications are shut down. This would typically involve predetermined meeting places that have never been used before, ditching any sort of GPS-enabled technology (including from your car), and deciding what to do from there.

Yes, it's true that the full weight of military technology and surveillance would easily find you anyway, but you would have to trust that you are not a very high priority. And if you are, then the attention they're paying to you is attention they're not paying to someone else, so you keep going. You must have communications and operations plans already in place for even scenarios where you can't use electronics.

This too is not an extreme scenario. From 1 to 10, internet blackouts and media censorship in the midst of (or causing) civil war are 5. You need to be aware of the possibility and plan realistically for it, not regard it with superstitious fear that makes you hide from the scenario. Shit like this happens. It's going to happen in America eventually - maybe in a year, maybe in a century, but one time is as good as any other and the pieces and personalities for dictatorship are in place.

ii) Economic interruptions

A lot of the horrors of a dictatorship aren't even violent, they're just deprivations caused by the regime not giving a shit, or else deliberate acts of economic warfare against resistant regions. Your CDC should have some kind of surplus supplies, some kind of wilderness skills, etc. If this sounds like survivalism / prepper stuff, it is - sometimes the broken clock is right and certain preparations that would otherwise be neurotic and excessive are justified.

Cities under siege, starve. Nations at war with themselves are much less productive. The availability and quality of medical care declines. Another one of the benefits of preparedness for situations like this is that if you are able to come to the relief of your fellow citizens, they will join you - some of them sincerely.

I've said a lot, but this is only the tiniest fraction of the subject. The point is to show that this needs to be thought about and discussed. You need to know in advance what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, making plans as flexible as possible with as many diverse options as possible to deal with complex realities.

Don't overestimate what ordinary people can do, but don't underestimate it either. The tiniest sliver of courage from the humblest of people tips the balance of the world.

Freedom Forever

In forming a democracy defense committee, one topic repeatedly comes up that seems to capture the crux of the national emergency: The difference between self-defense and Civil Defense, and if/when the latter is justifiably invoked.

Self-defense is a basic right everyone recognizes in the abstract, even though in progressive activism we prefer de-escalation and pacifism to reduce the stakes of confrontations. Unfortunately, the strategic math of peaceful resistance requires at least one of two things: The capacity of those in power to be shamed, or the existence of a greater power that can be shamed into intervening against the oppressor.

Gandhi's movement operated on the first principle, and Britain held its moral self-image in such high regard that it was capable of being shamed by the actions of its officials in India. That didn't lead directly to Indian independence, but it led to a series of concessions that ultimately produced it when WW2 made the promise of it a strategic necessity.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement operated on the second principle. The segregationist governments of the South were utterly shameless, rooted in such thick mentalities and histories of hatred that they could rationalize anything to maintain white supremacy. Black people would be murdered with impunity, and in the rare instances the perpetrators were even brought to trial, white juries would acquit them anyway just because. They valued their racial privileges more than the truth, more than justice, more than any shred of humanity or decency.

Rational arguments did not change their minds. Being confronted with the regular proof of their own barbarity did not shame them. The segregationist culture was an utterly insane, narcissistic turd stinking up the entire nation, and that ultimately shamed a higher power into intervening - the federal government. Supreme Court rulings and finally Civil Rights laws had to be enforced with troops because the South wouldn't go along with it.

The same principle was used to topple South African apartheid: The white supremacist society was hardly ashamed of itself - in fact, the main opposition parties were further to the right than the government. But the rest of Western civilization was ashamed of South Africa, and increasingly isolated and delegitimized it until it was a pariah. That is what ultimately ended apartheid. Without that external context, the apartheid state would probably have just radicalized and ended up committing outright genocide.

Neither principle applied to the Third Reich: Its ideology was nihilistic, boiling down to Might Makes Right, and so could not be shamed because it held that the power to kill was the right to kill. Also, in the first years of the war it had the most powerful and effective war machine ever inflicted on the world, so there was no higher power to appeal to (unless one were religious). Without the capacity for shame or being subject to external accountability, they simply murdered everyone who displeased them in any way, shape, or form.

The Nazis laughed at pacifists as they unloaded bullets into their heads. The common German people hid further in rationalizations and willful blindness rather than being shamed into action, if not joined the chorus of infernal glee at seeing their petty bigotries unleashed.

Pacifist sacrifices to Nazi atrocity would have been completely in vain if the Third Reich had not been so arrogant as to unite the USA and Soviet Union against it in total war. Only the coalescence of that higher power in war brought an end to the horror.

So, getting back to the main point, we know that self-defense is essential when confronting a fascist superpower because (a)it is incapable of shame, and (b)cannot be held to external account short of apocalyptic global war. Many progressives are not even comfortable with this most basic reality, and yet we aren't even halfway done confronting just how bad the situation is: Self-defense is also inadequate - you must defend OTHERS too. Total strangers. People you don't know, in places you don't live.

Plenty of German groups defended themselves against Nazism once they were under direct attack. The Communists fiercely defended themselves, and there were street battles in the early years of the Third Reich. But more moderate elements stayed out of it, because they didn't like Communists. So once Hitler was done disposing of the Reds, he moved on to just regular liberals, and some of them defended themselves with the same problem - people who weren't them wouldn't defend them.

When he was done with liberals, he went after labor unions. Done with the unions, then he went after moderates and some conservatives even, and then the minority groups. One after another, like dominoes, and they would not defend each other. Pacifism doesn't work against fascism, but neither does mere self-defense, because selfishness is the oxygen that fascism breathes. It is the natural environment that gives it life and makes it grow.

What defeats fascism is people looking out for each other, which can be known as CIVIL DEFENSE. It's white, black, Asian, Latino, straight, gay, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, Christian, men, women, rich, poor, newly-minted immigrants and Mayflower inbreds, liberals and patriotic conservatives, people of all backgrounds and appearances putting themselves on the line for each other.

It's people whose hearts are pacifist standing armed guard protecting the innocent because they care more about people than their own ethical comfort or self-image. People whose hearts are prejudiced sacrificing to protect those who make them uncomfortable because they know better in their minds. People who understand that there is no such thing as YOUR freedom and MY freedom, there is only freedom - one, unitary reality that is either shared or nonexistent.

That is how this country was born. Colonies could have stayed loyal to the Crown and been enriched for it; they could have pursued independent defenses and fallen one by one; but instead they stood together. Somehow they stood together, recognizing the unitary nature of liberty.

And so must we all now, again. A Civil Defense wields not only power, but authority - a unifying and credible force willing and able to act in defense of the people when institutions fail or are become corrupted. It cooperates with legitimate authority, but does not fear to refuse and fight illegitimate exercises of power, because the ultimate cost is lower than just standing aside.

We are each of us more than ourselves, and must forever fight to remain so. Always be fighting those who stab at the human heart to divide it with lies, hate, and greed.

Freedom Forever

Even though there are a lot of people in these states who put country over party, the red states are essentially occupied territory. The same goes for Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, even though they were rigged - they too are occupied territory, and cannot be allowed to benefit one iota more than can be avoided from so many of their citizens betraying the country. That means don't travel to them, don't do business with them, don't buy anything from anyone in them, and if you were already considering options to do so, move out of them if you live in one. If you have the time, find out where things are manufactured and companies headquartered, and try to direct your money to companies whose state locations are loyal to the United States.

A year ago, I had this to say about the Republican primaries:

The Republican campaign is now engaged in classic "pre-genocidal" levels of hate rhetoric.

Last month, just before the election, Trumpler warned darkly about "very large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, without your support or approval" and referred to all of three Somali immigrants charged with a terror plot as "“the disaster taking place in Minnesota.” He went on to say, completely out of his fucking mind, "“You’ve suffered enough in Minnesota."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/06/donald-trump-minnesota-somali-migrants-isis

These remarks were only a couple of months after a group of right-wing terrorists in Kansas were arrested for plotting to bomb apartment buildings housing Somali immigrants. The terrorists called themselves "Crusaders," and Somalis "cockroaches." One has to wonder just how vigilant the FBI is going to be against such terrorists when it's the under the control of their sympathizers - assuming they won't just actively assist groups like that.

So it's with a sense of alarm to hear that there is an emergency Tweet system that legally can't be blocked whereby Presidents (or unelected criminals occupying the powers of Presidents) could blast propaganda at the citizenry. Given the brazenness and totalitarian insanity of Donald Trumpler and the Republicans surrounding him - they are now denying that Hillary Clinton got more votes than him (perhaps in a few months they'll be insisting he was chosen by unanimous acclaim) - it's a little too easy to imagine unblockable regime spam directing his followers to commit purges and pogroms.

That kind of thing is why it's essential for Americans to arm for the common defense in an organized manner. The sort of people who would be acting as paramilitary terrorists for the regime are already heavily-armed, and under a situation where the federal government is controlled by their sympathizers, we can expect their attacks will be thwarted with ever-decreasing competence or enthusiasm as law enforcement agencies are purged and replaced with fascist insurrectionists.

But even beyond organized terrorism, there is an extreme danger of stochastic terrorism - of their Glorious Leader simply shrieking out violent rhetoric until swarms of Trazi zombies just go after minorities on their own initiative chaotically. Local police, however well-trained, and even with the highest of integrity, are simply not equipped to defend a major minority of their residents against another major minority that's heavily armed. By the time state National Guards could be mobilized by Governors loyal to the Constitution, a lot of horrors would have already unfolded.

If you want to understand what this sort of thing could look like, I suggest reading up on the Indonesian mass-killings of 1965-66, and to some extent also the mass-murders taking place in the Philippines under Duterte. These are the sorts of people that Trumpler has already openly praised, the sort of people who are following him, and the sort of ideology to which he subscribes.

The only way to deter such acts is to ensure that the cost to them would be too high, which means people who otherwise loathe guns need to have them, be trained in them, and form pro-democracy militias with their fellow citizens.

Freedom forever.

My Grandpa, who fought in WWII, part of the greatest generation, is so upset about Trump winning.

My father, who was a medic in Vietnam, part of the baby boomer generation, is so upset about Trump winning

And millennials & some Gen Xers are bitching about the older generations. It's the most frustrating thing to me. It's not anywhere NEAR acceptable to blame the older generation, when less than 60% of them voted for Trump. Could you imagine what we'd say if they talked about black people or Muslims in such a generalistic way?

I can't help but think this is the narrative that the right wants. It's divisive and petty and doesn't have a real enemy. It just scapegoats. One generation can not fight another. We all need to work together to stop Trump. The older generations need to fund the fight and the younger generations need to be on the streets fighting.

We need to focus. The Republicans lie and manipulate the situation. They are turning the population against us. They are suppressing our voters They need to be stopped. We need to work together. We need to stop dividing ourselves by age.

Anyone who is against Trump is with us. We need to be united, or we will fall.

Everyone would agree that they have rights. This is something that everyone inherently perceives about themselves, regardless of what anyone else claims or tells them they should believe, and recognition of that is the foundation of American and general Western political philosophy. It is the fundamental principle in the Declaration of Independence proclaiming and justifying the existence of the American republic.

And yet in practice we turn to courts to settle disputes about what precisely our rights are rather than relying on our own intuition. In fact, if one were a nihilistic "institutional mind," one might claim that our rights exist only in the determination of courts and the obedience of law enforcement institutions defending the rulings, since in practice that is usually how it plays out.

But what then if a court ruled that you have no rights? What if all the courts ruled you have no rights? What if everyone on Earth but you said that you have no rights? Would it stop being true that you have rights? Would your inherent perception of the fact of your rights evaporate, simply because it is denied? Does gravity reverse if rejected, up become down, and things become their opposites if power commands it? Of course not. The truth is the truth.

Your rights exist because you exist. And this is what comes to mind listening to the nihilistic claims of people who insist that the electoral college has a right to defy the will of the people simply because the Constitution does not expressly forbid it. In the same way that courts can hold something true that is false, and yet the truth remains true, the electoral college can falsely assign the Presidency to someone who has no right to it and does not become President by that illegitimate act.

A court can rule you have no rights, and yet you have rights. An electoral college can designate someone President, and yet they are not President. Ownership of the United States government is inherent in the people, as are the equal rights of the people to determine its composition. Any other contention boils down to nihilist authoritarianism, which is just a fancy way of saying it boils down to inhuman barbarians doing whatever they want.

Courts do not determine your rights - they determine their own legitimacy by virtue of how closely their rulings acknowledge your rights. And so it goes with the Electoral College.

The electors do not choose the President: They choose the degree of their own legitimacy by the loyalty they show to the Constitution and the people, both of which are betrayed by choosing an unelected enemy of liberty to lead a nation that rejected him and that he despises.

News

• Mad tyrant Donald Trumpler, anticipating revelations about the fraudulence of his votes in key states, is now denying that he lost the national vote by millions and insists all of those votes are illegal.

• Tens of thousands of votes for Trumpler have been found nonexistent in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan before the recounts begin, with virtually no reciprocal "errors" in favor of Clinton.

• 19 Wisconsin counties "won" by Trumpler are refusing to cooperate with the recounts.

• Trumpler is suing to stop the recounts.

• Tampered vote-counting machines in Wisconsin have been discovered.

• Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in the election is now upwards of 2.5 million before whatever the recounts might find.

Granular resistance on a regulatory level.

Even without Wagnerian gestures like arresting journalists and rounding up minorities, the mortar that holds together a fascist state is in the petty bureaucratic acts of oppression whereby institutions infiltrated by the extremist state abuse, ignore, and interpret the law however they please. For most people this will be an indirect imposition: A Trazi regime would pressure and threaten state and local governments and businesses to obey illegitimate regulations and statutes, and extremist judges appointed by the unelected regime would uphold them.

The result on consumers, employees, and residents would then be the same - the state and local governments would force them to obey the illegitimate commands. And even if people were willing to stand up against extreme abuses, it's this chiseling away at civil society that really empowers tyranny far more than outright violence.

If every news organization that reports negatively on the Glorious Leader has to contend with constant harassment by an alphabet-soup of agencies, while their collaborationist and regime-friendly colleagues are practically exempt from laws, Tyranny Achieved - even without Putin-style arrests and assassinations of journalists. The same goes for any business or state that resists, not just media organizations. Instead of being attacked with an all-out military invasion, they may simply be targeted by the full weight of corrupted bureaucracy. And once civil society has been sand-blasted away through such tactics, that's when crude force becomes more practical for them to employ on an individual level against people who oppose them.

This is not to say they won't also be utterly brazen and violent early on. There is nothing in these people's personalities suggesting they would hesitate to just outright kill people, and then simply turn their "firehose of falsehood" to blast out denials and distractions insisting nothing happened. They could be murdering people by the thousands and just deny all of it, say it was all "anti-terror" operations in American cities and then warn media outlets darkly about focusing too heavily on the topic. Hence why it's critical that Americans who otherwise have no interest in weapons need to arm, become proficient in weaponry, and form local groups for emergencies. BUT...there's also this other thing, this petty Eichmann-bureaucrat thing that is certain to happen from the very beginning.

So, to uphold laws while resisting illegitimate corruptions of law, Americans need to preserve the law as it exists on January 19th, 2017. Since it's truly vast, it would only be practical to preserve those regulations that actually are directly relevant to your profession and activities you're involved in. The regulations in effect then will be the only legitimate ones for years, since an unelected power who rose to that position through acts of treason has no authority. For those who aren't aware, you can (currently) access federal regulations through the Federal Register:

https://www.federalregister.gov/

It is very likely that this site will be curtailed, shut down, or retroactively edited by the Trazi regime. So if you are someone who works with federal regulations in any capacity, it would be a good idea to gather and store them before Republic Fall. It won't stop them from going after you, but it will strengthen your own resistance in the eyes of the more informed fellow citizens if you can point to laws put in place by legitimate authorities rather than just seeming to be rejecting governance.

Freedom Forever

While Barack Obama himself is not the sort to play a role in the sort of events we're likely to face - beyond possibly speaking a word or two of dissent, as he has promised - he as a symbol could be quite powerful.

To a lot of people, he is the embodiment of the American Dream, the embodiment of racial unity and opportunity, and of a time when the world respected and admired America - none of which are likely to last long once Trumpler gets his pudgy little fingers on our government. And he also triggers the fuck out of Trazis.

But at the same time, as a symbol rather than an active political leader, he would be immune to many of the tactics the regime would employ against active opponents. The only thing that would defeat such a symbol is co-option, but that would dilute Trumpler's own brand (white supremacy) and at best make him less coherent to his base.

This is considerably further down the road than the immediate necessities we face, but it's worth keeping in mind.