The quiet power of refusing to disappear

Living in America today means that your very existence is a form of dissent. You do not even have to march, shout, or hold a sign. Just being who you are, believing what you believe, or loving who you love places you on the “opposing side” of someone else’s ideology. For some, that alone is reason enough to vilify you, legislate against you, or even fantasize about your harm.

I dissent. Not by choice, but by survival.

And here is the thing: dissent is not always fireworks and protests. Sometimes it is as quiet as going to work, paying bills, raising kids, or daring to exist while someone out there wishes you did not. My dissent is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It is a refusal to bow to any precedent or ideology that glorifies harm or feeds on dehumanization.

The hard part is this: dissent requires balance. I want to live by “do no harm,” but I also live in a country where people openly call for civil war, where pundits on primetime fantasize about door-to-door purges, and where entire power structures are invested in making the destruction of certain lives look not just palatable, but necessary.

How does one “do no harm” in a world where harm is declared as policy, framed as patriotism, or blessed in the name of God? You learn to defend. You tell the truth, even when it is inconvenient, even when it is unwelcome. You call out violence without softening it into something polite. You hold your humanity in one hand, and your survival in the other, hoping both will fit.

And here is the heartbreak that comes with it: dissent does not only meet us in headlines or rallies, it shows up at the dinner table, in the group chat, in the silence of people we thought we knew. Some will call this posture of truth “toxic empathy” or accuse it of weakness, because to them compassion without caveat is a threat. What we are living through forces declarations, even from those who once preferred neutrality. And sometimes, painfully, we discover that someone we love does not live up to the humanity we believed they carried. That recognition is not easy. It can feel like betrayal, like mourning someone who is still alive. Yet this too is part of dissent, the courage to face not only systems of power but the cracks in our own relationships, and still refuse to let cynicism become the only inheritance.

There is also the matter of persecution, a word tossed around by certain religious or ethnic groups whenever they are told they cannot strip rights from others. Let us be clear: being unable to harm someone is not persecution. Being denied the power to demean, erase, or control another human being is not persecution. If your ideology, faith, or belief system requires you to kill, to call for war, to demean or dehumanize, to hate or to wish suffering on another living soul, then the problem is not the boundary set against your behavior. The problem is the rot at the core of the belief itself. True faith does not demand cruelty. True conviction does not require a scapegoat. Humanity is not built by what we can destroy, but by what we choose to protect.

In a nation of over 300 million, dissent is inevitable. Strong ideologies collide daily about government, morality, freedom, rights. The problem is not disagreement itself, but the narratives designed to weaponize those differences, to make scapegoats, to justify cruelty. That is where dissent becomes more than personal. It becomes communal.

I dissent because I exist. Because my existence, and the existence of anyone who refuses to shrink for someone else’s comfort, is a living contradiction to their fantasy of dominance. They may call it rebellion. I call it breathing.

And maybe that is the lesson here. Dissent is not always a choice. Sometimes it is just the cost of staying human in a system that profits from your erasure. To dissent is to refuse to disappear. To dissent is to refuse to let someone else’s ideology dictate the worth of your life.

I dissent. Because survival demands it.