An unflinching look at how truth collapses, who helps it fall, and what we’re still pretending not to see.

There are seasons in history when the greatest threat to a regime isn’t war, rebellion, or resistance. It’s the truth.

Not capital-T Truth, in the philosophical or spiritual sense—but the smaller, more dangerous kind. The truth that doesn’t need to shout. The kind that sits in a mother’s silence after the news broadcasts another law criminalizing her child’s existence. The kind carried in a whistleblower’s hands. The kind that chokes in your throat when you realize what you’re seeing isn’t hypothetical anymore. It’s happening.

And it’s happening here.

We’re in the second term of a man whose first reign was marked by cruelty, chaos, and lies so constant they became background noise. But if you think this sequel is just more of the same, you’re not paying attention. This time, it’s quieter. Sharper. More efficient. The architecture of authoritarianism doesn’t arrive as a wrecking ball. It comes as a renovation. A promise to restore what never truly existed. And the wreckage is called progress.

Let’s stop pretending America is confused. Confusion implies we don’t know what we’re looking at. But history has given us the blueprint. We’ve seen these tools before. Book bans, culture wars, purges of educators, propaganda dressed up as “parental rights.” We’ve watched regimes rise not just through brute force but through narratives that are crafted, repeated, and weaponized. The people who orchestrate this moment know exactly what they’re doing. The question is: do we?

If you’re still asking whether it “could happen here,” you’re already behind. It is. Slowly. Strategically. And just like before—just like under Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin—it begins with the erosion of shared reality. Not overnight. Not with a single catastrophe. But through a thousand small edits to the truth. A thousand moments of “it’s not that bad.” A thousand scrolls past the headline.

This is how you unmake a democracy. Not by one dramatic coup but by training people not to care that it’s dying.

Ask yourself this: What do you believe is worth protecting if truth itself is no longer one of those things?

Because we are living through a time when falsehood is not just tolerated—it’s monetized. Weaponized. Made algorithmically addictive. In this system, truth is treated like a liability. Something inconvenient to those in power, something too fragile for the public to hold. So it’s replaced. Bit by bit. First with alternative facts. Then with institutional purges. Then with fear, dressed up in the language of patriotism.

Here’s what we should be asking honestly, urgently:

·       At what point does silence become complicity?

·       What stories are we telling ourselves to feel safe in the face of growing injustice?

·       How does a culture normalize inhumanity and what role does each of us play in that normalization?

·       What do we lose when we allow truth to be categorized by political preference instead of ethical reality?

We are not innocent bystanders. We are participants in the algorithm. Consumers of the story. And in many ways, collaborators in the soft coup of empathy, nuance, and fact.

This is not meant to shame. But it is meant to wake us.

Because what’s rising around us is not just the far-right. It’s the infrastructure of unaccountable power. And it doesn’t always wear the face of a dictator. Sometimes it wears the smile of a neighbor. The calm of a school board candidate. The polished language of a corporate DEI memo that quietly disappears once the funding dries up. The danger isn’t always in the chaos. Sometimes it’s in the quiet.

So no, I don’t have a traditional agenda. I’m not here to push party lines or echo chambers. I’m here to say: unless Truth is the agenda, we are lost.

Because truth is what keeps the floor beneath us from giving way. It’s what forces a nation to reckon. To correct. To remember. And when it goes, what’s left isn’t debate, it’s delusion.

Some will ask: But what can we do?

That’s the wrong question, at least at first. The better one is: What are we refusing to see?

Because once the truth is visible, resistance becomes instinct. But if we never let it in, if we anesthetize ourselves with false equivalency, with whataboutism, with convenience…we lose before the fight begins.

Let’s be honest about where humanity gets lost.

It gets lost when we prioritize comfort over conscience. When we redefine “safety” as the absence of confrontation. When we’re more afraid of being called divisive than we are of becoming irrelevant. When we watch, numb, as book after book is pulled from shelves and call it “a local issue.” When we wait for someone braver to speak.

And it’s not just America. Globally, the tide is rising. Hungary. India. Brazil. Israel. Even in so-called liberal democracies, we see creeping authoritarianism disguised as “cultural protection,” “economic revitalization,” or “traditional values.” The language always shifts. The mechanics do not.

The question then becomes: what’s the fuel? What drives these cycles of control, repression, and cruelty?

It’s not just hate. Hate is a symptom. The engine is fear. And the currency is myth.

Fear that someone else’s equality means your erasure. Fear that the world is changing faster than your ability to understand it. Fear that your pain will be overlooked if someone else’s suffering is centered. These fears are real. But they’re exploited. Not by the powerless, but by the powerful. By those who know how to turn fear into votes, into loyalty, into laws.

And what of myth? That’s where the real power lies. The myth of national innocence. The myth of meritocracy. The myth of a past worth returning to.

Every regime needs a myth. Ours has always been the American Dream. But it’s time to admit that for many, that dream was never accessible. For others, it’s becoming a nightmare.

And here’s the part that no one really wants to say out loud:

Some of the people who helped build this world are people I’ve known. Sat next to at weddings. Shared baby pictures with. People who once checked in on my mother’s health or brought soup after surgery. Not monsters. Just people. People who smiled in family photos and voted for policies that endangered our lives. People who posted Bible verses by morning and defended white nationalism by night. People who insisted they were “good” while quietly cheering for cruelty as long as it didn’t reach their doorstep.

That’s what makes this so devastating. The betrayal isn’t always loud. It’s often dressed in respectability. In emails that say “we just disagree politically,” as if what’s on the table is tax code and not our right to exist with safety, dignity, and breath.

And let’s be honest, our nervous systems weren’t built for this kind of fracture. This constant background hum of betrayal. We’ve normalized pretending to be okay while absorbing wave after wave of political gaslighting from people we once trusted. It has a cost. Not just socially or spiritually, but physically.

So what are we supposed to do with all this?

What do you do when truth becomes dangerous not because of the state, but because it threatens your own sense of belonging? What happens when the people in your circle become active participants in the erosion of your safety, and still expect you to come to the baby shower?

That’s not rhetorical. That’s what a lot of us are living through. And it’s messing with our nervous systems in ways we don’t have language for yet. It’s grief. It’s cognitive dissonance. It’s hypervigilance at the dinner table. It’s panic attacks on holidays. It’s emotional whiplash from seeing someone who once loved you vote to criminalize your identity.

We need to name this.

We need to say: it’s okay to protect your peace. To cut ties. To grieve. To walk away from conversations that threaten your mental health under the guise of “civil discourse.” We don’t owe ourselves to the people who voted against our humanity.

But we also need to resist the urge to lose our own humanity in the process. Not forgiveness. Not forced grace. But clarity. We need clear eyes and a soft heart. Because if we let rage calcify into numbness, they win. That’s the goal of authoritarianism. Emotional disintegration.

We stay whole by telling the truth. Even when it hurts. Even when it’s complicated. Even when we know the people we’re talking about will read it and say, “That’s not me.” Especially then.

This isn’t just political anymore. It’s personal. It always has been.

And here’s what cuts even deeper: so many of them call themselves Christians.

The kind who post verses on Facebook. Who end texts with “praying hands” emojis. Who host women’s Bible studies and donate to missions in countries they couldn’t find on a map. The ones who’ve been to Israel but couldn’t stomach five minutes in a Black church. The ones who said “love the sinner, hate the sin” when queer kids came out, but stayed silent when those same kids died by suicide.

I was raised in that world. I know the cadence. I know the verses. I know the quiet, deep programming that taught people to weaponize “righteousness” as a substitute for morality. But what I didn’t know—what I’m still trying to reconcile—is how many of those same people would become some of the most ardent supporters of fascism in my lifetime.

It’s not a coincidence.

Because American Christianity, as it’s often practiced, is not about love. It’s about control. It’s about hierarchy. And it’s about exceptionalism masquerading as salvation.

Christianity, particularly white evangelicalism, has always been used as a gauntlet. A kind of holy passcode through which unthinkable violence can be justified, as long as it’s framed as “God’s will.” And just like during the rise of other authoritarian regimes, faith becomes the smoke screen. The moral cover. The branding. It’s how you get millions of people to support cruelty while still believing they’re the good guys.

And that’s the terrifying part: they don’t think they’re evil. They think they’re obedient.

They cherry-pick the commandments that reinforce their comfort and ignore the ones that require their compassion. They invoke Jesus when it’s convenient and crucify him again when he threatens their power. They preach purity while excusing predators. They demand obedience from women but none from their own flesh. And above all, they claim moral clarity while participating in systems designed to dehumanize.

If the Jesus they believe in walked into one of their churches today—dark-skinned, barefoot, speaking Aramaic, asking about the poor—they’d call ICE.

This isn’t a faith crisis. It’s a moral collapse masquerading as doctrine.

And still, we’re told we have to respect it. That it’s “their belief.” As if belief is somehow divorced from consequence. As if your Sunday sermon exists in a vacuum and doesn’t inform who you vote for, whose rights you strip, whose children get put in cages.

It’s time we say it plain: Religion without empathy is just cruelty in robes.

And I say this with a grieving heart, not a bitter one. Because I know what faith can be. I’ve felt it in rooms where real love was spoken. Where humility was practiced. Where nobody had to be erased to feel blessed.

But that’s not what this is. This is empire cosplaying as church. This is the Bible rebranded as a border wall.

And if your god requires the suffering of others to affirm your salvation, then your god is not God.

So here we are. Not on the brink. Not on the edge. Already inside the story we swore we’d never repeat.

And we have a choice. Not between parties but between delusion and truth.

The truth is uncomfortable. It doesn’t flatter us. It doesn’t let us off the hook. But it’s the only thing that can keep us human in a time designed to strip us of our humanity.

So no, I don’t have a neat call to action. No bullet list of solutions. Just this:

Pay attention to what is being erased in the name of tradition. Pay attention to who is being punished in the name of order. Pay attention to what truths are being silenced so lies can pass as law.

And then decide who you are when nobody is watching. That’s your real vote.

So if you're still looking for an agenda, let it be this: Stay human. Even when the systems around you aren't. Even when the people you once trusted choose doctrine over decency. Even when the truth feels like the loneliest place on earth.

Stay there anyway. That’s where the real work begins.

 

Tasha Monroe

Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.

Editor & Writer, The Commons Dispatch

This piece is part of The Commons Dispatch.

Twice a month, we sit with the hard stuff that require reflection, resistance, and viewing the world as it actually is. It’s not perfect, but it’s honest. From Simply Edyn & Co., for whoever’s still listening. 

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