There was a game we played as kids called connect the dots. You draw the lines and the hidden picture appears. I think it is time we start connecting the very real, life‑altering dots that have been staring us in the face for years.

The picture is not pretty. It is smoldering. Literally. Economies wobble, leaders lie, neighbors distrust each other, and the news cycle spins us until we are too dizzy to follow the hand that lit the match. Still, every day, we are told to perform normalcy. Buy the groceries. Post the quote. Pretend the house is not burning down around us.

That performance is killing us.

We have been trained to fake resilience. Smile through it. Call exhaustion a personal failure instead of what it is. A symptom of a system designed to drain you. That is not survival. That is performance survival. Dying slowly while convincing everyone else you are fine.

Meanwhile, there has always been a plan. It was not hidden. It was published, distributed, and voted for. Project 2025. A scalpel‑precise blueprint to concentrate power in the hands of a few. The chosen vessel is a man who thrives on attention and chaos. He is a blunt tool for billionaires and corporations to extract what they want while gutting the programs that keep people alive.

Tariffs get sold as strength. Let us be clear. A tariff is a tax on the American consumer. It hits small businesses and farmers first. It drives up prices at the register and squeezes families that are already stretched thin. It is not clever strategy. It is a pressure tactic. When people are desperate, power consolidates. Farms, homes, public lands. Stripped from the many. Handed to the few. The middle class erased.

And yes, that includes the voters who thought they were only signing up for mean tweets and a culture war. Hate is a snake that bites its own tail. If you vote to burn down your neighbor, do not be surprised when the flames reach your porch. The fine print says the fire does not discriminate.

Human Dignity Under Siege

Let us talk plainly about women. About human dignity. Because this is not only about policy. It is about control. There is a loud, well‑funded movement of men, and the women who follow them, who openly fantasize about stripping women of the right to vote, to live independently, to make legal choices over their own bodies and lives.

They dress it up in religion. They call it tradition. They wave flags and use the word patriot. But we know the truth. What they are building is an environment of silence, abuse, harm, and death. For women. For queer people. For immigrants and refugees. For anyone branded other.

There is a pattern here. The loudest voices promise order while sowing chaos. They criminalize care. They punish autonomy. They rewrite law to match their fear. They want a country where a woman is property, and a child is a talking point. Where classrooms are quiet not because students feel safe but because books are gone and truth is outlawed.

The backlash is not about morality. It is about hierarchy. There is nothing more dangerous than a man who has been given every systemic advantage and still cannot thrive. When the data shows that women and marginalized people are earning degrees, leading companies, saving lives, and building communities in a system never built for them, the fragile answer is rage. That rage shows up as gun worship. As book bans. As abortion bans. As rules that tie your hands while calling it protection.

The Oath To Do Harm

We like to pretend this level of cruelty is accidental. It is not. It is deliberate. The strategy is simple. Break people down until they are too numb, too exhausted, and too scared to resist. Attack universities. Defund science. Turn experts into villains. Replace evidence with influencers. Ban books because ideas are threats. Rewrite the map of truth until people give up trying to find it.

There is another layer that many people miss. The quiet revival of eugenic thinking. The farm logic of culling the herd. The fantasy that a nation is stronger when the vulnerable are left to die. We see it when healthcare is stripped from the sick. When disabled people are treated like cost centers instead of human beings. When special education is starved of resources. When public health is mocked until it collapses.

We are told it is about efficiency. About personal responsibility. About letting nature take its course. But nature is not doing this. Policy is. Budgets are. Leaders are. And the outcome is the same. A tamed, trained, obedient population that does not ask questions and does not make demands.

Performance Survival vs Real Survival

Here is a truth we do not say enough. Numbness is not apathy. Numbness is grief wearing armor. People are grieving stability that was stolen. Futures that were shrunk. Bodies that ache from stress and sickness. Freedoms eroded under the polite branding of order. Grief walks through the world looking like you do not care. But you do. You are hurting.

Real survival starts when we stop faking resilience and start telling the truth. I am tired. You are tired. We are not fine. The house is on fire.

Now we link arms. Now we choose each other. Now we reorganize our power and our priorities around what actually keeps human beings alive. Food. Housing. Wages. Healthcare. Education. Dignity. Safety that is not code for punishment. Truth that is not filtered through propaganda.

The International Stakes

Look beyond our borders. What happens here does not stay here. Authoritarians study each other. They borrow tactics. They road‑test narratives. When a wealthy country normalizes cruelty in the name of order, smaller countries feel the aftershocks.

Trade wars do not simply dent stock charts. They starve families who depend on steady prices for grain and fuel. Supply chain games translate into empty shelves in places that cannot afford to wait. Climate denial in one capital becomes floods, droughts, and fires in another. When refugees are treated like invaders instead of survivors, nations that relied on human movement become pressure cookers.

All of this is connected. The arms deals. The sanctions. The disinformation. The surveillance tech exported as if it were just another product. The private militias dressed as police. The public police dressed for war. If cruelty is rewarded here, it will be replicated everywhere.

History’s Echoes

History does not only repeat. It mutates. In the 1930s, fascists did not begin with tanks at borders. They began with stories. With scapegoats. With the illusion of restoration. With neighbors turning on neighbors because someone told them that progress is theft and equality is an attack.

We have seen other versions. Jim Crow. McCarthyism. COINTELPRO. The long, coordinated effort to punish people who organize for dignity. The throughline is always the same. Call freedom a threat. Call equality chaos. Call truth a virus. Then sell the cure. The cure is always submission.

There is a reason book bans happen first. Repress memory and you can rewrite the future. There is a reason women’s bodies are targeted. Control birth and you control destiny. There is a reason teachers, journalists, artists, and scientists are treated like enemies. They create language, context, and evidence. They interfere with the machinery of propaganda.

What Solidarity Looks Like

Solidarity is not a hashtag. It is work. It is a daily practice that refuses to leave people behind. It is also strategic. Here is what it can look like right now.

     I.         Build local safety nets that are not performative. Mutual aid that keeps people fed, housed, and connected. Quiet funds for emergency healthcare and legal defense. Transportation networks for clinic access and court dates.

  II.         Defend the information commons. Support independent journalists. Subscribe and share. Organize local teach‑ins on media literacy. Help people read statistics and budgets. Help them spot disinformation and look for the source.

III.         Protect schools and libraries. Show up to board meetings. Read the agenda. Bring neighbors. If you cannot speak, stand. If you cannot stand, write. If you cannot write, vote.

IV.         Turn grief into organized power. Support unions. Respect picket lines. Donate to strike funds. Push for fair contracts in your own workplace. If you do not have a union, gather your co‑workers and talk about one.

   V.         Hold the line in elections that feel small. City councils. County commissions. School boards. Judges. Sheriffs. State legislators. Authoritarian projects are built from the ground up. Democracy has to be rebuilt the same way.

VI.         Build unexpected coalitions. Nurses and pastors. Farmers and grad students. Veterans and poets. Tech workers and janitors. Parents and teenagers. When you organize across difference, you trip the sensor that keeps people divided.

VII.         Make digital life livable. Help your people secure their devices. Turn on two‑factor authentication. Use community channels that are not owned by a single billionaire. Teach your elders how to spot scams. Teach your teens how to set boundaries.

VIII.         Keep a record. When books are banned, create underground libraries. When public meetings go dark, document what you can. When officials speak in code, translate it. Memory is a form of power.

IX.         Vote like your body is on the ballot because it is. Then keep going the day after. Elections are checkpoints, not finish lines.

  X.         Make room for joy. Sing. Cook. Dance. Garden. Write. Healing is not a luxury. It is a strategy. Authoritarian systems hate people who can feel joy because joy makes you brave.

What We Will Not Do

We will not coddle cruelty. We will not normalize bigotry. We will not accept kings. We will not waste time on debates designed to make us chase our tails. We will not mistake neutrality for objectivity. We will not confuse cynicism for wisdom. We will not give up the language of love to people who only use it as a slogan.

We will not accept a politics that treats human beings as inputs. We will not accept an economy that calls people waste. We will not accept a justice system that declares some lives disposable.

A Word to the Loud and Wrong

To the people who insist that equality is oppression. That diversity is a threat. That care is weakness. Hear me. This country belongs to all of us. Not to kings. Not to strongmen. Not to one faith or one race or one story. To all of us.

You are not being replaced. You are being asked to share. You are not being silenced. You are being asked to listen. You are not under attack. You are being asked to stop attacking.

If that feels like loss, let me offer another word for it. Maturity.

A Word to the Ladies

Ladies, I am speaking to you. If you have ever been told to be smaller, quieter, nicer, more grateful for less, this is your alarm. I will not argue with anyone asking what a woman is. I am a woman. So are the women in your life. So are the girls becoming women right now who deserve a future with choices and safety and joy.

We do not need permission to defend ourselves. We do not need permission to lead. We do not need permission to vote like our lives depend on it. We do not need permission to form our own coalitions, our own economic networks, our own media, our own sanctuaries.

If someone is asking you to trade dignity for protection, understand the trap. The protection is the prison.

A Word to the Gentlemen Who Get It

To the men who understand that equality is not a loss. Thank you. We need you. Not as saviors. As partners. Use your access. Spend your capital. Open your networks. Speak up in rooms where women and queer people and immigrants are not present. Take the risk so others do not always have to. Teach the boys in your life that strength is the muscle that holds compassion.

What It Means to Be Human Right Now

This is not about optimism. This is about clarity. The world is not asking us to be hopeful. It is asking us to be human. That is harder than it sounds. It requires that we feel. That we testify. That we protect each other. That we tell the truth even when our voices shake.

Human is not a brand. It is a practice. It looks like feeding someone who is hungry without asking for their papers. It looks like paying a worker on time and with respect. It looks like refusing to share a lie even when it would get you likes. It looks like telling your kids the truth and then giving them tools to live inside it.

Human is the last rebellion worth fighting for.

The Call

The house is on fire. We cannot afford performance survival anymore. We cannot afford numbness. We must feel. We must link arms. We must speak truth to power. Before it is too late.

Democracy is worth saving, but the work in front of us is even more basic. Life over eugenics. Community over cruelty. Dignity over greed.

Every human being, native or immigrant or refugee or whatever label is used to other you, deserves food security, living wages, and a life of dignity. Everyone. Here and abroad. If you disagree with that, you can kiss my ass. Sorry, Mama and Daddy. It had to be said.

Now let us organize. Let us build. Let us be brave. Let us be HUMAN(E). 

 

Author: Tasha Monroe

Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.

Writer & Editor, The Commons Dispatch