It’s not as though we weren’t warned.
Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever.
That was published in 2018.
This was published a few days after Trump won, digesting Timothy Snyder’s warning:
Is Trump trying to kill us? Authoritarian expert says yes. Here’s how.
(Professor Snyder has since moved to Canada.)
Yesterday, The Economist gave us The Age of Chaos: How Trump’s Incoherent Trade Policy Will Do Lasting Damage.
Just a few months ago, The Economist dubbed our economy “the envy of the world.”
Because — despite its problems — it was.
And here we are today with The Third-Worlding of America by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Subhead: How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months.
Putin is succeeding beyond his wildest dreams.
(The tariffs, and Russia’s singular exemption from them, are the least of it — though he likes them, too.)
But is this what anyone here wanted?
What any of us voted for?
Would they have voted for this if they had known? Yes, 24% of American citizens voted for him (the rest voted for Kamala, were too young, or just didn’t bother). But I’m wondering what proportion of that 24% think the economy is better now, and that the country has a brighter future, with a more competent people running the government and its myriad departments and agencies, than when he took office.
Consumer confidence has plunged to its second lowest level since they began measuring it 73 years ago.
I hope you found time to read yesterday’s warning:
On April 20th, 2025, the United States may Cross the Point of No Return
> As crazy and unthinkable as all this is, remember how crazy and unthinkable the Ukrainians thought a Russian invasion was. Putin was very straightforward in assuring them and the world he would not invade. He was just conducting military exercises.
> Is it any crazier or more unthinkable than that Kash Patel runs the FBI?
Before setting foot there for the first time, he was a podcaster selling K$h-branded wine and tie pins and “an elixir,” Rachel reports, that could reverse your COVID vaccination status in case you had foolishly gotten the jab.
Acknowledging that his authorship of a children’s book extolling King Donald and his charity work on behalf of the January 6th hostages might not make him the ideal candidate to lead the world’s premier law enforcement agency, he promised to appoint as his deputy someone from within . . . but instead hired a Fox News Host Permanently Banned From YouTube who had no experience but required a full security detail 24/7, which no prior FBI deputy director had ever had, even when he was inside FBI headquarters.
Because this is an administration focused on eliminating waste and abuse as it hires the best people to fight crime.
The only possible crime here is that I could not find Rachel’s segment lambasting Patel in its original form. It is too funny.
Reacting to the April 20th doom-sayers, Oliver Kornetzke offers this message:
I keep seeing these anxious posts bubbling up from the swamp of doom-scrolls, clutching their pearls about April 20th—the day, supposedly, when the Trump regime will dust off the Insurrection Act like a vintage bottle of fascism, smash it open on the table, and toast to martial law. Constitutional rights? Suspended. Civil liberties? Vaporized. America? Repackaged as a theocratic police state with a God complex and a meth addiction.
And sure, the evidence pointing in that direction? Compelling. Chilling, even. But let’s not confuse “possible” with “inevitable” . . . and let’s certainly not confuse “dangerous” with “invincible.” This is not some fucking Marvel movie where the villain has a flawless plan. No, this is a clown car of egomaniacal sycophants with the strategic acumen of a toddler playing Risk while hopped up on Pixy Stix. . . .
[So] here’s my answer:
Don’t. Fucking. Comply.
You want to know what non-compliance looks like? It looks like whatever the hell you want it to look like. It’s not about heroism or martyrdom. It’s about being a magnificent, ungovernable pain in the ass. It’s about weaponizing inconvenience, absurdity, and joy against a system that demands fear and obedience.
Throw a wrench in the works—everywhere, all the time. Go limp when they try to arrest you. Laugh like a lunatic in the face of their solemn tyranny. Fill their inboxes with existential poetry or pictures of your morning post-coffee porcelain bowl masterpieces. Tape absurd messages in public places: “Authoritarianism gives you hemorrhoids.” Get petty. Get weird. Flush their toilet paper. Release crickets in inconvenient places. Spoil their scripts, trip their rhythm, yank the narrative from their hands.
Join a general strike. Practice the black cat sabotage—cut their supply chains not with violence but with broken protocol and creative disorder. Don’t show up. Don’t respond. Don’t cooperate. Don’t validate their authority with your silence. If you’re going to get arrested, make it for being a glorious bastard who refuses to play their game. Make a mockery of it.
Because here’s the ugly truth they don’t want you to hear: authoritarianism only works when the people allow it to work. It’s a performance, a bluff, a collective hypnosis. Break the spell. Break the frame. Mock it. Undermine it. Set it on fire (proverbially) with your refusal to kneel.
But here’s the thing—this has to be everywhere. Everyone. If you sit back, clutch your pearls, and hope someone else will jump first—you’re part of the problem. This isn’t Putin’s Russia (yet). We don’t need a handful of martyrs; we need a flood. A tsunami of “nope.” A wildfire of “fuck you.” We need resistance so widespread, so creatively chaotic, so utterly unmanageable, that the regime cracks under the weight of its own overreach.
History is watching. But more importantly, your children are watching. And if you let a pack of psychotic Bible-thumping oligarchs jackboot over your rights while you nervously refresh Twitter and do nothing—then don’t be surprised when the future looks back and calls you exactly what you were: a coward.
Choose better. Be bold. Be clever. Be feral.
And above all—DO NOT COMPLY.
And let me be crystal clear here: NO violence. None. Not a shred. That gives them the excuse they’re desperately craving to justify tyranny. What we need is coordinated, irritating, clever-as-hell, petty-as-fuck, infuriating noncompliance. Be a stone in their shoe. Be sand in their eyes. Be a bureaucratic migraine. Drive them nuts—but never give them the moral high ground. This is about outsmarting them, not becoming them.
Editors Note: This article was originally published on April 11th, 2024 on andrewtobias.com, syndicated with permission.
