Perfectly stated Jack. Many people don’t always recognize when they fought back. They gave it a different name like speaking up for their kid at school. Any time you chose to taker a different view or path you have fought back. That does not require physical altercation just politely defending something or yourself.
Well said. That is step one. Step two, we need to act. People need to express their idea on what can be done. Ideas are invigorating and motivating. Comment on what you read, write your own Substack, post your opinions on social media. Every raindrop helps, and enough drops can cause a flood - flood for positive change.
Thank you, Jack. I needed this today.. most days lately. Giving up is not an option… It just isn’t. So I won’t.. not today.. not until I take my last breath
We haven’t lost… I just need to keep reminding myself of that.
File the date. June 18, 2026. The day a column argued that the most dangerous sentence in American political life right now is “nothing can be done.”
Jack is correct that exhaustion is not a side effect of authoritarian consolidation. It is the mechanism. Historians who study how democracies actually fail — not in a single dramatic collapse, but case by case, year by year — keep arriving at the same finding. Regimes do not require belief. They require fatigue. A population convinced that resistance is futile behaves identically to a population that agrees with the regime, at a fraction of the cost to the regime. Hannah Arendt saw this in the 1940s. It does not require new theory to recognize it now. It only requires attention.
Note which administrations understand this and which don’t. The ones that understand it do not try to win every argument. They try to win the argument that arguing is pointless. Once that argument is won, the rest follows on its own.
Here is where I’d press the piece further, not against it. The line about America surviving the Civil War, the Depression, Watergate, and concluding “every single time they were wrong” — that comfort is true, and it is also a structure historians have a name for: the politics of inevitability, the belief that history moves in a direction on its own, carrying us along whether we act or not. That belief is seductive precisely because it resembles hope. But it is hope’s counterfeit. It tells people they can relax. Inevitability and despair are not opposites. They are siblings. Both end in the same place: nobody at the wheel.
Jack is correct about the actual antidote, which the piece names but underweights relative to the history line: the future is negotiated daily, by particular people, making particular choices, with no guarantee attached. Not because the arc bends on its own. Because someone bends it. That is a harder thing to believe than “we always pull through,” and it is the only version of the claim that is actually true.
The piece ends in the right place — showing up, staying informed, refusing the exhaustion — it just gets there by the comforting road instead of the demanding one. Worth knowing which road you took, the next time you tell people not to give up.
Reading this while listening to the opening of the Obama Presidential Center. YES WE CAN. We can rise above the ashes of this administration's greed and hatred and senselessness. Thanks, Jack, for always telling us we can make it. #HoldingFast
I just heard Barrack Obama's speech at the opening of his center in Chicago. Everything Jack talks about and encourages was in his speech. His basic message, we, the citizens are the difference. Every small action on out part is what makes America what it is now and has always been. Good Job Jack! Obama is a pretty good endorsement.
Thank you, Jack! This American isn't giving up and I've been pissed for a very long time! I plan to be a part of beating these SoB's at their own game and then relishing in their eventual criminal prosecution and punishment carried out.
I also want to be a part of the unwinding of this Oligarchy that wants to have the ball exclusively in their court. FUCK THEM! I have a can of gasoline to add to the hell fire that they will burn in!
When you have a couple of dozen people with more money than most states, and they work to preserve that wealth, there *are* people working against the interests of most Americans. Taxing the rich isn’t good enough. Unless they behave like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Mackenzie Scott or Laurene Powell Jobs in how they use their money, they’re less than useless, they are actually harmful.
Perfectly stated Jack. Many people don’t always recognize when they fought back. They gave it a different name like speaking up for their kid at school. Any time you chose to taker a different view or path you have fought back. That does not require physical altercation just politely defending something or yourself.
#HOLDFAST
Teri
Amen to that!!! I am most concerned for our children so giving up is not and option!
Well said. That is step one. Step two, we need to act. People need to express their idea on what can be done. Ideas are invigorating and motivating. Comment on what you read, write your own Substack, post your opinions on social media. Every raindrop helps, and enough drops can cause a flood - flood for positive change.
Excellent article! I just shared it to my social media!💪
Onward and Upward❗We need to be uplifted today, Jack, Thanks and will reStack ASAP 💯👍
Thank you, Jack. I needed this today.. most days lately. Giving up is not an option… It just isn’t. So I won’t.. not today.. not until I take my last breath
We haven’t lost… I just need to keep reminding myself of that.
#Holdfast
~Susan
File the date. June 18, 2026. The day a column argued that the most dangerous sentence in American political life right now is “nothing can be done.”
Jack is correct that exhaustion is not a side effect of authoritarian consolidation. It is the mechanism. Historians who study how democracies actually fail — not in a single dramatic collapse, but case by case, year by year — keep arriving at the same finding. Regimes do not require belief. They require fatigue. A population convinced that resistance is futile behaves identically to a population that agrees with the regime, at a fraction of the cost to the regime. Hannah Arendt saw this in the 1940s. It does not require new theory to recognize it now. It only requires attention.
Note which administrations understand this and which don’t. The ones that understand it do not try to win every argument. They try to win the argument that arguing is pointless. Once that argument is won, the rest follows on its own.
Here is where I’d press the piece further, not against it. The line about America surviving the Civil War, the Depression, Watergate, and concluding “every single time they were wrong” — that comfort is true, and it is also a structure historians have a name for: the politics of inevitability, the belief that history moves in a direction on its own, carrying us along whether we act or not. That belief is seductive precisely because it resembles hope. But it is hope’s counterfeit. It tells people they can relax. Inevitability and despair are not opposites. They are siblings. Both end in the same place: nobody at the wheel.
Jack is correct about the actual antidote, which the piece names but underweights relative to the history line: the future is negotiated daily, by particular people, making particular choices, with no guarantee attached. Not because the arc bends on its own. Because someone bends it. That is a harder thing to believe than “we always pull through,” and it is the only version of the claim that is actually true.
The piece ends in the right place — showing up, staying informed, refusing the exhaustion — it just gets there by the comforting road instead of the demanding one. Worth knowing which road you took, the next time you tell people not to give up.
#HOLDFAST
Reading this while listening to the opening of the Obama Presidential Center. YES WE CAN. We can rise above the ashes of this administration's greed and hatred and senselessness. Thanks, Jack, for always telling us we can make it. #HoldingFast
We are a resilient people for sure. A song to lift it all the way up💜
https://youtu.be/b7k0a5hYnSI?is=_60__stlghSjGs8l
I just heard Barrack Obama's speech at the opening of his center in Chicago. Everything Jack talks about and encourages was in his speech. His basic message, we, the citizens are the difference. Every small action on out part is what makes America what it is now and has always been. Good Job Jack! Obama is a pretty good endorsement.
Tru Dat
Thank you, Jack! This American isn't giving up and I've been pissed for a very long time! I plan to be a part of beating these SoB's at their own game and then relishing in their eventual criminal prosecution and punishment carried out.
I also want to be a part of the unwinding of this Oligarchy that wants to have the ball exclusively in their court. FUCK THEM! I have a can of gasoline to add to the hell fire that they will burn in!
When you have a couple of dozen people with more money than most states, and they work to preserve that wealth, there *are* people working against the interests of most Americans. Taxing the rich isn’t good enough. Unless they behave like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Mackenzie Scott or Laurene Powell Jobs in how they use their money, they’re less than useless, they are actually harmful.
The impossible is just a slight delay...great article Jack, with my morning coffee...(and yes, mine is better than ole Texas Paul's)