Tony Chiado

The moment is spiraling. Each fascist uptick is becoming more and more of a blur. I think that Andor’s revolutionary thinker Nemik captured it well: “It’s so confusing isn’t it? So much going on, so much to say, and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it and that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine. It’s easier to hide behind forty atrocities than a single incident.”

We are now in the midst of the forty atrocities. ICE murdered a man last week in Chicago and proceeded to lie about it. The government is using its full weight to censor dissent on the public airwaves. The U.S. military is obliterating small civilian boats in international waters and then joking about it at rallies. Trump publicly presses the United States Attorney General to speed up political persecutions. The list of atrocities, affronts to life and liberty, grow with each week.

Every day, I get asked what I think about the state of our union. I say that we are living in a historic moment of immense change. True. I say that our study of history can better inform our actions in the present. True. I say that the world still turns. True. I say that our country has gotten through such moments of division before and will again. This is a lie. Is it right to tell a lie? What if my truth does more harm? What if those who ask aren’t ready to hear the truth, or speaking that truth puts me in jeopardy?

A couple of my siblings, quiet in the beginning, are now talking of moving to foreign places. One further to the Netherlands. The other closer in Canada. My immediate family has a court petition for Italian citizenship by descent that won’t be heard for another two years due to backlogs. The prospects of moving abroad are beginning to materialize out of a fuller realization of this moment. And yet, it all feels so distant. The concept of becoming an emigrant of a land I never imagined I would leave is daunting. Would such a leap save me from falling to the depths with the ground currently crumbling beneath me? Or would I come to regret my choice, seeing my old friends continue on with life mostly unimpeded back home?

When to run, or is it better to stay? Should one close the shutters and weather the storm? Or is it better to resist? How should one resist? Who will lead? These are the questions my mind is constantly reaching for right now. I have been trying to answer these questions for the better part of a year, and I still don’t have them fully resolved. And as I think about what I ought to do, I am also overtaken by what is happening around me. How powerless I feel in all of it. How ashamed I am to not be doing more.

This is the weight of forty atrocities. It disorients and confuses. What are we to care about and where are we to press our efforts when the whiplash of cruelty pulls us here and there?

The answer, at least a partial one, to these myriad questions exists. And again, it comes from Andor’s revolutionary thinker. “Try.” Care about something. Refuse indifference. Strike a conversation with an unknown neighbor. Attend a community meeting. Volunteer in community services at your church. Brave the difficult political talks with your ‘apolitical’ friends. Interrogate your own conscience regularly. These are small efforts. Seedlings that can grow.

Fascism requires social isolation. Callous indifference for one another. A stasis of the human experience. A rejection of our own humanity. The purpose of forty atrocities is to shock the nervous system into inaction. But, as Uncle Walt writes, the saving grace is “That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

You cannot forget that. I cannot forget that. I write this today to commit to memory such a simple truth: even the smallest act of humanity makes a difference.