When Will We Reach Our Tipping Point?

Perhaps we have already passed it.

March on Washington 1963. Trikosko, Marion S., photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I wonder what the tipping point is for the do-nothing Republican Congress. Will it be when their Dear Leader orders a “limited” nuclear strike on Tehran? Will it be when he cancels the midterms because of a “national emergency?” Or will it be when he infests our cities with armed, masked thugs who gun down American citizens without remorse or liability? Oops, sorry, that has already happened.

And what will be our response? More “No Kings!” rallies? Letters to those same members of Congress who cower, simper and sweat when confronted by the menacing shadow of an 80-year-old low-T crackpot and his band of knuckle-dragging incompetents? A sign in the front yard stating belief for science and Black Lives? Prayers? Bumper stickers? Yoga poses?

Really, friends, what is our tipping point? What will it take to compel us to risk our comfortable lives in the same way that thousands across the world have done recently and in the past when faced with repressive governments? I mean if the actions of this horrible administration have yet not awakened us to the utter demolition of our nation’s fragile democracy what will jostle us out of our collective stupor?

I have asked myself some hard questions. If I were in Alex Pretti’s situation and saw someone being abused by ICE’s itchy-fingered robo-cops would I run to their aid, knowing (as Pretti unfortunately did not), that I was risking my life? Or, if a Latino working across the street from me, perhaps in landscaping or roofing, were being harassed and physically abused by ICE, would I intervene and try to protect him? Or would I just stand idly by in fear of being arrested, or worse?

Hypotheticals such as these are stark realities for those courageous folks whose communities are being invaded by ICE. But they also could become a reality for all of us as our government militarizes its forces against us. Detention facilities are rapidly being built. And one only needs to look at the $70 billion approved by Congress in June for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an amount that exceeds the combined budgets of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service. Half of that amount will go to ICE. Remember that in June of 2025 in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Congress shelled out $170 billion to the DHS.

The threat that the government sees that spawned these budgets is certainly not coming from penniless migrants crossing the border seeking better lives. No, as Trump himself warns, there is a “threat from within.” And he does not mean his militia (now pardoned and roaming our streets) that stormed the Capitol on January 6. Recently he has labeled any opposition as Communists. (Sigh. Here we go again with the Red Scare.) Then there is Antifa!

Not much has changed since former Speaker of the House, Newt Gasbag Gingrich said, “The left in America is to blame for most of the current, major diseases which have struck this society. This war [against the Left] has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars.”

These current bloated budgets for a lock-and-loaded American police state are obscene, especially in the face of a mean-spirited Congress that has slashed funds for social services, Medicaid and so many other necessary safety net programs to make up the deficit caused by cutting taxes for the rich. Not to mention the doge-ing of USAID and domestic environmental protection measures.

So, what to do when the red warning lights are flashing, and when so many tipping points have been crossed, and when the abnormal becomes the norm?

In a recent book on the Syrian revolution, Days of Love and Rage, author Anand Gopal, mentions two paths regarding resistance. (Do note, I am not comparing our current situation with what occurred in Syria. After all, unlike deposed dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad, Trump is not raining barrel bombs on us or gassing us with sarin poison. Well, not yet at least. Still, there are some ideas worth contemplating.)

The first path is called the “stone cutter approach,” the idea that small continuous chips in the edifice of oppression will eventually collapse the entire autocratic structure. Gopal writes, “Every demonstration, no matter how fleeting, exposed fresh cracks in the façade. If the regime ever did collapse, it would not be solely because of the final blow but also because of the many blows that had come before…The lesson, therefore, was to stay the course and keep holding nighttime protests until the multitude of fractures could not be ignored.”

The second course of action might more accurately fit our current state of mind. Gopal calls it propaganda of the deed. In this instance, we are waiting for someone other than us to do something. We remain on the sidelines, weighed down by apathy and a sort of stupor. Gopal writes, “Neither tiny blows against the regime’s edifice nor brazen acts of sabotage truly reflected the real reason people were glued to their couches, keeping their mouths shut. Fear was the master here…people would not join the protests until it was safe to do so, but it would not be safe to do so unless everyone joined.”

That last sentence hit home, a perfect example of a catch-22 in which, according to the definition there is no escape from a conundrum “because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.”

What to do? How and when to act? Who goes first? Is it even possible to return to an America we once knew before the rise of Trump and his MAGA allies? What can we in this brawling and divided country possibly agree on?

Syria took over a decade to free itself of Assad and then ISIS. So many deaths, and too many of them caused by our own bombing as we obliterated the ISIS caliphate while not caring that women, children and entire families got in the way.

In the end, the price of an elusive western-style “freedom” was high in Syria, and then, according to author Gopal, devolved into the “tyranny of the market,” where the poor stayed poor and wealthy grew wealthier. Sound familiar?

Gopal writes that, “There is, in fact, a set of goods or values that all humans strive for, including fellowship, health, esteem, and material security. Each is as vital to human flourishing as the next, and only citizens living in a polity that recognizes this truth have any chance of thriving.”

As we witness our country being dismantled and desecrated from the top down by rapacious, greedy clowns, and as we watch tipping point after tipping point bested, can we at least agree that the time for sitting on the sidelines has passed if we want our own democracy to thrive?

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