Polite Resystance is Acquiescence

The other night The Beloved Spouse™ and I watched Anthropoid, a World War 2 thriller based on the true story of the mission to assassinate SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the main architect behind Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution,” and known as “The Butcher of Prague.” It’s an excellent film on multiple levels and I highly recommend it.

 

It's also thought-provoking, given our current situation. Make no mistake, I am not comparing conditions in the United States in 2025 to what existed in Prague in 1938. What those people lived through is too hideous to contemplate. Even the worst of 47’s plans for immigrants and other chosen groups pale in comparison to the execution 5,000 Czechs in retaliation for Heydrich’s assassination, or the routine taking of hostages to “encourage” the betrayal of Resistance fighters.

 

Watching the film, I tried to put myself in the place of several of the characters, including those who lived in Czechoslovakia all along, and those who got out and parachuted back in to aid in the Resistance; I couldn’t do it. My personal experience makes a true understanding of their courage and self-sacrifice beyond my comprehension.

 

There is one similarity that struck me: the Czechs had no idea how long they’d have to keep this up. Chamberlain had sold them out and they were on their own until the United Kingdom entered the was after the Nazi invasion of Poland a year after Anthropoid takes place. (In fairness, the Brits were training those who parachuted back into Czechoslovakia to support the Resistance.)

 

Our situation is similar, if not as dire. We need to make up our minds to show courage and a willingness to sacrifice if we are to keep 47 and his MAGgots from destroying everything accomplished in this country over the past 100 years. While our conditions are nowhere near as bad as those faced by the European Resistance fighters during the war, we do lack one thing that helped to sustain them once the war was fully joined.

 

No one is coming to save us.

 

The time for polite talk and gatherings has passed. Chants of “Trump must go now!” are meaningless, given the current makeup of Congress. The encouragement of “good trouble” is masturbatory so long as “good trouble” means gathering, chanting, and marching with permits.

 

The upper echelons of the MAGgot movement are laughing at us. Does anyone reading this thing 47 or Vice President Possumfucker or Auschwitz Barbie or AG Barbie HHS Secretary Jack D. Ripper gives half a fuck about any of that?

 

They have to at least be inconvenienced. Gatherings of several hundred people – or more; more is always better -  in front of ICE or DHS or DOJ, or the FBI, or HHS, or Congress who got together without prior permission and have to be forcible removed would be a good start.

 

I’m not talking about violence. Law enforcement comes to clear the area, sit down. Go limp. Do not allow yourself to be escorted out; make them carry you. Whatever might get on the evening news or go viral to inspire the people outside the Beltway to take action of their own.

 

Such an approach worked during the Vietnam War, and what we’re facing here is a far more existential threat to this country than that war was. Yes, people are going to go to jail. Some will be gassed. Some may be beaten or worse. We all have to decide for ourselves what democracy is worth.

 

I’ve made my decision. Now I just need someone to point me, and not in the direction of more of the same.