We Live Under Authoritarian Rule

It's time to act like it.

Photo by mostafa jamei on Unsplash

The president is preparing a takeover of the nation’s capital. He says he’s doing it because crime has gotten “out of control” in D.C.

Many of us know the real reason has nothing to do with crime or homelessness. It has everything to do with flexing strength, exercising control, and silencing dissent. This administration is pushing us deeper into an unofficial state of martial law, something we knew was coming but couldn’t quite fathom.

Well, it’s here.

We don’t live in a democracy anymore, not even the illusion of one. We live under an authoritarian regime that’s installing “bias monitors” at major broadcasting companies and openly strongarming media platforms to reward propaganda. They’re destroying access to vaccines and other public health programs. They’re rolling back protections against everything from air pollution to fraud, while dousing us with lies about the state of the planet’s climate crisis.

They’ve killed public broadcasting as we know it. They’re even ordering the destruction of satellites that monitor CO2 emissions.

Just over the last few weeks, the president promised to jail his political rivals and promoted videos that bring his fantasies to life. He threatened to deport U.S. citizens. He opened investigations into rival fundraising organizations. As we all know now, his unhinged rants have a way of turning into laws.

We go through periods where life still feels relatively normal, but it’s not—and probably never will be again.

It’s time to protect yourself.

What would we do?

First, get into a habit of reminding yourself: You’re not an alarmist. You’re not paranoid. Everyone else is just asleep at the wheel. The first thing you have to do is protect your personal information. It’s something I’ve been working on all year, and right now I’m making another push to get it all done.

If you plan on doing any kind of organizing, now is the time to double down on protecting your data and your online activities. It doesn’t matter if you’re a journalist, a community leader, an activist, an artist, a homesteader, a blogger, or a random internet scribbler. This administration sees us all the same. They don’t like your tomato garden any more than they do a protest.

They’re just prioritizing now.

There’s no such thing as taking too many precautions. There’s no such thing as moving too fast. There’s no such thing as taking things too seriously. If anything, moments like today remind us we’ve been moving too slow. If you were thinking about getting a second unlocked phone, get it. If you were thinking about getting a second computer to keep your activities separate, do it.

If you’re concerned about big tech’s disregard for your privacy and intellectual property, ditch them. Get off Google and Microsoft for good if you can. Find a secure operating system like Linux. Find an encrypted cloud storage system. (Hint: not Dropbox.) Consider dropping cloud storage for external drives. Get a VPN. It’s true, they might already have a lot of your data. There might be things you can’t fully protect. There’s no reason to give up.

There’s no reason to make it easy.

This isn’t to say the administration plans to start throwing everyone in jail next week, but they’re definitely going to leverage every tool they can to make it harder for us to talk about things we care about. What they want is for everyone to focus on their career goals and personal development while they ransack the world for its remaining resources and prepare for neverending warfare.

I’ll be writing more about this soon.

Just remember, you’re not nuts.

We’ve entered a new era. Some of us still believe we can regain what we’ve lost. Others never had it to begin with. Regardless, when you combine the political developments with the ecological ones, you arrive at a clear understanding that whatever emerges from these years won’t look like anything we’ve ever seen, no matter who’s running things in four years.

Get ready.