The Last Temptation

It is tempting, so tempting, to be angry. To sit in frustration and let rage simmer as a radical minority twists democracy to its own ends. To scroll through the news, shaking your head, wondering how we got here. But history reminds us that fretting changes nothing. Sitting in despair solves nothing. The only answer to extremism has always been collective action.

There have always been those who seek to impose their will on the many, who mistake their power for divine right, who believe their control of a system gives them a mandate to oppress. The United States has faced these moments before. And each time, the arc of justice has only bent when ordinary people refused to be paralyzed by despair.

Frederick Douglass, speaking on the Fourth of July in 1852, reminded us that “power concedes nothing without a demand.” The abolitionists did not simply curse the cruelty of slavery; they organized, they printed newspapers, they filed lawsuits, they formed the Underground Railroad. The Civil Rights Movement did not sit idly by when Jim Crow crushed Black lives; they marched, they strategized, they endured beatings and arrests, but they never let their anger stop them from action.

And we must do the same.

Today, a radical minority is seizing every lever of government to roll back hard-won rights. They claim to speak for America, but they are only holding power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and judicial appointments made in bad faith. Their agenda, banning books, restricting bodily autonomy, dismantling public education, rewriting history, is not a reflection of the will of the people, but a desperate grasp at control.

The worst thing we can do is let them exhaust us into silence.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the Great Depression, faced a country in crisis and said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear breeds paralysis. But hope? Hope breeds movement. And history shows that when people move, when they vote, when they protest, when they challenge unjust laws in court, when they organize their communities, the tide turns.

There is no cavalry coming to save us. We are the cavalry.

If we are outraged by attempts to strip away rights, we must not merely seethe, we must mobilize. If we are exhausted by the endless barrage of attacks on democracy, we must not retreat, we must fight back with ballots, with advocacy, with local action. Because the one thing that has always stopped tyranny is an engaged and unrelenting citizenry.

John Lewis, the late congressman and civil rights hero, had a phrase for what we must do now: Get in good trouble, necessary trouble. Do not sit in frustration. Do not allow rage to consume you. Get organized. Get involved.

And above all, remember, power only concedes to those who refuse to surrender.