Sam Post

Tyler Perry’s Doing Life, which came out on Netflix this month, is the only Tyler Perry movie I’ve ever seen. 

The setup is simple. Anika is a single mother who once worked as a prison officer. Carousel is an inmate serving time for attempted murder. During a riot, he protects her and her unborn child. Afterward they begin writing letters, and what grows out of those letters becomes the heart of the movie. Then Carousel gets out, and the romance has to leave the page and survive the real world, including Anika’s family, who want nothing to do with a man carrying a prison record.

Perry has said the film is an homage to two ’90s Black love stories, Love Jones and Jason’s Lyric. So yes, it’s a love story. But what stayed with me wasn’t really the romance. It was Carousel.

People don’t just like this character. They love him.

After I watched it, I went looking for what other people thought, and I ended up watching a handful of YouTube reviews. A few were done by psychotherapists, which surprised me. And what struck me was the tone.

Usually when people love a movie, they talk about the movie: the acting, the plot, the ending, the music. These reviewers talked about Carousel the way you’d talk about a man you know. Men and women both. They went on about what a good man he was, how steady, how decent, how responsible. Some of the women seemed half in love with him. It was almost as if he weren’t a character in a film at all, or a big-screen heartthrob, but somebody they’d met and couldn’t stop thinking about.

I found that fascinating. Here’s a man with a violent crime in his past, and audiences aren’t forgiving him in spite of it so much as admiring him because of what he’s done with it. That’s a particular kind of hero, and I wanted to figure out which kind.

A classic Joseph Campbell hero

My first thought was that Carousel is a classic hero, and I still think so. I mean that in the sense Joseph Campbell laid out in The Hero with a Thousand Faces back in 1949. Campbell noticed that hero stories all over the world share the same bones. The hero leaves the ordinary world, descends into some kind of underworld, survives an ordeal that changes him, and then comes back carrying something of value for the people at home.

Carousel hits those marks almost exactly. Prison is his underworld. The riot is his ordeal, the moment of physical courage when he puts himself between violence and a woman and her child. In the letters we watch the inner transformation happen. And then he comes back out into the world, determined to take responsibility for his past and build a different future, down to working toward law school.

What makes him a little unusual is that his big heroic act comes early. After the riot, his trials aren’t tests of strength. They’re tests of character: patience when he’s judged, humility when he’s doubted, steadiness when it would be easier to walk away. That quieter heroism is probably why some people describe him as almost saintly. But a saint doesn’t usually begin with an attempted-murder conviction. Carousel is something more familiar, and to me more moving: a man who fell, and climbed back.

In good company

Carousel belongs to a long line of characters who went into prison one man and came out another. Three of them came to mind right away.

Jean Valjean, from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, is the great ancestor. He serves nineteen years, starting with a stolen loaf of bread, and comes out hardened and bitter. Then a bishop shows him mercy he doesn’t deserve, and Valjean spends the rest of his life trying to become worthy of it. But society never lets him forget. He’s required to carry the yellow passport that marks him as an ex-convict, and doors close in his face wherever he shows it. Anika’s family, looking at Carousel and seeing only his record, are holding up their own version of that yellow passport.

Red, from The Shawshank Redemption, is the second. Most people remember Andy Dufresne, but Andy was innocent. Red was guilty of murder, and he knew it. He spends decades inside, grows into wisdom and decency, and finally earns his parole. Then comes the frightening part: learning how to live in a world that kept moving without him. Like Carousel, Red’s real test begins when the gate opens.

Malcolm X is the third, and he’s not a fictional character, which makes him the most powerful example. In prison he copied the dictionary page by page, read everything he could get his hands on, and found faith and discipline. He came out a different man, a teacher and a leader. When I watched Carousel set his sights on law school, I thought of Malcolm educating himself in a cell.

Of the three, only Valjean has a moment of physical heroism like Carousel’s. In one famous scene he crawls under a runaway cart and lifts it off a trapped old man, knowing that a feat of strength like that might give away his past. Red and Malcolm X were brave in other ways, but they never had a scene like the riot. Carousel has both: the dramatic act of courage that makes a classic hero, and the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding a life that Red and Malcolm had to face.

What these men share isn’t purity. Every one of them did wrong. What they share is that the wrong didn’t get the last word.

The hardest part of the journey

Here’s the thing about Campbell that I think explains why Doing Life works. Campbell said the hardest stage of the hero’s journey isn’t the descent or the ordeal. It’s the return. The hero comes home changed, and the ordinary world doesn’t believe it, doesn’t understand it, or doesn’t want what he’s bringing back.

Most movies skip that part. They end at the triumph, with the credits rolling over the victory. Doing Life does the opposite. The heroic deed happens early, and nearly the whole film lives in the return: a transformed man trying to come home to a world, and a family, that still sees the old record. Redemption here isn’t a trophy you win at the end. It’s something you have to keep living, one ordinary day after another.

Maybe that’s why people love Carousel the way they do. He isn’t a superhero, and he isn’t a saint. He’s a man doing the unglamorous work that most heroes never get shown doing. A lot of folks know someone like him, or wish they did, or are trying to be him.

So here’s my verdict, for what it’s worth. Carousel is a character in a movie, in the tradition of Jean Valjean, Red, and Malcolm X. It’s a good movie.

A note on how this came about: After watching the movie, I asked Gemini whether Carousel was a classic hero, then kept the conversation going with Claude. This post grew out of those conversations, and Claude helped me draft it. The observations and opinions are mine; the writing was a collaboration.

I sell a product that is completely legal to buy. Legal to possess. Legal to drive home with in your glove compartment. Legal to store in your house. Legal to share with a friend.

The only thing that’s arguably not legal is smoking it.

More precisely — and this is where it gets genuinely strange — what’s arguably illegal is a single combustion event lasting less than one second. The moment between the lighter and the inhale. After that, it’s gone. Metabolized. Exhaled into the atmosphere. The evidence has literally vanished in smoke.

Welcome to the world of THCA flower.

Here’s the chemistry, as simply as I can put it. THCA is the raw, unactivated form of THC — the cannabinoid that produces cannabis’s well-known effects. In the living plant, virtually all of the psychoactive potential exists as THCA, not THC. They’re the same molecule with one small difference: THCA has an extra carboxyl group attached, which makes it non-intoxicating. Apply heat and that group detaches, THCA converts to THC, and the experience is identical to conventional cannabis.

I sometimes explain it to customers this way: think of a green banana. It’s still a banana. Same plant, same destination. It just needs a little time — or a little heat — to get there.

Federal law defines legal hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3% Delta-9 THC. THCA, being technically a different molecule, doesn’t count toward that threshold under the most widely applied interpretation of the 2018 Farm Bill. So hemp growers can legally cultivate plants with THCA percentages in the twenties — potency levels comparable to anything in a licensed cannabis dispensary — harvest them early, test them immediately, and sell them legally in states that haven’t legalized recreational cannabis.

The plants are picked like green tomatoes. The lab tests hold up in court. And an entire industry — a genuinely popular, genuinely helpful industry serving millions of people — has been built around this chemistry.

Now here’s the part I find both funny and a little profound.

The customer who walks into my store, asks good questions, selects a product thoughtfully, pays legally, drives home legally, and sits down in their own home with a legal product — that person becomes, under the strictest reading of federal law, a criminal for approximately one second. The moment between lighting and inhaling. Then it’s over. The THC is in their system, which is not illegal. The THCA is gone. The flower is gone. There’s nothing left to prosecute.

The transaction was legal. The possession was legal. The consumption was legal a second later. The one arguably illegal moment produced no victim, no harm, and no evidence.

I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice. The regulatory picture around THCA is genuinely unsettled and may change — there are serious efforts underway to apply a “total THC” standard that would reclassify most THCA flower as marijuana regardless of Delta-9 content. Consumers should stay informed.

But I think about the people who come into my store. Retirees with arthritis. Veterans with PTSD. People who can’t sleep, people managing chronic pain, people who tried cannabis decades ago and want to revisit it now that the stigma has softened and they understand it better. People who, in a legal cannabis state, would simply be customers. Here, they’re navigating a one-second legal gray area that exists because a federal definition written in 2018 didn’t anticipate this market.

Most of them know it’s a little absurd. They shake their heads and laugh a little, the way you laugh at something that’s too ridiculous to be worth getting angry about.

I sell them their flower. They go home. Nothing bad happens.

The law will catch up eventually. It always does.

Citizens United didn’t break American democracy all at once. It did it the way a slow leak ruins a foundation — quietly, incrementally, until one day you notice the floor is gone.

That day may be now.

What we are watching in real time — the Trump crypto schemes, the AIPAC money floods, Elon Musk purchasing a seat in government with his checkbook, legislators trading stocks on information the rest of us will never have — is not corruption in the traditional sense. Corruption implies deviation from the norm. This is the norm. Citizens United made it the norm. The billionaires didn’t break the rules. They bought the rules, rewrote them, and handed them back to us with a straight face.

But if you want to see where the logic ends up when you follow it all the way out, look at Iran. The world despises this war. Most people in this country despise this war. It is doing damage to our standing, our treasury, and our moral position that will take generations to repair — if it can be repaired at all. We have been given no honest reason for it. What we have been given is this: while their father wages war, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have been quietly building a portfolio of drone companies with Pentagon contracts. Eric invested in Xtend, an Israeli drone firm whose attack drones have already been deployed to Iran. Don Jr. has a $4 million stake in a drone parts startup that just received a $620 million Pentagon loan — the largest in the history of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital. The bombs pay for themselves, if you’re the right family. The drones need to be replaced. The contracts need to be filled. The money flows upward, as it was designed to do, while the dying happens elsewhere and the bill gets handed to the rest of us.

That is not corruption as deviation. That is the system as intended. That is the ultimate oligarch — one who has collapsed the distance between the national treasury and the family business, and uses the deaths of strangers as a revenue model.

And Iran is not the only place where this logic is operating. The images of military-style vehicles on American streets, the warehouses being bought up in secret across the country and converted into detention facilities, the ICE agents terrorizing communities — there is money in that too. Two private prison companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic, have essentially cornered the detention market. GEO Group reported a 700% increase in profits last year on the back of Trump administration contracts. CoreCivic’s CEO gave $800,000 to Trump’s campaign and inaugural committee. In return they received no-bid contracts — the competitive bidding process suspended by executive order — and a $45 billion taxpayer commitment to build more facilities. Trump’s own attorney general lobbied for GEO Group before taking office. The company is headquartered near Mar-a-Lago. The warehouses being purchased in secret, the ones local communities are fighting to stop, will be run by these same companies, at these same guaranteed rates, whether they are full or empty. Terrorizing immigrants is not just policy. It is a revenue model, and the people who funded the policy are collecting the revenue.

The destination has a name. It’s called oligarchy. And we have arrived.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Americans have something that populations living under centuries of feudalism or authoritarian rule often don’t have: muscle memory. We remember, not so long ago, a middle class that worked and mostly made it. We remember, imperfectly and incompletely, something that felt like a government that at least had to pretend to represent us. That memory doesn’t die easily. It becomes grievance. And grievance, in enough people at once, becomes a movement.

And then there’s the generation that doesn’t have the memory themselves — the under-30s who have only known this version of the country, this version of government, this culture that the grift produced. You might think that works in the oligarchy’s favor. It doesn’t. Because these people grew up with parents who had the memory, who talked about it at the dinner table whether they knew it or not. They grew up with the internet, which means they’ve seen what it looks like in other places — countries where working people don’t get treated like an afterthought, where healthcare doesn’t bankrupt you, where the government occasionally does something that isn’t a wealth transfer upward. They don’t have muscle memory. They have something else: the clarity of people who never had illusions to lose. They know exactly what this is. They’ve always known. And they are furious in a way that doesn’t fade, because it was never disappointed hope — it was always just anger at a condition they were handed and never asked for.

And there is another group whose experience the muscle memory argument has to honestly account for: Black Americans, particularly in the South, for whom this version of government — captured, extractive, indifferent to ordinary lives — is not a new development. They lived with worse, for longer, with less recourse. The oligarchy’s current behavior is not surprising to communities that have watched their votes suppressed, their neighborhoods redlined, their sons and daughters policed and incarcerated as a matter of policy. What is happening now is tragic for them too — newly tragic, in some ways, as things they fought to dismantle get dismantled in the other direction. But the shock that white Americans are feeling right now, that vertiginous sense that the rules have changed, is not a shock they share. They knew. They have always known what this country is capable of when it stops pretending.

And yet — and this matters enormously — Black political organizing, especially in the South, has produced some of the most effective democratic resistance in American history. Not because the system ever fully worked for them, but in spite of it. That is not muscle memory for a democracy that delivered. That is something harder: the discipline and determination to keep fighting for something you have never been fully given. That tradition is part of this coalition too. It may be the most important part.

The awareness is rising faster than the oligarchy expected. That matters.

So what does an overthrow actually look like? Not the dramatic kind. Not the kind that makes for good movies. The kind that actually works.

It looks like Democrats winning several election cycles in a row. It looks like a faction — the no-corporate-money candidates, the ones willing to say out loud what most politicians only whisper — growing large enough inside the party to set the terms. They won’t be a majority right away. They don’t need to be. MAGA was never a majority of the Republican Party at first either. It was a loud, disciplined faction that pulled the entire party toward it through noise, repetition, and a willingness to make apostates pay. The difference is that this faction will have something MAGA never had: receipts.

Outrage about imaginary caravans is hard to prosecute. Outrage about documented crypto schemes, insider stock trades, a war that enriched the President’s sons while soldiers and civilians died, no-bid detention contracts awarded to companies that funded the inauguration — that has paperwork. That has depositions. That has the kind of investigators-in-suits television that holds attention even when people are tired.

The investigations will matter. Not because they’re satisfying — they rarely are, in the end — but because they buy time. They keep the spotlight on the grift while the slower, less telegenic work of actual governance happens: breaking up monopolies, taxing wealth back toward function, rebuilding what got hollowed out. None of that is sexy. All of it is necessary. The investigations are the dramatic arc that lets the structural work happen in the background, the way a good magician uses one hand to distract you from what the other hand is doing — except in this case, the other hand is actually trying to fix something.

There is a real problem, and it deserves naming directly. The billionaires own the pipes. The big media companies are largely in the hands of people who are comfortable with propaganda if it gets them ratings and keeps their taxes low. The algorithms are not neutral. The playing field for communication is tilted in ways that don’t show up in the box score but determine the outcome of the game.

And yet.

Movements always find a way to communicate. They found a way with pamphlets and underground newspapers. They found a way with pirate radio. They found a way with photocopied flyers slid under doors. What the movement has that money can’t fully replicate is authenticity — and authenticity travels. It travels because it feels true to people who are living the reality it describes. A $50 million ad buy tells you what to think. A neighbor who’s been paying attention tells you what she’s seen. Those are not the same thing, and people know the difference, even when they pretend they don’t.

They will find new ways to talk to each other. They always have. Even, if it comes to it, with pen and paper.

But there is something else worth saying here, something that doesn’t get said enough on the left: the market may help correct this on its own. Not out of conscience — markets don’t have those — but out of appetite. The oligarchs can consolidate big media. They can tilt the algorithms. They can make the mainstream pipes run in one direction. What they cannot easily do is manufacture demand for content that people don’t trust or don’t want. And most people — not the cult, but most people — are not happy with oligarchy. That is an enormous market, and capitalism, even in its current unhealthy state, wants to make money.

Bluesky grew because people were hungry for a place that felt less manipulated. Substack built an entire economy around writers who wanted to talk directly to readers without a billionaire’s editorial thumb on the scale. Nobody mandated those platforms. The market created them because the demand was there and the existing pipes weren’t meeting it. As long as someone writing a blog like this one doesn’t get arrested for it — and we are not there yet, though the direction is worth watching — there will always be a market for honesty, for dissent, for the kind of writing that tells people what they are already feeling but haven’t quite found the words for. A healthy capitalism would break up the monopolies so the market could represent everyone. But even an unhealthy capitalism follows the money. And the money is wherever the people are. Most of the people are not in the cult.

This is not a prediction that everything will be fine. It is not a promise that the good guys win. History is not a morality play, and the oligarchy has enormous resources and no particular conscience about how it uses them.

But it is worth saying, clearly, that we have been in bad places before. That the muscle memory for something better is still there, firing quietly in millions of people who are furious and paying attention. That a faction is forming. That the receipts exist. That movements find a way.

The oligarchy arrived. That’s the diagnosis. The prescription is harder and slower and less satisfying than we’d like. But it’s available. And some people, running for office right now on no corporate money and the radical proposition that honesty is worth something, have already started filling it.

As of this writing, six women remain in the Wimbledon draw. Three of them are listed as “neutral athletes.” That is, they are not allowed to be associated with a country.

Sabalenka, Without a Flag

Aryna Sabalenka, top seed and current world number one, grew up in Belarus and trained at the National Tennis Academy in Minsk. She’s now in the semi-finals.

I wouldn’t be here if my grandparents hadn’t immigrated from Minsk. Before 1941, Minsk was a city with a majority Jewish population. During the Nazi occupation, over 100,000 Jews were murdered. Today, the city has two million people — and only 13,000 Jews.

Because Belarus supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wimbledon doesn’t list Sabalenka’s country next to her name. It’s a symbolic act of solidarity with Ukraine.

Andreeva and the Zone

Mirra Andreeva, 18, was born in Krasnoyarsk and moved to Moscow to train. She now lives in France — and like Sabalenka, she plays under a neutral designation. She’s handling grass courts remarkably well, returning drop shots one inch from the turf with softly placed, precision lobs.

In her match against Emma Navarro, a U.S. player from a country Wimbledon does recognize, Andreeva was so focused that she didn’t realize she’d won. She walked back to position for the next point as Navarro approached the net to shake hands.

At Roland Garros, Andreeva stood strong against a rowdy French crowd cheering for their Cinderella story, Loïs Boisson. But the cheers turned to boos, and even if she expected it, it clearly rattled her. She lives and trains in France, but loyalty and belonging are complicated — especially for a teenager with no official country.

Samsonova’s Split Identity

Liudmila Samsonova has lived in Italy her whole life. Her family moved from Russia to Turin when she was one. She’s never had Italian citizenship, and now, as far as the tennis world is concerned, she has no country at all.

The Italian and Russian tennis federations both decided she represents Russia. Samsonova, now 26, laughed about it at her Wimbledon press conference. “I’m Italian,” she said. “For Italian people, it’s something crazy. It’s not even in the…” She reached toward the sky, searching for words. “It’s impossible to dream about this.”

This is her best showing at a Grand Slam. She may be eliminated by the time anyone reads this — facing off against Iga Świątek, who, unlike Samsonova, is listed with a country. Poland.

Countryless and Crushing It

All three of these neutral athletes are exceptional.

Sabalenka dominates with raw power — the hardest hitter in women’s tennis. But it’s not just force. She’s precise, calculated, and rarely makes mistakes.

Andreeva is dangerous at 18, especially on grass. She could give Sabalenka a serious challenge — she may even beat her.

My prediction? Two women without countries will meet in the finals. And a woman from Neutral will win.

From Tennis to Tragedy

Wimbledon’s choice to remove flags is a form of protest. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine demands response. Atrocities must be called out — in every possible way, as loudly as possible. Unlike Trump — who, until recently, refused to criticize Russia — the UK takes that aggression seriously.

But what about countries that commit atrocities on their own people?

Reverse Coup in Los Angeles

Right now, Los Angeles is under federal occupation. Not figuratively — literally. ICE, the National Guard, and even U.S. Marines have taken over enforcement duties. Not because of riots or unrest. Not because the LAPD or California National Guard asked for help.

It’s a reverse coup — the federal government seizing control of a city from the inside, without a single shot fired. Masked ICE teams are detaining immigrants indiscriminately: some documented, some undocumented, many on their way to court to renew their status. Some are U.S. citizens. They are picked up at work, from job sites and kitchens, detained in secret facilities, and funneled into for-profit prisons.

The majority are Hispanic. It looks  like a human rights atrocity.

Time to Ban the U.S.?

FIFA banned Russia from international soccer competitions, including the World Cup. In the past, countries have been barred for human rights abuses — South Africa was banned for thirty years because of Apartheid.

The U.S. is scheduled to host the World Cup in 2026. In Los Angeles, the host city, human rights are under siege.

If this continues — if entire communities are disappeared by federal forces — the world should take notice. And FIFA should act.

If Sabalenka can’t list Belarus by her name, and Russia can’t play in the World Cup, maybe it’s time to ask whether the United States should be allowed to host it.

On July 4th, 2025, while most Americans celebrated independence, Donald Trump gave a speech in Iowa where he flatly stated: “I hate the Democrats.” For years, he has used dehumanizing language—calling political opponents “vermin,” migrants “animals,” and journalists “enemies of the people.” But this declaration crossed a new line. It wasn’t just rhetoric. It came on the very day he signed a sweeping bill that slashes healthcare, cuts school funding, expands private prisons, and funnels $175 billion to ICE for mass arrests and detentions. In authoritarian regimes, this is what happens when policy fails or becomes too unpopular to sell: the message shifts from solutions to scapegoats. The only thing left is hate.

From Policy to Punishment
What’s in the new law?

• $175 billion to ICE for mass detention and deportation infrastructure.
• Massive cuts to SNAP (food assistance), Medicaid, and public school funding—programs that are broadly popular across party lines.
• New tax breaks heavily favoring billionaires and corporations.

This is legislation designed to hurt the poor, the sick, and the working class. The cruelty is the point—and it’s increasingly accompanied by propaganda that shifts blame away from those in power and onto political enemies.

As one widely shared comment puts it: They want you to hate the people who would protect your health care, your schools, your wages, and your rights.

Dehumanization as a Political Strategy
Trump has long trafficked in dehumanization:

• In 2015, he called Mexican immigrants “rapists.”
• In 2018, he referred to immigrants as “animals.”
• In 2023, he said he would be a dictator “on day one.”
• In 2024, he claimed “vermin” were destroying the country—language used in Nazi propaganda.

Now in 2025, “I hate the Democrats” is the distilled message. Not “I disagree.” Not “they’re wrong.” But hate. It’s not just an insult anymore—it’s a directive to his followers.

Who Are the Targets?
The GOP’s enemies list has grown:

• Democrats, broadly labeled as evil or treasonous.
• Immigrants, including green card holders and naturalized citizens—some even stripped of their status in legally dubious ways.
• Trans people, whose very existence is used to inflame and distract.
• Teachers, librarians, scientists, journalists—anyone who challenges the narrative or presents facts.

These attacks aren’t about debate or disagreement. They’re about silencing, erasure, and control.

The Infrastructure of Authoritarianism
Trump’s policies now fund what amounts to a domestic police state:

• Private prison companies are booming again.
• ICE raids target workplaces, clinics, and schools—not criminals, but communities.
• Naturalized citizens risk losing their citizenship based on vague claims of fraud.
• Protesters, dissenters, and even journalists are increasingly described as threats.

This mirrors tactics used in Venezuela, Hungary, and other backsliding democracies. Immigrants from places like Cuba, Russia, and Haiti often recognize the signs before most Americans do. Many Europeans, too—especially those whose parents or grandparents lived under authoritarian regimes—carry a deeper cultural memory of what it means to lose democratic freedoms.

What Can Stop This?
It’s clear that Congress or the courts will not save us, although some judges and attorneys are certainly trying. And as the right consolidates power—from gerrymandered legislatures to a Supreme Court willing to give presidents immunity—hope shifts back to the people.

The historical comparisons are grim. But sometimes, it comes down to the people—not just in the streets, but in everyday life, choosing not to cooperate with tyranny. Sometimes the turning point is when ordinary people decide it’s not okay to work for thugs, or when communities begin to shame the institutions and systems enforcing oppression.

• The Civil Rights Movement changed law and culture through collective action, despite opposition from courts and Congress.
• Solidarity in Poland helped bring down a regime through strikes, organizing, and cultural resistance.
• The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia peacefully overthrew authoritarian rule with broad-based, sustained protest.

Fascism often implodes under its own weight, but not before causing enormous harm. The challenge is acting early enough—and courageously enough—to stop it before the collapse comes.

The question is: Will enough people speak up—before it’s too late?

Where We Are

Hate is not a policy. It’s not a solution. It’s the final refuge of a movement that has nothing left to offer. Trump didn’t just say the quiet part out loud—he made it the main message: hate the other side. But millions of us know better. We know democracy depends on disagreement without dehumanization. On compassion. On truth.

I’ll admit: part of me is afraid to publish this. That fear is a sign of how far we’ve slipped. But I also know that silence is what lets this take root.

So we speak up. We push back. And we remember: authoritarianism depends on silence. Let’s not be silent.