Lists

Timothy Snyder wrote this post on twenty steps to take to prepare for the rule of the Despot: https://www.facebook.com/timothy.david.snyder/posts/1206636702716110. (You know things are grim when Yale professors are openly joining the barricades.)

Also see Sarah Kendzior's spine-chilling but accurate warning: https://thecorrespondent.com/5696/were-heading-into-dark-times-this-is-how-to-be-your-own-light-in-the-age-of-trump/1611114266432-e23ea1a6. Here's my own version:

12 Rules for the American Resistance

1. No free citizen owes any politician one iota of automatic respect for anything, ever. The government serves the people, the people do not serve the government. If you worship a politician, you are a slave, not a citizen.

2. Democracy means one person, one vote. But the incoming leader lost the popular ballot by an astounding 2.5 million votes (http://cookpolitical.com/story/10174). We don't have an elected president, we have a crowned monarch selected by the Electoral College -- an institution designed by slavers. Our Senate elections are grossly undemocratic (Wyoming's 600,000 citizens get two senators, and California's 38 million get two). Elections to the House of Representatives have been horribly gerrymandered to benefit both parties. Our entire electoral system of electoral democracy is broken and needs fixing.

3. The enemy is not a person. The enemy is the plutocracy. For the past forty years, plutocrats have been razing the US economy to the ground. Their strategy: loot the country, then whip up hatred against the poorest and weakest of us. Here's how they looted the country's income:

Here's how they looted the country's wealth:

(Charts courtesy Emmanuel Saez: http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2015.pdf).

4. At some point over the next four years, a false flag operation will happen and the Despot will try to tear up our remaining civil liberties. Be prepared, not scared.

5. Books expand the mind and feed the soul. Read Jacobin, Theodor Adorno's classic Minima Moralia, Audre Lorde's autobiography Zami, and Orhan Pamuk's denunciation of Turko-imperialism, Snow.

6. The corporate media are lying thieves who just want to sell you ads. Stop paying for their lies and start paying for an internet connection to the citizen journalists seeking the truth. Start with the fine folks at the OCCRP and Belling the Cat. Follow the twitter feeds of William Gibson (https://twitter.com/GreatDismal) and Sarah Kendzior. (https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior).

7. Join a union (Change to Win  and AFL-CIO).

8. Go to rallies and demonstrations. Meet and greet people there. These are your friends, your allies, your fellow citizens who are planting the seeds of a better world.

9. Resist the plutocracy by taking ownership of public spaces. Run over a pothole? Report it. Is your local park run-down? Call the town council and get them to fix it. Mediocre school? Meet the teachers, students and school board and help improve it. Get involved in local elections, town and city councils, and school boards. 

10. Play and learn from videogames: Square's Final Fantasy 12, Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4, Stig Asmussen's God of War 3, Spike Chunsoft's Danganronpa 1 and 2, and CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3 are all complex, beautiful, sometimes heart-breaking but always redemptive explorations of history and anti-imperial resistance.

11. To the 30% of Americans who still have middle-class jobs: stop wasting your money on useless gadgets and start donating to the ACLU, the EFF and the many other fine groups fighting for the freedom of all and against the binge looting of the few.

12. Make sure you have your passport ready. Stay in touch with the forces of freedom all across the world, especially those located in countries which have struggled against kleptocratic regimes, oligarchies and autocracies. Our struggles and their struggles are one. Onwards to the Ameri-maidan!