(Roughly) Daily

Why is the most dangerous political crisis in modern American history being met with emotional denial, moral distortion, and cultural distraction? Mike Brock, with a bracing essay…

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the United States is experiencing a constitutional crisis that threatens to end our democratic experiment.

That sentence—stark, unqualified, devoid of hedging—causes a peculiar form of discomfort. It demands we confront a reality most of us are psychologically unprepared to process: We are living through a slow-motion collapse of constitutional democracy in the United States, and most people—not just average citizens but intellectuals, journalists, and elected officials—are emotionally and cognitively incapable of grasping the scale of this threat.

This is not merely a political problem. It is a moral and psychological crisis of coherence—a collective failure to align our emotional response with objective reality. The distance between the magnitude of what is happening and our capacity to feel its significance represents one of the most dangerous disconnects in American history.

We treat an existential threat to self-governance as if it were merely another election cycle. We discuss the potential end of constitutional democracy in the same register we might debate tax policy or infrastructure spending. We have normalized what should never be normal, accommodated what should never be accommodated, and rationalized what should have provoked immediate, sustained resistance.

The gap between the emergency and our feeling of emergency is not accidental. It is the product of specific psychological defenses, media failures, and deliberate manipulation—all combining to protect us from the emotional and moral burden of confronting our situation honestly…

[Brock unpacks the nature of the emergency and then enumerates the “defenses against reality” that are in play: denial (disguised as normalcy), deflection, bothsidesism and cynicism, performative objectivity, and moral equivalence. Having explained each of these, he locates them in what he calls “The Arendtian Frame: The Banality of Complicity” and explains the ways in which they create a series of “collapses in coherence” that keep us from feeling the gravity of the situation…]

… In the face of this psychological and moral crisis, clarity becomes not just an intellectual virtue but a form of resistance. We must name what is happening, without euphemism, without equivocation, and without the false comfort of neutrality.

This is fascism.

I understand the reluctance to use this word. I acknowledge that it has sometimes been misused by the left, applied too broadly to policies they simply dislike rather than to genuine authoritarian movements. This overuse has created an understandable allergic reaction among many thoughtful people.

But the misuse of a term doesn’t invalidate its proper application. The fact that some have incorrectly diagnosed pneumonia doesn’t mean pneumonia doesn’t exist. And what we face now—the cult of personality, the manipulation of law to serve power, the demonization of minorities, the glorification of strength over principle, the explicit rejection of constitutional constraints—these are the defining features of fascism as a political form.

To refuse this word is not moderation but evasion. It is not caution but complicity. It reflects not intellectual rigor but psychological denial—the desperate need to believe we remain within the bounds of normal politics when we have already crossed into darker territory.

Fascism doesn’t arrive announcing itself with swastikas and goose-stepping troops. It comes draped in familiar symbols, speaking the language of tradition, order, and national renewal. It maintains the forms of democratic governance while hollowing out their substance. It works through existing institutions rather than immediately abolishing them.

What makes our current moment particularly dangerous is how it combines traditional authoritarian features with technological capabilities for surveillance, propaganda, and control that previous fascist movements couldn’t imagine. The fusion of authoritarian intent with algorithmic power creates possibilities for sustained oppression that exceed historical precedents.

This is why clarity matters so urgently. Without the proper diagnosis, we cannot formulate the proper response. If we persist in treating an authoritarian movement as merely another iteration of conservative governance, we will deploy inadequate tools against an existential threat.

The appropriate response to fascism is not normal opposition but moral resistance. Not tactical accommodation but principled confrontation. Not private diplomacy but public witness.

This resistance begins with moral courage—the willingness to speak truth despite social costs, professional risks, or personal discomfort. It requires moral clarity—the capacity to distinguish between normal political disagreement and fundamental threats to democratic governance. And it demands civic resistance—the refusal to normalize or accommodate authoritarian consolidation.

In practical terms, this means:

Refusing to center the wrong stories. When media coverage focuses on trivia while constitutional violations go unremarked, we must insist on proper perspective. When commentators treat fascist rhetoric as merely “controversial” rather than dangerous, we must restore moral clarity.

Refusing to indulge fascist spectacles. The strategy of overwhelming our attention with constant outrages, contradictory claims, and manufactured controversies works only if we allow ourselves to be manipulated by it. We must maintain focus on the core threat rather than chasing each new distraction.

Refusing to treat a slow coup as normal politics. We must reject the pressure to discuss authoritarian consolidation as if it were merely another policy dispute. We must insist on the fundamental distinction between governance within constitutional boundaries and the systematic dismantling of those boundaries.

Most importantly, we must be witnesses—not passive observers but active participants in the maintenance of truth. When someone dismisses constitutional violations as mere politics, we must speak up. When someone equates democratic flaws with authoritarian assaults, we must correct them. When someone retreats into cynicism or bothsidesism, we must insist on moral distinction.

These acts of witness may seem small compared to the scale of our crisis. They may feel inadequate in the face of constitutional collapse. But they represent the essential foundation for any larger resistance. Without the maintenance of truth, without the preservation of moral clarity, no other form of opposition is possible…

… the center cannot hold through denial or deflection. It can only be held through clarity—through the painful but necessary acknowledgment of our true situation.

This clarity begins with saying what is true, even when others aren’t ready to hear it. It continues through the patient, persistent defense of coherence against the forces that would dissolve it. And it culminates in the courage to act on that truth, to align our response with the reality we face rather than the reality we wish existed.

The wire still holds—but only if we walk it. Only if we maintain the tension between truth and power, between principle and expediency, between the republic we’ve inherited and the responsibility to preserve it.

This is not about partisanship. It is not about policy preferences. It is about whether the American experiment in self-governance will continue or whether it will join history’s long list of failed republics—remembered not for what it achieved but for what it surrendered.

The emergency we cannot feel is no less real for our failure to feel it. The collapse we struggle to acknowledge is no less imminent for our reluctance to face it. And the responsibility to resist, to bear witness, to hold the center—that responsibility falls to each of us, whether we’re emotionally prepared for it or not.

Eminently worth reading– and contemplating– in full: “The Emergency We Cannot Feel: On the Psychological Unreadiness for American Collapse” from @brockm.bsky.social‬.

See also: “Courage versus Complicity” from the estimable Larry Lessig, and “The Nineteen-Thirties Novel That’s Become a Surprise Hit in the U.K.“

And for an extraordinary series of conversations about democracy and authorianism in our moment (and what we can do), visit The Civic Forum, created and moderated by Rory Truex. (TotH to MKM)

Finally, a philosphical (indeed, almost cosmic) perspective on the (broadest understanding of) the context in which the issues above are unfolding: “Reality is evil- Everything eats and is eaten. Everything destroys and is destroyed. It is our moral duty to strike back at the Universe”

* Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi”

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As we face reality, we might recall that it was on this date in 1775 that King George II of Great Britain issued the Proclamation of Rebellion (officially, A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition), in repsonse to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill at the outset of the American Revolutionary War. It declared elements of the American colonies in a state of “open and avowed rebellion” and ordered officials of the empire “to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion.”

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