Man, it pisses people off when I say that marches and protest don’t have any practical effect when the government doesn’t care about the will of the people.

Listen: if rallies make you feel better and connected to other people, great. Really. That’s a good thing. But as Malcolm X once pointed out, nonviolence only works when your oppressor has a conscience… or is worried about being reelected.

Does anyone think Trump gets worried seeing people rallying against him? Do you think he thinks he’s in any jeopardy at the midterms? No. Whether or not he actually is is not the point; the point is that, delusional or not, he doesn’t worry about 3% of the US population coming out to march against him because he either believes the other 97% are on his side or he thinks he’s got a way to either rig or suspend the midterms. Y’all get that, right? That the idea that he’ll try to simply not allow midterm elections is not a crazy fringe idea but entirely plausible, if not likely? I mean, if you don’t think he’ll do it just because he’s openly talked about it, you’re a dummy. He talked about trying to get Greenland and invade Venezuela and a lot of you didn’t think he was serious… until he did it.

If protests get too big or too visible or disruptive - much less turn violent - he’ll just declare martial law and suspend elections that way, plus start mowing motherfuckers down in the street, and nobody will stop him. I can’t believe anybody is still naive enough to think the Democrats will do anything but issue more strongly worded statements if he does, but what can they do? He is the commander in chief of the military and since he’s already legally immune for anything he does as president, no order he gives is illegal even if it violates the Constitution. I mean, if that logic occurs to me it’s almost certainly what he’ll claim.

What I want is for those of you who are desperately clinging to the idea that the vox populi is still the most powerful force in America to please stop deluding yourselves, because it’s dangerous. I don’t mean metaphorically dangerous, I mean physically dangerous. This is not 1968, this is not Vietnam, and all the old glories are gone. This is: you’re gonna go out there in pink pussy hats and whichever faction of the American armed forces he sends are gonna use those brightly colored symbols as targets. I’m not exaggerating, I’m not being hyperbolic, I’m telling you the exact truth. You are not going to defeat fascism by marching. All you’re going to do is, quite frankly, pat each other on the back so hard you’re going to get a false sense of the power of collective voices against state which has deafened itself to your voices. And it’s gonna look like every generation or so of Iranian or Chinese students who think this time is gonna be different… and end up smeared on the stones of some public square or another.

There are and have been times when protest and nonviolent resistance were very good and effective ways of making the will of the people happen. This is just not one of those moments. I mean, I’d be glad to be wrong but absolutely nothing suggests I am.