Here is the truth in a single sentence: We have mistaken a dangerous minority for human nature, and built a world in their image. Your exhaustion is the bill for that mistake.

You are not here yet. This world is not what we hoped We vow to tell the truth. We vow to resist amnesia. We vow to leave you maps— even if they are tear-stained, hand-drawn, and incomplete. We do not expect you to be grateful But we do hope you’ll be free. You are the continuation.

Empires rise on fear and fall to tenderness. Every revolution that endures—civil rights, labor, climate, gender—has love at its core: love for people, for planet, for possibility. Love is what reminds us we belong to one another.

Entire systems depend on hopelessness. An exhausted public will accept cruelty as normal; a hopeful one will organize. That’s why every tyrant calls dreamers delusional—because hope is contagious and uncontrollable. Hope turns citizens into builders, victims into witnesses, onlookers into creators.

Empathy threatens hierarchies. If you feel another’s pain as your own, domination becomes impossible. So power teaches distance early: boys shamed for crying, girls praised for “toughening up,” workers told to “leave feelings at the door.”

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is refusing to let fear decide. Audre Lorde warned that silence will not protect us, because protection bought with complicity is not protection at all—it is participation.

Your voice will not always be safe. But, know this: Each word of truth is an act of rebellion against forgetting. The fear you feel when you speak is the sound of the cage unlocking. Silence feels like armor, but it corrodes from the inside. What we refuse to say becomes what controls us.

Speech is risk; so is quiet. The only difference is WHO benefits from your silence. When you speak, you might lose comfort. When you stay silent, someone else loses freedom. Silence protects the structure, not the soul. The moment you name what’s happening, power flinches

In our own time, silence keeps repeating itself— in workplaces where harassment is whispered about but never reported; in classrooms where banned books disappear without a fight; in nations where neighbors vanish and the rest look away.

Power counts on silence—it calculates it into every decision. When the machinery of cruelty hums without protest, it assumes consent. The cage of silence is made of unspoken bargains: If I stay quiet, maybe they’ll spare me.

The 6% inflict cruelty. The 60% look away. The 30% resists. We are the 30%. Let's find each other. Document everything. Don't stop. We outnumber them 5-to-1.

Refuse to look away. Protect truth, memory, and the vulnerable. Build systems that outlast tyrants. Live as evidence that compassion is power. The 6% test humanity. The 28% renew it

The “6 % rule” isn’t formal science—it’s shorthand for data on antisocial traits (~4–6%). The rest mirrors social-psychology findings: most people conform (Milgram 1963; Zimbardo 1971). Only a minority resists—history’s moral immune system. What must be done now: Refuse to look away.

Studies suggest ~6% of people show psychopathic or sadistic traits (Hare 1993; Paulhus & Williams 2002; Buckels et al. 2013). About 60% comply or look away. The remaining 28% choose conscience, resistance, or repair. Civilization depends on them.

Texas Women, protect yourself and your children

Collecting evidence as a hopeful indicator for the future www.trumpactiontracker.info?

Of course - we know the pattern - Jews in ovens A dear friend’s parents survived Auschwitz and he was born in a DP camp in Poland - he has been practicing law for almost 35 years and he is a direct link History is made of patterns

At 2:13 p.m. on January 6, 2021, a man in a red Make America Great Again hat began assembling a gallows on the Capitol lawn. The rope was 50 feet of yellow nylon, the kind used for dock lines—strong enough to hold a ship, strong enough to hold a neck. This was not spontaneity.

"Gaslighting" from the 1938 play Gas Light, where a husband manipulates his wife into doubting her perception. But gaslighting is not just psychological—it is legal. It is the use of law to make people question their own reality, to make cruelty seem normal, to make resistance seem unreasonable.

Fascism doesn’t arrive in jackboots. It arrives in suits and ties, in procedural motions, in judges’ robes. It arrives when the courts say we can’t interfere, when the newspapers call it controversial, when the history books call it complicated. In Germany, they called it restoring order.

Trump's fascism is white "supremacy" disguised as cruelty—the ugliest aspect of human nature—turned into policy and a war on decency.

Is it me or the fact that I am reading Percival Everett’s book, James - but does it feel in addition to fascism - that the South is rising ?

We are not just living under authoritarianism. We are narrated by it. The greatest trick power ever pulled wasn’t brute force. It was storytelling. And America is a nation built not just on stolen land, but on seductive fictions. We are taught to believe certain things are facts They are lies.

You do not put alligators around a prison camp in Alcatraz if You are trying to protect. You do that to send a message. You do that to terrify. Under Trump’s second term, cruelty has become a form of gov- ernance. Not a byproduct. Not an accident. A tactic. Why cruelty? Because it works.

🪞 Who Is AI? The Mirror We Built and the Stories We Still Choose to Tell, A new book by Maya Sol, and it’s free if you want it. open.substack.com/pub/mayasolw...

We can build a world that remembers how to love. We can raise children who don’t mistake dopamine for devotion. We can make art that cannot be prompted. We can write laws that center protection over prediction. We can make Blue Zones bloom everywhere. May we love and care enough to change course.

We are not doomed. But we are deeply distracted. We are not evil. But we are complicit. We are not powerless. But we are tired. Still, we can choose.

Trump is not an exception. He is the final cancer. The ultimate convergence of spectacle and violence, white supremacy and celebrity, capitalism and cruelty. A monster, yes but also a mirror. The fool, the king, the predator. But this isn’t about him. This is about us. And we are not victims.

This!

I grew up with Mr. Rodgers and Trump wants to defund PBS & NPR. it’s not just about TV—it’s about access, education, & who gets to stay informed.

Name the cruelty. Do not sanitize it. State-sponsored sadism must be exposed. Disrupt obedience. The system thrives when we go along quietly. Disobedience is sacred. Build from below. Local mutual aid, education, and labor solidarity. This is our infrastructure of liberation.

"The function of freedom is to free someone else." — Toni Morrison This is why fascists fear poets. This is why they jail journalists. This is why they burn books. Because stories awaken memory. Because metaphor can survive genocide. Because the truth is contagious.

This is not the end of the world. It is the end of a world, one built on plunder, patriarchy, plantation wealth, and punishment disguised as order. To survive this moment — to make it matter — we must name the forces at work: Fascism is not just a regime. It is a mindset. A practice. A contagion.

"Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself." — Anaïs Nin Shame is not just a feeling. It is a weapon. It is the oldest surveillance system known to humanity. It keeps people compliant without the need for chains. It whispers: You are not worthy. It warns: If you speak, they’ll know.

The cruelty is organized. Profitable. Deadly. We are 300 million. Most don’t support torture, forced birth, or public collapse. So why are we watching it happen? Cruelty won’t win—but it will kill millions. Mass walkouts? General strike? A viral uprising? Let’s shut it down.

The cages are not concealed, the beatings are not hushed, the lies are not subtle. They are broadcast, live-streamed, and memeified. The brutality is the point, but more than that, it is the performance of brutality that sustains Trump's regime. It is no longer hidden, but staged.

“Public cruelty is performative. It is a warning and a celebration. It says, 'This is who we are now. Join in or be next.” — The Maya Sol Collective

"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly." — Hannah Arendt We are told that being "good" means just complying— but that's not true, never has been, and never will be.

We must resist the liberal temptation to believe that restoring the 'norms' of a pre-Trump America is sufficient. The status quo was never safe for Black people. Or Native people. Or queer people. Or disabled people. Or working-class people.