LIVING UNDER AUTHORITARIAN OPPRESSION
What is a person to do when the culture or the political system they are born into or chosen to live within becomes oppressive and a threat to your identity? All of my decisions are based upon living in a country where, at least until now, I have been free from political oppression or persecution, free to think and act within the law in any way I want to.
But through history and and around the world today, many people are born in countries where they are don’t have freedom of expression or political action. What choices do those people have. What do I imagine their options to be?
1. ACCEPTANCE. They can decide that whatever the authoritarian system offers them they support the system and go along willingly, even honoring the forces that determine what they can think or do. That was true of many people in Hitler’s Germany and many people in today’s China and today’s Russia and in many other countries. Their country right or wrong. They may even be energized by the power of the authoritarian state. This is the possibility that many Trump supporters seem energized by.
2. ESCAPE. The person can leave and move to another less oppressive culture. But this is only possible for people who can afford financially to do this and who can make a fresh start somewhere else and who can find a country that will accept them.
Many immigrants over the centuries came to the United States for this reason, many of our ancestors did. But now we make it very hard for people to come to the United States fleeing persecution.
This was very difficult for our ancestors to do and they made major sacrifices in leaving home and country. Very few people are willing to do this.
3. HIDE. The person can hunker down and become invisible. Again, many ordinary German citizens chose this route including my wife’s family. But this is very difficult to do without ultimately having to compromise and at the very least, silently accepting authoritarianism makes you complicit. On the other hand this may be the only what you can protect your family and the people you love.
4. AFFIRM YOUR BELIEFS. The person can be honest and live her values and very likely suffer the consequences of being imprisoned, killed or at the very least, made a pariah.
5. FIGHT BACK. The person can join a group of freedom lovers that opposes authoritarianism and if he does this in time can maybe prevent authoritarianism from happening. This requires a major commitment. You risk losing everything, including your life once authoritarians take power. But even before this, fighting back requires huge investments of time and money for it to be successful. If you are by nature a fighter, you will probably enjoy doing this. But if other things in life give you more satisfaction, such as making music or art or growing a garden and you have to give up what you love in order to dedicate yourself to partisanship the choice will be self defeating.
Oddly this is equally true for Trump supporters who believe that the Democratic Party is an authoritarian threat and people who oppose Trump’s authoritarianism. Both sides of this polarization can lose their souls and much more by fighting for what they belief.
But it is at this point I realize that living in a totalitarian state is much different today than it was during the time of Hitler and completely different from living under the the aristocracy and the church during the Middle Ages.
The computer and the Internet have transformed the way we do everything including the way that totalitarian states function and that when I am trying to imagine how one can deal with a totalitarian state I am dealing with a previous century. I am living in the past. If Siri can read my emails so can a totalitarian state. The only way to opt out is to opt out of the use of the computer and the Internet all together, which is almost impossible to do.
I give up at this point and realize anything I say will be so outmoded as to be pointless.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 