The Situation: I’m Done Cooperating

The Situation on Thursday asked whether Dan Bongino is really the most qualified podcaster to help run the FBI.

Today, I have a different question: Why have the heavens not yet darkened?

In Greece this week, the country was shut down by a widespread strike. International air travel was grounded. Giant rallies took place—and not entirely peaceful ones either. As the New York Times reported: 

The strike involved public- and private-sector workers. A police official estimated that the Athens protest attracted at least 180,000 people, the largest demonstration in the Greek capital in years.

All commercial flights to and from Greek airports were grounded, and no ferries or trains were running. Limited public transportation was operating in Athens to allow demonstrators to get to the rally.

Schools and hospitals were affected as teachers and health-care workers joined the action. Lawyers and ambulance workers walked out, too, while many shops closed. Several popular artists also canceled planned shows.

At the rally in Athens, many expressed anger and frustration.

The cause? A deadly train accident—two years ago.

By contrast, in the United States, federal workers are losing their jobs—right now. Plane crashes just since Inauguration Day have killed more people than that Greek train disaster two years back, and there have been other near-misses. The president and vice president are, as I write, gleefully humiliating the president of an ally under stress in the Oval Office with the cameras rolling. The United States is pulling back from overseas public health work as children are dying of Ebola in Uganda and pulling back from domestic public health work while bird flu is decimating livestock nationwide. The so-called DOGE is dismantling the federal government, agency by agency. The FBI and Justice Department are being overtly politicized by clowns wielding flame-throwers, as is the military. The executive branch is failing to comply with court orders that seek to make it comply with basic employment standards and respect Congress’s authority to control the spending of money. And Congress itself doesn’t seem to care about any of it.

And yet, the sun is shining. The birds are chirping. It’s a beautiful day outside. 

There are no mass rallies. The transit system isn’t being shut down by angry strikers. The federal bureaucracy showed up for work yesterday—at least, that part of it did that hasn’t been fired or placed on administrative leave. 

Sure, sure, there have been protests, some of them non-trivial in size. A bunch of people turned out to say thanks to USAID workers who were offered a chance to clean out their offices this week. And that’s lovely.  

But it’s actually remarkable how cooperative Americans have been with the ongoing assault on this country’s government, its national honor and dignity, its laws, its overseas alliances and influence, and its core values both domestically and overseas.

It’s not, I believe, because people broadly support these assaults. Half of the country voted against them. And a great many of those people would have clawed their way to the polls over fields of broken glass to do so. Even among those who did vote for this, many seem to be having second thoughts if not about the man then at least about The Situation he triggers. 

But Americans do seem unduly paralyzed. Republicans vote to confirm the president’s nominees and do nothing to defend the appropriations power. Democrats have no coherent strategy or message. So everything ends up in the courts. And Americans wait for their fate as a nation to be decided in litigation over temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions. Because as Benjamin Franklin famously said, “A republic, madam, if enough judges issue TROs and if the appellate courts affirm.”

I don’t know about you, but I am not interested in cooperating any more. 

I respect the election results. I respect that Donald Trump is president, that JD Vance is vice president, and that the Congress is lawfully controlled by people who refuse to defend their own institutional prerogatives. I also respect that I am bound to follow the laws of our country or face the consequences of refusing to do so. And I reject political violence in all forms.

But I don’t accept that I owe this process of national degradation, humiliation, and sublimation to corrupt and evil foreign and domestic interests more than that. I don’t accept that I owe it any voluntary cooperation. 

What does an approach to The Situation based on lawful, non-violent non-cooperation look like? It looks like:

• Large numbers of people driving very slowly to work in a coordinated fashion. Very slowly. At, say, the minimum lawful speed. 

• Trans activists releasing thousands of crickets at a conference in London; I know of no law against the release of crickets in this country, though I’m obviously not giving anyone legal advice.
  

• Die-ins in strategic locations at strategic moments.

• Support for people in government who are subject to purges or oppressive working conditions or who are doing the right thing.

• Unscheduled marches in locations where marches may cause inconvenience and can be lawful depending on precisely where and how one conducts them. 

• Large numbers of people choosing to file their taxes by mail, instead of electronically. Specifically, having folks to whom the government owes money file electronically and folks who owe the government money file on paper—and maybe in lousy handwriting.

• Federal workers working just a little bit less hard at scheduled times—doing the minimum their job descriptions require.

My point here is that our society depends on a level of mass cooperation that can be withheld in highly distributed fashions. It depends on a degree of participation that individuals, groups of individuals, and organized masses do not have to offer.

An election gives elected officials the authority to administer and to try to make laws, and the civic compact requires public compliance—or at least public willingness to accept the consequences of non-compliance. But more than that is voluntary. And I, for one, have passed the limits of my willingness voluntarily to grease the wheels of maladministration and misgovernment. 

And yes, I have looked into the price of crickets. (Note to self: A thousand crickets costs only $15.99, which is to say that 10,000 crickets cost less than $200.)

The Situation continues tomorrow.