The military occupations around the country and the parade in DC represent the culmination of a long-term shift from persuasion to coercion as disparities in wealth and power intensify. Autocracy requires mercenaries—despicable scum who sell their capacity to inflict violence to the highest bidder.

For autocracy to triumph, people must suppress their empathy, confining themselves to selfish materialism. Their aspirations to community must be replaced with jingoistic conformity. And many of them must be desperate enough for employment that they will accept a wage to do harm to others like themselves.

Yet as economic and ecological crises intensify, millions of people are waking up to the reality that solidarity and mutual aid offer our best chance of survival, whereas the mercenaries who serve autocracy—and the inclination to do violence for a wage—pose the greatest threat to us.

Thank you to everyone who resists. It requires considerably more courage and integrity to be a rebel than to be a mercenary. 🏴