The Slow Creep

For those of you who are “okay” with the way things are going in America, (and I have to say, alarm klaxons are screaming in my head, more so each day) I would just ask you, while you complain that I’m being a histrionic Cassandra, to consider—just for a moment—what it would take for you to say “Now wait just one second! THIS (thing, whatever it is) IS NOT OKAY WITH ME!

What’s the tipping point for you, where you stand up and say, “This is not right. This is un-American. This will not stand.”

• Government officials using private email servers?
• Explicitly racist statements from the Administration or its members?
• Relaxing penalties for bias/hate crimes?
• Mass deportations?
• Bombing a country and then telling its citizens that they cannot seek asylum here?
• Singling out one religion or ethnicity for legal restrictions?
• A mandatory National Identification Card and increased power of US Security forces' (military / police /Dep’t Home Sec.) ability to “check” that ID?
•  Internment camps?
• Removing rights of people who identify as LGBTQ?
• Repealing the Marriage Equality Act?
• Making it illegal to be gay?
• Making it illegal to have gender-reassignment surgery?
• Making divorce illegal?
• Decreasing penalties for excessive force by police?
• Sweeping increase of police license to use force?
• Retail prices for many of the products you buy going up by 15%? What about 20%? Higher?
• Your taxes increasing—10%? 20%? 30%? 40%?
• Laws against purchasing products made abroad?
• Extreme job loss? (One million jobs? Five? Ten?)
• Dissolution of Labor Unions?
• Relaxation of Occupational Safety and Health regulations?
• Voter suppression?
• Cancelling elections?
• Privatization of schools?
• Defunding of the Arts? Humanities?
• Government determination of acceptable Art? (Fine Arts, Theater, Cinema)
• Shutting out news media from the White House?
• Creating an official State Channel for dissemination of information?
• Government censorship of newspapers, radio, and television news?
• Government censorship of Academics and results and conclusions from academic studies?
• Abrogation of freedom of the press?
• Warrantless collection of your personal information for a database?
• Warrantless wiretapping and collection of your phone calls? Web browsing? Purchases?
• Government control over or restrictions on your ability to browse the internet?
• Making it illegal to criticize the government?
• Making Celebrations of the State mandatory?
• Criminalizing protest?
• Restrictions of the civil rights of citizens? (This already started after 9/11 with USA PATRIOT, but, you know, extrapolate.)
• Loyalty tests for citizens?
• Repeal of the Second Amendment?
• Selling off chunks of land from National Parks for private use such as oil or natural gas drilling, hydraulic fracturing, coal mining?
• A pipeline leak or explosion with mass casualties?
• Your own aquifer poisoned from fracking?
• Defunding the FDA so that people routinely get sick?
• An increase in maternal and infant mortality rates?
• Environmental health problems, like smog or acid rain?
• Personal health issues due to ease of environmental restrictions—what if you develop asthma or other health problems related to environmental issues?
• Repeal of Roe v. Wade?
• Criminalization of abortion?
• Outlawing birth control?
• Naked nepotism and/or corruption, cronyism?
• Martial law in one or more cities?
• Pulling out of N.A.T.O.?
• Black site torture?
• Beginning a new air- or ground-war with another country?
• Long-term conflict or occupation of other countries?
• Reinstitution of the Draft?
• Using nuclear, chemical, or biological instead of conventional weapons against another country?

 Some of these things have already happened. Some are happening right now.

If not any of these things, then what? What would be your breaking point, what has to happen in order for you to stand up and say, “No more.”?