Resistance Carries A Cost

I'm going to start this weekend piece with a little story pulled from my own life.

Like so many kids from my background (Old Mix American* working class), I joined the US military without finishing high school - on my 17th birthday, in fact.

I spent three years stationed with an artillery unit situated along what was then called "The Iron Curtain", a border dividing the "Free West" from the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe.

The Warsaw Pact countries were essentially all of the nations which, at the end of WWII, had ended-up as satellites or outright puppet states of what was then known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

All of the countries behind the Iron Curtain (East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania) had governments/regimes situated politically on a spectrum between authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

Put simply, the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism rests on how many of the following aspects of governance are out of the hands of the wider "demos" or people, and controlled by the few.

It doesn't matter if these "few" are communist party officials, monarchs, dictators, corporations and oligarchs, or elected officials who flout the laws and norms of democracy.

If any government, administration, or regime includes more than one of the following indicators, they are authoritarian at the very least:

1) an elaborate foundational myth and/or ideology

2) a single party or body of governance

3) state terror

4) a technologically conditioned monopoly of communication

5) a monopoly on advanced weapons systems

6) concentrated control of news media

7) centrally controlled economy

8) government access to mass surveillance systems

As a teenager I had been propagandized or indoctrinated to believe that service in the US Armed Forces was meant to forestall or prevent a “free” and “liberal” USA and Western Europe from falling under communist authoritarian rule.

The wisdom which comes with age - experience and education - has taught this writer that almost any system of government can be undermined and corrupted by those who are motivated by greed, lust for power, or rigid ideology.

Compare the following to the list above:

• Project 2025/White Christian Nationalism/MAGA.

• A two-party system (with both in thrall to Big Business and billionaire lobbyists).

• ICE patrols, raids, and murders.

• Anti-immigrant and LGBTQ+ hate speech and the demonization of “The Left” and other political opponents.

• The Broligarchy of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel, et al.

• TV, radio, and newspapers in the hands of the few.

• Hybrid surveillance/incarceration systems expanding rapidly via privately-owned tech and AI companies.

The USA now bears all the hallmarks of the systems it once claimed to oppose.

The USA government has always served the rich and powerful, mainly through foreign resource wars and the passing of legislation to increase the wealth of the Epstein Class.

Those of us in the “imperial core”, i.e., “back home in America” just tended to ignore it, as long as we were able to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads.

We pretended that our soldiers were protecting our “freedom”, when all they were protecting was low gas prices and corporate profits.

And now that our armed forces have been handed their ass on a plate by Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (and now Iran), the rich and powerful are turning their baleful gaze inward.

They hope to protect their power by fomenting war among ourselves.

*****

I had a German girlfriend when I got out of the army in the mid-80s, so I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey to out-process, and flew back to Germany to be with her.

One of the many jobs I held down at the time included working as a frame-maker for a small town art gallery in Upper Franconia, a very provincial and conservative part of the state of Bavaria.

After a few months at this gallery, the owner (who will remain unnamed), approached me and asked if I would consider doing an extra "job" for her and her partner.

Over the course of a couple of hours, "T" tried to explain to me the history of the Siebenbürger people, a German-speaking minority who lived in the mountains of Transylvania, in central Romania.

The Siebenbürger are descendants of 12th century medieval Germanic mercenaries invited by King Andrew II of Hungary to take up land grants and fortify the eastern borders of what was the Kingdom of Hungary at the time.

King Andrew’s idea was not new. The ruling classes everywhere will often throw an economic bone or two to certain preferred underclass groups to get them to do the hard and dirty work of subduing and guarding a permeable frontier.

[Image: Remains of an old “Saxon” settlement in Romania]

The Transylvanian Germans would build homesteads and farms while fighting-off various Mongols and Cumans, in much the same way that underclass Americans were offered land grants along the Appalachian and later frontiers.

The poor and uneducated would fight and drive off the Indians, build forts, clear forests and roadways, set up farms and grist mills and ferry crossings, until the wealthy land, cattle, and mining barons arrived to take over.

The region in Romania known as Wallachia is where Vlad Tepes - “Vlad the Impaler” or "Dracula" - played the Hungarians off against the Ottoman Turks to build his own kingdom during the 1400s.

Most of the enemies he viciously impaled on stakes were in fact Siebenbürger soldiers.

Between 1965-1989, Romania was ruled by the brutal Nicolae Ceaușescu, who is widely considered to have run the most repressive regime among all the Warsaw Pact nations.

As part of his "make Romania great again" program, he embraced isolationism and shunned international trade, seeking to make Romania self-sufficient in every respect - food, energy, manufactured goods - everything.

By the time Ceaușescu came to power, Romania's effective overlord, the Soviet Union, had already transported at least 70,000 ethnic Germans from Romania to labor camps in the Ukrainian Donbas region between 1944-1965.

Many of these and their children are the people referred-to as "Nazis" by Putin today.

Ceaușescu's cultural program involved the attempted elimination of all ethnic minority groups.

Initially, this ethnic-cleansing took the form of shutting-down all newspapers, publishing houses, schools, and theaters in which anything other than the Romanian language was spoken.

Roma (Gypsy) communities were dismantled wholesale.

It is not common knowledge in the west that the Roma (who are a separate ethnic group to "Romanians") were held as slaves for centuries in the kingdoms which would eventually become Romania.

Speaking their own languages, the enslaved Roma of regions like Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia were only emancipated during the 1850s and 1860s.

During the 1970s and 1980s, many members of both the Roma and Siebenbürger communities began to be "disappeared" by Ceaușescu's much-feared secret police, the Securitate, just as many Hispanic Americans are being persecuted, swept up, or executed by ICE thugs today…

*****

It is against this background that "T", who had actor and painter friends among the Siebenbürger behind the Iron Curtain, asked me if I would would drive her into Romania.

A Romanian theater troupe had been touring what was called "West Germany" at the time. Three of its number were Siebenbürger who had defected and were claiming asylum in Germany.

There was one small problem, however.

None of them had been allowed to travel while holding their own identity documents. Those were being held by a member of the Securitate who travelled with all such touring companies.

Without some form of ID, any claim for asylum was likely to be rejected. Any defector handed-back over to the Romanian embassy and secret police was a dead man walking.

"T" was going to Romania to retrieve some form of ID for these people.

She also hoped to smuggle out a couple of paintings which could be auctioned in the west, with the cash raised being funnelled back into Romania in order to help the desperate families left behind.

They could use western cash on the Romanian black market to survive, and maybe even use it to bribe a border official to look the other way if they attempted to cross into the west to join their loved ones.

"Why on earth do you want ME to drive?" I asked.

"Because you hold a US passport", she replied. "The border police and Securitate are unlikely to risk an international incident by detaining or harming an American."

This all sounded extremely risky, and to my eternal shame, instead of a simple "yes" or "no", I found myself asking "Am I going to get paid for this?"

I was still only 20 years old, but fully deserved her reaction.

"What the hell is the matter with you? Have you never done anything solely for others? Just for the damn sake of GOODNESS?"

Long story short, I agreed to go.

*****

We went shopping for cartons of Kent cigarettes (prime currency in Romania at the time), as well as tiny luxuries like condoms, pantyhose, and music cassette tapes - contraception and the trappings of "decadent" Western culture were outlawed by Ceaușescu in his twisted dream of an ethnically and culturally pure "Motherland".

Driving in stages, our first stop was in Vienna, where I was advised to eat well, as we wouldn't be eating well again for a few days.

From there, it was on to our first stop behind the Iron Curtain - Budapest - where we took a brief rest before pushing on.

We drove across the Hungarian plains in white-out blizzard conditions on unploughed, unilluminated highways, giant Soviet-era sculptures of proletariat workers looming suddenly out of the snow-blasted darkness along the roadsides like silent titan gods.

The actual crossing of the border from Hungary into Romania was terrifying.

I had never had a gun pointed directly at me; never mind a dozen or so Kalashnikovs. The casual laughter and staring eyes of mostly unshaven soldiers - all with only one hand on their weapon as the other held a cigarette - placed a heavy stone in the nauseous pit of my stomach.

Hands gripping the steering wheel, I turned and said to "T" "Geez, I hope they don't search the car and take all the stuff meant for your friends".

She slapped me as hard as I've ever been slapped. Leaning near, she whispered angrily through clenched teeth "Shut up you idiot! There are bugs everywhere. They can hear every word you say."

When one of the soldiers made clear his intention to search the car, "T" handed me a carton of cigarettes and my passport, and told me to play the dumb American.

It wasn't hard.

Getting out of the car, I turned warily toward the soldier who seemed to be in charge, holding out my passport while keeping the carton of cigarettes tucked under my arm. He put a hand on my shoulder and gestured toward the checkpoint booth.

I made a "You first, I'll follow" sort of gesture, but he nudged me with his rifle barrel, indicating that I was to walk ahead. That 20 yards with a rifle at my back was the longest 20 yards of my life.

Once inside his booth/office, he took the carton of cigarettes from under my arm and laid it on a small table, before taking a pack of state manufactured cigarettes - "Carpațis" - from his own pocket and offering me one.

My cigarette lit, he began pointing at the carton of Kents, and pointing back at the old BMW. It became obvious that he wanted to know what else was on the menu, but wished the bribe to remain between the two of us, out of sight of his underlings.

I went back to the car and gathered a small selection of items, tucking them inside my coat and hurrying back to the checkpoint.

Nothing I offered seemed to satisfy him, and my increasing anxiety and fear must have been obvious. Finally, a smile, an exclamation, and a slap on my back.

A Michael Jackson cassette had done it. The soldier smiled and pointed to a small photo pinned to the wall beside the table. A gift for his wife or girlfriend.

He put the cassette into a drawer under the table, and walked me back to the car, waving the others aside.

I got back into the car and crossed into Romania, looking neither left nor right in case someone might try to get my attention and stop us again.

*****

We arrived in Sibiu under cover of darkness on the second night after a journey of around 900 miles, the shadowy black mass of the Transylvanian Mountains hulking in the mid-distance.

Even in a small city like Sibiu (about the size of Reno, Nevada), electricity was only available a couple of hours every day, and it was strictly rationed.

We were met at the end of a long, wide boulevard by a dark-complexioned man standing outside a heavy, ancient oak door set back along a row of large sooty terraced townhouses which betrayed hints of former glory from the century before.

He led us down some stairs and pushed open another door, where a family sat huddled around a simple table under a single bare lightbulb in the kitchen of a freezing basement apartment, all rising with cries and smiles and hugs and warm handshakes to greet us.

The generosity of these people upon our arrival has stayed with me to this day.

They had almost nothing. Nothing in the way of decent clothing, and nothing in the way of wholesome, nourishing food.

Most of their winter sustenance was comprised of hard, stale bread and homemade sauerkraut fermented in barrels in the cellar.

Yet within the hour they had triumphantly produced a small cut of bacon wrapped in a piece of newspaper, which they cooked in a skillet before insisting that we, and we alone, should eat.

They later pulled a bottle of vodka from a hiding place behind a cupboard, and filled our glasses again and again.

I later learned they had hoarded these things for months in anticipation of our arrival.

The next morning, as "T" discussed business with our hosts, I went to the door, turning to ask if anyone would like me to fetch them something from the center of town.

I had hoped to get a brief glimpse of the city once known as "Hermannstadt" when it was still part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to WWI.

Everyone burst out laughing.

"And what will you bring us back from town?" they asked in the most curious German accent I had ever heard.

"I don't know. A bar of chocolate, maybe?"

This reply led to near pandemonium, with hoots and guffaws and more gales of laughter.

Another bottle of vodka was taken from the secret place behind the cupboard, and placed in the center of the kitchen table.

Thomas pointed to the bottle.

"Bring us back a bar of chocolate, and the bottle is yours."

After many hours wandering the streets, I returned.

Empty-handed.

I will save for another time the story of our exit from Romania, which made our entry seem like the red carpet treatment.

Things very nearly turned very, very bad indeed.

But I'm here now, aged 62, writing of a world which, until recently, seemed many lifetimes distant.

Nicolae Ceaușescu was not a totalitarian dictator on his first day in office.

He wasn't even an authoritarian, really.

Power without checks and balances makes a monster of most humans, though...

After a quarter century of his hellish tyranny, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed on Romanian national television on Christmas Day in 1989, five years after my unlikely escapade there.

*****

I have travelled, and I have seen the workings of many people in many places.

And I will say it here and now.

The Republic called the USA is momentarily lost.

Authoritarianism has crept up softly on the American people, and struck.

The world has suddenly grown much smaller and more dangerous.

Freedom of speech and a free press have never seemed in as much danger in the USA.

Modern Americans have had too much, for too long, and most have never bothered to wonder how or why this could or should be so.

They foolishly believed that consumerist affluence and cheap gasoline were somehow a measure of American "greatness", “freedom”, or “exceptionalism”.

Others, of course, believe in "God's blessings".

Most Americans never thought to ask why gasoline in the USA has always cost a quarter or a tenth the amount it costs in other developed countries.

I seriously doubt that 1 in 100 Americans know that the US, in cahoots with the UK, overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran during the 1950s in order to maintain control of petroleum reserves in that country.

Hell, I seriously doubt that 1 in 100 Americans could point to Iran on a map.

Modern Americans have treated comfort as a birthright, wilfully turning a blind eye to, or remaining entirely ignorant of, the suffering and cheap labor furnished by generations of downtrodden Black and Hispanic communities (and the “white” underclasses taught to believe they were “special”, even when dirt poor).

In recent months, some of my readers have suggested that there is a case for optimism, because only 1 in 3 voters actually voted for a fascist.

This optimism is misplaced.

The current president enjoys a 35% approval rating, similar to the 37% support enjoyed by Hitler when he came to power nearly a century ago in 1933.

Trump’s minions continue to tear down the very last structures upholding democracy - right this minute, while you read this essay.

Stephen Miller is laying the groundwork for the legal persecution of “leftists”, in the same way that Hitler demonized Communists, gays, and Jews.

The American populace is as thoroughly propagandized as any of those who ever lived in any authoritarian state.

*****

Over the past while I have shared posts on various media suggesting that boycotts, civil disobedience, and general strikes are probably the only way to head-off the emergence of a full-blown techno-fascist, “white” nationalist autocracy this autumn.

When I shared boycott “target lists” of those who have either made public declarations of support for Trump or Project 2025, or given direct financial aid to Trump, the GOP, or Project 2025 (through endorsements, individual donations, and various PACS), the most common response was people quibbling over which companies were most deserving of being boycotted, or people saying that such boycotts would cause too much personal hardship.

This is like bickering over whose turn it is to cook while a tornado approaches.

If resistance doesn’t hurt, it’s probably not resistance.

It’s performative moral posturing.

But it’s almost certainly too late for boycotts now, anyway.

Much of Congress is complicit or acquiescent.

Many of the courts and the DOJ are complicit or acquiescent.

Many government agencies such as ICE are complicit.

Many of us are complicit, or stand transfixed by the lamp of the oncoming train.

If the Republicans lose control of both the House and Senate, Trump and many of his minions know they will be going to prison.

The current administration is never going to accept the midterm election results if they do not go their way.

The current president, with the help of his technocrats, has taken over almost all levers of government and dismantled almost all oversight bodies.

Big Tech is this very minute illegally harvesting every single shred of data concerning our lives and our loved ones.

Everyone from George Orwell to Frank Zappa warned this was coming, but neither could have imagined the power of AI.

AI and authoritarianism have never in history been combined in the way they are today.

This is going to make the old surveillance states of the Warsaw Pact look bumbling and amateurish…

Brownshirt thugs and goons roam the streets of our towns and cities, waiting for their master to release them entirely from their leashes.

Many of us claim we are not racist, but why do we only know the names of “white people” killed during interactions with ICE and Customs and Border Control?

1/16/2025 Unnamed Honduran man, El Paso, Texas

1/20/2025 Felix Bauckholt, Coventry, Vermont

3/15/2025 Rubin Ray Martinez, South Padre Island

3/28/2025 Elena Catarina Morales-Chan, Texas

3/28/2025 Enrique Juan Tizol Macario1, Texas

3/31/2025 Unnamed man, San Diego, California

6/15/2025 Unnamed Guatemalan man, El Paso, Texas

6/27/2025 Unnamed man, Rio Grande City, Texas

7/7/2025 Ryan Louis Mosqueda, McAllen, Texas

7/12/2025 Jaime Alanis, Ventura County, California

8/14/2025 Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, Monrovia, California

8/17/2025 Unnamed Ecuadorian woman, El Paso, Texas

8/30/2025 Unnamed Mexican man, Carrizo Springs, Texas

9/12/2025 Silverio Villegas González, Franklin Park, Illinois

9/23/2025 Yahir David Martinez, Brownsville, Texas

10/13/2025 Axel Everado Iquic-Sequen, El Paso, Texas

10/13/2025 Manuel Mateo Lopez, El Paso, Texas

10/23/2025 Jose Castro-Rivera, Norfolk, Virginia

11/14/2025 Bartolo Baltazar Baltazar, Imperial Beach, California

11/14/2025 Epifanio Molina Bravo, Imperial Beach, California

11/14/2025 Hector Lopez Lopez, Imperial Beach, California

11/14/2025 Unknown, Imperial Beach, California

12/11/2025 Isaias Sanchez Barboza, Starr County, Texas

12/31/2025 Keith Porter, Los Angeles, California

1/7/2026 Renee Good, Minneapolis, Minnesota

1/24/2026 Alex Pretti, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2/16/2026 Dr. Linda Davis, Savannah, Georgia

2/24/2026 Nurul Amin Shah Alam, Buffalo, New York

3/24/2026 Daphy Michel, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

7/7/2026 Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Houston, Texas

7/13/2026 Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, Biddeford, Maine

7/14/2026 unnamed man, Jacksonville, Florida

This list does not include at least 59 deaths which occurred while being held in ICE, CBP, or in government contracted private prison custody since Trump took office the second time.

*****

If we do not want to see another Civil War, we will need to relearn a simple truth:

Freedom isn’t free.

It seems unfathomable hearing people say things like “Oh, I couldn’t boycott that place, my friend works there”.

If we as consumers are not even willing to absorb the “pain” of boycotting the most egregious and immoral corporations, we do not deserve freedom.

Truth is, there is almost never such a thing as a "moral" corporation, anyway.

Where shareholders are getting rich, someone, somewhere, is invariably being hurt.

For a so-called majority Christian nation, it is astonishing how few Americans pause to consider the reported words of the man who gave rise to a world religious movement:

"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

So once again...

IF WE ARE ONLY WILLING TO FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM WHEN IT DOESN'T HURT, WE DO NOT DESERVE DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM.

Go look up The Battle of Blair Mountain.

Go watch the film "Matewan".

Remember the suffragettes and the Civil Rights movements.

When our boycotts and strikes cause “collateral damage” to our own, we take them to our bosom and look after them.

It's called solidarity.

It's what all of us good people do.

It's why I shared my own small story of trying to help people who might have been killed without the help of strangers.

But I'm no hero. Far from it.

I just got put in a spot where, for the first time in my life, I was given the chance to make a decision, a chance to help a few people to resist an authoritarian.

It could’ve cost me. I’m lucky and glad it didn’t.

There are some more hard decisions to make, right here, right now, for all of us.

The latest authoritarian is not some cardboard cut-out in a faraway land with petroleum reserves.

He’s right here at home.

We won’t all be lucky all the time.

But I like to remember the words of James Baldwin:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

*Old Mix American = Americans descended from the mixed-ethnic underclasses already present in the Anglo-American colonies between 1589 and 1776

List of deaths during ICE and CBP encounters taken from The American Prospect