Don't Just Honk. Do Something

July 8, 2026

The following essay may sound like an author trying to sell books and get reviews, which is partly true, because how else can I make a difference? But it’s more than that.

It concerns why millions of Americans across the country honk their horns and yell in agreement as they drive past people holding signs in protest of the Trump regime. It concerns why they honk and wave, but don’t stand on the sidewalk and hold a sign.

When I wrote my book, Weaponized Division: What Broke America — How We Repair It, it seemed logical to me that readers would be curious to know why I claim to have witnessed through daily interaction with national policy advisers how social division in America was engineered intentionally for the benefit of those who promoted it.

By showing how the traits that make us “us” are used to manipulate the public, undermine our democracy, and lead to its capture by corporations and oligarchs, I thought my book could serve as a bridge to greater social understanding and democratic defense.

Clearly, I grossly over-estimated the appeal of a book that essentially tells its readers that they’ve been conned repeatedly by con artists who tell them what they want to hear.

And yet, people I meet through my pro-democracy activism tell me the book’s concepts and first-hand experiences are important and that the public needs to hear them...but they don’t read the book when I give it to them freely, mention it to others, or leave reviews.

In a parallel that feels strangely apt, I’m reminded of the hundreds of cars that drive past protesters honking their horns and waving but doing nothing material that matters.

So a few days ago, I asked an Italian friend why she thought my book and my decades-long activism have been so ineffective. This was her response:

“James, unfortunately, there is an increasingly widespread mental laziness which, together with a widespread general superficiality, prevents the majority of us from moving from ‘thought’ to ‘action.’

“How many times are we struck sincerely by the truth of something and, instinctively in the immediacy of emotion, we want to act immediately. But something distracts us. We postpone to it later, do something else...then we say to ourselves:

‘It is useless anyway. What good will it do?’

“So it ends there. In my opinion, this happens because we are not capable of processing, of truly internalizing what moves us, of transforming our instinctive sentiments into compelling thoughts that spur us to action. Therefore our superficiality pushes us toward inertia.”

I suspect that what my friend says is true about much in America. She speaks of our mental conditioning, of our apathy or complacency or readiness to tell ourselves that someone else will do what’s right or what needs to be done...because someone else in America always has — else we wouldn’t have a democracy along with its rights and legal protections.

Our problem is that now there’s no one left but us to stand against the power and wealth that seeks to capture our democracy and control our lives. The Marines aren’t coming. The politicians are complicit. The corporate media is captured.

If my Unity Briefings have done nothing else, they should at least have revealed how close we are to losing those rights and protections.

I write this to ask that you just don’t honk and wave:

• that you stop and pick up a sign.

• that you stop and think how dangerous it is for America to have a president who exhibits severe mental pathology.

• that you write to your congressional representatives to demand his removal from office.

• If you see a video or read a book or find an article that moves you, that you don’t just nod your head in agreement and clink on something else—that you mention it to your friends, discuss its content, and share it on social media.

You have been conditioned for years to be compliant, to not to believe you can make a difference, to see yourself as isolated and impotent, and to not share what matters to you with others. You defeat that conditioning by asking yourself who encourages your mental climate and exploits it for their power, wealth, or profits.

You defeat it by refusing to be conditioned.

America’s weaponized division concerns far more than Left versus Right. It concerns ordinary people isolated from families, from former friends, and from neighbors.

Please consider: if Trump, the 1% and Corporate America didn’t have cause to fear our unity and voices, why would they work so hard to divide us, to keep us silent, to keep us complacent, and to keep us inert?

Together we can make a difference by refusing to be what they want us to be.

James P. Kelly

author of Weaponized Division: What Broke America — How We Repair It