By this time, we know this Administration’s playbook. It looks haphazard, and perhaps some of it is, but much of it is calculated to drive us to despair and numbness, to focus our attention on the fear invoked by the Executive Orders and dramatic statements, to draw the eye away from what’s really happening. Underneath all the intended layoffs of federal workers, for example, is the truth in plain sight – Musk and other Administration Republicans are making themselves unthinkably wealthy by raiding public coffers.
I know personally that this approach to distraction and fear is effective. As we well know, it’s the playbook of authoritarian regimes. A fate from which we as a country now recognize we are not exempt.
Neither, however, are we powerless.
In a call this week, a lawyer reminded us that the Executive Orders are no more than a wish at this point. Our current laws and protections still (largely) exist and can be fought for and defended.
As I listen to Trump’s claim that he’ll move Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt and make Gaza instead “a luxury paradise,” I recognize that same distraction strategy. It’s not that he’s not serious in his intentions, as this would be consistent with his imperialist core. Instead, it’s the recognition that his bluster and bluffing is meant to distract us, again, from the very real dangers he is creating.
The same playbook Netanyahu has used for years. The lies that Israel was in danger and must defend itself against the Palestinians was never true. This claim is a gas lighting of the actual truth, that the deeply oppressed Palestinians fought back in the way they knew and know how against their captors.
It was this same justification that was underpinning Netanyahu’s absolutely leveling of Gaza, a genocide funded by this country and continuing to this day. The false belief that the destruction of another – the Palestinians, immigrants, transgender individuals – is necessary to the success of society. This has never been true, but this “othering” provides wildly powerful cover for the very worst of human right abuses.
Which is where we find ourselves now. Fighting parallel wars, in the US, in Palestine, in much of the world, as humanity continues to try to hold back a rising tide of authoritarianism.
For it is all intertwined – our fight for our Palestinian siblings is tied up with the safety of our immigrant, transgender, and otherwise vilified cohabitants on this shared earth. When we can dehumanize one group, we don’t stop there. We find ever more groups to dehumanize, until there is nothing left but the “preferred” individuals. We know this horror all too well.
What, then, do we do as Unitarian Universalists?
This is the time, beloveds, to be brave in a way most of us never have before. When we were fighting safely from a far distance, with great intent and effort, but still essentially safe. That time is over.
This administration threatens to deport students who protested the genocide in Gaza, to jail those who use “anti-Semitic” language (which is just code for speaking out against Israel’s actions), to separate us in ways that make us afraid of naming our own truths.
Yet the Palestinians themselves teach us otherwise. For three-quarters of a century, they have fought for their home, for each other, for mutual care and the strength of love, against brutal conditions and captors.
We are only just beginning that same fight for our homeland – and for theirs. And if we do it now, not stunned into inaction, we have some hope of saving our country before it descends into a truly authoritarian regime. The time to act is now.
So, what do we do?
One answer is to reach out to your local UUJME chapter. If you don’t easily find one, reach out to UUJME directly for help in getting involved UUs in many locations are drawing the connections between the multiple oppressions we face here and that the Palestinians face there, and moving people into meaningful action in community, accountable to the request of the Palestinian liberation movement.
And this list gives great, finite, suggestions, for those just feeling stuck, not knowing where to begin.
If you do nothing else, call your representatives every day, and remind them of their power to halt government gone astray. They have powers that they are not yet using.
Keep the faith, friends. This is a fight we can win.
