The Cavalry Isn’t Coming. Be the Cavalry
From Despair to Defiance: A Citizen’s Guide to Reclaiming Power
By Dino Alonso
What should you do when your party is out of power, your institutions are cracking, and the country is sliding toward the unthinkable?
Let’s stop pretending.
The Democratic Party has lost institutional control.
The Republican Party controls the presidency, the House, the Senate, and the narrative more often than not.
If you’re waiting for a cavalry to arrive, you’ll be waiting a long time.
If you expect bold leadership to spring from the national party structure, you’ll be waiting even longer.
But that doesn’t mean we are powerless.
It means we must relearn where power lives—and how it’s exercised when all the old doors are closed.
The System Has Been Captured. But It’s Not Fully Owned.
There’s a temptation, especially among political moderates, to say, “Let’s just wait for the next election.”
Let’s be clear: this is not a normal political cycle.
What we’re living through is not just the “other party” holding power.
It is a faction openly hostile to democratic institutions, civic trust, and basic pluralism.
This administration is not governing—it is hollowing out.
• Tariffs are used as power plays, not as policy tools.
• Federal agencies are packed with loyalists who bend data to ideology.
• The courts are increasingly used as enforcers of executive will.
• Opposition voices are labeled as enemies.
• States threatened for defending rights.
• Journalists are painted as traitors.
• Children, the poor, the sick, the marginalized—all used as rhetorical props or budget line items to slash.
This is what authoritarian drift looks like: not a dramatic coup, but a slow severing of norms.
And while the Democratic Party has no chambers of Congress, and appears fractured or feeble, the citizenry is not bound by that failure.
History shows us something urgent:
Institutions falter. People rise.
History Doesn’t Wait for Strong Institutions
Let’s zoom out.
There is precedent for this kind of moment, and it rarely ends well when people choose silence or safety.
• In the 1850s, the political establishment equivocated as the nation barreled toward civil war.
• In the 1930s, establishment leaders in Germany and Italy believed they could “manage” rising strongmen.
• In the 1950s, McCarthyism metastasized while many in power stayed quiet.
• In the early 2000s, truth was the first casualty of patriotic fervor.
Each time, citizens, artists, local leaders, journalists, and the morally ungovernable forced the pivot.
You don’t need to win a Senate race to turn the tide. You need a conscience, a spine, and a plan.
What We Still Control
We no longer control federal legislation.
But we control pressure points—and pressure is power in a fragile system.
Here’s where leverage still lives:
1. Governorships & State Legislatures
In 17 states, Democrats hold the trifecta—governor and both legislative chambers.
In another 9, they hold at least the governor’s office.
That means:
• Executive orders can still be issued to protect reproductive rights, environmental safeguards, and education access.
• State laws can directly counter federal overreach.
• Governors can be national voices of conscience if we publicly back them.
Pressure your governor like they’re your president—because, in effect, they are.
2. State Attorneys General
State AGs can sue the federal government.
They can protect whistleblowers, file injunctions, and keep courtrooms open where Congress has gone silent.
If your state has a Democratic AG, send them resources, support, and public backup.
3. Local Power—The Most Ignored Battlefield
City councils. School boards. DA offices. Sheriffs.
This is where ideology becomes law enforcement. Where rights either live or die.
You can run. You can organize. You can watch a dog.
Want to stop book bans?
Run for your library board.
Want to stop police from cooperating with federal overreach?
Run for city council.
Want to change your town’s budget priorities?
Run for the commission.
We don’t need permission.
We need people with clarity and courage at the micro-level.
The Role of the Citizen in an Unraveling Republic
So what do we do? Not in theory—in practice?
A. Stop Asking Politicians for Permission
Politicians follow pressure.
They don’t lead—they respond.
Build that pressure with:
• Letters and public testimony
• Coordinated social media pressure
• Donor pressure
• Mass call-ins
• Relentless organizing
Make them fear inaction more than action.
B. Link Arms with Civil Society
If your party is confused, civil society is not.
Join or support groups that:
• Defend voter access
• Protect journalists and educators
• Help immigrants and marginalized communities
• Offer legal protection for protesters
• Teach civic education
Power doesn’t need a ballot to grow.
Sometimes it grows in church basements, union halls, bookstores, and classrooms.
C. Create Parallel Moral Authority
When state power is abused, moral power becomes the antidote.
That means:
• Speaking the truth with clarity and repetition
• Refusing euphemism (“culture wars” is cowardice—this is extremism)
• Framing the fight not as Democrat vs. Republican, but democracy vs. authoritarianism
“When the forms of an old order are breaking down,” John Dewey wrote, “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old order has not yet died and the new one is not yet born.”
This is our crisis.
But it’s also our task: to carry what’s dying and deliver what must be born.
How to Build a Moral Majority Again
Let’s be honest. The Democratic Party is not, in its current form, a movement.
But the people around it can be.
To build a moral majority again, we need three things:
1. A Shared Language of Urgency
Not left vs. right.
Not liberal vs. conservative.
Authoritarianism vs. Democracy.
Truth vs. Delusion.
Life vs. Cynicism.
2. A Culture of Boldness, Not Deference
Deference got us here.
Politeness and process are no match for coordinated cruelty.
We need loudmouths, truth-tellers, artists, whistleblowers, grandmothers with megaphones, teens with TikTok accounts, and preachers with spines.
Be louder than the liars.
3. A Commitment to Slow, Real Work
The Right has spent 40 years reshaping the courts, media, and cultural norms.
We can’t reverse that in 18 months.
But we can:
• Out-organize them locally
• Out-vote them in key districts
• Out-think them strategically
• Out-love them morally
This Will Be a Grind. But It’s Ours.
This isn’t a political campaign anymore.
This is a civic movement.
It’s harder. Slower. More frustrating.
But it’s also more real. More human. More lasting.
Every person you talk to.
Every school board you flip.
Every voter you register.
Every youth you mentor.
Every lie you challenge.
Every elder you protect.
Every law you read.
Every meeting you attend.
It all matters.
Final Words: Don’t Look Up. Look Around.
There is no savior coming.
There is no institution that will solve this for us.
There is only us.
And that’s enough.
Enough to build something better.
Enough to hold the line until reinforcements arrive.
Enough to replant this democratic experiment in healthier soil.
We’re not powerless.
We are the power.
Now let’s act like it.
If this piece helped clarify things for you, send it to one person.
Just one. That’s how we grow—one conscience at a time.
Quality first. Frequency second. Friction last.