There’s a lot of folks outside of the country who are urging all the wrong things. I get they’re anxious but you have articulated why we’re on the right course.
Dino, today's essay of yours has helped keep me grounded. Still angry at recent and current events, and that we seemingly have to triage Venezuela, Minnesota, and Greenland, but grounded.
I'll do my best to balance the anger with the grounding, and there'll be more. I'll need to read this a second and probably a third time or more. You're so right, and you have a special talent for naming things and putting events in their proper order and perspective.
Let's continue to compare notes and bring our life experience to bear in all this.
how long does the witness phase last? ICE invaded CA 7 months ago. How many people have to die in their custody? They’ll do a lot of damage between now and November. I’m ashamed that my Dem electeds aren’t calling these thugs terrorists.
I hear the urgency underneath your question, and I don’t think it’s naïve or reckless. It’s the right question to be asking now, not later.
“How long does the witness phase last?” doesn’t have a calendar answer. It has a function answer.
The witness phase doesn’t end when enough harm has occurred. If it did, we’d already be past it. It ends when witnessing stops being absorbable by the system.
That’s the part that’s hardest to accept.
You’re right, ICE has been operating with lethal impunity for months. People have died in custody. A citizen was killed. None of that is in dispute anymore. But the witness phase persists nationally because the damage, horrific as it is, is still being contained. Geographically. Politically. Narratively. It’s treated as tragic but local, shocking but isolated, serious but not system-threatening.
Witnessing alone doesn’t force a transition. What forces a transition is when exposure creates costs that can’t be deferred.
Right now, those costs are still being pushed downward, onto families, communities, local officials, and a handful of brave individuals. That’s why I keep insisting on sequence. If we bypass noncooperation and civil disobedience at scale, we don’t shorten the path, we collapse it into something the state knows how to handle.
That’s also why I’m careful about Minnesota. I agree with you that parts of the Twin Cities never granted legitimacy in the first place. But legitimacy withdrawal only works when it spreads beyond the already unconvinced. Otherwise it becomes proof of containment rather than proof of collapse.
You’re also right to be angry at Democratic electeds. Their refusal to name this as terror isn’t prudence. It’s fear. Fear of escalation they can’t control, fear of being blamed for disorder, fear of stepping outside procedural safety while the other side has already abandoned it. That silence is corrosive, and it teaches people the wrong lesson, that naming reality is more dangerous than living inside it.
But here’s the hard truth I keep circling: if we move to confrontation before legitimacy has fractured broadly, we don’t force accountability. We supply justification. We give the state permission to accelerate openly and consolidate support it hasn’t yet fully secured.
The witness phase feels intolerable because it asks people to endure damage while building leverage instead of releasing it. That’s brutal. It’s also how resistance survives long enough to matter.
So my answer, as unsatisfying as it is, is this: the witness phase lasts until exposure stops being survivable for those in power. Our work isn’t to count bodies to reach a moral threshold. It’s to make silence, delay, and complicity politically and institutionally untenable.
I don’t think you’re wrong to feel we’re running out of time. I think the danger is confusing urgency with readiness.
And I’m still asking myself the same question you asked me, every day.
You raise the right questions. Where are we along the continuum? Hard question, perhaps even harder to answer, but absolutely necessary to, and to do so accurately. That's true at the micro, i.e. personal level as well as the macro - national and global. The one also has to sustain the other, or it won't work.
At what point are we really ready to move past the boring, tedious, patience-trying-but-vital witness and exposure to the legitimacy withdrawal and confrontation? And yes, I combined the last two while bypassing the noncooperation and civil disobedience, and mean the kind of 'legitimacy withdrawal' that really can topple tyrants.
Minnesota, it seems to me, is in a combination of parts 2, 3 and 4: mass civil disobedience, legitimacy withdrawal and confrontation. Though I'm not convinced legitimacy was ever granted up there in the first place, certainly not in the Twin Cities, and not by the majority of Minnesotans elsewhere in the state.
The resisters' effectiveness is being tested, I'm certain, even as I (impatiently) type this.
The rest of us, for the most part, are left with witnessing and exposure, mostly from a distance. And helping where we can. There are obviously myriad local and individual variances to all of the above, including in Minnesota itself. And street by street, hour by hour in Minneapolis.
That's my take, at 11:49 a.m. local time, January 14, 2026. And you?
I appreciate how carefully you’re holding the question rather than rushing past it. That alone tells me we’re circling the same concern from different angles, not arguing past each other.
I think you’re right that the continuum isn’t uniform. It never is. There isn’t a single national “phase” that everyone inhabits at once. There are pockets that advance faster, and others that lag, and the friction between those zones matters more than we usually admit. Minnesota may well be further along the arc than much of the country, especially in the Twin Cities, where legitimacy has been strained or absent for a long time. That history changes the math.
Where I’m still cautious is exactly where you placed the emphasis: bypassing noncooperation and civil disobedience in favor of legitimacy withdrawal that “really can topple tyrants.”
I don’t disagree that legitimacy withdrawal is decisive. I do worry about how it’s achieved and, more importantly, who can safely participate in it. Legitimacy doesn’t evaporate just because a group refuses it. It erodes when refusal becomes broad, boring, repeatable, and hard to punish without revealing the state’s hand. That’s where noncooperation does quiet work that confrontation alone can’t.
What I keep coming back to is asymmetry. Minnesota’s resistance is being tested, yes, but so is the state’s tolerance for escalation. In places where legitimacy was never fully granted, confrontation can surface truth quickly. In places where it still half exists, confrontation can paradoxically restore it by letting the state claim order against chaos. Same action, different outcome, depending on terrain.
I also think the distance you name matters more than we like. Witnessing from afar feels thin, even performative. But it’s often the only way scale is built before risk concentrates. The mistake, I think, is treating witnessing as the end rather than the scaffolding.
So where am I, right now?
I’m less interested in asking “are we ready to move on?” and more interested in asking “what conditions make the next phase survivable for more than the bravest few?” If legitimacy withdrawal arrives carried only by those already exposed, it doesn’t topple systems, it selects martyrs.
My unease isn’t about patience for its own sake. It’s about timing that multiplies power rather than spending it all at once.
That’s my take, right now. And like yours, I know it may need revision before the end of the night.
You've really researched this from end to end. Yes, "bypassing" the middle stages was perhaps not the word I intended; it was more of an abstract or theoretical turn of thinking meant to infer "once we've successfully navigated" them. Just a matter of some of us want - and I would argue even actually need, legitimately need, to get through them speedily. Not rush, but not delay things unnecessarily either. And each of us individually as well as locally, regionally, etc., is at a slightly or widely different place with that.
I recently navigated an hour long podcast from a Black minister who pointed out some of the history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, as it officially called itself. One thing that is poorly understood is that the Panthers did a *lot* of mundane, but vital community organizing, of which the free breakfast program for school children, and its legacy programs to this day, is merely the best known.
One thing the self-defense up to and including arming themselves did was help drastically reduce the number of police killings and other lynching. I can't speak from experience, other than to say, I'm married to a Black woman, and was married to another one before she passed five years ago. So, first hand I can't speak to that experience, but I think you get my meaning.
And of course, just as you're not passing judgment on our more militant allies (hopefully truly allies), I'm also not saying the militant approach is always best or right. It depends, on a lot of things. And I'm speaking as a former long ago militant myself.
Your point about the legacy of violence is well taken. What effect the Panthers had in reducing crime in the Black community overall is a deeper dive than I'm ready for at the moment. I fear I would not like the answer.
Well, so much else, but I just finished reading Part One of your resistance essays. Expecting to finish Two and Three tomorrow or over the weekend. I continue to marvel at the extent of your research. May it continue to correct errors, including within ourselves, and do some good. Take care, good buddy!
Dino, I really appreciate your article today. I also am an avid follower of Chris Hedges. So, I was very interested to see your essay pivot off of his work, and in the way that it does.
.
Personally, also, I am strong advocate of non-violent resistance, and I am pleased to see you present a case for how and why (and, by your reckoning,
when) non-violent resistance is not just a moral choice, but a skillful one.
.
I was surprised, however, at the implication you seem to hint at that -- that Hedges would advocate for any path other than non-violence. Yes: it is true that he has sounded – and continues to sound – the alarm about the accelerated advance of totalitarianism in the United States, and I have heard him advocate for resistance, but I have never heard him advocate for violence. Quite the contrary, in fact. Have you?
If it appeared that I was implying Chris was advocating anything other than non-violence, then I apologize for the unintended implication.
The chief purpose of my commentary was to define the space between pressurization and civic collapse.
There is a tendency in the public to misinterpret the warning of those who have lived the terror of civic collapse and subsequent violence. It can accelerate (in the mind of the public) the interpretation of recognition—> preperation —> Action —> consequence.
There is also a tendency to collapse unrelated conditions into a logical flow. Resistance does not of necessity precede violence. Violence, rebellion and partisan operations are seperate and unrelated.
There’s a lot of folks outside of the country who are urging all the wrong things. I get they’re anxious but you have articulated why we’re on the right course.
Dino, today's essay of yours has helped keep me grounded. Still angry at recent and current events, and that we seemingly have to triage Venezuela, Minnesota, and Greenland, but grounded.
I'll do my best to balance the anger with the grounding, and there'll be more. I'll need to read this a second and probably a third time or more. You're so right, and you have a special talent for naming things and putting events in their proper order and perspective.
Let's continue to compare notes and bring our life experience to bear in all this.
Wow. A lot to chew on along with Chris's opinions and those of some folks looking at us from the outside. Thank you.
how long does the witness phase last? ICE invaded CA 7 months ago. How many people have to die in their custody? They’ll do a lot of damage between now and November. I’m ashamed that my Dem electeds aren’t calling these thugs terrorists.
I hear the urgency underneath your question, and I don’t think it’s naïve or reckless. It’s the right question to be asking now, not later.
“How long does the witness phase last?” doesn’t have a calendar answer. It has a function answer.
The witness phase doesn’t end when enough harm has occurred. If it did, we’d already be past it. It ends when witnessing stops being absorbable by the system.
That’s the part that’s hardest to accept.
You’re right, ICE has been operating with lethal impunity for months. People have died in custody. A citizen was killed. None of that is in dispute anymore. But the witness phase persists nationally because the damage, horrific as it is, is still being contained. Geographically. Politically. Narratively. It’s treated as tragic but local, shocking but isolated, serious but not system-threatening.
Witnessing alone doesn’t force a transition. What forces a transition is when exposure creates costs that can’t be deferred.
Right now, those costs are still being pushed downward, onto families, communities, local officials, and a handful of brave individuals. That’s why I keep insisting on sequence. If we bypass noncooperation and civil disobedience at scale, we don’t shorten the path, we collapse it into something the state knows how to handle.
That’s also why I’m careful about Minnesota. I agree with you that parts of the Twin Cities never granted legitimacy in the first place. But legitimacy withdrawal only works when it spreads beyond the already unconvinced. Otherwise it becomes proof of containment rather than proof of collapse.
You’re also right to be angry at Democratic electeds. Their refusal to name this as terror isn’t prudence. It’s fear. Fear of escalation they can’t control, fear of being blamed for disorder, fear of stepping outside procedural safety while the other side has already abandoned it. That silence is corrosive, and it teaches people the wrong lesson, that naming reality is more dangerous than living inside it.
But here’s the hard truth I keep circling: if we move to confrontation before legitimacy has fractured broadly, we don’t force accountability. We supply justification. We give the state permission to accelerate openly and consolidate support it hasn’t yet fully secured.
The witness phase feels intolerable because it asks people to endure damage while building leverage instead of releasing it. That’s brutal. It’s also how resistance survives long enough to matter.
So my answer, as unsatisfying as it is, is this: the witness phase lasts until exposure stops being survivable for those in power. Our work isn’t to count bodies to reach a moral threshold. It’s to make silence, delay, and complicity politically and institutionally untenable.
I don’t think you’re wrong to feel we’re running out of time. I think the danger is confusing urgency with readiness.
And I’m still asking myself the same question you asked me, every day.
You raise the right questions. Where are we along the continuum? Hard question, perhaps even harder to answer, but absolutely necessary to, and to do so accurately. That's true at the micro, i.e. personal level as well as the macro - national and global. The one also has to sustain the other, or it won't work.
At what point are we really ready to move past the boring, tedious, patience-trying-but-vital witness and exposure to the legitimacy withdrawal and confrontation? And yes, I combined the last two while bypassing the noncooperation and civil disobedience, and mean the kind of 'legitimacy withdrawal' that really can topple tyrants.
Minnesota, it seems to me, is in a combination of parts 2, 3 and 4: mass civil disobedience, legitimacy withdrawal and confrontation. Though I'm not convinced legitimacy was ever granted up there in the first place, certainly not in the Twin Cities, and not by the majority of Minnesotans elsewhere in the state.
The resisters' effectiveness is being tested, I'm certain, even as I (impatiently) type this.
The rest of us, for the most part, are left with witnessing and exposure, mostly from a distance. And helping where we can. There are obviously myriad local and individual variances to all of the above, including in Minnesota itself. And street by street, hour by hour in Minneapolis.
That's my take, at 11:49 a.m. local time, January 14, 2026. And you?
I appreciate how carefully you’re holding the question rather than rushing past it. That alone tells me we’re circling the same concern from different angles, not arguing past each other.
I think you’re right that the continuum isn’t uniform. It never is. There isn’t a single national “phase” that everyone inhabits at once. There are pockets that advance faster, and others that lag, and the friction between those zones matters more than we usually admit. Minnesota may well be further along the arc than much of the country, especially in the Twin Cities, where legitimacy has been strained or absent for a long time. That history changes the math.
Where I’m still cautious is exactly where you placed the emphasis: bypassing noncooperation and civil disobedience in favor of legitimacy withdrawal that “really can topple tyrants.”
I don’t disagree that legitimacy withdrawal is decisive. I do worry about how it’s achieved and, more importantly, who can safely participate in it. Legitimacy doesn’t evaporate just because a group refuses it. It erodes when refusal becomes broad, boring, repeatable, and hard to punish without revealing the state’s hand. That’s where noncooperation does quiet work that confrontation alone can’t.
What I keep coming back to is asymmetry. Minnesota’s resistance is being tested, yes, but so is the state’s tolerance for escalation. In places where legitimacy was never fully granted, confrontation can surface truth quickly. In places where it still half exists, confrontation can paradoxically restore it by letting the state claim order against chaos. Same action, different outcome, depending on terrain.
I also think the distance you name matters more than we like. Witnessing from afar feels thin, even performative. But it’s often the only way scale is built before risk concentrates. The mistake, I think, is treating witnessing as the end rather than the scaffolding.
So where am I, right now?
I’m less interested in asking “are we ready to move on?” and more interested in asking “what conditions make the next phase survivable for more than the bravest few?” If legitimacy withdrawal arrives carried only by those already exposed, it doesn’t topple systems, it selects martyrs.
My unease isn’t about patience for its own sake. It’s about timing that multiplies power rather than spending it all at once.
That’s my take, right now. And like yours, I know it may need revision before the end of the night.
You've really researched this from end to end. Yes, "bypassing" the middle stages was perhaps not the word I intended; it was more of an abstract or theoretical turn of thinking meant to infer "once we've successfully navigated" them. Just a matter of some of us want - and I would argue even actually need, legitimately need, to get through them speedily. Not rush, but not delay things unnecessarily either. And each of us individually as well as locally, regionally, etc., is at a slightly or widely different place with that.
I recently navigated an hour long podcast from a Black minister who pointed out some of the history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, as it officially called itself. One thing that is poorly understood is that the Panthers did a *lot* of mundane, but vital community organizing, of which the free breakfast program for school children, and its legacy programs to this day, is merely the best known.
One thing the self-defense up to and including arming themselves did was help drastically reduce the number of police killings and other lynching. I can't speak from experience, other than to say, I'm married to a Black woman, and was married to another one before she passed five years ago. So, first hand I can't speak to that experience, but I think you get my meaning.
And of course, just as you're not passing judgment on our more militant allies (hopefully truly allies), I'm also not saying the militant approach is always best or right. It depends, on a lot of things. And I'm speaking as a former long ago militant myself.
Your point about the legacy of violence is well taken. What effect the Panthers had in reducing crime in the Black community overall is a deeper dive than I'm ready for at the moment. I fear I would not like the answer.
Well, so much else, but I just finished reading Part One of your resistance essays. Expecting to finish Two and Three tomorrow or over the weekend. I continue to marvel at the extent of your research. May it continue to correct errors, including within ourselves, and do some good. Take care, good buddy!
.
Dino, I really appreciate your article today. I also am an avid follower of Chris Hedges. So, I was very interested to see your essay pivot off of his work, and in the way that it does.
.
Personally, also, I am strong advocate of non-violent resistance, and I am pleased to see you present a case for how and why (and, by your reckoning,
when) non-violent resistance is not just a moral choice, but a skillful one.
.
I was surprised, however, at the implication you seem to hint at that -- that Hedges would advocate for any path other than non-violence. Yes: it is true that he has sounded – and continues to sound – the alarm about the accelerated advance of totalitarianism in the United States, and I have heard him advocate for resistance, but I have never heard him advocate for violence. Quite the contrary, in fact. Have you?
.
If it appeared that I was implying Chris was advocating anything other than non-violence, then I apologize for the unintended implication.
The chief purpose of my commentary was to define the space between pressurization and civic collapse.
There is a tendency in the public to misinterpret the warning of those who have lived the terror of civic collapse and subsequent violence. It can accelerate (in the mind of the public) the interpretation of recognition—> preperation —> Action —> consequence.
There is also a tendency to collapse unrelated conditions into a logical flow. Resistance does not of necessity precede violence. Violence, rebellion and partisan operations are seperate and unrelated.
Exactly.