The forecast hurricane has arrived. Predictable from Election Day, 2024 – a day that will live in infamy – here it is. Government shut down, military summoned to combat “the enemy within,” the economy sliding, costs rising, the absurdly rich getting richer at the expense of the rest, science and education kneecapped, fishing boats bombed, the press suppressed, a flailing leader unable to disguise his dementia… The popularity of the Nameless One and his lawless laws is abysmal, but in a tyranny popularity doesn’t count. Each day more of us wake to our predicament, while our leaders and chieftains insist the system is working. Are they blind, frightened, or just plain venal – does it matter which? Our dreamy ship of state is foundering on the shoals of timidity and greed.

What to do! First, what not to. No surrender, ducking, finger-pointing. Bellringing, yes, hand-wringing, no. “We are where we are” – the phrase of the hour. Ready your uniform and arms. Am the “enemy within,” as defined by the Nameless One? (Any critic of his regime seems included in that category and – obviously! – should be rounded up and shot.)

What are our arms? No, not guns, let’s hope ever. Once we start massacring each other, our state will be sunk, and we must reconstruct from scratch. Our arms are our voices, purses, guts. We must raise hell and keep raising hell till hell’s likelihood recedes. We must never, never endorse any enabler of this regime. Any Republican who still calls themselves Republican is our opponent, at least for now. There are not “very fine people on both sides.” This battle, alas, is not political but existential, between Good and Evil: that’s their rhetoric too, maybe the only point about which we can agree. Pick your team and act accordingly. Wrestle the Devil with no holds barred.

Money’s a potent persuader. We the People have a lot of it. Weaponize it. The Disney company reinstated Jimmy Kimmel after they lost 1.7 million customers overnight. Punish collaborators by withdrawing patronage. Our enemies will do the same, you say? Let them – there are more of us.

Be disagreeable. You’ve been branded an enemy, act like one. No more Mister Nice Guy, let’s talk this through. For the Nameless One and his goons, words are tools, unconstrained by truth. They don’t believe a word they say so neither should we. Assume every assertion from the White House is a bald-faced lie; you won’t be far off. Shout them down. Get hauled away in police vans, if you must. America can house a million prisoners. What happens if ten million disturb the peace – or fifty million? The Nameless One believes he can scare everyone into submission. Prove him wrong.

“Make good trouble,” Congressman John Lewis urged. Be willing to disrupt to rebuild. That was the spirit of the January Sixth mob and sadly they achieved a lot. Convince your lily-livered representatives they’ll join the unemployed if they don’t listen up – that, not patriotism, will fix their attention.

Am I rabble-rousing here? You bet. That, in this dire hour, is my moral obligation. Do all you can, I exhort. What I can do is shout – to my gathered hearers – not to convince you – you need no convincing – but to rouse and rally. A coup is underway, which together we can prevent – if we get together. E pluribus unum – out of many one – and that one can pack a punch.

Am I happy on the hustings? Hardly. I prefer poetry to politics. But there can be no poetry without the freedom to write and read it. Hence my hollering.