How Monsters Grow

Today I walked past a replica of the Eiffel Tower on my way to a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Two powerful symbols standing a few blocks apart, one born of France’s 1889 centennial after the French Revolution, and the other a gift from the French to celebrate our independence. The irony of passing both on my way to protest a man who behaves like a king was not lost on me.

Even though I’m away from home, and back in Las Vegas for a few days, there was no way I was going to miss the No Kings rally. So I found one nearby on the Vegas strip.

Coming together like this connects you to people in a way few other things can or ever will. In a few minutes, you can meet people who were strangers moments before and leave as friends and with stories you would never have heard otherwise. Today was no different. We crowded together to remind one another that there are more of us than there are of them, and that the Constitution is still worth defending.

But most importantly, it was a reminder that we will get through this and as long as we can still protest, he has not fulfilled his dream of actually becoming a king.

While the crowd chanted No Kings, my mind drifted back to Berlin. Seeing the city with a local guide and stopping at places I had only read about in textbooks. I was lost in thought, much like I was today, at one such stop when our tour guide pulled me back to the present. She saw the question in my face before I could ask it. I was looking at people the way you look at a photograph you cannot quite read. These were seemingly good people. They helped one another, cared for each other, and were compassionate and accepting. In those small moments, they were exactly the kind of neighbors you want to live beside.

She read the question on my face before I could speak and asked, “You want to know how it happened, don’t you?” What she said next unlocked something in me. I’m paraphrasing her now: it didn’t happen overnight. It was a slow, grinding collapse, a death by a thousand small cuts. After World War I, people felt desperate and broken and they wanted a better future.

In that instant, I heard a line that’s stayed with me ever since: “No one becomes a monster overnight.” Ordinary Germans didn’t wake up one morning and decide to become what they became. It starts in pieces. In hardship. In the promise that one strong voice can fix everything. In laws that quietly remove rights while everyone’s too tired or too afraid to stop them.

Those words landed cold and clear. They followed me home and left me with a question I couldn’t shake: in those early days, did Germans protest? At the point we are facing now, were they putting up a resistance? Did they see the danger? Were there mass outcries, or only scattered, brave acts that the state was able to crush?

I needed to know if they saw it coming. If they pushed back early, and what happened when they did. Because that’s the part that haunts me. Not just how bad it got, but how many people might’ve seen the signs and still couldn’t stop it. I kept thinking: maybe they protested just like we are now. Or maybe by the time they were ready, it was already too late.

So I went looking for the answer, not just in memory, but in history.

The legal machinery that made resistance dangerous did not fall from the sky. After the Reichstag burned in late February 1933, the government used that fire as an excuse to strip away basic freedoms almost overnight. A decree the next day gave police broad powers to arrest political opponents. A few weeks later, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which allowed the government to rule by decree. That one-two punch, emergency fear followed by permanent power, closed the public square fast. Protests, parties, unions, the spaces where people organized, all came under a new, lethal set of rules.

But that doesn’t mean no one fought back. They did.

Trade unions, Social Democrats, Communists, they organized. They called strikes. They held rallies. The regime responded with brutal force: street violence, mass arrests, state-sanctioned beatings. People were jailed. Some disappeared. Institutions that might have held the line, judges, churches, schools, were either attacked, co-opted, or silenced right when they were needed most.

A few stories from that time show us what resistance looked like, and why it wasn’t enough to stop the train.

There was the White Rose, a student resistance group. Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were just twenty-one and twenty-four. They walked into a university atrium with leaflets tucked under their arms. Pages that said: you still have a choice. That we don’t have to live like this. That resistance is still possible. They were arrested, tried, and executed. Their bravery still burns like a torch. But it also reminds us that isolated acts, no matter how courageous, can be crushed when the state controls the courts, the police, and the streets.

Sophie’s final words before her execution by guillotine have haunted me since the first time I heard them: “Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go. But what does my death matter if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

And Hans as well: “Long live freedom!”

To be this brave and steadfast on the right side of history is something I will never fully understand, and something I will never stop aspiring to.

Because Sophie and Hans didn’t know if anyone would ever read their leaflets. They didn’t know if anyone would pick up where they left off. They didn’t know if their words would outlive them.

But they acted anyway.

They believed enough in human decency, in conscience, in freedom, to spend their final moments whispering to a future they would never see.

And we are that future.

We are the ones they hoped would awaken. We are the ones with the chance to choose differently, while we still can. Not in grand heroic gestures, but in showing up. In connecting our voices. In using what power we still have before it slips away.

Because freedom doesn’t disappear all at once.

It erodes, slowly, legally, and then all at once.

Until one day, no one is left to hand out the leaflets.

There was resistance in the church, too. In 1934, a group of Protestant leaders gathered in the city of Barmen and signed a declaration that said, in essence, no. No, the church would not serve the state. No, faith would not be twisted to fit Nazi ideology. The document, written mostly by theologian Karl Barth, declared that Jesus Christ, not any political leader, was the true head of the church. It rejected Hitler’s attempt to merge Christianity with racial hate and national obedience. That moment became the moral backbone of what was called the Confessing Church, a movement of pastors and believers who refused to let their pulpits become propaganda. It didn’t stop the regime, but it drew a line of conscience that history still remembers.

And then there was Rosenstrasse. In the winter of 1943, about 1,800 German women stood in the freezing streets of Berlin, calling out the names of their Jewish husbands who had been detained. Day after day, they came back. Refusing to leave. Refusing to be silent. And in a rare moment of concession, the regime relented. Many of those men were released.

It was a victory. And it was a warning. Because even though Rosenstrasse proved that public pressure could sometimes work, it also showed how rare and fragile that success really was.

So what’s the pattern?

People resisted. Many were brave. But the resistance was fragmented. And when legal power is fused with violence, and fear replaces free speech, it becomes almost impossible for mass resistance to survive.

That’s the point I carry with me from Berlin. Most people weren’t monsters. But when fear, propaganda, and collapsing institutions take hold, even good people become silent, and silence becomes complicity.

That’s why what we do now matters.

Because we still have time. We still have rights. We still have newsrooms that publish truth. We still have courts and local governments that can check power.

We still have rallies that fill city streets with chants of “No Kings.”

And as long as those exist, we are not too late.

But that time is shrinking. And the cracks are already showing.

Just this week, a Senate Republican campaign ad circulated a video that looked like Senator Chuck Schumer speaking on camera, claiming the government shutdown was good for Democrats. The quote? Real. The footage? A lie. The entire visual was generated with AI, a fake mouth over real words designed to make people believe a moment happened that never did.

This is not some novelty or tech gimmick. It’s propaganda, and it spreads in seconds. One glance, one repost, and a truth becomes a weapon. And when millions of Americans are trained to believe only what they see with their own eyes, even when it’s not real, it becomes nearly impossible to hold anyone accountable. You can’t fight corruption when half the country no longer trusts what’s real.

And that erosion, that fog, is spreading fast.

At the same time, Trump is publicly claiming strength and loyalty to our allies, private reporting now shows that he told Ukraine’s President he was “reluctant” to approve sending Tomahawk missiles. These aren’t just any weapons. They’re precision-guided long-range cruise missiles, exactly the kind of deterrent Ukraine needs to hold the line against Russia. When a president says one thing in public and something completely different behind closed doors, it doesn’t just damage trust; it destabilizes entire regions. It weakens alliances. It tells dictators watching from the sidelines that maybe this country isn’t as united as it pretends to be.

And that’s not just speculation. Congress knows how dangerous this is.

A bipartisan group of senators, yes, bipartisan, is now moving to force a vote to block unauthorized military action in Venezuela. They are trying to claw back the constitutional authority that presidents have quietly eroded over decades. And they’re doing it now, because they know how easily a desperate president could manufacture a foreign conflict to distract from domestic failure. It’s not paranoia. It’s precedent. And they are sounding the alarm.

Even John Bolton, yes, that John Bolton, compared Trump’s approach to governance to Stalin’s secret police. He said, after his own recent indictment, that the way Trump targets his political enemies mirrors how the worst regimes in history turned the full power of the state against those who dared to stand in their way. You don’t have to like Bolton to understand how chilling it is when someone that inside the machine starts drawing those kinds of comparisons.

And while all that is happening at the top, here’s what’s happening at the bottom, in the daily lives of Americans who just need the government to function:

The federal courts are about to run out of money. They’re preparing for furloughs. That’s not a delay in paperwork. That’s immigration hearings halted. Civil rights cases paused midstream. If you’ve ever waited for a court to decide something that affects your child, your safety, or your future, you know this isn’t red tape. This is your life, on hold.

And it gets worse.

The U.S. agency that maintains our nuclear weapons stockpile just announced it will furlough most of its staff because of the shutdown. These aren’t theoretical roles. These are the people who perform constant safety inspections and security checks. These are the people who make sure the most dangerous weapons on the planet stay secure. And now we’re telling them to go home without pay.

While we were out holding signs that said No Kings, Trump was busy unveiling plans for an enormous arch near the Lincoln Memorial, a structure shaped like a triumphal gateway, inspired by Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, and intended to mark America’s 250th anniversary. It hasn’t been built yet, but the symbolism is clear. This isn’t just about honor or commemoration. It feels like projection. A design that uses architecture to signal power rather than service. And placing it so visibly near the Lincoln Memorial, a space built to honor unity and democracy, is more than coincidence. It’s a new narrative. Authoritarian regimes throughout history have relied on architecture to project dominance. When power demands a monument shaped like a missile‑arch, it isn’t about remembering. It’s about reminding, and controlling.

When Trump was asked about the more than 7 million Americans who showed up to protest today, he answered with just two words: “Who cares.”

And the truth is, we have to take him at his word. He doesn’t care. Not about the country. Not about the damage. Not about the people risking everything to hold the line. But he does care about one thing: how it looks. He cares about the optics. About the image. About whether he looks strong or weak. That’s everything to him. And this, the sheer scale of our protest, was a blow to the facade he’s worked so hard to build.

So he tried to change the subject.

He shut down a major freeway in San Diego, shooting off live military rounds onto American soil, hoping the noise would drown us out.

He ordered a strike on another boat in the Caribbean, another flash, another headline, another distraction.

But it didn’t work.

Because we’re not looking away.

We see what this is. It’s not leadership. It’s spectacle. The last time a U.S. president used covert force this recklessly was Nixon, dropping illegal bombs on Cambodia while denying it to the public. Another strongman move. Another desperate cover-up. Because when power starts to slip, men like this reach for war. For chaos. For noise.

It’s the oldest playbook in the world, and it’s playing out right in front of us.

We cannot keep pretending this is politics as usual.

It’s not.

When courts are stalled, safety systems break down, propaganda spreads unchecked, and world leaders are lied to behind closed doors, that’s not a glitch in the system. That is the system breaking.

And that’s why these protests matter.

Because we’re still standing in the public square.
Because we’re still shouting while we’re allowed to.
Because we’re still able to stop this, if we act before the window closes.

But the truth is, protest is just the start.

Marching makes a statement. But it doesn’t make a law.

It doesn’t stop a war.
It doesn’t fund the courts.
It doesn’t inspect a warhead or verify a lie before it spreads.
It doesn’t pay a judge’s clerk or keep a newsroom running when ad dollars dry up.

That part takes institutions.
The boring ones. The quiet ones.
The ones most people don’t see unless they fail.

And right now, those institutions are still standing, just barely.

State governors are still pushing back on federal overreach, some fighting in court, some refusing to comply with unconstitutional mandates.
Judges are still issuing rulings that keep corruption in check, even when they’re targeted for doing so.
Legal nonprofits are still filing lawsuits, the kind that slow the machine just long enough for the rest of us to catch up.
Independent newsrooms are still digging, even while being smeared as enemies of the state.
And local election officials are still showing up, even when it means facing threats, harassment, or exile from their own communities.

But they can’t do it alone.
None of them can.

That’s why these protests matter, not just because they feel good in the moment, but because they are fuel.
And we have to decide where that fuel goes.

Does it burn hot for one afternoon?
Or does it power something that lasts?

Because this isn’t just about resisting Trump.
It’s about making sure a country like this can’t be broken by someone like him again.

And if history teaches us anything, it’s this:
The moment we believe we’re powerless is the moment they win.
And we cannot give them that moment, not now, not ever.

So we have to take today’s momentum and push it somewhere real.

Because I looked around at the protest today, and I saw so many people, good people, ready to act but unsure of where to start.
The signs are strong. The energy is there. The passion is real.
But now we have to get deeper.

We need to get local, with a national message and a common mission.

There are enough of us in each region, town, and county.
Enough to change a school board, flip a city council, defend a library, and hold a line.
We just need structure. And a plan.

We need rallies that don’t end with applause.
We need speeches that don’t just inspire, they assign.
We need shared messaging that travels fast and cuts through noise.
And we need a coordinated call to action, with specific steps for each of us to take.
Not vague slogans. Not one-time events.
Real, granular, boring, powerful things.

Because what happens next doesn’t depend on Trump.
It depends on us.

And I know we’re tired. But the future doesn’t care how tired we are. It’s still coming.

So let’s decide what it looks like, while we still can. And make it happen. Because this is our moment, and we can’t let it slip away.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather