Run, Hide, Fight

6 minute read Published: 2024-11-06

I'm just a teacher. I'm no political expert; I have no special understanding of voter motivations, policy implications, procedural levers, or anything else you want an expert on right now. I'm just a teacher, but I've taught in the mad era of normalized school shootings.

Seems to me, there's an armed madman in the building.

If you find this metaphor distasteful, well, good. I am absolutely recruiting dead children to my argument, because there are about to be a whole lot more of them. Make no mistake: the Trump regime comes with a staggering body count. How many is unclear, but more than you can bear.

There's an armed madman in here, and we're locked inside with him. Only, it's even worse than that, because it turns out the teachers—the authority figures who ostensibly should protect us—are on the madman's side. Nobody is drawing shades over windows or barricading doors. Nobody is keeping us away sightlines for a clean shot. The windows are up, the doors ajar. Heavy footsteps are getting louder in the hallway.

Run, hide, fight. This is what we, sickeningly, teach children to survive school shootings. Escape if you can. Hide if you can't. And as a last resort, use everything at your disposal to incapacitate the attacker. Of course, this last option is a farce, since thrown chairs and staplers do not stop the rapid discharge of a semi-automatic rifle. But these are the "rules of engagement" as we define them for kids.

For kids.

But now these are the circumstances faced by anyone who might be an enemy of the Trump regime. If you dissent, if you protest—hell, if you're the wrong nationality, creed, or gender—you may be a target. So what will it be: run, hide, or fight?

Running is expensive, as any immigrant can tell you. The passage itself may be costly, but that alone does not account for the lost connections to family, friends, career, and homeland. Then there's the cost of playing by the rules of another country, building a new network, and likely restarting a career. Departing America is a privilege not everyone can afford.

I also wouldn't be so sure that the madman allows simple departure for very long. There are economic costs to a brain drain.

So maybe you hide, hoping this all blows over and no one comes knocking on your door, asking about your political views or your assigned sex at birth. Living in fear comes with its own costs, and has few fail-safes once your cover is blown. Running is much harder when you're already a target.

The safest form of hiding is the least operable: in solitude. Humans need connections, and with those connections comes a risk of exposure in one form or another. A person trying to hide in plain sight will need to live as though they are an undercover agent. Individual operational security will need to massively improve for many. This is not just a technological consideration. If you think I'm being hyperbolic here, remember that Texas passed an abortion law that encouraged neighbors to report their neighbors for seeking an abortion. There are literal bounties. Living as though there's a price on your head may not be that far-fetched.

And then there's fighting: direct confrontation with the threat. But what does that even mean when facing down an authoritarian regime that has the full violent force of the American police and military apparatus behind it?

Broadly, I think there are two kinds of fight here: the fight that makes it harder for the shooter to strike their intended target; and the fight that stops them from shooting at all. The former takes many of the strategies of hiding, but combines them with strong community building and mutual aid to form support networks to share skills, communicate vital information, and most importantly, hide and move the vulnerable to confound targeting/searching.

The latter—preventing the shot—well, that's the sticky one, isn't it?

If you believe the rule of law is still in place, a direct confrontation could occur in the political arena. Personally, I have my doubts about the rule of law being more than a pinkie promise that the current regime has decided to forswear, and has been rewarded for doing so. The laws will be bent to the will of the regime; they will not prevent the regime from enacting their will. And if that is so, direct confrontation looks much different.

The right in the US has been engaged in asymmetric warfare for decades now. They are unconstrained by facts or law. They will say anything, do anything, to grab and maintain power. Meanwhile the left...doesn't. And they may have some moral victory in conducting themselves so, but a moral victory rings hollow in authoritarianism.

Let me say this clearly: initiating violence is a mistake. Not only is the left massively outgunned, the result won't be what is desired. The regime is in a position to crack down with enough violence that kinetic opposition becomes a massacre. Do you want a real civil war? That's how you get one—at least, one that feels like a war. And in the attempt, life is made worse for everyone. The Northern Ireland model wasn't a good exemplar for social change, and an American equivalent of the IRA would not, I suspect, play out the way the wannabe soldiers hope it would. There are other examples one could find. Bottom line: I'm not so sure direct confrontation is viable at this moment.

Like I said, I'm just a teacher. The only thing I can think of that has a chance at success is, unsurprisingly, knowledge. Communication. Networks and broadcasts of vital information. Spread far and wide without reliance on state-captured media. We need not tell lies about what the right is planning and doing; the truth is terrifying enough.

The means of distribution will likely need to change. We will need a real-life Radio Free America and its internet equivalents to survive, and to disseminate truth in the face of government disinformation. Some very old tactics may well become relevant again, and we'll need brand new ones as well.

Victory may not look like an election for a long while now. It will be about keeping the light of truth alive in the dark times, and protecting one another through every tool at our disposal. I cannot say what shape the world will take, but I know that our enemy fears truth, and that makes it all the more powerful, all the more important to preserve.