We Are the Retribution Trump Promised
How America's institutions surrendered, how democracy buckled — and how a quiet resistance is rising to end the cycle of vengeance.
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
— Albert Camus
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.”
— James Baldwin
Donald Trump told America exactly what he intended to do
"I will be your retribution," he said.
He promised it. Over and over again. On camera. At rallies. In interviews. It was never a hidden plan. It was an open threat.
And now we see what he meant.
Retribution looks like a female judge hauled into a courtroom under the same “obstruction” charge he once evaded. It looks like American citizen children deported alongside their immigrant parents without a hearing, while he himself had armies of lawyers shielding him from justice. It looks like toddlers shoved through asylum interviews alone, while he spent years delaying his own trials with endless motions and appeals.
Retribution looks like ICE raids and mass deportations, not to make the country safer, but to avenge the humiliation he felt when civil servants stood in his way the first time. It looks like dismantling the very federal government he once called "the swamp," because it had the audacity to expect him to follow the law.
Retribution looks like bullying our allies, cutting our social supports, hollowing out our democratic institutions. It looks like turning America into a mirror of one man’s resentments, so that no one stands taller than his own wounded pride.
The Ground Shifts Underfoot
He is not coming for the so-called elites. He is not coming for the immigrants. He is coming for you.
For us.
We the People are his retribution.
He does not want to save America. He wants to drag it down until it no longer makes him feel small.
And unless we understand that — unless we see that the attacks on immigrants, on children, on judges, on civil servants, on dissent itself are all one thing — we will keep losing ground without understanding why.
This is the heart of the matter. It is the lesson etched into history: that there comes a time when the weight of resistance gathers not by force, but by a quiet rising of the human spirit. The Firewall rises in that tradition, born of memory, built for this hour.
Because if we are his retribution, we must become something greater.
We must become his contradiction.
We must become the answer that shows up where he expects silence.
The dignity where he expects fear.
The refusal where he expects obedience.
The creation where he expects only collapse.
The Lie of Proximity
Trump’s regime is built on dragging others down. It does not know what to do when we lift each other up.
It is built on turning proximity to injustice into guilt and punishment. It cannot survive if we turn proximity into solidarity.
It survives by isolating victims and terrorizing witnesses. It collapses when witnesses refuse to look away and refuse to walk by.
We are not helpless spectators to this slow-motion disaster. We are the pivot point.
Because here is the truth that none of Trump’s enforcers can afford for you to remember:
They cannot arrest us all.
They cannot disappear us all.
They cannot fire us all.
They cannot erase the truth from every mouth.
Not if we name it.
Not if we choose — now, urgently — to act inside the very institutions they are trying to bend to their will.
They counted the buildings. They counted the salaries. They counted the contracts.
And they thought they had counted the people too.
They mistook the silence inside our institutions for surrender. They mistook the dimming of public words for the extinguishing of private will.
But will is not so easily measured.
It runs along the fault lines of erased policies and ghosted colleagues. It roots itself in those who remember that law without justice is only paper, and power without conscience is only noise.
It survives inside those who stay at their posts — not to obey, but to resist.
In the questions that stop a process.
In the signatures that never arrive.
In the hands that quietly refuse to carry out what they know they should never have been asked to do.
The Firewall is not a place you join.
It is a place you decide to stand.
It lives wherever someone says, even if only to themselves, Not here. Not through me.
And through that unseen line, through that thousandfold gathering of the willful and the weary, the real work begins.
What the Old Fighters Knew
He thinks the universities are his.
He thinks the law firms are his.
He thinks the tech companies, the banks, the hospitals, the HR departments are his.
He believes that fear has already done his work for him. That those inside will comply, if not cheer.
But we have seen this story before. In other countries. In other centuries. In other times when power mistook silence for loyalty, and mistook fear for surrender.
They are wrong.
Because silence is not consent. It is a waiting breath.
Because fear is not agreement. It is a call.
And because compliance is not destiny. It is a choice we still have the power to break.
This week, The Firewall will begin gathering the first maps of workplace resistance.
Tiny actions. Small refusals. Micro-acts of dignity.
Enough to create friction in a machine that demands smooth, silent obedience.
Enough to remind each other, and the country, that democracy is not a possession — it is a practice.
Enough to answer the question that is now rising everywhere:
What will it take to make all of this stop?
It will take you.
It will take choosing proximity to the vulnerable instead of distance.
It will take using your voice instead of staying polite.
It will take seeing the deported child, the arrested judge, the fired librarian, the expelled student — and recognizing yourself.
Because you are not safe from what is coming. You are part of what is coming.
And that can be terror — or it can be triumph.
The Firewall chooses triumph.
The Firewall Begins Here
On Monday, we meet again. We will map the first acts. We will plant the first seeds. We will remember that every dictatorship was stopped not by the heroes we worship, but by the millions of small refusals that history forgot to name.
It begins now.
It begins with you.
As someone who has solid communication skills - and built a career based on my ability to write - I am absolutely in awe of your powerful writing. The resistance is lucky to have you.