“Tyranny requires the citizenry to show fear, maintain silence and offer compliance.
“Democracy requires balls, backbone, courage. Too hard!”
From Owen Gleiberman’s 9.27.25 weekly essay:
“As the United States gets pushed, day by day, closer and closer to autocracy, that’s a situation that ought to be setting everyone in the country on edge. Yet it’s part of the nature of autocracy to narcotize people into numbness, delusion, fear, and a kind of self-perpetuating apathy. And that’s what seems to be happening in America right now. Gavin Newsom shouldn’t be the only one saying that we’re in danger of not having real elections in 2028; tons of people (leaders, citizens, journalists) should be saying it. But too many of us are caught in a zone halfway between resistance and despair, and that’s the mood that One Battle After Another taps into.”