Source: Common Dreams
by George Cassidy Payne
“Archbishop Desmond Tutu once warned, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’ Neutrality (that quiet silence born of fear and resignation) is the oxygen every autocrat breathes. They survive by persuading us that resistance is pointless, that solidarity is too dangerous, and that isolation is inevitable. But history has no mercy for regimes built on fear. They all fall. We are watching the same authoritarian script play out today, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia to Benjamin Netanyahu’s siege of Gaza, from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to the United States itself. On Monday, President Trump invoked the Home Rule Act to seize control of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, installing Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terry Cole as its leader.” (08/13/25)