“For decades, elites have been using the power of shock to impose nightmares.  Donald Trump thinks he’ll be able to do it again and again–that we will have forgotten by tomorrow what he said yesterday; that we will be overwhelmed by events, and will ultimately scatter, surrender and let him grab whatever he wants.

But crises, do not always cause societies to regress and give up.  There is also the second option–that, faced with a grave common threat, we can choose to come together and make an evolutionary leap.  We can choose, as the Reverend William Barber puts it, ‘to be the moral defibrillators of our time and shock the heart of this nation and build a movement of resistance and hope and justice and love.’  We can, in other words, surprise the hell out of our opponents–by being united, focused, and determined. By refusing to fall for those tired old shock tactics. By refusing to be afraid, no matter how much we are tested.

How we respond to this crisis is up to us. So let’s choose that second option. Let’s leap.”

—adapted from No Is Not Enough