The Regime Doesn’t Fear Your Rage. It Fears Your Absence.

Political journals are too afraid to touch it: why mass non-cooperation is more dangerous than protest.

Editor’s note: This piece was originally slated for publication elsewhere. I won’t name names, but let’s just say they came asking for it—and then backed off. Fast.

I shopped it around. A few major outlets. Reputable ones. The kind that has published my work before without hesitation. But this time?
Same answer. Different wording.
“Not our tempo.”
Translation: we’re not touching that.

Now, maybe the message doesn’t land with the current moment. Maybe audiences still want to feel like resistance works.
Or maybe it’s something else.

Maybe the reality of the second Trump term is already chilling editorial judgment. Perhaps even the most serious journals don’t want to print a piece that doesn’t conclude with chants, hashtags, or hopeful calls to vote more strongly.
That’s their call.

But here, I don’t have to ask for permission.
I’m the editor-in-chief. This is my platform.
And I still believe some things are worth saying—even if they make people uncomfortable.

You decide if this one does.

Resistance is a performance.
Refusal is a withdrawal.

In an era where authoritarianism wears the mask of law — and democracy dies while a thousand marches are broadcast on cable — it’s time to reconsider the playbook.

The banners, the chants, the hashtags — they make noise. But power doesn’t fear noise.
Power fears starvation.

Especially this regime.
It fears being starved of money, of media, of attention. Because attention is the oxygen of authoritarian rule in the United States. Without it, the entire edifice starts to wheeze.

Now, I know this might feel counterintuitive when facing a regime as thoroughly corrupt and patrimonial as Trump’s. We’ve been trained for decades to “speak truth to power,” as if eloquence could undo tyranny.

But in deeply consolidated systems — and we are getting close — truth isn’t censored because it’s dangerous. It’s ignored because it doesn’t matter.

Surveillance states don’t panic when you scream. They panic when you vanish.

Though Trump’s version is particularly grotesque, the model he employs — rule by spectacle, consumption of outrage, capture of institutions — isn’t unique. From Erdogan to Modi to Xi, the modern autocrat thrives not by eliminating dissent, but by turning it into entertainment.

So here’s the premise: maybe the goal isn’t to be heard.
Maybe the goal is to leave. (Even for those continuing to reside in the United States).

The Limits of Resistance

When regimes seek legitimacy, they love resistance. It gives them spectacle — a foil. It justifies crackdowns. It feeds the theater.

This is why autocrats host sham elections. Why they allow protests in kettled squares. Why they let social media platforms fester into screaming voids. Resistance becomes part of the machine — absorbed, processed, neutralized.

We should know this by now. The Trump Regime feeds on performance — especially its own.

Remember the spectacle: foreign leaders dragged into the golden gaudiness of Trump’s Oval Office, forced to grovel or be threatened. “King Trump,” berating them like a mafia boss in a bankrupt casino.

To the MAGA base, it’s a bread-and-circuses binge.
To the rest of us, it’s authoritarian rot in high definition.

And what do we offer in response? Marches. Screeds. A dopamine IV drip of MSNBC monologues. CNN trying to ride the fence, badly.

We’ve had the most sustained protests against government abuse since Vietnam.

And what has it accomplished?
Has one bill been denied?
Has one executive order been overturned?
Has the Supreme Court shown anything but ignorance and contempt — for both precedent and people?

Exactly.
So what’s the point of all this shouting?

If the system has learned to feed on resistance, maybe it’s time to stop feeding it.

Refusal Breaks the Machine

Claudette Colvin didn’t “resist” segregation — she defected. A fifteen-year-old who refused to yield her seat months before Rosa Parks became the symbol. Colvin’s act helped ignite the Montgomery Bus Boycott — not because she shouted, but because she stopped cooperating.

Václav Havel didn’t call for riots. He called for people to “live in truth” — to exit the lie. It was enough to topple an empire.

In Egypt, Mubarak didn’t fall because of slogans. He fell when civil servants — and then the military — quietly stopped obeying him.

Chile’s Pinochet didn’t fear opposition. He feared irrelevance. It wasn’t screams that undid him — it was silence. One defection at a time.

These weren’t revolutions of resistance.
They were revolutions of withdrawal.

Power doesn’t need your belief.
It needs your submission.
Take that away — one person, one institution, one civic gesture at a time — and the fuel line breaks.

This isn’t “if you can’t beat them, join them.”
It’s: “I’m done playing. Enjoy being King of nothing.”

Refusal Scales. Quietly.

Non-cooperation doesn’t need a viral hashtag. It needs critical mass — built locally, silently, and intentionally.

· When hundreds of civil servants slow-walk paperwork or quietly stop enforcing unjust rules, government halts.

· When millions abandon surveillance platforms, data empires lose power.

· When consumers shift en masse to parallel systems, economic leverage shifts without protest signs.

It starts with individuals — but it scales through imitation. People don’t need to be organized. They just need permission. When one person opts out, others begin to wonder: why am I still complying?

This isn’t fantasy. It’s the same network effect that built every mass movement — just inverted. Viral absence instead of viral outrage.

Silence Is Not Surrender

This isn’t a plea for passivity. It’s a strategy of intentional absence.

Walkouts, not speeches.
Work slowdowns, not slogans.
Strategic disobedience, not symbolic outrage.

Because the more totalitarian a system becomes, the more fragile it gets. Absence is ambiguity — and ambiguity is lethal to brittle power.

If you stop playing your assigned role — as taxpayer, compliant worker, digital subject — the state has to show its hand. It has to drop the mask. Or it collapses under the weight of its own expectations.

Authoritarianism needs predictable enemies.
It knows how to fight noise.
It has no idea how to handle disinterest.

Refusal Looks Different for Everyone

Let’s be honest: not everyone can walk away cleanly.

A well-connected technocrat can quit a corrupted federal agency and land in the private sector. A minimum-wage worker under surveillance in a red state? Not so much.

Refusal, like any tactic, must be adapted to circumstance. It can mean:

• Disengagement, for those who can exit the system.

• Subversion, for those who must remain inside it.

• Evasion, for those forced to play along — but not in earnest.

This is not a moral purity test. It’s a tactical spectrum. The point is to starve the regime in any way available: time, attention, obedience, data, taxes, labor, mindshare.

You don’t have to martyr yourself. You just have to stop feeding the beast in every place you safely can.

The Allies Already Know This

Look at the global response to Trump’s tantrums.

Canada? It’s gone quiet. Carney and his cabinet negotiate with Europe, with China, with Latin America. They reinforce their own defense strategies. They are preparing to hold back water, oil, electricity — not in defiance, but in detachment.

Trump rants.
Canada shrugs.
That shrug is deafening.

Europe? Same story. Macron walks into the Oval Office and delivers a dressing-down Trump is too dim to recognize. The Brits sign a trade deal that was already on the table — no new concessions. The EU forges ahead with Ukraine support, regardless of American temper tantrums.

It drives Trump insane.

Why? Because he needs the audience.
He needs the fight.
And when he gets ignored — truly ignored — he spirals.

Suddenly the NATO alliance he claimed was worthless becomes the most sacred thing on Earth. He flip-flops not out of strategy, but out of insecurity. Because the sovereign response — refusal — robs him of oxygen.

Starve the Beast

In a country where democratic institutions are corroding under performance and polarization, we’ve confused loudness for leverage.

But power isn’t shouted down. It’s starved out.

This is the sovereign strategy. Not to rage against the machine — but to unplug it.

• Don’t just protest censorship. Build parallel channels.

• Don’t just decry surveillance. Exit the platforms.

• Don’t just rail against elections. Reclaim the local.

• Don’t just boo the puppet show. Walk out of the theater.

What this regime craves is your continued attention.
Your participation.
Your compliance — even in anger.

Starve it of those, and what’s left?

A man shouting into an empty room.
A regime trying to govern a disengaged nation.

King Trump throws a military parade — it rains. Nobody comes.
He’s the kid whose mom paid the neighbors to show up to his party.
They didn’t.

That, more than any court ruling, is what haunts him.

Conclusion: Exit Is a Tactic

This isn’t a utopian call. It’s a tactical one.

You don’t have to win the argument.
You don’t even have to be right.

You just have to stop playing.

When resistance is absorbed and monetized, disengagement is the most radical act left.

Let the regime rage into silence.
Let the machine grind itself down.

Refusal isn’t just an answer to Trump. It’s an answer to any regime that thrives on participation without consent. That includes the soft authoritarianism of bureaucracy, the surveillance capitalism of tech, and the moral coercion of online mobs. This isn’t left or right. It’s sovereign versus systemic.

Don’t resist.
Refuse.