Welcome to another Planet.

Presumably most of the population is asleep. We are living under the shadow of a full-blown dictatorship — not a whisper of authoritarianism, but a loud, determined march. The people who once promised to protect our institutions are now labeling any dissent as dangerous, and the definition of “dangerous” keeps shrinking to mean anyone who disagrees.

Make no mistake: this isn’t subtle. The rhetoric is explicit, the tactics are obvious, and the targets are anyone who stands for pluralism, reason, or basic decency. Free thought is no longer merely under pressure; it is being declared the enemy. Courts that once served as limits on raw power have been hollowed into cheering sections. Legislatures that were supposed to debate and check the executive now mimic the leader’s talking points like trained parrots.

Why is this happening? Part of it is the normalization of spectacle over substance — of outrage as policy. Part is the steady erosion of civic guardrails: norms replaced by raw ambition, norms replaced by loyalty tests, traditions of restraint replaced by theatrical displays of dominance. When the institutions that hold power accountable are repurposed as instruments of power, the balance that underpins a free society collapses.

And yet most people go about their days as if the disappearance of civic guardrails is ordinary. That quiet complacency is dangerous. History shows us again and again that freedoms erode gradually, then suddenly. It is easy to dismiss censorship, intimidation, and the attack on dissent as temporary noise — until the noise is all that remains.

So what do we do? First, name what is happening. Call out the rollbacks of rights and institutions; refuse the euphemisms. Second, engage — not as an act of entertainment or anger, but as citizenship: show up at town halls, vote, support independent journalism, hold representatives accountable. Third, protect the small civic habits that matter: respectful debate, tolerance for uncomfortable facts, the ability to disagree without demonizing the person across the room.

If we let ourselves sleep through this, the choice will be made for us. If we wake up, speak up, and act together, we still have a chance to reclaim the basic freedoms that define a free people. The test of a republic is not that it survives easy days — it’s that its people refuse to give it away when it matters most.