A Letter from the Edge of the American Mirror

Christine Merser, August 7, 2025

And keeping with yesterday’s theme, how they’ve stopped hiding the plan and started broadcasting it like a dystopian press release, let’s talk about what’s next on their checklist. Arrests. Not the symbolic ones, not the flashy headlines, not the perp-walks-for-show. I mean real arrests. Of people like me. And maybe you.

Here’s the blueprint. Speak out, publish, push back, protest, call out, or simply refuse to conform to the version of America they’ve decided we now live in, and suddenly you’re a threat. Not in the abstract, not in theory, but in a very real and actionable way.

Maybe first you get a visitor. A polite knock. Someone “just checking in” about your columns, your podcast, your blog. Happens more than you think. It’s already happening to some of the people I know. Writers. Academics. Small-time journalists without bodyguards or institutional protection. Then comes the letter. Cease and desist. Or you will cease. Or you will desist. Or both. That’s the message.

Let me remind you, they arrested a sitting member of Congress a few weeks ago. For speaking at a press conference. On Capitol grounds. Let that sink in. Not for inciting violence. Not for brandishing a weapon. For words. Spoken. At a microphone.

And down in Texas, Greg Abbott, the hollowed-out puppet whose strings are pulled by Trump’s smallest, pettiest fingers, has issued warrants to arrest duly elected state senators who dared leave the state to stop an illegal gerrymandering maneuver. Not just suppressing the vote anymore. Criminalizing the opposition to it.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security is flush with billions in funding. Not to protect the homeland. But to protect those who’ve taken it hostage. And the people being hired? Let’s just say they wouldn’t pass the dinner test. I wouldn’t break bread with them, wouldn’t trust them near my dog, and certainly wouldn’t hand them a badge and the legal authority to disappear fellow citizens. But someone did. And they’re not hiding it.

Let me be clear. I believe you and I are morally superior to anyone who would put on a ski mask and drag someone out of their home without due cause. And, at this point, I believe we are ethically lightyears ahead of most people in public office right now, who continue to say, “I voted yes ‘but.’” On both sides of the aisle.

The piece I wrote last week about the psychology of a person going from a good human to the dark side left one thing out. It’s important. People can no longer hide behind, “I voted for him and I believe in many of the things they are doing…” Small children sitting in a courtroom by themselves, representing themselves, makes you complicit in child abuse. Dragging innocent people off the street with no paperwork behind masks for a bounty, and sent then to inhumane concentration camps - that are openly being touted as just that, makes you a partner in the crime. You can’t be partially in any more. That ship has sailed. It’s time to ask people to look in the mirror and own their decision to continue to support this regime. End of story.

And, it’s escalating. More every day. The violence is more open. The lawless nature of the way government is behaving is growing. There is no law. They are not obeying the courts and show no signs of doing so in the future. Nothing is grounded in any truth.

So, I don’t think this ends in a slow fade. I think it happens faster and faster. One Friday I’ll publish, and by Monday the platform is gone. My columns are gone. The ability to speak is gone. Not through law. Through brute force. Through silence by shutdown. We are this close.

So I’m making an announcement tomorrow. Not because I’m afraid. But because I want to think through my best plan for assisting in resisting. Get a plan. Get clear. I have been thinking about this for quite awhile. I know life as I knew it in America is about to change. I don’t know the shape of what’s coming, but I can feel its breath on the back of my neck. And I need to figure out how to meet it without losing myself. How to stay who I am without doing something that lands me in a cell just to make a point. I don’t need martyrdom. I need strategy.

I’m talking to those I trust. I’m making peace with the fact that some of the people in my life are not going to be able to come to this moment. They can’t face it. They don’t want it on their plate. They’ll go to brunch while the ground opens up around them. And for a long time I thought I had to convince them. Wake them up. Now I know I don’t. I just need to move differently.

So if we part ways in the coming months, I’m good with that. Not out of anger. Out of clarity. Out of necessity. We are not on the same path anymore.

And yes, I do think you’re being foolish if you continue to ignore what’s right in front of you. If you treat the flames as ambient light and the smoke as morning mist. If you think you can go on living your life untouched by what’s unfolding, you’re not buying yourself a future. You’re buying yourself a few more weekends.

That’s all.

And if many of you are right and I’m wrong, if this is just a phase, a bump, a fever dream, may God take your side over mine. May I be remembered as the one who panicked too early, not the one who prepared too late.