“Should you decide that writing is your way to serve your country, or to defend it, you are almost always writing about the country it could become.” – Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

I can’t get this out of my head: In fourth grade, my class completed an assignment in which we were supposed to take pictures of our lives, and paste them to individual letter paper-sized trifolds branded by Pepsi. This was 1989/1990, so I took pictures of my bike, my friends, and my simple, sweet life.

Here’s what was interesting about it. The teacher collected them all, and then they went to Russia.

Several months later, we received other trifolds containing pictures of Russian youth. The girl who got mine sent me hers. Her house was small. She sat on a step with a bowl and a spoon. It looked cold, there.

But basically we were the same. I’m sure that was the point. I’m also sure selling Pepsi was the point.

Those were the years that Russia was liberalizing under Mikhail Gorbachev.

I can’t get this out of my head, because when I see pictures of old men being dragged into the winter cold without warrant or explanation, wearing only shorts that may as well be their underwear, pictures of a five-year-old boy being taken by masked agents, videos of protesters being shot, or sprayed in the face with toxic chemicals, or dragged, what I see doesn’t feel all that different from the imagery of Putin’s Russia, and its harsh, deadly crackdown on dissent.

Basically the United States has become the same as Russia or any other autocracy that is willing to harm its own people in the name of the supreme power of the supreme leader. That is the point of what Donald Trump is showing us in real time on the streets and in the schools of Minnesota. He’s showing us who he is. It’s not “like” a repressive government. It “is” a repressive government. And it is a danger to us all, no matter where we live, our citizenship status, and even our political beliefs.

But I also can’t get this out of my head, from “Requiem” by Russian poet Anna Akmatova:

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
“Can you describe this?”
And I said: “I can.”
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.
—-Leningrad, 1 April 1957

I believe writers of conscience have a patriotic duty to describe the subversion and destruction of our democracy, and its murderous impacts on real people, real lives, real neighbors. In doing this we are committing the ultimate patriotism.

So I don’t say casually, we have become quite similar to the Russia of today. Our country is run by a madman who doesn’t care who lives or dies, as long as he has ultimate power. We have a situation where it appears European leaders are more likely to hold American fascism to account than our own Congress and courts.

We are past the point of warning where we are headed. We are already there now. I write this knowing full well that our liberty to write words like this may be gone already, or retroactively declared gone at any point. And I refuse to give up that liberty. For me, or for you, whoever you are.

When the federal government lies, we have a moral obligation to speak the truth. I believe in the promise of a country operating under the rule of law. I believe in the power of love and community to overcome the horrible activities our government has weaponized against our own people. I have zero interest in our country igniting the world war our ‘MY COUNTRY, MINE’ president seems to want.

I believe in the importance of writing words, speaking words, sharing pictures. Whether they are exposing the harms of fascism in our country, or celebrating what a real government for the people is actually all about. We must fight for democracy everywhere, including the streets. And the page.