We're not cut out for this. Time to change that.

I was having a DM conversation with our own Rational Left about yesterday's seismic events. In short: People were freaking out when men and women of good conscience weren't resigning in protest at Trumpian policies. Yesterday, four US Attorneys resigned in protest, and people immediately started, yes, freaking out, that this meant Donald Trump was amassing untrammeled power.

For the most part, we are a very soft people. Since World War II, we haven't been asked to sacrifice anything. Even the tragedy of Vietnam affected the majority of the country in only ancillary ways. Since the end of the draft, all of our wars have been fought by volunteers. Sure, we see the caskets coming in at Dover AFB. But they don't really affect us. They're volunteers, and knew what they were getting into. We skimmed through much of the Cold War without much danger, save for two weeks in 1962. When terrorists demolished the World Trade Center, our glorious leader urged us to go shopping in a sign of defiance.

We live in bubbles of unimaginable splendor. We have no idea what immigrants braving thousand of miles of terrain to make it to the US to escape murder and rape at home endure. If we were faced with the same travails, we'd curl up in balls of sorrow and inaction. Too many of us thought: We elected Barack Obama. We've changed. Then, two years ago, we thought: We elected Nancy Pelosi. We're going to be okay.

We have vague inklings in our consciousnesses that we should be doing more. That we should be more. That we should live up to the examples of our ancestors, who fled pogroms and famines and oppression and dictatorships, to build the world we have now, where we cry if our home internet has an outage. Hitler mocked American resilience, calling us a mongrel nation, ignoring that we, too, had been through the fire of the Great Depression. Would he be correct today? Not that we're mongrels, but that we have no stomach to keep our republic, our way of life?

We are at a point no less momentous than 1860. What shape our nation will take is on the precipice. We are facing a fascist movement which wants to end the great American experiment. To extinguish what that great Republican called the last, best hope for mankind. And too many of our people are apathetic, just wanting to cocoon themselves from the world's troubles. This is a common refrain across the breadth of the Western world. Life is uncertain, leaders are all the same, and best to attend to one's own interests. I met a young man recently who said much the same thing. That the past four years he's been focusing on himself, and has found that Trump's malfeasance doesn't affect his day to day life. And yes, he was white, and I had to point out to him that he spoke from a place of privilege from which I, as a Latino, could not endorse.

We have to rediscover the American spirit which saw us through the Civil War. That spirit which fought for every advancement we've achieved—the eight-hour day, Social Security, civil rights. When we retreat into our comfortable dens, we betray every last person who fought, suffered, struggled, bled, and died for the things we now take for granted and, apparently, hold so cheaply.We betray our mothers, our fathers, our ancestors going back generations who struggled to create the wonderful, imperfect country in which we live today. They didn't hand us a finished project, but a project to be continued, to be improved upon. And too many of us would rather slough off into inertia, concerning ourselves only with ourselves, ignoring the pain which surrounds us.

My mother and father fled a Communist dictatorship, and brought along numerous family members, to make a better life for me and my brothers. My father let go of his life the day after my 18th birthday, having held on long enough to do what he could for me. My mother still lives. I'm not going to insult them by giving up on the gift they struggled so hard to give me. This is my country more than it is that of Trump's followers, because I know the sacrifices made so that I could bask in its light. Trump's followers wallow in grievance and hatred. They've never had to sacrifice anything. Or, if they had, what they've had to sacrifice is the position they felt entitled to. Not from merit, not from diligence, but from inheritance, from the color of their skins.

Here's the dirty secret those in power don't want you to know: You have the ability to say: This far, and no further. What autocrats fear is people realizing that they have the power. That without their acquiescence, all the powers and principalities are as chaff. They want us to sink into despair, or fight each other, instead of focusing on them. We give them all the power they need.

I'm not going to give up my power, which my ancestors fought for. Will enough people heed that?