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Hey readers,

It's Sigal Samuel. I'm back with another edition of Your Mileage May Vary, my advice column offering you a different framework for thinking through your ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions.

Here's this week's question, condensed and edited for clarity: 

I’m convinced that the fight against authoritarianism is the most important issue of our time. My family immigrated to America from an authoritarian country, and some of my relatives and I are astonished and horrified that the same thing is befalling the US. 

There’s more that I could be doing to participate in the pro-democracy resistance. I’m in a public-facing (not government) job where I could shape my work in a way that draws more attention to Trump’s corruption and war on the American people. But I feel both like my work wouldn’t make much of a difference, and like I will be targeted and punished by the Trump administration for it, so what is the point? 

With the path we’re on now, more and more Americans are going to be persecuted for doing things the administration doesn’t like, and I’m terrified of the potential consequences for myself and my colleagues. It’s a collective action problem, because no one person’s actions alone are going to stop Trump and Musk, yet if we all tell ourselves that the risk isn’t worth the gain to democracy, no one will do anything. How can I navigate this dilemma ethically, rationally, and without ruining my life?

Dear Rational Resistance,

Growing up in the Jewish community, my childhood was full of stories about the Holocaust. I heard horrifying stories, obviously, but also stories about inspiring people who resisted the Nazis — like the “Righteous Gentiles” who hid Jews in their homes at great personal risk. My child-mind obsessed over the question: If I were in their place, would I have had the same courage they did? Would I hide someone in my attic?  

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot since January 20. Not because I think today’s America is equal to Nazi Germany, but simply because a lot of us are wondering how far to stick our necks out right now. How do we navigate the tension between personal safety and moral responsibility? Is there something about living in extraordinary times that demands more from us, morally speaking, than we would normally risk?

I don’t think that the moral demandingness of the universe suddenly changes in times like these. Instead, I think times like these open our eyes to the reality that was there all along: We are not just atomized individuals, as Western modernity conditions us to think. We are interdependent. Our fates are connected to the fates of other people, so to truly look out for ourselves and our own family, we have to look out for the broader collective, too. 

While a special minority of people are always tuned into this — Buddhist monks, say, or extreme do-gooders — most of us only see reality this way when tragedy strikes. As author Larissa MacFarquhar wrote in her book Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help:

In wartime — or in a crisis so devastating that it resembles war, such as an earthquake or a hurricane — duty expands far beyond its peacetime boundaries. In wartime, it’s thought dutiful rather than unnatural to leave your family for the sake of a cause. In wartime, the line between family and strangers grows faint, as the duty to one’s own enlarges to encompass all the people who are on the same side… 

This is the difference between do-gooders and ordinary people: for do-gooders, it is always wartime. They always feel themselves responsible for strangers — they always feel that strangers, like compatriots in war, are their own people. 

Whether it’s a war or an earthquake or an attack on democracy, dramatic events can cause a vertiginous shift in perspective, from me-myopia to a more telescopic vision. We see ourselves as part of the bigger story of humanity, which transcends not only national borders, but generations. 

Pete Gamlen for Vox

I suspect that’s why we all admire the Righteous Gentiles — even though by taking in Jews, they were sometimes putting their own kids at risk, something we normally consider morally dodgy (in fact, it’s so counter to a parent’s wiring that I wouldn’t blame parents who couldn’t bring themselves to do it). They were looking beyond their children to the world they would inherit. What good is it to bring your kid up into a world that’s morally bankrupt? And what would you be modeling for them if you did? 

Seeing that bigger story can motivate us to take action against authoritarianism, even when it’s risky. Yes, it may feel scary to stick our necks out now — as you said, “I’m terrified of the potential consequences for myself and my colleagues” — but remember that authoritarians want you to feel too terrified to resist. That’s how they cultivate anticipatory obedience and how they gain power over time. 

Right now, for most of us, the risk is actually relatively minimal. Act now and you might lose your job, or maybe even get your organization defunded, resulting in more lost jobs. That’s not nothing. But unless you are an undocumented immigrant or otherwise especially vulnerable under Trump administration policies, you are, right now, not likely to be deported, imprisoned, or physically harmed the way resisters have been in more authoritarian states. 

And if you don’t act now, America could well become a more authoritarian state. If that happens, people in the future really might not be able to resist without facing extreme consequences. That’s an argument for resisting now, while you can do it at relatively low risk. 

It is not, however, an argument for acting nobly but recklessly. It’s an argument for acting strategically. 

Consider the story of Queen Esther from the Hebrew Bible. When she learns of a plot to destroy her people, the Jews, she faces a terrifying choice: She can go to her husband, the king of Persia, to plead for their protection — which would mean risking her own life, since the king would kill anyone who approached him without being summoned — or she can stay silent to protect herself. 

At first, she tells her cousin Mordecai that she can’t just march over the king and speak her mind; that’s not how being queen works. But he responds with a powerful rejoinder: “Who knows if it’s for a time like this that you were made queen to begin with?” What he’s doing there is triggering the vertiginous shift in perspective — getting her to stop seeing herself as an individual and start seeing herself as someone who was always meant to look out for the collective.

And that “who knows?” also acts as a challenge. In situations of moral crisis, people often feel, as you wrote, that “my work wouldn’t make much of a difference” — so why bother? To which Mordecai says: Who knows! It’s possible that your work won’t make a difference — but you don’t know that, so you’ve got to try something. 

It works: Esther acts. But notice how she acts. She doesn’t just rush immediately to the king and tell him to save the Jews. First, she builds a network of support and develops a multi-part strategy. She dresses up to the nines, making herself attractive to the king so he might want to keep her around. She invites the king and his vizier to a party, where she wines and dines them. The next day she invites them to another party. Gradually, through carefully orchestrated moments of influence, she reveals the truth and makes her ask.

Esther is what the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman might call a Noble Winner. In Moral Ambition, Bregman urges readers to be more ambitious about the good they can do for the world. As he points to historical examples of people who stood up for what’s right, he notes that some are “Noble Losers” — they take a personal stand, but nothing much comes of it. Think of that famous photo showing a crowd of Germans all saluting Hitler, and the single man who refused to salute. 

“He was on the right side of history, but he didn’t make history,” Bregman writes. “If you really want to change things, then someone like Rosa Parks is a better role model.”

Parks was a Noble Winner. She didn’t just decide one day, in a rash moment of fury, to refuse to give up her seat on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead, she spent years quietly getting involved with the civil rights movement and studying protest tactics. Her refusal to surrender her seat was planned. An action group called the Women’s Political Council strategically portrayed her as a kindly seamstress and demure heroine — someone milquetoast enough for white Americans to get behind — and launched the call to boycott the bus system the instant she was arrested. The careful planning and collaboration paid off: They achieved not just fame, but concrete wins. 

You can be strategic, too. Rather than acting impulsively and alone, you can build a network of support by reaching out to colleagues both inside and outside your organization. If you’re a nonprofit employee, you can organize within your union and push them to take a particular stance. If you’re an educator, you can coordinate action with other schools. If you’re a journalist, you can reach out to other journalists to forge consensus around covering news events in a certain way — for example, calling a purge a purge. The point is to reach out to others and build power together. 

And one more word about those Righteous Gentiles. After the Holocaust, psychologists began to study them to figure out what made them courageously agree to hide Jews while the majority went along with tyranny. Maybe they were friends with Jews before the war? Maybe they had spare rooms or extra savings tucked away? Maybe some people just come wired with an altruistic personality?

Nope. The psychologists found that none of these factors made the difference. Instead, as Bregman recounts in his book:

Turns out there was one circumstance that determined almost everything. A new analysis of data … showed that when this condition was met, nearly everyone took action — 96 percent to be precise. 

And what was that condition? Simple: you had to be asked. Those who were asked to help someone in danger almost always said yes. 

Asking things of each other and acting together is how we move unjust systems. So go ahead. Reach out to someone. Ask. 

—Sigal Samuel, senior reporter