By Michael A. Hancock | Commentary, Substack
A Citizen’s Guide to Resisting Fear and Restoring the Republic
There is a form of political ventriloquism occurring in America. The left warns, with breathless urgency, that Donald Trump is a dictator in waiting, a Mussolini in a red tie, poised to crush democracy with a golf swing and a sneer.
Yet while they scream “authoritarianism,” they themselves quietly build its infrastructure.
This is no longer just about Donald Trump’s rhetoric or temperament. It’s about how a fabricated narrative has become the pretext for a real and present ideological revolution—one that seeks to dissolve the very foundations of the American experiment: objective truth, individual liberty, the nuclear family, and the rule of law.
All of it is justified in the name of “saving democracy.”
The left’s theory—that Trump is a threat to democracy—has moved from critique to catechism.
This belief is no longer up for debate in elite media, academia, and corporate HR departments. It is dogma. And anyone who questions it, or worse, who voted for Trump, is treated not as a political opponent but as an accomplice to tyranny.
What began as a political diagnosis has morphed into a moral purge, enforced not by the state but by society itself.
In authoritarian regimes, citizens are trained to report on each other—family members, neighbors, coworkers—anyone whose thinking deviates from the party line. Today, in a nation that still prints “In God We Trust” on its currency, that same reflex has been imported through media conditioning and social enforcement.
A father shares a Facebook post questioning mail-in ballots, and his children accuse him of endangering democracy.
A coworker wears a red hat in a private photo, and soon, HR is “investigating his values.”
Families divide, churches splinter, and friendships dissolve—not over policies, but over the perceived moral failure to denounce the Great Enemy with sufficient zeal.
This isn’t the byproduct of grassroots misunderstanding.
It’s the intended effect of a top-down campaign of ideological capture. The left has learned that it doesn’t need gulags to silence its opponents. It only needs guilt, fear, and a compliant class of middle managers.
And while they warn of Trump’s alleged authoritarianism, they engage in debanking, deplatforming, redefining language, criminalizing dissent, and rewriting history—not hypothetically, but in real time, with real consequences.
So the question becomes: what should the sane and free do in the face of such organized madness?
Not surrender. But also—not mirror it.
The real danger is that in opposing this cultural siege, we become like the thing we hate: angry, tribal, suspicious of every neighbor. That’s not resistance. That’s infection.
So yes, we must fight—but fight as Americans, not as rival mobs.
That starts with four clear imperatives:
- Recover the distinction between disagreement and evil. A citizen who supported Trump is not a Nazi. A parent who questions gender ideology is not a fascist. We must puncture the moral inflation that equates differing views with hate. Not because our opponents deserve it, but because truth does.
- Reject the left’s theater of apocalypse.While the stakes can be very high at times, every election is not “the last one before the fall.” Every policy debate is not a “battle for the soul of the nation.” This hyperbole is not civic engagement—it is civic arson.
- Build alternative civic infrastructure. If public schools, media, and corporate platforms are captured, then create new ones: new churches, new networks, new communities grounded in liberty and sanity. This is not escapism—it is a strategic adjustment to reestablish strength.
- Preserve bonds with those the regime wants you to hate. Your grandmother who voted Republican is not the enemy. Your friend with conservative instincts is not a danger. The left’s goal is to isolate dissenters into silence. Defy it by doubling down on relationships, even in disagreement.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean pretending the left wants dialogue. It doesn’t. It wants power. It wants to remake America in its own image: borderless, historyless, genderless, and Godless.
But our task is not to return evil for evil.
Our task is to speak plainly, stand firmly, and refuse the false choice between authoritarianism in red and authoritarianism in blue.
There is another way—the American way. It’s harder. It’s slower. But in the end, it endures.
The republic won’t be saved by those who scream the loudest or cancel the fastest. It will be saved by those who rebuild trust, not to appease the regime but to outlast it.
And remind our fellow citizens, lost in fear and rage, that liberty is still possible if we choose it.
Hancock also publishes on Substack. You can check out more of his work here.
Michael A. Hancock is a retired high-tech executive, visionary, musician, and composer, exploring diverse interests—from religion and arts to politics and philosophy—offering thoughtful insights on the intersections of culture, innovation, and society.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.