I Woke Up Enraged

Wrote on Substack https://substack.com/home/post/p-185561093

I woke up enraged.

Angry at the state of the world. Angry at the United States, here and now. I have a pattern. Every once in a while I make the mistake of going online and doom‑scrolling. Then I shut everything down for weeks, because it takes days to calm my nervous system, to rebalance, to return to a life that feels even briefly sheltered from the insanity of this world.

 
Yesterday was one of those days.

The image of five‑year‑old Liam being detained is now etched into my brain and my heart. It won’t leave me. And I need to say this plainly: if you are a grown man, dressed in Amazon‑bought camouflage gear, detaining a child, you are not a patriot. You are not a hero. You are a coward participating in cruelty.

I will be clear about who I am here, because I don’t want to waste time pretending neutrality for people who won’t hear me anyway. What we are witnessing in this country bears the fingerprints of authoritarianism. We have normalized state violence against civilians. We have normalized fear. These are not the markers of a healthy democracy. These are the tactics used in regimes we once claimed to stand against.

I was born and raised in Poland. I grew up studying what led to World War II, the slow erosion of norms, the propaganda, the scapegoating, the way ordinary people convinced themselves that what they were seeing “wasn’t that bad.” I remember learning about the rise of Hitler and thinking, How could anyone have let this happen? I remember believing, naively, fiercely, that if I had been alive then, I would have fought it. That I would have protected people. That I would have stood up.

I saw this coming nearly ten years ago. Some people say, “You should have left.” And they’re right. I should have. But life is not that simple when you have young children, roots, obligations, love. It wasn’t just my decision anymore.

And now here I am.

Sitting in my home. Safe, technically. Watching history rhyme, if not repeat. Feeling small. Feeling helpless. Wondering what it actually means to “fight” when you’re not a revolutionary in a textbook, but a real human with limits, fear, and responsibilities.

The anger I feel isn’t just about what’s happening. It’s about my own helplessness. About the version of myself I imagined I would be, the one who would know exactly what to do when the moment came. I am furious at the people who still don’t see it, who dismiss everything as “fake news,” who minimize cruelty because it hasn’t reached them yet.

But if I’m honest, I am most angry at myself.

For the ways I have been complacent. For how little I know how to mobilize, organize, or meaningfully resist without becoming consumed by rage. For living in the tension between knowing how dangerous this is and not knowing how to stop it.

I don’t want to add fuel to the fire. The world is already burning. But I also refuse to numb myself into silence. Writing this is not a solution. It is not activism. It is not resistance in the grand sense. It is a refusal to pretend I am okay.

Maybe this is what resistance looks like for me right now: naming the grief, the fear, the anger without turning away. Staying awake. Staying human. Refusing to let cruelty become normal in my own mind, even when I don’t yet know what the next step is.

I don’t have answers today. I only know that forgetting is dangerous, denial is lethal, and history does not need monsters to repeat itself only enough people willing to look away.

I am not looking away.