Ameri-stinians
A reflection on authoritarian drift, civic helplessness, and the danger of becoming defined by power unchecked.
There is a familiar tragedy in watching a people
become defined by a power they did not choose.
In Gaza, ordinary lives were folded beneath a regime
that spoke in absolutes, ruled through fear,
and waged war in the name of protection.
The people were not the government.
Yet the world learned their name through the government’s violence.
That pattern is older than borders.
Authoritarianism rarely announces itself as tyranny.
It arrives calling itself order.
It speaks the language of safety, loyalty, destiny.
It tells citizens that chaos is everywhere,
and that only obedience stands between them and annihilation.
Over time, dissent becomes suspect.
Truth becomes conditional.
Power stops asking permission and starts demanding faith.
Control is not always seized;
sometimes it is surrendered—
inch by inch—
because outrage is exhausting
and resistance is inconvenient
and fear is persuasive.
So, the question is not whether Americans resemble Palestinians.
That comparison flattens two very different histories
and risks erasing real suffering.
The question is quieter, and more unsettling:
At what point does a people stop steering
and start being steered?
At what point does patriotism become compliance,
and security become silence?
When a government acts without consent,
speaks without accountability,
and threatens the world in the name of its own survival—
the danger is not what we are called by others.
The danger is what we allow ourselves to become.
Not Ameri-stinians.
But citizens who forgot that power, once normalized,
rarely returns itself.
--Tom Rodgers 2026