'No one has the right to obey'

We never talk about the second time Sisyphus has to roll that rock up that hill. He was probably still stuck with the thought that this couldn’t happen again. No one could spend the rest of eternity doing this.

The absurdity of facing Trump a second time as farce—with the wealthiest men ever to live uniting in their sense of imagined victimhood to launch a Vichy America—is designed to overwhelm us, drain us, and make us hate our particular boulder. But, as Sisyphus surely figured out eventually, what else is there to do?

The only other choice is to obey and let the boulder slowly crush you.

We all know by now the first lesson of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Do not obey in advance.

In the latest episode of Next Comes Up at the top of this post, Andrea Pitzer—who looked at wannabe authoritarians around the world since the rise of mass civilian detention for her global history of concentration camps ONE LONG NIGHT—updates that lesson for Trump 2.0:

No one has the right to obey.

Andrea is paraphrasing Hannah Arendt:

The quotation in question comes from a radio interview Arendt gave to Joachim C. Fest, 9th November 1964. During the conversation, she stated: "Kein Mensch hat bei Kant das Recht zu gehorchen" (according to Kant no man has the right to obey). In doing so, Arendt wanted to contest the “banality of evil”, personified in the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, on whose trial in Jerusalem she had published a famous essay with that title. Many Nazis argued that they had only obeyed orders. Eichmann, in particular, attempted to refer back to Kant's categorical imperative to justify his actions, distorting completely the meaning. Arendt responded to this by insisting on the ethical duty of the individual to resist the totalitarian temptation, to refuse unjust orders and to be aware of the significance of their actions.

In this second Trump era—where he won on his promises and obvious intention to set up concentration camps, turn the military against American protesters, liberate insurrectionist militia groups to enforce his retribution, and prosecute anyone who investigated or opposes him in any way—everything depends on who obeys.

MAGA has made a ritual of its obeisance and revels in the lust to exile or even hang anyone—including a Republican vice president—who disobeys Trump. We know what they will do. That’s why the appointment of Pete Hegseth—who has advocated for the military taking sides against Americans—is one of the greatest threats to our constitutional order in the nation's history.

But what will we do?

That’s perhaps the only gift at this moment. We don’t need to speculate what we would have done in the 1930s as Germany became Nazi Germany. It would rhyme with whatever we’re doing now. That may look like taking care of ourselves and our families while doing everything possible to oppose Trump within our capabilities. It may look like producing a podcast with someone who has written a global history of concentration camps. But there is one thing we must not do, condone, or let go unnoticed. We cannot obey.

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see/ I meet my shadow in the deepening shade,” Theodore Roethke wrote. Like the groundhog and Sisyphus, we’re doing it all again. And as dark as things get, in what Roethke called “the purity of pure despair,” we will always be accountable to ourselves and, ideally, history.