They Want You to Be Afraid

What Prepared People Understand About Power

They want you to be afraid.

They’re going to be surprised when you’re not.

When I first heard what happened to Renée Good, I felt what anyone with a functioning nervous system would feel. Shock. Anger. Grief. That hollow, sickening recognition that something unthinkable has already crossed the line into reality.

And then something else happened—something I didn’t expect.

I didn’t feel fear.

Not denial. Not bravado. Just the absence of fear. What I felt instead was something closer to inevitability—not in the fatalistic sense, but in the moral one. The sense that certain decisions, once made, don’t actually require daily reconsideration. They simply exist. They define you.

I already know what I will and won’t do.

I am not going to watch one of my patients be dragged out of a labor unit. I am not going to stand by while someone is harmed because obedience was more convenient than courage. I am not going to cooperate with violence dressed up as policy or procedure.

That isn’t heroism. It’s construction. It’s how I was built.

I have three children. I am not reckless. I am not looking for harm. But I also know—deeply, calmly—that if harm is happening in front of me, I will not sit down and pretend neutrality is an ethical position. If that carries risk, then that risk already exists. Avoiding it by silence is not safety; it’s just delayed consequence.

What this moment demands—what I’ve heard echoed by clergy across traditions, including my own—is discernment. Not panic. Not chaos. Discernment. A choosing, ahead of time, of where you stand when standing becomes costly.

Everyone is going to have to make that choice.

Not hypothetically. Practically.

For me, that choice is clear. I am not living in a country where this becomes normal. That is not an option I accept. And I am not going to watch people be hurt in front of me and call that survival. That is not how I understand life, faith, or responsibility.

There’s a narrative emerging that says America is uniquely fragile right now, that we are on the brink because we lack the discipline or cohesion to resist authoritarianism. I don’t buy that—at least not entirely.

There is something culturally real here that is rarely named without irony: a deep resistance to unearned authority. A reflexive suspicion of power that demands obedience without legitimacy. Not everyone has it. You can see clearly who doesn’t. But it exists. It’s in our DNA. And that instinct—messy, imperfect, often inconvenient—is not a weakness. It’s the thing that saves societies when institutions fail.

But resistance is not spontaneous. It is prepared.

Preparation does not mean doing something reckless or dramatic. It means doing the boring, adult things now, before you need them.

It means having a will.

It means talking to your partner, your family, your people—clearly and without euphemism—about what matters if something happens to you.

It means having a lawyer you can call. Not because you’re doing anything illegal, but because when systems turn hostile, you don’t want to be searching for help under pressure. A competent, well-connected attorney is like a good physician: someone who answers the phone, knows your situation, and understands that responsibility is relational.

If you are speaking publicly. If you are advocating. If you are writing, organizing, documenting—this is not optional. It is part of the work.

And here is the part people don’t like to say out loud: this work costs money.

People defending the lives and dignity of others are not getting rich. Legal fees alone make sure of that. The people who profit are the grifters, the propagandists, the ones selling fear back to the audience that produced it.

If you want people to keep doing this work—competently, sustainably, without being crushed—you have to support them. Practically. Financially. Subscribing is not consumption; it’s participation. It’s not about “content.” It’s about contributing to the world you claim to want.

That includes us. And it includes others doing this work alongside us.

Fear is not the emotion of this moment. Responsibility is.

They want you afraid.

They are going to be surprised when you are prepared instead.