political & ideological opposition is meaningless now
Billionaire JB Pritzker, the current Governor of the State of Illinois in an annual constitutionally mandated “State Of The State” address of February 19, 2025, questioned the near and long-term State of the Union — of the United States of America,
the relevant paragraphs are excerpted below with a link to the full transcript:
As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.
The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.
The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.
As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.
I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.
The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.
I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.
I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.
All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.
I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.
My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.
If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:
It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.
Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.
It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.
Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker,
in his 2025 “State of the State of Illinois” address
If Governor JB Pritzker actually, truly believes that this nation is at urgent risk of — or on precipice of being under the absolute control of a fascist authoritarian regime presided by Trump and directed by Musk et al. — and i don’t disagree with him or disbelieve it, either —- but adding the huge caveat that we were already witnessing a fascist holocaust in Gaza, Palestine, by the Israeli government and occupation forces that this Illinois governor has ignored,
then he perhaps he should act quickly to convene a coalition of like-minded governors to consider the activation and coordination of the National Guard in their states to protect and defend the People and their rights.
Pritzker and other governors wrongly activated and deployed the National Guard during the summer of 2020 in the face of organized actions by People protesting and mourning the Minneapolis police’s public murder of Mr. George Floyd,
so, he and they could do this now, too —- even though the legality of the governors’ activation and command of their state’s National Guard would likely be challenged by Trump’s administration.
Armed preparedness and demonstrations of militant resistance are applied anti-fascist resistance.
Pritzker calls for “our” courage, but he is the only one in Illinois with an actual command of ground and air forces.
He must become courageous, first.
The same goes for Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Governor and recent Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, etc.
The time for rhetoric is over, Pritzker’s, theirs and ours.
The time for lawsuits is over — because there is no observance of precedence, ordinance, injunction, order or law, anymore.
Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years.
Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary
NOW, is the time for action.
An activation of the National Guard by a governor or a coalition of governors asserts a strong and sobering, sovereignty:
“The State of Illinois, The State of Michigan, The State of Minnesota will not comply; the State of California, the State of Pennsylvania, the State of Wisconsin, et al. will not comply with a fascist, authoritarian President and Federal Government.
Tax resistance and financial desistance is applied anti-fascism resistance and desistance.
State governors, especially those of “donor” states, working in coordination with their state’s comptrollers and treasurers could withhold all state employees/contractors federal payroll tax payments to the U.S. Treasury and cease all investments in U.S. Treasury securities instruments and divest existing portfolios immediately.
States may need to use that money to protect, defend, serve and feed their own citizens.
“No taxation without representation.”
Let me preface the following with — I am not a tax professional or tax lawyer:
Citizens could also withhold personal or small business annual or quarterly tax payments to the Federal Government; and if you are a salaried or hourly wage worker you could attempt to opt out of federal income tax withholding —- or at the very least, claim maximum exemptions upfront on your W-4 form.
If you are in the position of owing federal tax on your 2024 return, you could file an extension and postpone your payment — and choose to not aid and fund this Federal Government with money earned from your work and labor: you may need this money to protect, defend, house and feed your family, friends or neighbors.
There is not enough IRS staff right now to audit withheld or delayed income tax returns and payments — or to pursue federal income tax resistors.
If you are in a position of receiving a tax refund from the Federal Government — by all means, file.
The truth is — we all might have been doing this well before Trump’s first term — in opposition to funding the Iraq War, the “War on Terror” apartheid, genocide, drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, black sites, and conflict and war across the globe — and in opposition to the build up the military industrial and technological complex to be ultimately used against not only “enemies” — but everyone — including American citizens.
Many American federal tax resistors were born in anti-war movements over the decades of America’s endless wars. Let millions more be born in an anti-fascist resistance.
We are in a constitutional, humanitarian and physical CRISIS right NOW — and it will become increasingly physical — and increasingly militarized by local, state and federal police and the US military — all of which inarguably, have large contingents of Trump supporters in their ranks — but who have still sworn oaths to uphold the US and/or their state’s constitution.
There is no sitting or waiting this out.
The balkanization of the United States of America is a very real possibility — and a viable one — especially for The Great Lakes states and/or states bordering Canada or Mexico —
— if the federal government is being dismantled, defunded and failing at or abandoning its obligations to the People of those States,
and
— if The Constitution, an ideologically questionable document to begin with — is not being observed, is being continually challenged without standing – or may be officially revoked by an authoritarian autocratic executive branch — that is emboldened by both a favorable and solid judiciary and a weak, complicit, incompetent and diminished Congress.
There are no checks and balances or separation of powers, anymore.
Like-minded governors, and mayors of large cities might at least try, to get ahead of these fascist and authoritarian maneuvers and actions — and lead with more than just speeches and more than lawsuits or “lawfare” by their states’ attorneys general — they must resist with immediate, applied Anti-Fascist ACTION.
otherwise, well, we and he understand what happens next.
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 