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Bare Trees in Fog

A Distant Drumbeat: “Sleepwalking into Dictatorship”

Writer's picture: Marie LaureMarie Laure

". . .Appalling things had happened since Hitler had come into power ten months earlier; but the range of horror was not yet fully unfolded. In the country the prevailing mood was a bewildered acquiescence. Occasionally it rose to fanaticism. Often when nobody was in earshot, it found utterance in pessimism, distrust and foreboding, and sometimes in shame and fear but only in private. The rumours of the concentration camps were still no louder than a murmur; but they hinted at countless unavowable tragedies.”*


The word that jumped off the page for me in this excerpt from a book published in 1977 is “acquiescence: the reluctant acceptance of something without protest…submission, surrender, obedience.”


A stunning resemblance to the German past has arrived on our American doorstep. We are on the threshold. We have not yet crossed over, but we are so close you can hear from a distant room that drumbeat of what is waiting for us over there. We are only months away from facing what many of us, myself included, would never have imagined might mark the turning point from American Democracy to Dictatorship.


This past weekend, a former Congresswoman said the U.S. is "sleepwalking into dictatorship"** This is not a partisan statement. She herself is a lifelong conservative Republican. The true threat that she is calling out cannot be dismissed. The world has seen this happen, has lived through its nightmare, has carried the consequences from one generation to the next. Lives were irrevocably changed forever. FOREVER!


The best outcome for all of us living at this tipping point in U.S. History would be to never accept "bewildered acquiescence;" to never utter real concerns "only in private;" to never allow "rumors" to remain a "murmur" until they become the realities currently promised in 2024: Camps at the U.S. Southern Border; national abortion bans; judicial branch stripped of its power; punishments and pardons meted out by one person as retribution; freedom of the press determined by what is reported; voting delegitimization in crucial states; voting results not accepted as counted; . . . In total, this amounts to tearing up the Constitution of the United States. That is exactly the endgame being promised. But it would only be the beginning. There would never be an ending because dictators never go. NEVER!


It is time to wake up from our sleepwalk before it is too late. Wake up a few friends and neighbors, too. Let’s walk together in solidarity not in sleep. We need one another to stop the ever closer drumbeat signaling Democracy’s Demise***



*A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (Journey Across Europe Book 1) by Patrick Leigh Fermor


**Liz Cheney


***A Play by Lance Carden












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Guest
Dec 16, 2023
Rated 5 out of 5 stars.

You said it!

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Guest
Dec 07, 2023

It is clear to me; the "what" of this here in these words and in the most recent blog by Marie Laure...The thing which flummoxes me is a lack of clarity as to how to stop it from happening again.

Thank you kindly,

Cherylann Pierce

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Guest
Dec 16, 2023
Replying to

We must come together in solidarity to succeed. Thanks for your comment.

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Guest
Dec 06, 2023

Agree on all accounts. This is a scary time and so many people seem to b in a daze and unaware of the danger we are in,

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© 2023 by Marie Laure

​Six Stages of Pilgrimage:

  • The Call:

  • The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an overscheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.

  • The Separation:

  • Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.

  • The Journey:

  • The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain and sacrifice of the journey itself.  This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.

  • The Contemplation:

  • Some pilgrimages go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation like walking a labyrinth.

  • The Encounter:

  • After all the toil and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling and blisters, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin veil where humans live in concert with the Creator.

  • The Completion and Return:

  • At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one's own world. "Seeing the place for the first time . . ."

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