I grew up in a tiny country on a continent that tried tolerance as a sleeping pill in the mid-nineteen-thirties. That tolerance and appeasement cost millions of lives. It ruined families and cities. The hangover lasted half a century and tasted bitter. So when people parade “tolerance” like a Gwyneth Paltrow scented candle, I reach for the manual.
Karl Popper (quick primer for normal people with jobs: Austrian-British philosopher, champion of the open society, allergic to authoritarian fairy tales) wrote on the fuming ruins of continental Europe that a tolerant society survives only if it refuses oxygen and fuel to movements that would strangle tolerance itself. Not a call to punch harder. A call to defend the arena where arguments can breathe, but not at all costs. Rules of the house, not vibes.
Across the Atlantic, those rules are being stretched like old gum as we speak. On July 1, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court granted former presidents criminal (absolute) immunity for “core” official acts and presumptive immunity for other official behavior. Translation for civilians (I do my best): the office now comes with thicker armor and better FLAK defense systems. Lower courts will spend costly and heavy debated years deciding what counts as “official.” A generous gift to anyone tempted to wear public office as a shield… or simply get away with (almost) everything.
In Washington DC, the powers that be in the White House (in its mutation to a more gold flavored house) invoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act, took operational control of the city’s police (a fancy phrasing for “hijacked”), and put roughly 800 National Guard troops on the peaceful street for a quickly declared public safety emergency (an emergency, a big one, biggest you’ve ever seen). This uncalled for control runs deep, runs for up to 30 days unless Congress extends it. City leaders call it overreach, crime data shows steep declines (in total dissonance with the emergency claims) , and the legal edges will be chewed in court and make some eager lawyers multi-millionaires. Precedents like this tend to stick. Europe has seen that movie. It does not end cute. It does not end well. It stings and stinks like hell, and for a very very long time.
Zoom out, it matters. I do not care if you’re left, or right, somewhere in the middle, or if you did not make up your mind yet. Rights now depend (and that is a scary thought) on where your tires hit the tarmac. As of 2025, fourteen states enforce total abortion bans, with many more squeezing access on a stopwatch. It’s sets back women’s rights a full century. And has re-opened Pandora’s box on equality. It does not require Einstein’s brain to quickly detect that efforts are encouraged to put women “back where there belong”: in the kitchen, having (white) babies…. Babies much needed to make the country apparatus work. If this made you throw up a bit in your mouth, you’re on the right track. This goes beyond a culture-war headline, or a political fait-divers. It marks a structural split in bodily autonomy and tolerated roles of gender and sexes.
Shall we now talk about the libraries? As a book aficionado and a devourer of ideas, tales and arguments I find it alarming and appalling that PEN America, a century-old free expression nonprofit tied to the PEN International network, counted 10,099 book bans in U.S. schools in the 2023–24 year across 29 states. The “book burning” (because that is what it is) is heavily targeting stories by or about people of color and LGBTQ communities. It rewrites or erases history, science and nuance. “They” dress it up as protection. The outcome is children trained to distrust plurality and thriving on a singletrack mind.
Layer on the blueprint politics. Project 2025, the Heritage-led policy tome, reads like a Netflix horror playbook for centralizing executive power and purging civil-service independence. It might have been written by Goebels, Speer, Himmler, Heudich and Eichmann. Even with public disavowals on TV, the document exists, runs more than 900 pages, and revives Schedule F to swap competence for loyalty across agencies. Design a system for control and you will get control. Pretend shock later if you must. Textbook textbook. You read that right: twice.
Where to draw lines without burning the page on free speech. U.S. doctrine keeps the bar high for a reason. Even vile speech is protected until it becomes incitement to imminent lawless action or a true threat. That is the Brandenburg line. Cross it and face consequences. Stay this side and you keep your megaphone, while the rest of us keep our right to drown you out. That is how adults run a noisy republic. That is how the game should be played.
Now the part too many skip. Responsibility is personal. Full stop. Your voice is not décor. Use it at the council table, in the company chat, at the dinner where an uncle tests how much poison a room will tolerate. Use it with your vote, your dues, your complaint letter, your boring presence at a school board that hoped you would stay home. Speak your mind at the coffee machine. Call out the nonsense, the danger, the lessons not learned, the inherent lines, the danger, the racism, the hypocrisy. Silence also speaks. It says, go ahead, I will adapt. That might not stop the upcoming and incoming avalanche. “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin”: Cohen’s song on power, ambition, and the drive to disrupt and corrupt existing systems rings like a bell. Washington is far, but not that far.
And please retire “wir haben es nicht gewusst.” We did not know. That little phrase will be offered again one day, soon, like a moral parking ticket by people not that far from us. It will not get anyone out of the lot. We do know. We do scrutinize. We scroll the evidence daily. We keep track. Ignorance is no longer ambient; you choose it.
The risk ledger is plain. Draw lines clumsily and you mint and print martyrs. Draw them cleanly, in daylight, anchored in law, and pluralism lives to argue tomorrow. Refuse to draw them and aberrations harden into unwanted tradition. Immunities widen. Emergencies become policy. Libraries turn into curated innocence museums. A capital city’s policing becomes a presidential experiment. Tolerance decays into apathy, and apathy is a gift to people who treat rules like speed bumps.
Belgian verdict, with all my love and a raised eyebrow (and a quivering finger, haven’t made up my mind if it’s the index or middle one). Tolerance is maintenance with dirty hands and greasy elbows. Protect the space where disagreement survives. Back the institutions when they creak. Fund the watchdogs and journalists. Call out and push back on bullies in suits and bullies in comment sections. Stand up for what matters because that is what keeps what matters. Freedom dies when we stop defending it. Defending is a verb.
Not on my watch. Yours?
