Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz

Denial is a powerful drug.

In the wake of the unthinkable images and footage coming out of California over the weekend, it’s easy to feel insulated from the chaos if we happen to reside somewhere else in the country, as if our geography protects us.

Watching heavily-armed troops spraying civilians with rubber bullets and bombing them with tear gas for rightly protesting I.C.E.’s indiscriminate round-up of people working in local businesses, sitting in traffic, and showing up for their legal immigration appointments, it’s critical that we remember something.

This isn’t about Los Angeles.

It’s not about the bluest of the blue states receiving the wrath of a vindictive Republican president.

It’s not about an outspoken Democrat Governor being intentionally targeted by a leader who resents him.

This is about the future of our Republic.

Los Angeles is a test by this corrupt Administration of how much illegality the American people will tolerate, how willing we will be to abide authoritarianism, how easily ordinary people will allow an arm of the government to be weaponized against us. It is a barometer of the intestinal fortitude of our citizenry.

Trump is always looking for his Reichstag Fire—his reason to bring the hammer of the Military down upon the nation. Declaring Martial Law has always been his endgame, and his strategy has been transparent: create an emergency where one did not exist and propose to bring Law and Order to a lawlessness and disorder of which he is the sole author. As California Governor Gavin Newsom correctly declared on his X account:

1) Local law enforcement didn’t need help.

2) Trump sent troops anyway—to manufacture chaos and violence.

3) Trump succeeded.

4) Now things are destabilized, and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess.

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has discussed that during his first term, Trump sought to turn the Military on citizens by shooting Black Lives Matter protestors, but was dissuaded from doing so by him and other leaders. Now, with a far more willing sycophant in Pete Hegseth, and with a Cabinet filled with shameless yes-men and genuflecting disciples, there is almost nothing standing in his way, other than We the People.

What’s happened and is happening in Los Angeles is a personal question to all of us, regardless of where we live, asking how much we’re willing to do to preserve the America we call home and claim to love. Is our patriotism real enough, our morality sturdy enough, is our faith true enough to move us into the fray? The people in California don’t just have answers in the abstract. They know in the certainty of their bruises and broken bones.

The ordinary people in those neighborhoods, business owners, Uber drivers, retirees, school teachers, and college students, have shown us the very best of what humanity aspires to by standing up for family members, friends, and strangers whose humanity was disregarded. They braved rubber bullets and tear gas and beatings by armed soldiers, and in doing so, showed more devotion to this nation and its Constitution than those very soldiers.

America, we are all Los Angeles.

Its streets are the streets we traverse each day. Its restaurant workers and business owners are those we know and work alongside. Its families are those we find our identity and meaning in.

There is no border between us and them when it comes to the fascist aspirations of this president. No geography will keep us safe, no political affiliation will exempt us from harm, and nothing will prevent us from having our neighborhoods and communities invaded by complicit agencies and willing foot soldiers, unless we decide that we, too, dare to stand in the gap between power and assailed human beings.

I don’t know where in this nation you call home, what you do for a living, or what the story in your head is about the violence in Los Angeles this week. What I do know is that you are in this now, just as I am. We all need to choose whether we will be numbed into apathy, terrified into silence, or propelled into the trenches of the war for this nation, regardless of the cost.

Like so many of our fellow Americans in California, I pray we choose the latter.