The Comfortable Lie You Tell Yourself Every Morning

The Resistance Sabotage Manual: Day 4 of 12

August 17, 2025

Your alarm goes off. Coffee brews. Email opens.

Your federal employee neighbor heads to work, not mentioning she's one of 50,000 whose job protections just vanished. The museum you visited last week has new "patriotic" exhibits. Your kid's teacher removed her rainbow sticker "just to be safe."

Everything feels normal.

It's not.

In Turkey, they kept going to work as judges were purged. In Hungary, they watched the news as it slowly became propaganda. In Venezuela, they adapted to each new "temporary" measure. Everyone maintained their routines while democracy died around them. Different countries, same psychological trap.

The Normalcy Bias That's Killing Democracy

Four years ago, if the government announced it would strip 50,000 civil servants of job protections to create political loyalty tests, there would have been riots.

Today? It's happening. The Office of Personnel Management is implementing "Schedule Policy/Career" — allowing agencies to fire any federal employee deemed insufficiently loyal. Not for incompetence. Not for corruption. For "subversion of Presidential directives."

And you're reading about it like it's weather news.

This is normalcy bias: the psychological state that causes people to underestimate threats and assume things will return to normal. It's why the frog boils. It's why democracies die not with explosions but with shrugs.

A third of Republicans now believe political violence is acceptable to "save the country." In 2021, it was 15%. You've normalized a doubling of support for political violence in four years.

The Smithsonian removed exhibits about race and gender. Not because a law required it. Because an executive order suggested it. Museums are self-censoring American history, and you're planning your weekend trip there anyway.

Your Brain's Desperate Need for Normal

Here's what's happening in your head: Cognitive dissonance hurts. Literally. Brain scans show that holding contradictory beliefs ("America is a democracy" + "The government is purging disloyal employees") activates the same regions as physical pain.

So your brain resolves the conflict by minimizing the threat. "It's not that many people." "It won't affect me." "The courts will stop it."

The courts that Trump has spent months attacking? The ones where chief justices now warn about threats to judicial independence? Those courts?

You're not stupid. You're human. And human brains will do anything to avoid the anxiety of accepting that things have fundamentally changed.

Germans in 1933 did the same thing. "Hitler's just posturing." "The Reichstag still meets." "It's temporary." They adjusted their baseline with each new violation until the unthinkable became unremarkable.

The Historical Pattern We're Repeating

Germany, 1933-1935: "Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse," wrote Milton Mayer in "They Thought They Were Free." Germans didn't wake up in a dictatorship. They normalized their way there, one adjusted expectation at a time.

First it was just communists being arrested. Then socialists. Then union leaders. Each step was "understandable" given the previous step. By the time they arrested the Jews, the pattern was normalized.

Chile, 1973: After Pinochet's coup, middle-class Chileans told themselves the military would restore order and return to barracks. They kept shopping, working, living normally. By the time they realized the military wasn't leaving, thousands had been disappeared. The grocery stores stayed open the whole time.

Hungary, 2010-2020: Orbán didn't declare dictatorship. He just kept winning elections while gradually capturing courts, media, and universities. Hungarians adapted to each change. "At least we're not Russia," they said. Until they were.

What You're Normalizing Right Now

Things that weren't normal in 2020:

• Museums removing exhibits for "lacking patriotism"

• 50,000 federal workers losing civil service protections

• 33% of a major party endorsing political violence

• 188 executive orders in 7 months (Trump signed 220 in his entire first term)

• Threats against judges becoming routine

• Federal agencies conducting "loyalty reviews"

• Libraries pulling books no one formally challenged

• Universities facing funding threats for "divisive" content

Things you now shrug at:

• "At-will" government employment based on political loyalty

• Daily erosion of merit-based hiring

• Normalized threats against election workers (79% now want security)

• Acceptance that violence might be necessary (23% of Americans agree)

• Self-censorship as standard practice

• "Both sides" coverage of democracy vs. autocracy

You read "Trump moves to reclassify federal workers" and think "another Trump thing" instead of "the end of professional civil service."

You see "museum removes controversial exhibit" and think "avoiding drama" instead of "cultural capitulation."

You hear "political violence rising" and think "concerning" instead of "emergency."

How to Break Through Normalcy Bias

Easy Mode: The 2020 Test Write down what was normal in January 2020:

• Federal workers were hired on merit, fired for cause

• Museums displayed history, even uncomfortable history

• Political violence was universally condemned

• Executive orders were rare and narrow

• Threatening judges was unthinkable

Now list what you accept today. The gap is your normalization.

Medium Mode: The Canada Mirror A Canadian watching America sees:

• Mass purges of civil servants

• Government-directed museum censorship

• One-third of a party endorsing violence

• Loyalty oaths for government workers

• Opposition parties called "enemies"

They'd recognize it immediately. You don't because you're inside it.

Hard Mode: Active Denormalization

• Say out loud: "It's not normal to fire civil servants for disloyalty"

• Document each violation as it happens

• Refuse to adjust your baseline

• Call out others' normalization: "Remember when this would have been shocking?"

• Stop saying "unprecedented" and start saying "authoritarian"

Your Normalcy Bias Inventory

Check which of these you've said recently:

☐ "Things will work themselves out" ☐ "The institutions will hold"
☐ "It's not that bad" ☐ "We've been through worse" ☐ "People are overreacting" ☐ "This is temporary" ☐ "Let's wait and see" ☐ "At least we're not [other country]" ☐ "The pendulum will swing back"

Count them. That's your normalization score.

The Success Story You Need

When Denmark was occupied by Nazis in 1940, King Christian X refused to normalize it. He rode his horse through Copenhagen daily, alone, without guards, wearing a Danish flag pin. When Nazis demanded Jews wear yellow stars, he said he'd wear one too.

The Danes refused to adjust their baseline. They saved 99% of Danish Jews.

Your neighbor who quit her federal job rather than accept reclassification? She didn't normalize.

The teacher who kept her rainbow sticker up? She didn't normalize.

The museum curator who leaked the censorship orders? They didn't normalize.

They recognized abnormal as abnormal. They refused to pretend otherwise.

You're boiling. And every day you pretend the water's fine, you turn up the heat.

---

Tomorrow: Why "both sides are bad" is exactly what they want you to think — and how this false equivalency paralyzes resistance.

The Resistance Sabotage Manual is a 12-day series examining the specific ways we accidentally collaborate with authoritarianism — and how to stop. Based on analysis of democratic collapses from Weimar Germany to present day.

What are you normalizing that would have horrified you five years ago? When did you stop noticing?

---