Stop Lying to Yourself—We Are No Longer Living in a Democracy

Let’s stop pretending this is normal. Stop pretending we’re fine. We are not. America is not functioning as a democracy—not nationally, and certainly not locally. We are in a constitutional crisis, and the saddest part is how familiar it feels. Like something we’ve lived through before. Like something we’ve grown to accept. But what we are experiencing now is the slow, quiet unraveling of democratic governance—and we need to name it before it devours us whole.

Let’s talk about Hungary.

Hungary is one of the most chilling examples of how democracy doesn’t die with a bang—it rots slowly from the inside. When Viktor Orbán took power, he didn’t jail journalists or shut down protests overnight. People still had the ability to speak, to post online, to whisper dissent. But with every critique came a consequence. Journalists found themselves audited. Teachers were reassigned. Families lost contracts. Protesters were labeled extremists. Criticism was allowed—but it came at a cost. The state didn’t have to make you disappear. It just made your life harder. And that’s enough to make most people go quiet.

Now look around.

In the United States, just a few months into this presidency, we are watching the same authoritarian pattern take root. It doesn’t look like fascism at first glance. It’s “law and order.” It’s “national security.” It’s “protecting children.” It’s ICE dragging a mother away from her family on a quiet Worcester street. It’s a child’s face slammed into the pavement by police. It’s the media, slow to question power. It’s city halls locking their doors to the public. It’s not that we can’t speak—it’s that when we do, we are met with silence, retaliation, or outright criminalization.

This is not democracy. This is power unchecked.

And Worcester, Massachusetts—the city I live in—is a perfect case study in this slow slide. We don’t have a strong mayor system. Instead, we have a city manager who holds more centralized power than most residents even realize. And when that city manager fails to serve the people—when they enable harm, silence dissent, or protect police violence—the City Council is supposed to hold them accountable.

But what happens when they don’t?

Or worse—what happens when they won’t?

You get a government that resembles Orbán’s Hungary more than anything we pretend to be. A performative democracy. The illusion of accountability. And all the while, harm continues. Injustice flourishes. And people—especially Black, brown, immigrant, queer, poor, and disabled people—pay the price.

So stop lying to yourself. This is a crisis.

We are already here. We’re not on the edge of authoritarianism. We are in it. The question is not if it’s coming—the question is what we are going to do now.

Because on the other side of this, we have a choice.

We can rebuild America into something it has never fully been—a country that respects humanity over profit, care over capitalism, and justice over control. But only if we fight back. Only if we speak up. Only if we organize, disrupt, and refuse to comply with the silence they demand of us.

The institutions aren’t going to save us. We are the institution now.

Don’t wait to be swallowed whole. Sound the alarm.

We’re already living in the fire. Let’s start building the future.