Why I'm Still Optimistic

We're exhausted, yes — but angrier than ever. And that’s exactly what winning looks like.

Why I'm Still Optimistic

We’re exhausted, yes — but angrier than ever. And that’s exactly what winning looks like.

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I’ve been in crash-mode more than alive-mode for the last couple of weeks, but fingers crossed, I think I’m over it—for now at least. The world didn’t exactly wait around for me, and now that I’m mostly caught up, I’m ready to deliver on the post I’ve been promising: why I’m feeling more optimistic than ever—and, believe it or not, not inspite of but because of the wild ride of events from the last couple of weeks, even more hopeful than when I first promised it. Let’s dive in.

Trump has been prancing around these days looking less like a president and more like a monarch who’s stopped pretending there’s any limit to his rule—throwing around easter eggs that clearly show he has no intention of leaving—like “joking” about a war cancelling out a 2028 election. We all know Trump doesn’t joke, at least in a normal way. Sure, he says things that his followers think are hilarious, but there’s always hidden context—either in the form of a threat or confession.

And yeah, it’s terrifying. A reckless narcissist with nuclear codes is terrifying. A government run by yes-men too cowardly to tell him no is terrifying. And the exhaustion we all feel after years of watching him bulldoze every norm, every law, every protection we thought we had? That’s valid too. Nobody should feel ashamed of being tired.

But here’s why I’m still optimistic: people aren’t cowering. Not this time.

When Trump federalized D.C. police and rolled tanks into the capital last week — crowing about “Liberation Day” like it was a parade — people poured into the streets. The mayor called it an illegal coup. The ACLU and NAACP were in court within hours. From the very beginning of this term, Americans have met Trump’s overreach with noise, lawsuits, and protests.

Newsom stepped up the game last week with a media campaign that could single-handedly drive Trump insane (yeah, I know, there’s a joke in there, but you know what I mean. We’ll call it more insane). And he’s backed it up with policy designed to stop Trump from rigging the election.

In Texas, Democratic legislators literally fled the state to block anti-democracy votes, one of them, State Rep. Nicole Collier, now effectively being held hostage for refusing to sign a “permission slip” agreeing to a personal envoy that will keep her from fleeing again. She stated last night that she has no intention of signing, ever. The country is watching.

New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham beat Trump at his own game by calling up her National Guard preemptively, making them unavailable for his abuse.

These are not people rolling over. These are people standing in the way.

And it’s not just politicians pushing back. ICE is struggling to meet its own deportation quotas—even with every recruitment lever pulled. They're waiving age limits so applicants can be as young as 18 or older than 40, dangling up to $50,000 in signing bonuses, student-loan forgiveness, and enhanced retirement packages. More than 80,000 people applied within days of launching the campaign, but reports indicate that the agency is still struggling to secure qualified officers—and bottlenecks like training capacity and public backlash aren’t helping.

Meanwhile, on the ground level, resistance is rolling in real time. Viral videos show ordinary and angry Americans filming ICE raids, heckling masked agents, and stepping between deportation vans and families. It’s resistance cell phone by cell phone, body by body—a peaceful force in defiance of fear, refusing to cower even as officials try to push through their enforcement.

And it’s working. Video after video, the agents retreat, embarrassed, too ashamed to show their faces or share their names.

The world is catching on

For the first time in a long time, the rest of the world seems to be catching on. Yesterday’s high‑stakes Trump–Zelenskyy meeting at the White House was unprecedented: Zelenskyy flanked by half a dozen European leaders — Macron, Starmer, Meloni, Merz et al. — all sitting in Trump’s own house, pressing him to back Ukraine’s survival. It was the clearest sign yet that Europe has finally had enough. After Trump’s despicable groveling over Putin, a war criminal, and the way the White House treated Zelensky the last time, they high-tailed it to the states to show their support.

This is a big deal, not just because of the effort it must have taken to arrange last-minute travel for that many dignitaries, but because of the message it sends—that Trump’s behavior will no longer be tolerated without pushback, not just here, but around the world.

And it’s not just governments stepping up. Non-governmental organizations — NGOs — are part of the foreign support that matters here too. Groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom for Immigrants are documenting ICE raids, tracking detentions, and filing reports that end up in front of the U.N. and foreign parliaments. The Immigrant Defense Project’s “ICEwatch” map has logged thousands of raids, exposing patterns of abuse that can’t just be swept under the rug. Every report, every video, every map entry becomes a piece of evidence — and it reminds this regime that the world is watching. Dictators can shrug off domestic outrage; they can’t so easily shrug off international bodies that use NGO reports to build sanctions, lawsuits, and travel bans. That outside scrutiny is another shield for peaceful resistance at home.

What the evidence tells us

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth’s research matters here because it shows us the roadmap. Her 3.5% rule — that when just 3.5% of a population engages in sustained, nonviolent resistance, authoritarian regimes always fall — has never been disproven. We’ve already crossed that threshold.

But the threshold alone isn’t enough.

Rule one: keep it peaceful.

The study found, first, that it’s peaceful persistence that makes movements succeed. Peaceful — because when a movement stays nonviolent, it invites solidarity at home and abroad. Here’s the interesting part: Chenoweth found that regimes with foreign eyes on them are less likely to massacre their own people, because they know they’ll one day answer to the world. And now we’ve met that criteria, too: the world is watching.

Rule two: keep going.

Here’s where the sh*t hits the fan. The final requirement is Sustained Resistance — because this only works if we keep going. I hear people say, “We keep protesting and protesting and nothing helps. Why do we even bother?”

But it is helping. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to: straining the regime, denying them silence, building pressure step by step. That’s how dictatorships crack. Not in one glorious burst, but in the grind of steady, relentless resistance.

Just an aside, because I’ve seen the comments: before you say “that research isn’t valid—Chenoweth said so”—that’s not accurate. Chenoweth has explicitly emphasized that the 3.5% rule is descriptive, not prescriptive, and does not guarantee success—especially in unique contexts like the U.S. However, that doesn’t invalidate the pattern her research consistently shows: once sustained, nonviolent resistance crosses that threshold, it becomes extremely difficult for regimes to hold on. We meet her criteria in every meaningful way.

There are no guarantees in this battle to keep our country from sinking into authoritarianism. I’m not offering them either. I’m just offering hope where I see it. And I do see it.

I know it doesn’t feel like enough. People are exhausted. The signs of fatigue are everywhere. The daily atrocities are an affront to the senses of everyone with a conscience. The urgency of the situation makes its way into our dreams, turning them to nightmares.

The fantasy of Trump frog-marched out in cuffs tomorrow is delicious, but it was never real. This was never going to be a quick revolution. It was always going to be an ugly marathon. And the truth about marathons is that they hurt. They grind you down. But if you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you win.

Here’s the biggest clue we’re winning: the anger.

Every time Trump threatens a city, and people meet him in the streets. Every time ICE raids a neighborhood, and someone shoves a phone in their face—that’s how you know they’re losing.

We have history behind us to support this theory. In Chile under Pinochet, neighborhoods went silent. In Guatemala’s genocide, entire villages disappeared without a whisper. I don’t mean to shame them. They were scared, in survival mode. Silence was survival. Dictators thrive when people go quiet. That’s their goal.

But we’re not quiet.

Not by a long-shot.

We’re Americans. We’re known around the world for being loud and obnoxious. That’s a strength, at least for now. We don’t cower. We never shut up. We’re messy and sloppy and we let people know when they’re being jerks. We stand up for ourselves and confront bullies. That’s our history.

Good for us. We need to keep that energy, with pride.

Stay loud. Stay angry. Keep your eyes open.

This is how we win — not in one explosive moment, but in thousands of small acts of defiance stacked on top of each other until the whole rotten tower falls.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll lay out exactly what we all should be doing if we want to push the odds ever in our favor. EDIT: Here’s that link.

Take care,

—Rosie

🔥 What do you think? Are you feeling deflated or optimistic? Drop your thoughts in the comments (it helps to vent, plus it helps the algorithm). 👇

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I’m a journalist and novelist whose career was upended by long COVID—years of neurological and physical damage that still keep me in recovery mode most days and prompted an urgent move to lower elevation. But the state of this country lit a fire I couldn’t ignore. So I write when I can, from the margins of exhaustion, because staying silent isn't an option.

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