JD Vance and his family showed up in Vermont this weekend to ski. And, despite it being the dead of winter, more than a thousand Vermonters found time to line the streets in protest. Unable to attend myself, I beamed with pride as I scrolled through coverage of my fellow citizens.

Our Republican governor, whom I’ve voted for three times, was quoted in VT Digger: “I hope Vermonters remember the Vice President is here on a family trip with his young children, and, while we may not always agree, we should be respectful,” Scott said in a Thursday statement. Please join me in welcoming them to Vermont and hoping they have an opportunity to experience what makes our state, and Vermonters, so special.” My pride dissolved into disappointment and then into fury.

But this piece is not about our governor. He can wrestle with his contradictions on his own time. It’s about the urge to apply the old rules of courtesy and hospitality to a spinning-out-of-control, rude, crude, and inhospitable reality. It’s not about going low or going high. It’s about the fact that sometimes a raging fire must be fought with fire.

I vehemently disagree with Governor Scott. We are coloring way outside the social norms and niceties here—there is no mutual respect to be had, so the usual rules don’t apply. These guys are beating democracy to a bloody pulp and gleefully tweeting about it—fury is the only appropriate response.

I traveled to Washington, DC with my daughter for the Women’s March on January 18th. Countless articles, pundits, and political commentators have since spent meticulous time debating the questions: why march, and is protest even relevant anymore? I wrestled with the same questions, both before and after the march, and I almost didn’t go, but in the end, I’m really glad I did. Not because the experience infused me with a sense of hope or energy, quite the opposite—it was more like scraping the bottom of the barrel for anything resembling the stamina needed to carry us through the foreseeable future. We marched, we chanted, and we dug deep to muster boldness and defiance. But the fatigue, the disbelief, the through-the-looking-glass incomprehension, was palpable, magnified for me especially with the words, not going back. I couldn’t even force my mouth to form them because they fell flat—an empty threat. I kept thinking, but haven’t we already? Isn’t going back precisely what we’ve done?

That being said, there were other chants, specifically my body, my choice, that injected solidarity and rhythm into our step. Intensity and persistence pulsated off the crowd, magnified by the diversity of voices—all ages, all genders, all races. It was the most powerful, the words that held a depth of conviction and determination that seemed to carry us along as one organism. I inhaled that energy like the gulp of air that it was, knowing we would all be plunged once again into the depths.

Whiplash is the most appropriate descriptor for this moment in history. We recognize the fervent nature of the need to resist, but in the flurry of atrocities that are demanding our attention, it’s tough to find our bearings and pinpoint what that resistance should look like.

There are myriad ways to resist, and we must harness them all, but I’m confident that protest is still relevant and just as effective as ever. We live in a visual society. Numbers matter, especially to this administration. They matter a lot. In fact, if we are informed by past experience, numbers are the most important measure in his toolbox. Which means, a visual representation of our dissent will have a powerful and incessant impact. For a time, it may only prove to be an irritation or annoyance, but the pesky little intrusion of our persistence will remind the administration and the world that the majority of us do not endorse the directives and actions of this president and his thugs. Our job for the next four years is to hold their feet to the fire every single moment of every single day in every way possible—to exhaust this toxic administration with an onslaught of every tool we have available until they can no longer continue to steamroll our democracy.

This grand democratic experiment of ours is still fresh within the context of history. Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have lived in relative calm and have not had to fight the big world wars or show up for the monumental social movements survived by preceding generations. It’s inviting to shrink into our little bubbles and ask, what’s the point? And I’m speaking from experience. I am tapped out. But when I choose not to read the news, I wrestle with guilt. Then, I wade into the headlines and am choked by anxiety. See? Whiplash. But somehow, I know I must find a balance because while I absolutely refuse to close my eyes and plug my ears, relinquishing my sanity and stability to the chaos and ugliness renders me ineffective and hobbled.

It works in their favor if we stop reading the news and stop being scared, appalled, angry, and motivated. It’s tempting to declare that we don’t want that in our sacred personal space, so we’re opting out. However, opting out is part of what got us here in the first place. Opting out, as nearly ninety million voters apparently did (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/13/why-eligible-voters-did-not-vote), is apathy at best and cowardice at worst. Opting out is the same as endorsing the narrative that the whole system needs to be burned to the ground. Unfortunately, thanks to the people doing the burning, it won’t be a phoenix rising from those ashes but a voracious monstrosity driven by greed, rage, and an insatiable thirst for power. The race to the bottom has been so fast and gone so deep that the dregs are all that’s left.

Do we really think if the world goes up in flames around us, our perfect little bubbles will stay intact?

This is not who we are. Period.

Be seen. Be heard. Be counted.

The sense of urgency is greater than ever, but our fury is still timid and dampened. We must show up—without apology, without regret. Because when we have no presence in the streets, it’s easy for them to claim a mandate that is pure fantasy. Our lack of resistance becomes our endorsement.