(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Fuckin' Strait Was Already Open [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2026-04-07 You're probably still scrolling. That's by design. Two moves to break free. The Strait of Hormuz was open on February 27th. Ships moved through it. Oil flowed. The global economy depended on it and the global economy got what it needed. Then on February 28th, Trump and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Iran closed the strait in response. We’ve heard over a dozen conflicting rationales for starting a war no one wanted. Clocking at a billion dollars a day. Now Trump is threatening to destroy Iran’s power plants, bridges, and water systems unless they reopen the passage he caused them to shut. He broke the strait. Now he’s threatening war crimes to force someone else to fix it. On Easter, while Christians around the world marked the resurrection, the President of the United States posted a profanity-laced threat to plunge 90 million Iranians into darkness and signed it “Praise be to Allah.” This after his spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain – head of the White House Faith Office and Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser – spent Holy Week comparing him to Jesus. You opened your phone Easter to this spectacle and something lurched. Maybe you went numb. Maybe rage. Maybe a grief you couldn’t place. Maybe you cycled through all three before breakfast. Your horror is a correct read on events. The president is publicly celebrating the prospect of destroying civilian life support systems, and no institution is stopping him. One prominent headline read, “Trump Revels in Threats That Could Be War Crimes in Iran.” Revels. Wow. But notice what else happened. While you were reacting to the post, the Bondi firing slid past. The Hegseth defense stock scandal barely registered. The Army chief of staff was fired. The government ordered satellite imagery of Iran suppressed. The Epstein files were ignored. Each headline designed to bury the last. Constant chaos and rage bait is the smoke. The structural damage happens behind it. And Trump’s strategy works best when your attention stays pinned to the latest outrage instead of the grift and creeping fascism underneath. Maybe you’re still scrolling now. Reading takes about his Truth Social post, scanning reactions, refreshing for the next development. You can’t stop because looking away from a president threatening war crimes feels morally wrong. That feeling has a name. “Vigilance as duty.” You feel like you owe it to democracy and to the resistance to stay up on every new development. It’s one of four forces that keep people locked in the doomscroll trance — and every one of them serves Trump’s objective, not yours. Make Some Moves First move. Close this app, open your contacts, text one person: “The strait was already open before he started this war. I need someone else to acknowledge that.” Then put your phone down for twenty minutes. Take a walk. Make tea. Hug someone or pet the dog. Use the bathroom without bringing your phone. Second move. When your head is clearer, take whatever is still burning in your chest and convert it into something defiant and specific. Here’s my response: “You break it, you bought it.” The fuckin’ strait was already open. Trump broke it. The Trump family businesses should be on the hook for the full cost of ships damaged, war-related price increases around the world, and damages for pain and suffering to the families of fallen soldiers killed in his pointless war. I’m making that my response. I’m saying it online and to my neighbors. Writing it in letters to my representatives. Putting it on a sign for the next protest. Posting it anywhere it might land. The specific form of your response doesn’t matter. Make some art. Organize a vigil. Contact representatives. Connect with a friend and talk about something unrelated to Trump for an hour and recharge your battery for the long haul. What matters is the conversion — outrage into a defiant act, even a tiny one. Defiance is a skill. Every time you convert overwhelm into one concrete move aimed outward, you’re training it. Those two moves — breaking the scroll, then converting the outrage into defiance — come from practices in v2.0 of my civic resilience toolkit Staying Steady. There are ten practices total. This new version drops later this week. Subscribe to stay informed. In solidarity, Paul T. Shattuck Remember: Stay human. Stay strategic. Shape tomorrow. Interrupt Overwhelm and Build Resilience My workbook Staying Steady: Practical Tools to Interrupt Overwhelm and Build Resilience Under Authoritarian Assault , gives you 60 pages of practical tools for facing authoritarian assault. Pay what you want pricing to stay accessible . Short practices you can use in five minutes when shame, paralysis, or fog take hold. Buy version 1.0 now, get the updated and expanded version 2.0 for free when it’s published later in April. About Me I’m Paul T. Shattuck and I help people and organizations stay steady in the face of authoritarian assault and extractive systems so they can keep showing up without losing their effectiveness or humanity. I draw on decades of community organizing, deep expertise in research and collaborative community problem-solving, contemplative practice and mindfulness teaching, and what I’ve learned from tens of thousands of subscribers in 95 countries. Check out my main blog on Substack where I post all my content: Stay Human — Shape Tomorrow I was fired three weeks before Christmas, 2024 for refusing to delete a LinkedIn post about Trump’s campaign promises to target federal workers. I launched this blog soon thereafter. It’s my way of pitching in, standing in solidarity with you all, doing my part to help build a progressive future rooted in things worth fighting for: justice, equity, security, and care. I also do coaching and consulting with activist groups, nonprofits, and universities fighting Trump’s authoritarian assault. Contact me to learn more about my services. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/7/2376799/-The-Fuckin-Strait-Was-Already-Open?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/