To the Citizen Who Expects Better,
There is a particular kind of exhaustion settling over this country now — not the exhaustion of labor alone, but the exhaustion of witnessing. The exhaustion of watching outrage become routine. The exhaustion of hearing behavior once considered disqualifying defended daily by people who once claimed to value character, law, patriotism, restraint, or decency. The exhaustion of watching corruption explained away as strategy. Cruelty reframed as strength. Ignorance celebrated as authenticity. The exhaustion of watching institutions delay, defer, investigate, table, postpone, and politely endure behavior that would destroy the lives of ordinary citizens in a matter of days.
The public is tired.
Tired of protests that seem unheard.
Tired of scandals that produce no accountability.
Tired of lies that remain profitable.
Tired of political theater masquerading as leadership.
Tired of watching elected officials behave less like statesmen and more like rival influencers trapped in an endless performance cycle for cameras, donors, and algorithms.
And perhaps most dangerously of all: people are becoming tired of believing resistance matters.
This exhaustion is understandable. It is also politically useful.
An exhausted population is easier to govern. Easier to distract. Easier to divide. Easier to convince that nothing can improve and therefore nothing is worth attempting. The constant flood of outrage, crisis, spectacle, cruelty, scandal, and absurdity does not merely happen around the public. It shapes the public. It overwhelms attention spans. It erodes civic stamina. It conditions citizens to expect disappointment and eventually mistake helplessness for realism.
But history offers an important warning: democracies rarely disappear all at once. More often, citizens simply grow too weary to defend them consistently.
This nation has endured periods of profound injustice before. Corruption before. Demagoguery before. Bigotry before. Lawlessness among the powerful before. The lesson of those eras is not that heroic figures appeared magically to save the republic while everyone else watched comfortably from the sidelines. The lesson is that ordinary citizens applied sustained pressure over time — politically, legally, economically, culturally, journalistically, morally, and electorally — until institutions were forced to move.
Not politely asked.
Forced.
Progress in this country has never emerged primarily from the goodwill of entrenched power. It emerged because pressure became impossible to ignore.
And that is where this moment now stands.
What has been done matters. Journalists have continued documenting abuses despite intimidation. Citizens have organized, protested, voted, litigated, educated, documented, and resisted disinformation. Whistleblowers, activists, scholars, workers, local organizers, independent media, attorneys, and ordinary exhausted people have kept pushing forward even while being told repeatedly that nothing changes.
But what is being done is still insufficient for the scale of the crisis.
Too many leaders continue treating democratic erosion as a public relations inconvenience rather than an institutional emergency. Too many officials speak passionately while acting timidly. Too many organizations fundraise endlessly off outrage while producing little structural change in return. Too many political actors remain more committed to preserving professional relationships, donor comfort, party stability, and personal career security than confronting the full seriousness of what is unfolding.
A republic cannot survive indefinitely on strongly worded statements and procedural decorum alone.
What should be done next is neither glamorous nor instantaneous. It is sustained civic pressure:
- relentless documentation of abuses,
- aggressive legal accountability,
- local organizing,
- labor organization,
- voter participation,
- independent journalism,
- civic education,
- institutional reform,
- economic pressure where appropriate,
- coalition building,
- refusing normalization,
- and refusing the seductive lie that exhaustion excuses surrender.
This does not require constant rage. Rage burns quickly. Discipline lasts longer.
That distinction matters.
The goal is not permanent outrage. The goal is sustained engagement. Democracies are not defended by emotional intensity alone. They are defended by stubborn persistence practiced repeatedly by ordinary people who refuse to quietly accept degradation as inevitable.
There will always be voices insisting resistance is pointless. There always have been. History remembers them poorly.
The republic does not require perfection from its citizens. It requires participation.
And participation becomes most important precisely at the moment exhaustion begins whispering:
“Nothing will ever change.”
That whisper is not wisdom.
It is surrender.
We are not finished.
Not unless we choose to be.
We must remain, unwilling to accept less,
— Prudence C. Wilder
Letter's From Prudence 