‘A Very Long Dark Night’
In this thoughtful guest post by Jeffrey C. Isaac, a political science professor at UI, he recommends choosing your “battles” with much greater care. “We are in for the long haul,” he writes.
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“We truly are now in an exceptionally dangerous situation, we all ought to consider thinking very hard about what we are doing, really doing, when we say the things we are saying on social media. We probably are not doing much to change many minds or to promote any real political empowerment. But we certainly are creating a digital record that can be used to demonize us, to monitor us, and perhaps eventually to punish us. Indeed, many of us are already being punished. And we have only just entered what is sure to be a very long and dark night filled with terrors…
“I am determined to choose my ‘battles’ with much greater care. Because I care about myself, and think it is a good thing for individuals to do likewise. But also because I truly do care about the political world that we share. And I honestly believe that those of us who are serious about freedom and democracy must understand that we are in it for the long haul, and really need to marshal our efforts, and resources, mindful of the risks involved, where they really might make a discernible difference.
“For reasons of sanity and prudence and whatever hopefulness about the future might be summoned—and there are reasons for hopefulness—I think it is very important, now, for us to hold close those to whom we are close, those family and partners and friends and colleagues and real political allies with whom we can draw some strength and also perhaps do some bit of good in the places where we are. Of course we need to speak out broadly, and act politically at every level. But I think that we in the U.S. have now entered a situation unlike any we have experienced, at least in my lifetime. We cannot simply continue to act the way we’ve been acting for years.”—Jeffrey C. Isaac, September 14, 2025
Author’s note: The times in which we live are prompting too many sleepless nights, and I am grateful for my friends who understand the gravity of loss in the US. This is a time to solidify allies and talk strategy. It’s not enough to simply respond to the events of the day. We need thinkers. The old methods of rebellion and resistance are not enough in technofascist surveillance states where leaders misuse the meaning of words as easily as they breathe. So when on another sleepless night Dr. Marci Shore shared with me a post from one of her colleagues, Jeffrey C. Isaac, I immediately reached out to him to ask if I can cross-post it here. Thankfully, he said yes. He is a political science professor at the University of Indiana in Bloomfield, and like me, he’s deeply tired. We’ve been covering this shitshow for a decade, and it’s different now. I’ll let him explain.—hsc
‘A Very Long Dark Night’ by Jeffrey C. Isaac
Originally published on September 14, 2025, at Democracy in Dark Times as What I Think About Last Wednesday
What happened last Wednesday was truly terrible.
Have I said enough?
Many friends and colleagues, people I both like and respect, have been telling me for days that they are looking forward to reading what I have to say about what happened this past Wednesday.
Anyone likely to read this piece probably knows that I am very opinionated and I write often about current events. I am appreciative, and even honored, that so many very smart and good people—though not that many!!—care about what I think. And it is good that at least some people like what I say, because I am constitutionally unable to not say what I think.
And yet I have been hesitant to say much of anything about what happened last Wednesday—an episode whose ramifications will unfold for many days and weeks to come–for a number of reasons. And I’ve decided that perhaps the most meaningful thing I can do right now is to explain why.
One reason for my hesitation is that almost everything that can be said has already been said by others (this is of course almost always true, but until recently the costs of ignoring it have approached zero; that is no longer the case, as I will explain below).
Much of what has been said is predictable pundit bullshit of the Ezra Klein variety. Much of it is predictable MAGA demonization of “the left,” combined with predictably dangerous accusations, threats, and calls for vengeance. There have also been some very sharp commentaries with which I agree—a little more on this below, but only a little.
But it has honestly not been clear to me what I have to say that meaningfully adds to the cacophony or brings us one millimeter closer to a better politics. What, then, is the point?
A second, reason, related, is that I am tired, deeply tired.
I have been writing about these things, doggedly, for almost a decade. A fucking decade. In 2016 this shit took over my first sabbatical in over twenty years, after twelve years of working on Perspectives on Politics. And it has held me captive ever since. It has sometimes been observed that I look like Al Pacino (yes, yes, DeNiro too). I have often felt like Michael Corleone in Godfather III (if this eludes you, just read on).
None of the very bad things that are happening now surprise me at all. None. At all.
I more or less predicted all of them a very long time ago. Not the details of course, but the general descent into authoritarianism. I was one of many—most more famous than I am, though none more prescient, if truth be told– who were disparaged from the right as sufferers of “Trump derangement syndrome” and disparaged from the left as sufferers of “liberal tyrannophobia.” There has been no shortage of warnings, and critiques, and predictions of doom and more sober reflections on how to defend our pathetic and precarious democracy. And yet the tyrant has been returned to power, and it is hard to avoid feeling like all of that serious and sincere writing was like whistling in the wind.
I am tired. I am also bored of having to keep saying more or less the same things, over and over again, and to no discernible avail. Those things might be very important and deadly serious. But is anyone listening who has not heard these things already? Again, what is the point?
And then there is a third reason: I am afraid.
Afraid.
Not in the sense of the commonplace and easily stated observation that “I’m afraid for the future of our country”—though I am very afraid for the future of our country.
I am afraid for my colleagues and my friends and my fellow citizens, whatever their legal status, who write and teach and speak publicly, and I am afraid for my students who are finding their voices amidst this disaster, and I am afraid for myself, as someone who writes and teaches and speaks in especially direct ways. (Who else do you know who back in 2019 gave a featured talk at the American Political Science Association on “Is Motherfucker the Concept Political Science Now Needs” and then published it online?) I am afraid for my sanity. I am afraid for my job. I am afraid for my physical well-being. And most of all I am afraid for my civil liberty.
I repeat. I am afraid for my civil liberty.
Or if you like, my “bourgeois freedom.”
Call it what you like. It’s a thing most of us have long enjoyed and exercised even as we criticized the political system that codified it. And it is a thing we are on the verge of losing. Period.
To be clear, I am not one of those who literally puts his body on the line by practicing civil disobedience, nor am I vulnerable in the ways that people of color, or trans people, or people suspected of being “illegal aliens”—have you noticed how demeaning MAGA terminology is again in fashion?– are vulnerable. But I do speak out, often, and I have harshly criticized by name pretty much everyone in a position of power in the state of Indiana and on the Indiana University, Bloomington campus. (Did you know that Indiana is a deeply “red” state?) I published a book only a few years ago, for God’s sake, entitled #Against Trump. I rarely leave much to the imagination.
How much longer will I enjoy academic freedom or civil liberty?
I do not know. And anyone who says they know is either a fool or someone who harbors me, and others like me, ill will.
I am increasingly mindful of my own vulnerability, as well as that of others, and this awareness fosters what can only be called fear.
I am not a fearful person by nature. And I have not (yet?) literally been put in a situation that would call forth the true existential fear that many others in the world, including many of my historical and personal heroes, have experienced and do experience, at the point of a gun or behind prison bars or in concentration camps. Yet.
But I am no fool, and I can take the measure of the situation as well as anyone. I am afraid the way any athlete is afraid before confronting an opponent who is strong and tough and who has a good chance of overpowering them in a one-on-one matchup. Not afraid in a way that is disabling. I’m still in the game, aren’t I? But afraid in a way that is mindful of the situation, and of the ability of a stronger opponent to do real harm, a fear that inspires real care about how and when to make a move, and an awareness of the fact that any superfluous move might produce little that is good but more than a little that is very bad.
In this sense I am now afraid.
I am not afraid to stand up for a friend or colleague. I’ve done it more than once, and I will do it again if the situation arises, as it most certainly will. Out of principle and out of friendship.
But I am now afraid to publish things, especially online, that have little chance of making much impact, but a perhaps significant chance of getting me into hot water with people who have real power and who are cruel and vindictive and motivated by values that are anathema to freedom.
This is a new thing for me. Truly. Ever since grade school, I have been the guy who has challenged the authority of teachers, rabbis, “superiors” of one sort or another. I am that guy, though to be perfectly clear, I have always done it in my own way, and not to claim any special badge of honor.
But I am also a guy who is now looking around, and seeing freedoms–and the people who bear and exercise these freedoms–being eviscerated with increasing rapidity and with no accountability. Academic freedom. Freedom of movement. Freedom to inhabit and control one’s own body in one’s own way. Freedom of expression. Freedom of association. Freedom to vote in free and fair elections.
It is not only that these freedoms, however imperfect they always have been, can no longer be taken for granted.
It is that these freedoms are being relentlessly attacked. Attacked.
What happened this past Wednesday was terrible both morally and politically.
Political assassination is a terrible thing, an immoral thing, and a violation of both the law and the legal principles that any decent society must respect. (To be clear, I well understand that what I have just said applies not only to what took place in Utah this past week, but to what takes place, with some regularity, in the Middle East and elsewhere, often with the support of our own government. The levels of hypocrisy with which this issue is currently being discussed would beggar credulity in any normal political situation; we long ago left normality very far behind).
Political assassination is bad.
Ergo the political assassination of Charlie Kirk is bad.
I know not a single serious liberal or progressive or leftist who thinks otherwise or who has ever done anything that might lead any reasonable person to imagine they think otherwise.
But we are now in a situation—a perilous situation—where it may be dangerous to say anything but that.
Let me take that back. It is dangerous to say anything but that.
And at this moment, for the reasons already stated, I feel disinclined to say much more than that.
I agree with what Jay Kuo has written on his Substack about “Politicizing Charlie.” Indeed, events of the past 24 hours have furnished further evidence of his argument about how the MAGA right, from top to bottom, is weaponizing the terrible assassination of Charlie Kirk to further the politics of “retribution” and vengeance that was at the heart of Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency and is at the heart of his presidency now. But honestly, there is nothing in this terrific piece that surprises any of us—the people who write and read things like you are now reading. The details are worth noting. But we knew it would happen. It is happening.
I agree with what my friend and colleague Joe Lowndes has written, in New Lines Magazine, about how “Trump’s ‘Chipocalypse Now’ Meme Sends a Message With Deep Historical Roots.” But here again, while this piece is beautifully crafted and makes excellent use of history, there is little here that “we” haven’t already known about MAGA’s attraction to the darkest forces in U.S. history.
I am not saying these things in criticism!
The same things can be said about pretty much everything I have been writing for years.
And, painfully aware of the logic of performative contradiction, I concede that it might be said of this piece you are now reading, assuming you are reading still.
I am not saying that these commentaries ought to stop. They ought not to stop.
I am not saying that I have decided to stop. I will not stop.
But I am explaining why I have little more to say right now about the Kirk assassination, for those who have wondered.
And I am also trying to draw out a more consequential political point: because we truly are now in an exceptionally dangerous situation, we all ought to consider thinking very hard about what we are doing, really doing, when we say the things we are saying on social media. We probably are not doing much to change many minds or to promote any real political empowerment. But we certainly are creating a digital record that can be used to demonize us, to monitor us, and perhaps eventually to punish us. Indeed, many of us are already being punished. And we have only just entered what is sure to be a very long and dark night filled with terrors. (If you haven’t seen “Game of Thrones,” then just read on.)
Obviously, I am not recommending silence!
But I am recommending a new mindfulness about the danger.
I am not making an “argument,” and of course others are free, and ought to be free, to say and do whatever they want to say and do, when and wherever they choose. (I do honestly fear that this freedom is being extinguished, but I am certainly all about defending it. That will not stop.)
Perhaps I am doing nothing more than explaining my own new mindfulness.
Those who know me know this is not cowardice. And I could care less what anyone else thinks.
I intend to keep writing, and acting, in my own way.
But I am determined to choose my “battles” with much greater care.
Because I care about myself, and think it is a good thing for individuals to do likewise.
But also because I truly do care about the political world that we share. And I honestly believe that those of us who are serious about freedom and democracy must understand that we are in it for the long haul, and really need to marshal our efforts, and resources, mindful of the risks involved, where they really might make a discernable difference.
For reasons of sanity and prudence and whatever hopefulness about the future might be summoned—and there are reasons for hopefulness—I think it is very important, now, for us to hold close those to whom we are close, those family and partners and friends and colleagues and real political allies with whom we can draw some strength and also perhaps do some bit of good in the places where we are.
Of course we need to speak out broadly, and act politically at every level.
But I think that we in the U.S. have now entered a situation unlike any we have experienced, at least in my lifetime. We cannot simply continue to act the way we’ve been acting for years.
There is a reason why, a few months ago, I chose to write about Benjamin Nathans’s prize-winning To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, and why I closed my review by quoting these famous words of Vaclav Havel: “even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”
Even before last Wednesday, I had started re-reading Havel’s prison-composed Letters to Olga, along with the Letters from Prison of my friend Adam Michnik. There is much to be learned from these brave citizens of the world, and many others too, who figured out ways of acting with integrity, and keeping alive spaces of freedom, in the face of authoritarian repression and mass indifference.
What happened last Wednesday was very, very bad.
It is likely to get much worse, politically, in the weeks and months and probably years ahead.
At the same time, the future always presents possibilities. As Hannah Arendt famously observed: “The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability…. The new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.”
We can sure use a miracle right now.
—Jeffrey C. Isaac, September 14, 2025
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I will continue to pray for a deus ex machina. I will continue to speak truth to power and investigate and publish. I will also be choosing my battles. Thank you, Jeffrey.—hsc
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More about the author:
Jeffrey C. Isaac is a political scientist who moonlights as a jazz pianist. He is the James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he has taught since 1987. He served as Editor in Chief of Perspectives on Politics, a flagship journal of the American Political Science Association, from 2009-2017, and in 2017 was awarded APSA’s Frank J. Goodnow Award for Distinguished Public Service to the profession. He has published five books, edited two anthologies, and published over 75 articles and essays. He writes regularly for a range of public intellectual venues, including Public Seminar, Common Dreams, Dissent, the Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Guardian.
His career as a blogger was prompted by the political rise of Donald Trump, and his book #AgainstTrump: Notes from Year One, was published in late 2018 by Public Seminar Books/OR Books. In addition, he participated in Democracy Seminar, which resulted in the creation of the Small Acts of Resistance website.
He plays jazz regularly in Bloomington with his band, the Postmodern Jazz Quartet, and has a Great Pyrenees-Golden Retriever mix named Jessie.
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