July 4/5, 1977, I was in, of all places, Lahore Pakistan, literally down the street from where this took place. We had travelled to the city of Islamabad to the American embassy’s Independence Day party (yes, ironic as can be).

I was young, idealistic, fairly political for someone of that age, but had experienced few opportunities to fully get the world stage until that summer. We thought we were there to help people but our host had other ideas. He wished for us to experience and listen to the stories of people, to be safe but also to understand, but I doubt he knew a military coup d’etat was going to happen while he had charge of a bunch of college kids.

I write a lot about learning from history but we in our country tend to bring up Nazi Germany, The Civil War, Viet Nam, Native and tribal wars, and how the west was won as our basics, and The Middle East is often lumped into a grouping of places with biblical names we don’t always know where they actually are. (I actually failed the class on India/Pakistan the spring before I left and found out while I was there. Irony, again)

I have written this before, but our lives there did not change a bit. Military presence was the same, we girls still couldn’t travel alone while the guys in our group could go anywhere they damn well pleased and did, we had to wear the clothing of the country and keep our heads covered, and I can’t recall any other stoppages or restrictions. Yet in the United States, the headlines screamed “MILITARY COUP”, and I think it took our parents a day or two to learn we were all fine and clueless.

So now we have, right here and not in a country far away, with a “stan” in it, a new century coup d’etat. No headlines calling it that, this time though. No one seems to be saying “regime change”, even though what is taking place in Washington is exactly that. Not being dramatic, remember I’ve lived through one of these, right?

The very basics of what was happening in Pakistan before 1977- they split from India to be an Islamic nation. Women wore western dress and ran companies and were educated. Churches, yes Christian

Churches were thriving and had healthy congregations who served others and loved God, meeting freely. But not long before we arrived the sabbath was changed to Friday. Women’s clothing changed and many wore full black covering faces. Little things, you know, that as we’ve learned became really big things over time. You can read on your own everything that has happened in Pakistan’s short history.

So if we believe such change can never, ever happen here because all our lives we’ve been taught we are a nation of laws, of checks and balances all throughout the branches of government, we are being proven wrong as what has taken place, with no military this time, simply the cutesy name “tech bros” and an odd mix of super conservative religiosity and dystopian visions of a technological society that is self governed, using people who have envisioned and studied this for years, and using a president who in all likelihood seems to enjoy the name recognition over the deets, it’s what’s happening.

So ask yourself, what is my role in this? I recently said to my friends, “I am not June from Handmaid’s Tale”. I’m not brave or strong or even a fighter. I’m not even competitive. I like to write, I like art, I like quiet spaces.

So what do each of us do or say in response? Do we wait it out still believing the Avengers will arrive soon? Do we believe our checks and balances are still intact? Do we believe those chosen to lead are, um, LEADING? Are we complicit, ignorant, hopeless, tired, frightened, uncertain, limited, worried? Are we blissfully unaware of how history repeats itself? Do we even have the tools necessary to self examine those inner thoughts about what is going on because the shock is so much?

What is our collective role? What is our place in this as individuals? What do we think is going to happen?