Dystopian Boots

The boots you lick will stomp you too…

I can’t give credit for the quote because it has been around for a while, and it is used on everything from t-shirts to mugs to signs to billboards. I’ve seen it at protests and rallies. I’ve heard it from both folks on the Left and the Right.

I think about the quote a few times a week these days…

I was a Literature teacher for years and basically a professional reader my entire life. I have read several pieces of fiction that prepared me for what I see around me daily…

The Parable of the Sower. Animal Farm. The Handmaid’s Tale. 1984. The Giver. The Road. The Hunger Games. Fahrenheit 451. A Brave New World. The Lottery. The Stand. It Can’t Happen Here.

That last novel was the hardest for me, and it is because I didn’t pick it up until a few years ago. I found it almost unbearable because of the prescience of the author. Sinclair Lewis was able to envision the backsliding of our democracy with clarity, and it scared me. I listened to it on audio, and I should tell you that it took me months to get through it.

You know the feeling of reading something that is too much on the nose. Too true. Too frightening in an already scary situation.

I found out that it could indeed happen here.

But some of the novels were difficult reads because of the way society changes when authoritarianism enters the frame. Some of the people in dystopian societies written into the novels become as bad or even worse than the people in power. The societies become more hateful as hateful rhetoric is used and encouraged by those in power. The societies become more violent. The societies start to crave brutality. Even bloodshed.

The book that has haunted me for 15 years now is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read it while pregnant with my daughter, which made it all that much worse.

I won’t spoil the book for you if you’ve not read it, and please go and read it if not, but the scene in the cellar with the people trapped awaiting their fate and the scene with the pregnant woman in the woods will never leave me.

When I read what was on the spit over the fire in the woods, I screamed out and woke my husband. I am not an especially emotional person, but I sobbed into my pillow, while my husband asked in earnest why I would ever read something so horrible.

Because I am a reader, and in my defense, I didn’t have any inclination that either scene would be written, and it didn’t matter anyway because I had to finish the novel to find closure for the main characters.

After I finished The Road, I reflected on the books that felt similar in their cruel, apocalyptic settings. I immediately thought of The Stand by Stephen King. And then the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson which led me to think about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and back to one of my favorite novels, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

Similar themes: Societal collapse due to disease or war or an election. Chaos. Conformity. Blind obedience. Mob mentality. Violence that begets violence. Widespread brutality and cruelty.

Yesterday, a few of those themes came to mind when I read an AP article on ICE.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to give its officers high-tech gloves that deliver electric shocks to people they're trying to detain, according to plans posted by the Department of Homeland Security this week. The agency could spend as much as $20 million on the gloves.”

I found it interesting that the same agency that claimed to not have enough funds to purchase body cameras for ICE agents now has $20 million to spend on gloves that can essentially act as tasers during traffic stops and raids. I guess it all depends on where the Trump regime and Border Czar Tom Homan actually want to spend taxpayer dollars, and it seems they’d like to spend money on brutality rather than accountability.

Things got much worse when I opened the comment section of the AP article that was linked on Facebook. Much worse.

Some of the comments included, “ICE, ICE baby” and “They could just comply” and “I hope local LEOs can get in on this” and “Good!”

I recognized what I was reading. Apocalyptic dialogue. Dystopian discourse.

Chaos. Conformity. Blind obedience. Mob mentality. Violence that begets violence. Brutality and cruelty.

I was speechless, but if I could have spoken, I would quote the line I wrote at the beginning of this essay: The boots you lick will stomp you too. The regime is just breaking in the boots they will place on your neck. This doesn’t stop with immigrants or with ICE.

It stops when there is no one left to resist.

Conformity and blind obedience do not give you a pass. They just give you a little more time. Mob mentality will rob you of your decency and morality. The violence you cheer will beget the violence they use on you. The brutality and cruelty you praise will be aimed in your direction.

The boots will stomp you too. Maybe not today. Maybe you are still useful to the regime, but eventually, they will come for you too.

The story details change. Different oppressors. Different uniforms. Different slogans. Different targets for abuse. But the themes remain the same. The power identifies someone as less than human and promises safety to everyone else and then waits for the crowd to applaud.

But no one who applauds the regime gets to decide where it stops. In every version of the story, those who applaud become the next chapter.

If I have learned anything from the literature I mentioned, it’s that we have two choices: resistance or compliance. I want to resist, and I want others to resist. I want them to read and understand our stories and react when they recognize the boots.

We aren’t just reading these stories anymore.

We are watching them in real time.

We are living them.

~Jess