Timothy Snyder's on How to Avoid or Resist Tyranny: His quotes with my thoughts-6

Uniforms are interesting signs of authority, peacefulness, goodwill and bravery, but also evil. When I think of uniforms outside the police or the armed forces, I think of those who call themselves Christians and wear uniforms. And I think of good and evil. 

 The good I think of is the Salvation Army--giving food, clothing, comfort and the Gospel. The evil I think of is Sacramento's onetime cult. They no longer exist in Sacramento but at one time they had a commune on X street. After changing their name from Free Love Ministries to Aggressive Christianity they decided to get uniforms. 

A young woman, a member of the cult, was brought to my office to talk with me because she wanted to leave the group. She had committed some sin, not making it to their prayer meeting I believe, and they wouldn't let her have a uniform. She did, thankfully, leave as did a woman who was pushed out of her marriage, declared spiritually dead by them. and used as a slave. 

 The cult eventually left Sacramento and ended up, I think, in New Mexico. Just a few years ago I heard on the news that the leaders, Jim and Lilla Green had been arrested for allowing sexual abuse in their commune. And this brings me to Timothy Snyder's 6th way to avoid or resist tyranny. 

"When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come." This of course is not something that one can do, but what one must know.

 I could not believe what I was seeing on TV when the many men, in Charlotteville, marched with torches shouting racists slogans, nor the many who attacked the United States Capital beating the policemen and degrading its many offices. 

 Among those who participated at the Capital were uniformed paramilitary groups. The end was nigh. But the day is still free. They have been pardoned by the President but the day is still free. Speaking secularly, we are free. Free to vote, free to write, free to complain or not. But, there are still unknowns, I will not enumerate, except can we write tomorrow? Can we complain? 

I think some of the later chapters have better answers, Stand Out, Be Kind to Our Language, Believe in Truth. Thats coming. But finally, tomorrow is unknown except- as Charles Williams kept writing in his book, The Place of the Lion, after all was disappearing still there was the sheep: 

 .. but the Virtue understood, in its soaring comprehension, the safety in which the sheep still lived, or from what yet deeper distance of spirit was to arise the Innocence which everlastingly formed and maintained them."