I woke up handcuffed to a gurney.
That was the moment my life changed.
I had done everything right.
I enlisted. I deployed. My military career moved fast — promoted to sergeant before I could legally drink. I aced every test that was ever put in front of me. I was recommended for a Bronze Star in Iraq as a PFC — and then again as a specialist. I kept my nose clean, and never got in trouble. I did what was asked of me.
On paper, I was exactly the kind of soldier the institution says it wants.
But my personal life had turned inside out.
What I would later learn was severe post-traumatic stress disorder had been visible to my friends and family long before I recognized I was broken. I was unraveling, and I didn’t understand why. When my symptoms culminated in an attempt on my own life, I wasn’t treated like a patient in need of medical care and compassion.
I was treated like a criminal.
That night was an inflection point.
The institutions I had trusted — the United States Army, the Department of Defense — turned on me. These massive, faceless organizations with billions in budgets and millions of personnel ran me over without even noticing they’d done it.
I was kicked out with a bad paper discharge. I lost my GI Bill — the thing I had planned to use to rebuild my life. I was branded “less than honorable.” I was effectively excised from my own community, no longer welcome in many of the veteran service organizations that exist, at least in theory, to help people like me.
When I appealed to have my discharge upgraded, I believed in justice.
The facts were on my side. Years of documented treatment for PTSD. A record that reflected a good, honorable, above-average soldier. Fellow soldiers — men I had deployed with — traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify that Iraq had changed me. That what happened to me was a wound of war, not a moral failure.
Five army colonels sat on that panel. My friends and I broke down in tears talking about what we endured overseas — and what we endured coming home.
The Army’s medical expert who reviewed my case was a podiatrist.
A foot doctor.
Because the regulation only required “a doctor.” It didn’t say a mental health professional. It didn’t say someone qualified to assess post-traumatic stress disorder.
That’s how indifferent the system was.
When I received the letter denying my discharge upgrade, the Pentagon argued that I couldn’t prove my PTSD was connected to my service in Iraq — despite years of treatment and documentation.
I felt hopeless.
But the emotion that was stronger than hopelessness was rage.
I still believed in justice. I believed that any reasonable person, looking at the evidence, would understand that something had gone wrong. I was told countless times that I would never change the system.
But I decided to try anyway.
In researching my own case, I discovered that what had happened to me had happened to tens of thousands of soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines since Vietnam. Many of them never even got access to VA healthcare — the healthcare that ultimately saved my life.
Honorable women and men, chewed up by war and discarded like trash.
I was eventually able to put my life back together enough to start school at a local college. I found a new community — other combat veterans, other student vets who had seen people they served with destroyed by similar betrayals. And with an education, I began to professionalize my advocacy.
Eventually, I got to Columbia University and studied political science and policymaking. I learned about a concept that could move mountains.
Incrementalism.
How do you eat a whole elephant?
Small bites. One at a time.
The first bill I ever advocated for and saw passed was the Military Mental Health Review Board Improvement Act — a law designed to ensure that never again would a podiatrist be the one deciding whether a soldier’s PTSD was real.
In under a year from my first time setting foot in Washington, D.C. as a professional advocate, that bill was attached to the National Defense Authorization Act. It passed the House. It passed the Senate. It survived conference. President Obama signed it into law.
Then came the Fairness for Veterans Act. The Honor Our Commitment Act. The Forever GI Bill.
Each year, another incremental change. Each year, another bite of the elephant.
Now veterans who face similar troubles on their way out of the military have more rights, more protection, and a stronger safety net. Today, it is much harder for the Department of Defense to take unilateral actions that deny veterans an opportunity to use the benefits designed to put them back together after a life of service.
Nearly ten years later, I finally received the honorable discharge I deserved.
Incrementalism works.
It is slow. It is frustrating. It requires patience.
But over a decade, I helped move mountains.
And here’s what I learned.
Incrementalism works when institutions are intact.
It works when the other side believes in the same system, and they respond in good faith.
It works when the rules still matter.
But critical institutions are no longer intact. The other side does not believe in maintaining our democracy. And they will violate any rule, any law, to gain and keep power. As masked federal agents terrorize American cities and murder people without accountability, the time for us to rely on changing things through incrementalism has ended.
The people working to dismantle democracy didn’t get us here overnight. They built this moment through their own incrementalism — the last ten years of Trump as a political force was just the most visible manifestation of it. What Trump is doing now was made possible by decades of work from the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Koch network, Harlan Crow, Paul Singer and other billionaire-funded entities who understood that that they could rig the game of democracy and make it impossible for people playing by the rules to win.
They were patient.
They were strategic.
And while they were building a leviathan within our own government and society, too many of us clung to rules and norms that are no longer strong enough to withstand fascists who are willing to break the law and rewrite history.
So what now?
If the federal government is wholly under the control of people who hate the very idea of democracy, how can we keep them from killing it completely?
The answer is simple: stop relying on broken federal institutions to protect democracy. We force our opponents to play a new game, one where we write the rules, we go on offense, and we make running from accountability impossible for them.
This episode is about local power.
It’s about your state representative.
Your state attorney general.
Your mayor.
It’s about understanding that engaging them is easier than you think. And with local government, you can move a lot faster, you don’t have to eat a whole elephant, and you can make changes that can rein in the Trump Administration and its most powerful allies.
And this episode is for everyone, no matter where you life.
If you live in a state that still believes in democracy — you’ll take the path of learning how to rally the government that’s closest to you to take meaningful, structural steps to undermine authoritarianism.
If you live in a state run by fascist collaborators — your path is going to be learning how to waste their time, drain their resources, and make governing uncomfortable.
I spent a decade forcing massive institutions to change course — one law at a time.
Now we’re in a moment that demands something faster.
Not chaos.
Not recklessness.
But disciplined, organized pressure at the level where you still have leverage.
And that’s why I reached out to today’s guest, Christopher Armitage, an Air Force veteran, security expert, and policy wonk who creates blueprints for fighting authoritarianism.
He’s an accomplished author, and the writer behind The Existentialist Republic on Substack. You’ll hear ideas you can act on immediately, so you might want to listen more than once to catch it all. All of the tools that you need that will be discussed will be linked in the show notes.
🎧 Listen to the full episode above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Christopher Armitage writes at Existentialist Republic, where he’s developing policy frameworks and model legislation aimed at countering authoritarianism at the state and local level.
📰 Read and subscribe to Existentialist Republic:
☕ Support his work directly: https://buymeacoffee.com/theer
If this episode resonated with you, follow Christopher’s writing. He’s thinking deeply about federalism, state power, and how ordinary citizens can influence institutions closer to home.
And if you’re serious about acting locally:
Start or join an Antifascist Book Club: https://veteransfightingfascism.org
Access antifascist field manuals and organizing tools: https://taskforcebutler.org
This work — this podcast, this newsletter, this organizing — is now my full-time focus. I stepped into an unpaid role as President of VALOR Media Network, and On Offense is my primary source of income.
If you’ve found my writing and podcast to help you in your resistance to authoritarianism, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support sustains this work and helps provide for my family while I build this platform.
No one’s coming to save us.
But we can still save each other.
Let’s go on offense.
