You Can't Flatter Your Way Out Of Fascism:

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s head is all the way in the tiger’s mouth and she’s trying to flatter its jaws open, if only for a moment.

The idea of negotiating with a tiger when it’s eating you alive is from Winston Churchill, who was mostly wretched but had some banger quotes about fighting fascist aggression. I think of that head-in-tiger’s-mouth quote every time an elected Democrat takes the brave and principled stance of trying – and failing, naturally – to flatter their way out of total tyranny, to soothe the tiger’s ego until it relaxes its jaw and allows its prey to slip out of its mouth, smiling and unscathed.

Except that never happens. The tiger bites down and blood goes everywhere and you become lunch.

Bowser is among the many, many Democrats who have shown nothing but weakness and spinelessness in the face of tyranny. Bowser is under the impression that one can flatter oneself out of authoritarian domination. She’s not the first one in history to think enough nice words, enough compliments, enough capitulating, will function as a ticket out of the tiger’s mouth. Probably she won’t be the last. But like every other public figure who has tried to sweet talk their way from between those razor sharp teeth, Bowser will fail. She will eventually be Trump’s lunch.

Contrast the above with JB Pritzker's recent statement:

Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.