“Submission is the First Step on an Avoidable March” - Madeleine Albright

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“Submission is the First Step on an Avoidable March”  - Madeleine Albright

So this is a quote from an interview given recently by a person I greatly respect who, at age 80, has lessons in life we could all learn from. And a life of experience through refugee to top US diplomat to back it up.

This quote was made in the context of the road of how a democracy crumbles.

But it can be true rue of any setting. Your life, your career, relationships.

Are you an active participant or just following a path someone else has set out for you?

if your just following a road and not asking where it is going you can’t be upset about where you end up.

If you have an assignment in a group project project and let two of the 6 people do all the work because you think they are smart and get a shitty grade you can’t be mad about it because it was your choice not to participate.

Like you may have felt like you participated because you decided with the 6 others who would handle what within the first 30 minutes of the week long assignment but that’s not participating. Even if you divide the job up equally in that 15 minutes, if you aren’t checking in over the week to make sure all the pieces are coming together you can’t be upset when you get a failing grade because the others didn’t do their jobs.

You have to keep checkjng in and makesure the final product is whole before presenting it.

Submission is accepting that your job sucks and your boss is corrupt but what can I do about it?

Submission is accepting that your miserable every day that you wake up at home and don’t want to leave the office to go home to your partner but what can you do? Because you can’t make the mortgage on your own so you guess this is how it is going to be.

Submission is when your partner shoves you and you protest loudly. But then later he slaps you and you protest, but now the shoving doesn’t bother you because at least he didn’t slap you. Then the slap becomes tolerable because it wasn’t a punch. Then punching is normal.

That partner cuts you off from you best friend, your family, your job and at the end of the road your realize you are completely dependent upon him as every other support system you had was taken away.

How did you get here? Why didn’t you question him telling you not to talk to your mother because she was against him? Or work because why?

Holocaust survivor and Professor at Georgetown, Madeleine Albright, lays out how Mussolini began plucking apart the feathers of democracy by first pointing out and calling out journalists. Then by Mussolini’s own words “draining the swamp” of civil servants.

If a democratically elected leader tells that only he can fix it and he alone. That the other branches of government put in place to check his power are invalid and biased. That law inforcement and even the people that were appointed by him and work for him are biased. That only he can be trusted and we accept this. Can we be upset about where we end up and point fingers?

Before one points a finger one should reflect on what you did and could have done on the road to now.

The breaking down of a democracy is like plucking a chicken. If you pluck it one feather at a time no one will notice.

“Submission is the First Step on an Avoidable March” - Madeleine Albright
12 Opinion