By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, October 27, 2026

When the South Korean President declared martial law in December 2024, protesters immediately assembled, the National Assembly voted down the decree, and the protests grew to include a million people following through until impeachment, arrest, and a change of power were achieved. The Nation had an article last week called How to Stop Trump’s Coup. It brought lessons to the United States from South Korea and was written by Jungmin Choi and by Paul Loeb who had made Choi’s earlier article into the first chapter of his book.

The lessons are key, but I think we should be careful to apply them fully. The version in The Nation has been made timely by claiming to offer “lessons for how Americans can counter Donald Trump and his allies if they disrupt or defy the results of November’s midterms,” while the version in the book has been made timeless by being stripped of explicit reference to any application. But the original article in Waging Nonviolence got it right, I think, in suggesting that the emergency was already upon us, that in fact there was no need to wait for a moment of even worse government malfeasance.

A man who campaigned for the presidency the first time instigating violence at his rallies and promising to strip the public treasury for his personal profit while disregarding laws as he saw fit has been put into office twice, has scorned the rule of law, has used wars and all variety of lesser crimes to fill his own bank account, and has intentionally damaged our health and environment, all while promoting fascistic hatred. Every day has been an appropriate moment for an impeachment, a prosecution, and a nonviolent public uprising — but the U.S. Congress and public have mostly been otherwise occupied. And the attempted coup of January 2021 was halted by the Capitol Police of all things without most members of the public needing to trouble themselves to leave their homes. One might draw the lesson that, while the rest of the world needs to rise up against its tyrannical threats, we in the United States are all right sticking with football and shopping. This would be a dangerously erroneous lesson.

A particularly outrageous moment can be used as a catalyst for action, but there is no reason to wait to plan actions until a worse moment than the current one arrives. In recent months, the people of Bolivia have shut down their capital, not because of a military coup but because of an elected government not keeping its promises. I don’t know which is harder to imagine, the people of the United States nonviolently shutting down Washington or a U.S. government keeping its promises. Last year in Peru, protesters forced out a brutal and illegitimate president as part of an ongoing years-long struggle. Two years ago, in Bangladesh, a student-led movement replaced an oppressive government without “resorting to war.” Equally useful, perhaps, for our learning, in recent years in Colombia, a community has claimed its land and largely removed itself from war. (See here, here, and here.) In Mexico, a community has done the same. (See here, here, and here.) In Canada, indigenous people have used nonviolent action to prevent the armed installation of pipelines on their lands. These are nonviolent actions taken against heavily armed powers because the corruption and cruelty have grown too horrible to any longer withstand. Just like real-world frogs, and unlike the libel we tell about them, humans can jump out of a heating pot.

It’s tempting to lament how enormous and spread-out the land of the United States is, as if demographics completely prevent behaving like Koreans or Bolivians (or as if the much larger Russia has never had a revolution). Bolivia has only 12.7 million people, of whom 2 million are in or very near a capital of only 182 square miles, and the rest of whom are within 700 miles of there. South Korea has only 51 million people of whom 26 million are in or very near a capital of only 234 square miles, and the rest of whom, on the mainland, are within 230 miles of there, with lots of trains available. The United States has 342 million people of whom only 5 million are in or very near a capital of 68 square miles, the rest of whom are within 2,400 miles of there, not counting Alaska, Hawaii, or other territories. But look closely. Washington is not too large. Five million people are not disastrously fewer than 2 million. Even the 26 million at and around Seoul are readily available within the train-and-highway corridor from Washington to New York. A democracy should include everyone, but a nonviolent movement of a few million people is as capable of representing 342 million as is a violence-prone, campaign-funded government of 500 Congress Members.

Of course, not all Congress Members are created equal, and the better ones — as well as the Capitol Police — and many other groups are critically needed. This is one of the lessons from South Korea. Here are the lessons in the various versions of the article linked to above:

• Take action commensurate with the threat and move quickly. / Act quickly to confront attempted seizures of power.
• Encourage defections from security forces. / Encourage security forces to stay loyal to the Constitution.
• Beware of the next martial law. / Prevent the coup’s initiators from consolidating power.
• Create festive, diverse forms of resistance.
• Elections matter all the more under a would-be dictator.

If there’s anything we’ve got down it’s how much elections matter. Half the people don’t vote, but that’s due to the absence of inspiring candidates, the gerrymandering of districts, and the second-class status of immigrants, not the failure of millions of people to spend months telling everyone else how dearly elections matter.

We’re also pretty darn good at festive, diverse forms of resistance. We’ve got the props, costumes, music, and rally cries down.

Mainly we need the showing up part, the larger numbers, which depends on the underlying premise: belief that anything can be done. We’ve so excelled at learning helplessness that the main thing we need to learn from the world and the past is that we have the power to change things if we choose to use it.

The midterm elections could nudge things in a better direction. I imagine there will be people who voted for Trump as a supposed “peace candidate” who will now vote against anyone in his party as the “war party” while others will deem the effort useless and stay home. The good news is that openness to a new approach may result in an unprecedented number of much better new representatives and senators being elected, perhaps a dozen or so, and — at least in theory — a block of progressive lawmakers could exercise influence in the new year, or even sooner.

They would be up against the so-called leadership of their own party as well as the party of Trump. Read what happened in Korea and then just try to imagine Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer filling the role of the courageous opposition! Even as Republicans are viewed as the war party and the War on Iran party, many Democrats are misreading the room and aggressively advertising themselves as the party for escalating the war in Ukraine, as though the problem in the public mind is not the wars and other outrages but rather whatever Trump does, whether warlike or peaceful.

A Trumpian refusal to accept election results could nudge things in an even better direction, if we refuse to accept his refusal. We should be looking for such opportunities. Not to have larger weekend marches with cleverer signs, but to combine massive nonviolent action that actually disrupts and prevents government action with public persuasion and legal and legislative efforts to redirect the U.S. government away from the path of disaster and destruction.

A Trumpian acceptance of election results could likewise provide the needed encouragement.

It’s up to us to seize the moment. Fortunately, a nonviolent uprising against warmongering, money-stealing criminality is already being planned for November 10-12 in Washington, D.C. Be there.

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