There has been a constant onslaught of terror from our new autocratic administration, which can make us feel powerless. But there is nothing futile about resistance. Here’s why.

For many of us, the idea of life under dictatorship tends to conjure images from George Orwell’s 1984, where we imagine the government is all-powerful, and resistance is futile. Perhaps that’s where things are headed, but we’re not yet there—and an omnipotent autocracy is not the only possibility. There’s a whole framework of government, “competitive autocracy,” with which Americans need to become familiar, because that’s where things are rapidly headed, and history can be instructive here.

The histories of anti-authoritarian or anti-fascist resistance are not usually happy ones. Not because they all end in tragedy—though many do—but because it is a slow, dogged, painful struggle, and one that is often quite boring because there are long periods of forced inactivity. Americans usually consume stories such as these through TV shows and action movies, and this has warped our sense of what “resistance” really looks like. It’s not blowing up rail lines or narrowly escaping capture or daring gun battles. Nor is it impassioned speeches about freedom to convince the other side how wrong they are. It can be boring; it also tends to be a game of relationship-building.