Rachel Maddow gave an impassioned speech after the election last week. This is what I needed to hear and what many of use need to hear, internalize and act on. Let's go, pirate energy!"If you are an American citizen who does not want to ash can the American system of government, who doesn't want astrongman, authoritarian system where the whole government is one guy andeverything else just exists to serve him—if that is not the kind of countrythat you want—then yesterday's election means you have more to do for yourcountry than you have ever done before.

Because now is when the rubber reallyhits the road, right? We don’t just flip a switch, and the American system of governmentis gone. Democracy is gone. It doesn’t work like that. I mean, not to be boringhere for a second, but just getting very real.

We are now just another one in the list of countries thathas decided to, you know, hey, what the heck, let’s try the strongman thing.Let’s let democracy go. Let’s put in an all-powerful guy instead and see how itgoes. There are many more countries in the world governed by that kind of asystem than there are governed by ours.

We are the only 248-year-old,multiracial, pluralistic democracy in the world. And shall we keep it? A lot ofour fellow Americans say we shouldn’t. Now we know. Now we know for sure. But alot of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, say we should keep thatsystem—which means it’s time to fight for it.

And yes, Americans did fight for it by working on thiselection, by trying to get the candidate elected who was both the Democrat andthe small-d democrat. She didn’t win. The strongman candidate won instead. Butnow history doesn’t end. Time doesn’t stop. Now, we have the benefit ofknowing, you know, how this has gone in every other country that has beenthrough a democracy-to-authoritarian transition. And sadly, there are a lot ofthem. We have the benefit of seeing what’s happened in those other countriesthough. And what we know is that the more ground the authoritarian takes, theharder it is to ever get that ground back.

And so the first order of business is to stop them fromtaking any uncontested ground, right from the outset when it comes to what oursystem of government is and what our democracy is, right? We know from othercountries' experiences that, quickly—I mean, now, in the next few weeks, if notthe next few days—they are going to start pushing to see how far the country isgoing to let them go without pushback, without protest. And part of this isbecause it’s just psychologically advantageous for them to do this now, right?

They’re counting on the half of the country that votedagainst them, the half of the country that doesn’t want to give up our systemof government. They’re counting on all those tens of millions of Americans tobe despondent, to feel powerless, to check out—which, of course, would meanletting them do what they want, letting them run the table.

What they reallydon’t want is for the half of the country that voted against them, the half ofthe country that wants to keep our democracy. What they really don’t want isfor those tens of millions of Americans to wake up tomorrow feeling scrappy ashell.

Feeling sure, regretful about the election outcome, butalso, frankly, freed up from having to spend all of our time working on theelection. So now we can work full time on being frickin’ pirates, on being athorn in the side of anyone who now intends to try to turn this country intosome tin-pot tyranny. What they want least of all is to realize that half thecountry went to bed sad tonight but then woke up tomorrow fired up with a newsense of purpose, knowing that apparently this is what we’re on this earth todo as American citizens in this generation.

Because history did not just end.Time did not just stop. We just got marching orders from the universe and theElectoral College that, as of today, American citizens who do want to hold onto democracy, we know exactly what we’re going to be spending the next days andweeks, and likely years, of our lives working on.

And the strategic first moves come into focus quickly whenyou think about what other countries have shown us about how hard it is toregain democratic ground once an authoritarian leader has taken that ground.And the work has to be done now. The work that has to be done now—it has tohappen in sort of every aspect, every corner of our society.

The U.S. militaryneeds to give the American people binding assurances that they will not deployU.S. military force against the civilian population in this country. They cangive those assurances, and now they should.

The free press needs to give thepeople of this country assurances that they will not become state TV, that theywill stand and fight together. They will put aside rivalries and petty professionaldifferences. They will stand and fight together as the free press, as thefourth estate, as an institution that is a pillar of our democracy as theseguys on the other side inevitably start picking off individual journalists,individual publishers, individual news organizations to try ultimately to turnus all into some American-accented version of RT.

If the Democratic Party takesthe House, expect Article I of the Constitution to come under attack—by which Imean, expect efforts to hollow out the power of Congress, to make Congress ajust-for-show institution, right? There’s a reason actions of the Russian Dumanever make news, right?

Expect efforts to attack Article I, to make it ajust-for-show institution that has had its real powers taken over by theexecutive, by the dear leader. We are going to need a plan and some steel spineinserts among elected officials in Washington to head that off. We’re going toneed the whole country to recognize that risk in advance, to call it what it iswhen they try it, and to actively resist it.

Depending on whether the courts can provide a check on thisadministration, expect Article III of the Constitution to come under attack aswell. It is already a fetish and a laugh line on the right to brag about howcourt orders really mean nothing and physical force and violence is whatultimately really decides what’s allowed. Well, we have to decide if that laughline from them is going to become our reality or whether we’re going to resistthat.

We need a plan and some steel spine inserts among members ofthe judiciary to head that off. We’re going to need the whole country torecognize that risk in advance. We’re going to need every lawyer in the countryto recognize it as their calling to fight it. We’re going to need to call itwhat it is when it inevitably happens. And we’re going to have to activelyresist it.

And then there’s civil society. Is there a more boring termin the world that doesn’t include the word "committee" or"budget"? No, there isn’t. Civil society, though, is kind of wherethe rest of us are at, right? Civil society is one of the things that I thinkof as soft food for authoritarians. They often don’t even have to bite thathard to crush it. All the organizations, membership groups, advocacy groups,professional associations, every voluntary group of every kind in the country,everything in organized American life and culture that is not business and notthe government either—that is civil society.

And authoritarians need to crush that because it’s not aboutthem. Strongman leaders have a tendency to become not just leaders of thegovernment, not just dictators, but totalitarians because they can’t haveanything going on in the country that isn’t about them or for them. And astrong civil society, therefore, must be crushed, right? If you have a strongcivil society, that gives people breathing room to think for themselves, toorganize in their own interest, to speak with the power of more than just oneperson.

We need assurances from civil society leaders today that they’re notgoing anywhere and that they will fight for our democracy too.

And frankly, it’s not just the leaders. We all need toparticipate in more civil society things than we have before to make sure thatwe are taking up space that otherwise they’re going to try to take for thegovernment and the dear leader. And what I mean by this in short is: joinsomething. It doesn’t really matter what it is. But you want right now to beconnected to other Americans and not isolated on your own.

So, deep breaths, hydrate, maybe time to get back in shape.Do you have any burned bridges in your past? Un-burn them. Reconnect withpeople, whether it’s your family or the people on your block or in your town,your old friends from school, that book club, that Indivisible group maybe.Reconnect or connect for the first time.

Join something, join something.

Ifthis election was about one candidate who stood for the American form ofgovernment and another who stood for getting rid of that because America is agarbage can and "I alone can fix it, just give me all the power, and I’lldo it all." If that was the choice in this election, then the aftermath ofthe American people making the choice they did in this election is not just theend, right? It’s not just, oh, it’s over. It means we’re now entering into acontest.

It will now be an effort on his side to put that intopractice, right? To put strongman, authoritarian government into practice. Andit will be an effort on the other side, an ongoing, continuing, and now newlyurgent effort on the other side to let him know that it’s not going to be easy.

These next few days and weeks, if they really are going to try to dismantle theAmerican form of government, including firing all federal employees, right,including rounding up their enemies, including opening internment camps to holdmillions of people, threatening military force against their perceived enemies—if they really are going to try to undermine the Americansystem of government, which is what they’ve made this campaign about, then inthe next days and weeks, they are going to be testing to see what they can getaway with without pushback.

They are going to do the things they can do easily, and theywill have to put off the things that turn out to be hard. So, what’s going tobe hard for them? That’s where the American people come in. We do not only workfor our country and for our democracy in elections; we work for our country andfor our democracy against anyone, anywhere, anytime who seeks to do it harm.And so there’s, there’s a lot to do.

Time doesn’t stop. History doesn’t stop. We have stuff todo. Millions of Americans woke up today to the realization that, although youworked as hard as you could to try to bring about the election outcome youwanted, you did not get the election outcome you wanted. And so now what thatmeans is that there is a whole new raft of stuff to do.

Hope you are feeling scrappy. Hope you are tapping into yourinner pirate energy because it is one thing to be a defender of the realm. Itis another thing to be in opposition. And opposition can be a lot of things. Itcan be dangerous. It can also be fun. It would have been nice to win theelection. Didn’t. OK. Time to save the country."

Watch the video here: