What you will witness is not a riot.
It will not look like a revolution.
There will be no single day you can circle on a calendar and say, “That’s when it happened.”
It will look quieter than that.
Older than that.
More final.
A people does not correct itself first through force.
It corrects itself through withdrawal of consent.
Disgust is not outrage.
Outrage is loud and burns out.
Disgust is calm. Disgust is permanent.
When disgust sets in, people stop arguing.
They stop pleading.
They stop explaining.
They turn their backs.
Not in dismissal.
In recognition.
This is what happens when ugliness becomes normalized.
When corruption stops pretending.
When power forgets it is meant to serve something beyond itself.
The public doesn’t rush forward to tear it down.
They simply stop feeding it.
Legitimacy dies long before institutions fall.
What follows is not chaos.
It is sorting.
Guilt is named plainly.
Not screamed.
Not weaponized.
Named.
Shame returns — not as cruelty, but as boundary.
A signal that says: this does not belong among us anymore.
Correction always begins here.
Not with laws.
Not with courts.
Not with punishment.
Those come later.
First comes standards.
Standards are older than systems.
Older than governments.
Older than ideologies.
They are the quiet agreements a people holds about:
what is tolerable
what is excusable
what is unforgivable
When standards erode, corruption thrives.
When standards return, corruption starves.
This is not new.
This is not radical.
This is not theoretical.
It is how civilizations survive.
Generations that refuse to abide by shared standards are not conquered.
They are not hunted.
They are not erased.
They are discarded by necessity.
Not out of hatred.
Out of survival.
Every enduring culture does this.
Every one.
The excess is cut away.
The noise fades.
The useful remains.
Those who cannot live within boundaries are left to live without them — on their own terms, with their own consequences.
That is not cruelty.
That is gravity.
And in times like this, roles emerge naturally.
Some fight to slow the damage.
Some build quietly underneath the wreckage.
Some hold memory.
Some teach.
Those who know the path do not rule forever.
They do not need to.
They guide long enough for others to find their footing.
Then they step aside.
What they leave behind is not power.
It is example.
That example becomes embedded — not in slogans, not in platforms — but in habit, in language, in expectation.
History does not remember noise.
It remembers standards restored.
This is not optimism.
It is pattern recognition.
The human race does not survive because it is gentle.
It survives because it can still:
recognize wrong
correct course
pass on wisdom
and accept loss without surrender
Those who expect reward for doing what is right misunderstand the work.
The work is done because it must be done.
Because not doing it would violate who we are.
That is resolve.
That is what marks the trail.
We do not need to convince everyone.
We do not need to carry everyone.
We do not need permission.
Our flag is not a banner for marching.
It is a marker so others know where solid ground still exists.
Drive the herd when necessary.
Batten down the hatches when required.
Hold the line quietly and without apology.
Nothing less.
Nothing more.
How well this is done depends on resolve and ability.
Mine is the Baseline.
And these posts.
That’s it.
micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org
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