Excellent piece Caitlin -- as usual! I really love your perspective.

On this one I'm more optimistic than you seem to be. I'm seeing how the core of all power -- I don't care what kind it is -- is credibility. No credibility? No one will pull the trigger, shoot the cannon, or drop the bomb.

So the antidote to abuses of power is, simply, honesty. Not just any honesty, but precisely that honesty which the abuser works hard to intimidate into silence. That honesty.

It's contagious, eventually goes viral, and once it does it literally suffocates the bullshit that enabled the abuses to continue. Maybe smother isn't the right metaphor. It's more like sunlight frying a vampire to ash, or acid turning a zombie into a sticky ooze. Fun to watch, actually.