My name is Andy, and here I'm (once again) writing under the pen name, Boxer Orwell and naming this blog, "The Chair is Against the Wall." When I returned to Medium in August 2025, I explained that name. I share some of that and add to it, below.

For a while, I was concerned that perhaps I was being too alarmist with my concerns about our current government. But I’m not. We are seeing a deliberate assault against the republican form of government our Founders established and we are flirting with an authoritarianism we may never escape from. And while our President and his MAGA loyalists in Congress and state capitals around the country are mostly to blame, the ineptitude of the Democratic Party isn’t helping anything. The path to how we got to here is one paved by Democrats and Republicans my entire life. It is largely the selfishness, short-sightedness and stupidity of the boomer duopoly parties that set the conditions for the current assault on America.

While it would be easy to despair, we don’t have time for that. America is too important for that. Democracy is too important for that. The future is too important for that. In the face of government violence, WE HAVE TO RESIST and FIGHT BACK for the future of America. And so I drew inspiration for this name from one of my favorite movies, 1984’s Red Dawn. Via IMDb:

It’s 11:59 on Radio Free America; this is Uncle Sam, with music, and the truth until dawn. Right now I’ve got a few words for some of our brothers and sisters in the occupied zone: “the chair is against the wall, the chair is against the wall”, “john has a long mustache, john has a long mustache”. It’s twelve o’clock, American, another day closer to victory. And for all of you out there, on, or behind the line, this is your song.

The phrases were meant as coded messages for those fighting back against the Russian occupation of America. And so I borrow those words now for the name of this blog.