It is too common a scenario. They come at night, because daylight invites witnesses. The officers move through the neighborhood with practiced ease. Potential areas to investigate have been noted in advance. The orders are clear, the papers are already signed. This is not a search. It is a hunt. The illegal runs when he […]
Category: Defiance (Page 2 of 4)
There is something profoundly unwell about a president who sees rebellion in every raised voice, treason in every crowd, and enemies in the governed themselves. This week, Donald Trump once again demonstrated that his presidency is not merely authoritarian in instinct, but unstable in execution. In response to protests in Minneapolis following an aggressive federal […]
What frightens is not just this single moment of violence, but the machinery that made it foreseeable. Governments do not wake up one morning and discover they have thugs roaming their streets. They manufacture them. They take administrative agencies, arm them, strip away restraint, replace training with ideology, and aim them politically. When that process is complete, brutality is no longer a breakdown of the system. It is the system doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The Tyranny of Efficiency: AI, Art, and the End of Human Risk
Generative AI is not dangerous because it thinks. It is dangerous because it invites us not to. It offers fluency without struggle, synthesis without judgment, creation without risk. Power has always preferred subjects who mistake convenience for freedom and coherence for truth. Art once resisted tyranny by being inefficient, by wasting time, by refusing to scale. When expression becomes instant, smooth, and endlessly repeatable, rebellion is no longer crushed. It is diluted, softened, and made safe.
At a December 2025 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump publicly aligned with Benjamin Netanyahu in endorsing a plan that would uproot the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Reporting on related policy discussions cites proposals for voluntary relocation of Gaza’s population as part of postwar planning. Language matters. When starvation, blockade, and battered shelters leave […]
He calls himself the peace president. It’s a tidy phrase. Polished. Market-tested. A dove yes, but clenched in Trump’s fist. Peace, apparently, now includes airstrikes launched on Christmas Day. Peace includes joking responses when asked what happens if Russia and Ukraine refuse a settlement imposed from above. Peace includes missiles fired at boats too small […]
There are two horrible stories this week. Two stories separated by a thousand miles but driven by the same engine: a government drunk on its own authority and a political movement cheering it on like spectators at a public stoning. The first story comes from Dilley, Texas. Under President Trump, ICE’s family detention regime has […]
The most terrifying authoritarian actions never arrive wearing jackboots and shouting decrees. They arrive in legal briefs, phrased in the language of “security,” “integrity,” and “national interest.” And now Donald Trump is preparing one of the most dangerous authoritarian projects in modern American history: the power to strip millions of naturalized Americans of their citizenship […]
We continue being challenged by Trump’s second administration as he pushes boundaries further and further from tradition. Personally, I am absolutely fine with challenging our traditions, but not when it comes to outright bigotry, xenophobia and pure racism. There have been some controversial statements made about our country, including: “If tyranny and oppression come to […]
Donald Trump has crossed every line a democracy can tolerate. Not bent, not strained. Obliterated. Now he’s again dragging Ilhan Omar through the sewer with the oldest trick in the fascist manual: invent a salacious lie, racialize it, sexualize it, weaponize it, and repeat it until the weakest minds mistake it for truth. Incest, immigration […]