Friends. Americans. Countrymen: We were asked to stand. Stand, if we believe the first duty of government is to protect citizens before “illegals.” And many did stand. For who would not stand for safety?Who would not defend his child, his street, his own door? I am a citizen.I claim the protection of this nation gladly. […]
Category: Patriotism (Page 1 of 2)
Last night, people gathered in Brockport, New York. A small college town. Hundreds of miles from Minnesota. Candles in gloved hands. Silence broken only by breath and resolve. That distance is important. It’s the detail the mockers trip over. “What does Brockport have to do with Minnesota?” “What a waste of time.” “Do you really […]
The government is gaslighting us. Not metaphorically. Not rhetorically. Literally. We are being told not to believe what we saw, not to trust witnesses, not to trust video, not to trust journalists who were assaulted for doing their jobs. We are told the problem is our perception, our tone, our lack of patience. Fine. If […]
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 […]
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.
Every anniversary of January 6 arrives with the same demand: forget what you saw. Forget the broken windows of the United States Capitol.Forget the chants that rose like smoke inside the halls of power.Forget the officers crushed against doors, beaten with poles, sprayed, stomped, hunted.Forget the dead. Instead, we are offered a bedtime story. It […]
Before Rob Reiner became a director whose films taught us how to fall in love, how to remember childhood, how to stand by one another when the world turns cruel, he was something else entirely. He was Meathead. On All in the Family, Michael Stivic wasn’t a hero in the classical sense. He wasn’t a […]
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 […]