Anger is an easy ocean in which to sink, in which to lose one self completely. It is easy and sometimes joyful to drown in outrage, as I longed to do when I read that our military had bombed a wedding in Iran last night, one more in a long line of war crimes committed with impunity. It is easy to lose one self in outrage and anger, which can easily become apathy or nihilism. To seek love, which is more difficult to cultivate, especially in terribly circumstances, requires so much effort that finding the motivation seems too often too exhausting a prospect to manage, yet it is the antidote to the depressed and depressing power of anger, the numbing effect of prolonged outrage.

I think of the excesses of the 1920’s which gave way to the injustices of the 1930’s—another epoch which left deep and lasting scars across not only our society but across the world. We do not think about efforts like the New Deal as forms of love, but when one looks at the words and actions of its advocates, like Eleanor Roosevelt, it is impossible to separate love from her untiring advocacy during those years.

One can call Eleanor Roosevelt’s commitment to justice and the ideals of democracy and their equal application a commitment to bringing love into the world through her words and deeds. Her unbending opposition to the degradations of Jim Crow and racial segregation was also born out of love. Her earliest work in the slums and tenements and sweat-shops of turn of the century New York, among the disenfranchised and undesirable members of society were born of love, and it was this sense of abiding love—call it justice if you prefer—that would sustain her work, her words, her vision through the rest of her life, a tireless campaigner for a society that lived the ideals of its founding, not one that merely paid them lip-service.

We are exhorted to remember the ideals on which our republic was founded—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness among them—yet seldom do we go much deeper than the rote repetition of those words. Happiness is not, as it was classically understood, and individual’s state of being, rather, it is a state of being born of a common sense of wellbeing, a shared contentment in one’s lack of worry over the basic necessities of life having been met.

As I confront my own outrage day after tired day, I remind myself of this commonly held contract—happiness—and of the reason why Eleanor Roosevelt has been one of my abiding heroes and guides and role-models. Without the seemingly insignificant flame of love the courage to stand against the winds of cruelty, moral corruption and decay and delight in injustice would be hard to sustain. Commitment to justice is love; standing up for and hand in hand with our neighbors is love; acknowledging the humanity of the stranger is love; it is love that is the central tenant and command of all forms of faith, and with that, I leave you with Eleanor Roosevelt’s prayer.

Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far-off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to You for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying: make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new.

The same can be said of the fat and furry bumblebees that spend the sticky afternoons foraging my mother’s flowerbeds: lavender, geranium, wild violet and the squash and tomato and cucumber blossoms that steadily drop their petals and grow their slow fruits in the lush tangles of the vegetable patches. Mystery is simple and ordinary and slow in the making, like the sun as it rose again today after another pre-dawn thunder storm shook the house and woke me from some unnecessary dream. Now the air is filled with insect song and the croak and coo of mourning doves, unseen in the trees of every yard in this quiet, unheeding village.

Perhaps it is just that that draws my attention this morning, as the heat and humidity and human noises wake and rise: what we do not heed. The simple divine that surrounds us every day—unaware of our needs and worries and travails. The bills, the obligations, the tensions we take as givens—the price of life. The cost of living.

I have heard it said—have said it myself—that it takes a certain freedom to contemplate (to commune with) the divine. But, now, today, this August morning (this august morning), I think it isn’t so. The ordinary is divine and if our worries are the price of contemplation then the cost is well and happily paid.

Today will be full, as every day is, with the many tasks awaiting attendance, and I hope—I pray—I will bring gentleness to the attending worries, even if only for a few brief moments. An offering of sorts. A sacrifice of sorts, to set aside my own precious and tightly held anxieties in an age of tightly held anxieties, doubts and fears. An offering, a prayer. An agreement made silently with the singing world around me that has no need of my fear, small as it is, utterly insignificant when compared to the marvel of another sun, simple as it is, rising to join all the others that have risen before it.

Establishment Democrats and MAGA have, in recent years, united to support genocide in Palestine, attacking Iran and demonizing anyone left of center and expending all resources necessary to maintain American hegemony—not to mention legitimizing a president suffering from rapidly advancing dementia. If one were seriously concerned about protecting democracy, it would seem that the willingness to prop up a would be authoritarian while raining down bombs across western Asia while criminalizing opposition genocide would constitute a greater threat to freedom than campaigning on free childcare and affordable housing.

The electoral and primary victories of Janeese Lewis George in Washington DC, Zohra Mamdani in New York City, and Katie Wilson in Seattle over establishment Democrats seem to refute the longstanding myth (lie) that progressive policies cannot win, especially in an era of increasingly extremist policies put forward by the current incarnation of what was once the Republican Party. It would also seem to demonstrate that voters under sixty are not scared of the outdated Big Red Bogeyman. In short, it suggests that the values of the electorate at large have shifted to left, much as they did during the Great Depression—a shift that helped launch the New Deal in an effort to stave off the much feared Socialist Revolution.

It seems to me that, despite the threat to liberty and equality posed by the right-wing policies, that the majority of American citizens are not frightened by worn-out red baiting tactics, transphobia or fear of our Muslim neighbors and elected representatives. It seems to me rather the opposite—the more frantic and apoplectic the warnings about Communism, “men in women’s sports” and Sharia Law, the more the People are focusing on bread-and-butter issues, such as how we are to survive in the richest nation on earth, much as the People did during the Great Depression.

History, as they say, repeats itself, and decrepit, corrupt politicians and political parties have expiration dates.

The reigning goons kick around the vulnerable, the marginalized, and tell us they enact hate in the name of God and Country, which are one and the (White) same. It is no coincidence that hundreds of thousands of trans people are being forced into legal limbo, in some state beyond being able to prove residence, let alone citizenship, during a highly contentious election year. This is not just about keeping trans people and queer people more broadly out of public life—the attack on foreign students opposed to genocide, and sweeping queer people out of sight are symptoms of a broader whole, and history tells us, once the others are already being swept from view, then the evil is already deeply within, and its reach will, in the end, extend to all of us.

Do not forget, in this post-Patriot Act world, that the hint of extremism or support of extremism can render one beyond the rights of the Constitution and all international treaties and accords. Do not forget that in the wake of NSPM 7, the definition of extremism is greatly expanded and poorly defined, and operating within the scope of the aforementioned Patriot Act. Do not forget the non-stop attacks on journalists, political enemies, and critics of the regime and its allies. The optics, as source material for generating AI slop and propaganda bites, of disappearing the least desirable, the most maligned, the most misunderstood, first and loudest, always rallies the base. The identifying of the first of the “others”, revoking their citizenship, their personhood, is an old and familiar story; it is the calling card of every rising despot.

Iran. Population: 93,168,497.

Cuba. Population: 10,892,659.

Taken together, that is 104,061,156 people living with less, living with unnecessary shortages and inflation. Shortages of fuel, of food, of medicine. They suffer the sanctions for the sins of their governments, who have refused to bend the knee to western imperialism, and because those governments have refused Washington’s demands that they allow exploitation by western corporations, hospitals run out of insulin; children starve or die for lack of vaccinations. It is widely said that over five-hundred-thousand children in Iraq died under Clinton’s sanctions. How many die as our hands tighten around Cuban and Iranian throats?

Of course, any US intervention in Western Asia will come with the requisite fear of Muslims, of the Islamic faith, of all Arab, Isamic or “Middle Eastern” culture, which is similar to, but quite distinct from, our fear of Communism and Cuba. The people in our society who push fear of Islam have never read Rumi. They have never broken bread with a Muslim friend, or been delighted every night of Ramadan to listen to their Palestinian neighbors gathering in the waning day, preparing for Iftar, generations of a family all together, night after night, their voices bright in the growing darkness, laughing, singing, praying, welcoming the Holy on all our behalf.

We wait with baited breath, wondering where this current lunatic decision will take the world, how far this latest egregious violation of international and domestic law will lead? How many more lives will be laid down at the altar of greed? How much more? Four years the bombs fall across Ukraine; the genocide in Palestine grinds on, unabated; kidnapping the President of Venezuela while blowing up fishing boats in the Gulf of Mexico; and tiny Marco Rubio and sad Lindsey Graham proudly saying, “Cuba is next”.

No wonder the world is watching for every new photograph of the bruised hands of the sitting president, the ankles swelling achingly over the patent leather pumps, the garbled speech and obvious dementia, wreaking havoc at every lethargic speech and rally. Yesterday photographs of his necrotic looking neck began to circulate, sparking the lighting of candles and the offering of prayers across the globe. In the absence of an opposition party or any integrity within his own, to rein in his illegal actions, it is only nature that can slow or stop this mad attack on all of us. It is with guiltless hope that we think, “Why, yes, Mr. President, have another crispy fish sandwich and a Big Mac and a large (hell, go extra-large!) side of fries”. It is only the Tangerine Toilet’s eight decades of fast-food and lack of exercise that will slow this man’s roll, and bring about the in-fighting of the far-right wing-nut coalition that brought him to power. Even after his clogged arteries have ceased pushing thick blood through his slowly rotting heart, there are years of vigilance ahead. Vigilance and rebuilding. When their dear leader has finally putrified beyond resuscitation, they will be left scrambling, looking for their next dear leader, still screaming about the risk of Antifa and feminism and pronouns, and it will be easy to laugh at their absurdity—their need for a Daddy—and we must never forget that this is a political faction that wishes harm on 75% of us, and under the banner of another strongman-daddy-figure, they will return to finish the total dismantling that they began in 2025.

Hope for the best, organize for the worst.

Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, who were facing off against the Minnesota Timberwolves that night, later referred to it as one of the “most bizarre and sad games” he had ever been a part of—his quote forming the headline of the SFGate the following morning. The basketball stadium, the stadium where the jumbotron showed the picture of Alex Jeffrey Pretti before the Golden State Warriors won the game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, was the Target Center in Minneapolis. A city being asked to stand in silence, to eulogise and for the second time in January, to mourn another neighbor shot dead on the streets by masked, secret-police. How could the mood have been anything but bizarre and sad?

The rules, the rules as we have known them, as we have (largely) held them in common, are being rewritten every day by people who despise the rule of law and the principles of democratic society. We stand in vigil, again, over the senseless murder by the state of one of our valued citizens. We bury a poet and a nurse. We bury two people, killed by a rogue militia at 37—their stories, their futures—lost not only to themselves, but to many they touched, year after lost possible, promised year.

Who’s next?

The inevitable question.

And we are all asking it.

On the same night that lawless goons deputized by a rogue and lawless regime stained the snow in Minneapolis with another hero’s blood, the tangerine clown occupying 1600 and his tacky first lady hosted a screening of her nearly two hour self-masturbatory multimillion dollar bribe project. The tragically attired guests included the usual self-abasing members of the desperate billionaire circles and sycophants. The sartorially challenged and culturally ignorant crowd was shown to an improvised screening space (the former presidential screening room having been torn down with the rest of the East Wing, which was also the location of the office of the first lady). A truly fitting portrait of a tasteless and tragic first couple, screening a documentary-bribe about the duller of the evil two.

A more narcissistic, hateful, violent and out of touch picture or episode of this administration, taken so completely, is hard to come by. This week. It is, like every distorted, absurd, heart-chilling picture of this administration, totally true to itself, and its values, and how it will respond to every catastrophe of its own making to come. It is this constant portrait—one of a self-absorbed and un-caring Versailles redux, unflexing, unchanging, lost in itself like Narcissus staring into the pool—that makes the images of orange whistles, of dancing dinosaurs, of spontaneous solidarity and of the inherent creativity involved in multifaceted human organization so striking. The image they present of themselves is unchanging, lost in the mirror of their own projections. The pictures of the real world tell a different story, one where people already live with the changes of life and differences between themselves and their neighbors—and it reacts and adapts in real time, spontaneous responses to the times at hand as they are, not as they appear in some self-made mirror.

We are stronger. We are wiser. We are together, and those badly dressed, miserable wielders of power don’t even have each other’s backs.

I will spare you having to read the vile things said by vile people after they had killed a good person, you have likely already heard them, and you were likely mortified and disturbed by the words being used by people who have such great power. Specific words, one word in particular—the T-word—which is being used more and more often to describe actions, or, increasingly, ideas, and couldn’t further more misrepresent and distort the situation and reality at hand. Don’t believe your lying eyes, as is being put about. As confusion on a mass scale is the modus operandi of the current administration, the repeated and deliberate use of that particular word after having just shot an unarmed woman in the face became one more Orwellian allusion, one more step in the direction of authoritarianism, in what is not yet one full year of the new regime.

Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis, saying at a press conference, “ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis”, was an appropriate and warranted response (something Democrats ought to consider, alongside the recent win of another young, bold mayor), to what is beyond doubt authoritarian overreach. It is an appropriate response to the militarised and economic attacks on Minnesota, which are nothing to do with fraud and violent criminals roaming the streets, and everything to do with a white-supremacist agenda, and a desire to destroy all vestiges of the social safety net, at every level. Minnesota has long been a stubborn example of a more just distribution of resources and maintenance of social safety nets, and thereby a source of shame for the free market fundamentalists setting our economic policies and direction. Now that they are weaponising funding so boldly, they can join both facets of their agenda in Minnesota—attacking the vibrant immigrant populations while also attacking the “socialist” largesse of the state.

Poor, Minnesota. They have made the grievous decision to think about their neighbors, to vote their consciences in support of the policies that seem wisest to them, and in using their vote to speak for their values and not using it to put a decrepit menace back in power, they have put themselves and their neighbors in the cross hairs of that very decrepit menace. For not voting for the sitting president, the sitting president is setting out to inflict as much harm and damage as possible on the populace of an entire state (whose name is said synonymously with the word “nice”), because their electoral votes went blue and they do not fear their neighbors. Petty and barbaric vengeances are yet another hallmark of the emotionally stunted and narcissistic disasters that go on to become tyrants, dictators and CEO’s.

I was in Minneapolis for a couple of days in December, and as with every visit, I loved it. It is a charming city, one that openly celebrates its diversity and welcoming nature. Its shared values. How else do you get through such treacherous winters if not with strong community bonds? The friends I was visiting are part of a community watch group, carrying little red cards with one’s legal rights in dealing with federal agents in white letters in English on one side, and on the reverse in Spanish. It is one of many such community based groups of legal observers in the Twin Cities, each responding to the community, to the needs of their community. They identified a need and from the need, some actions that they might take as individuals, as groups, to confront the violence and fear, the lies and hubris.

Many in our society call places like Minnesota “flyover states”, but in this critical moment, it is this flyover state, Minnesota—headwaters of the Mississippi River—that is demonstrating how democratic ideals can be put into practice. People forget about the bold, leftie politics that proliferated in this region at the end of the 19th century. The roots of the communities under attack—the people whose homes surround the headwaters of the Mississippi River—run deep, and the example they provide is strong and necessary. It is echoed in communities small and large, all across the country. On-the-ground resistance, which is built in coming together. A bedrock of any free society.

All through October and November I kept thinking of the origins of Halloween and All Soul’s Day. I thought about thinning veils and all that has happened in the year since the last US election. I thought of parallel lives and parallel realities and things once hidden made visible. The subservience of one party to one man’s ego and the subservience of both parties to homicidal billionaires; corruption, vengeance and profiteering at every turn; inflammatory rhetoric; categorizing philosophical concepts as federal crimes; and a young Muslim being elected as the next mayor of New York City on an agenda of leftist-populism, despite the fortunes spent to defeat the candidate and the needs and desires of those who rallied behind his banner.

Among the thinning veils is that between civilization and barbarism. It is for that reason I try to honor the victories, even the small ones, especially now as the light thins and the days shorten and we decorate our homes, bringing in the light of another holiday season in which we will, ideally, turn our thoughts more towards gratitude and generosity and grace.

The recent victories of Zoran Mamdani in New York City, Abigail Spanberger as governor in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill to the same office in New Jersey, and the passage of Prop. 50 in California certainly seemed to have shaken the confidence of the current “administration”. (I use the quotation marks intentionally—no one in this “administration” understands or knows how to administer anything. Playing at leadership does not entail or demand unironic use of the associated title.) Millions more participants attended the last No Kings Day protests while every day, in small town and large, in small cities and in metropolises across the US, protests are continuing to happen. Communities are developing their own organic, on-the-ground community response and support systems. Everywhere, the people show up in their tens and hundreds, in their hundreds and their thousands and hundreds of thousands, standing up to speak together, to speak for each other, to speak for those being disappeared by unidentified, masked goon squads. The veil is thin and there are those now who had supported degrading and decadent policies and behaviors, who are now calling it what it is, what it always was: debased. The veil is thinning and now more people can see what some of us have seen for a decade or longer: that the people do care more about the common good than perceived differences, and that when engaged on substantive issues instead of word-salad and reasons to hate our neighbors, you will have their attention, and, in all likelihood, their support.

Hopefully vital, vibrant campaigns like Mamdani’s will continue to change the political landscape, and utilize this thinning of the veil, which was not just in November, but is defining the zeitgeist, and see it as the open playing field it is. The open ground, the fresh season in which to establish a new narrative, a new vision and mission. Every subject, every concern not addressed on the campaign trail is left open to opponents with an endless supply of conspiracies and enemies to sell, and they are far more organized and better funded than the centrist fossils representing the “opposition”, (quotes also intentional), the ones always leaving the field open and handicapping anyone left of center trying to win a game against team barbarism.

If there is a lesson to take from this rending of the veil between civilization and barbarism, it is that both offer solutions to the problems perceived by the people, but only one of them is grounded in some sort of realistic understanding of the problem, and the other is the reason we have the expression, “never again”, and that refusing to answer substantively to the needs of a population inevitably tips the scales in favor of darkness.

From the position of an American living in Europe, I will say that the outsized role the US has built for itself in the post-WWII years and its dramatic shift to an untethered and capricious far-right has people nervous and vigilant. For the first domestic election since I have lived in Portugal, on Sunday the far-right party was plateaued and achieved, other than I believe three small mayorships, no gains. Among the Portuguese, it would seem, the greater instability posed by the new US administration has reminded the people, perhaps, how fragile the democratic contract is, and how easily affected small countries like this one are to the political upheavals among greater powers, as every trip to the market or the pharmacy makes clear. Perhaps the growth of far-right parties across Europe, and their increasing embrace of the clownish theatrics and rage-bait politicking adopted from the American far-right reminded voters how recently their own dictatorship ended.

Last month it occurred to me for the first time that the country, our country, the Republic of the United States of America, may close, that the borders may be shut down for some time, as they are wont to do during a period of restructuring in which power is being reconstituted into a singular, top-down source, and the people within society being properly documented and appropriately sorted. It was a terrifying prospect, and for those of us who grew up having all of 8th grade dedicated to studying the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, the “what if” we were always asked to imagine seemed absolutely implausible. Beyond implausible, it was inconceivable in a country that seemed to be rising in prosperity and peace. Democracies like ours could not close, could not properly document and then appropriately sort its citizens and residents. We were approaching the millennium, democracy would grow, we were told. America is a shining city on the hill, spreading democracy around the world, we were told.

“What if”, we were asked to imagine.

“What if”, as I asked it of myself over the intervening decades has taken on more shape and color, from Bush II to where we find ourselves now. I had not, at any point, situated myself outside of the country where I was born, and had not ever considered that crossing the border into my own native country and being able to then turn around and leave it would be a concern of mine. It had not occurred to me as the US embraced the motto, “we must give up freedoms for security”, after September 11th 2001, that I would be wondering what such a situation—the end of American democracy—would mean for me should I be living in another country. Of all of the what ifs, finding myself in this position is far scarier than any other I had imagined. There is no way to go back and inform my 8th grade self of how fragile it is, freedom, or how you cannot predict your own circumstances in any hypothetical future, so I write this instead. We cannot change the past, we can only allow it to inform the future, and to do that, we must document the present, lest it be erased.

I had been skeptical of Pride over the last decade, Pride seemingly having become a parade of corporate sponsors and a side-show for curious straight people experiencing queers in the wild. Over June this year, as the world began Pride celebrations and Black communities prepared for Juneteenth, the US government and corporations moved fast to show the world that not only are we, Queer and Black Americans not wanted, we do not exist as equal human beings under this administration, or any that will carry its banner in the future.

I am glad that the corporations withdrew sponsorship of Pride and Juneteenth celebrations. There were always those among us who said these partnerships were performative for the companies and prohibitive for us and our speech, and now we are vindicated. Once the winds changed, once decorum and mutual respect were out the door and another band of bigots was given the bull-horn, our fair-weather allies jumped ship, and we saw that we do not need their sponsorship, and we certainly do not need performative allies.

What we do need are federal funds for research, funds which have led to medical breakthroughs over the decades, saving millions of lives. What we do need is continued, targeted support for vulnerable populations who have traditionally faced discrimination in every area of life. What we need is equal access, which is slowly being erased for all Americans not protected by wealth, but first and foremost for women, LGBTQ and Black and brown communities. Every agency or task force that remotely touches our lives, that investigates our claims of discrimination, or offers aid and support in any way has been slashed as DEI, just as the USS Harvey Milk, a ship named after a US Navy veteran who had been forced out of service for being gay has been renamed (the Pentagon confirmed that this announcement was made deliberately during the month of June). Because he is remembered for being the first openly elected gay city council member he is tied mostly certainly to what was being called “gay liberation”, therefore the honor bestowed on this veteran who served during the Korean War is not an honor bestowed on a US Navy veteran who served his country, it is DEI, and therefore detrimental to the security of the United States.

These are times to get involved in organizing. These are times to be in personal contact with people who see us, who see us as human, and who see that there is much to do if we are to prevent coming catastrophe. There is no one answer to pushing back against so aggressively hateful and intentionally cruel an administration, but that is why we organize—we need to meet, to share our concerns, to share our visions, and to share the collective burden of creative thinking. That is the only path to mutual liberation. That is how we show each other that we cannot be erased, and that even if our humanity is not seen by Presidents of countries or Fortune500 companies, it is seen by our neighbors.

Organizing is an empowering, invigorating experience, and for anyone who has never taken it on, now is the time. Take the plunge. Get involved. Get political. Trust me, it’s some of the best fun you could ever have!

Every capitulation to this insanity has been seamlessly handed on from one unhinged administration to another. Columbia has for years capitulated to pressure from pro-Israel groups, donors, sponsors and guests, while chilling voices speaking on behalf of Palestinians. Columbia University itself selecting Mahmoud Khalil as a negotiator because of his calm, because of his kindness, his commitment to his peers and his rational approach. He had the respect and trust of students and faculty, he was asked to act as negotiator, and then Columbia fed him to the wolves. This throwing of Mahmoud Khalil to the wolves and then offering further capitulations, bowing to further unprecedented federal interference in internal university affairs, this should trouble everyone, not just Columbia students. An Ivy League institution is working with an authoritarian executive to directly attack the First Amendment, and is allowing its students to be guinea pigs in the laboratories of tyranny.

Columbia University and Paul, Weiss law firm bowing down before the edicts of a would be king acting outside the law is a crack in the democratic foundations. For these two institutions in particular—institutions with the credibility and resources to fight this rogue administration—for them to cave, to kneel and kiss the ring not only emboldens the leaders in the administration, it emboldens and empowers the players in the wings and the shadows, the lobbyists and cronies, and it emboldens other tyrants, namely Netanyahu, who has resumed the holocaust in Gaza, Orban, who continues his erasure of LGBT people, and Erdogan, who has just jailed the leader of the opposition to head off an unwanted challenge.

From this vantage point, from a place of relative calm, I am watching history repeat itself, only this time it isn’t Berlin or Nuremberg, it isn’t Madrid or Barcelona—it is Manhattan and Washington, D.C. It is the capitulations that have, for years—more years than I can count—always worried me. The grey areas we worked into law and life following 9/11—the grey areas that linger on like our presence in Iraq or Afghanistan, Guantanamo or Syria or all of the places our arms shipments arrive—the newly undefined states of being, “terrorist” and “radical” among them. It is the capitulations on civil liberties over the last two decades and the normalising of exchanging liberty for “security” that has paved the road to this point, here, now, where legal, lawful residents are being disappeared and the executive branch seems intent on assuming supreme power. Once that phase of the project is complete, they will begin to come for the rest of us—the “citizens”, as we believe ourselves to be.

What happens when they begin arresting Americans for holding views that “jeopardise foreign policy”? And if Americans already believe anyone saying “stop the genocide” is an antisemite because that’s what cable news and both sides of the aisle have been telling them since October 2023? It would seem that in the contemporary rendering of a previous anti-fascist poem, the poem would have to start: First they came for the immigrant “pro-Palestinians”, and I said nothing because I was neither an immigrant, nor pro-Palestinian…

Who will speak for you when they have already come for me, when they have already come for your immigrant neighbors, or when they have already come for the students of your now quiet schools?

Throughout Ta-Nahesi Coates’s “The Message”, and Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”, the necessity of narrative is a through-line, not just the human need for narrative—we tell ourselves stories in order to live—but the power wielded by those who write the narrative, as well. In any time of engineered confusion, someone is always introducing a new narrative, and confusion, which renders us vulnerable, is being used on us deliberately, now, as a matter of policy, and the unhinged clown ballet is throwing as many narratives at the wall as possible, not caring what sticks—their ring-leader will change the narrative again by dinner time.

Here is a narrative: our country is already in Constitutional Crisis, which has been pursued by dangerous ideologues who desire most of us to live as second class citizens, or, frankly, not at all. The architects of this administration have made their desire to rule as authoritarians and oligarchs known quite publicly, and, as promised, they hit their first hundred days with wrecking balls swinging in every direction. The apparatus of authoritarian power usually begins within the framework of parliamentary procedure—within laws and constitutions and assemblies of representatives and within courts—creating new designations for its citizens and residents; creating new classes of aliens; creating official classes of undesirables and using the application of “terrorism” charges to politicise all avenues of dissent; exerting undue influence on universities; redesigning borders and spheres of influence. Deciding what is and is not free and protected speech and assembly.

It is happening now with devastating speed, and the “opposition party” seems intent on enabling or ignoring the threat—which has been on the slow walk for decades—which is nothing short of the theft of American democracy. Where are the Democrats who decried fascism on the campaign trail? Where are their voices now, while Mahmoud Khalid sits disappeared in a hell-hole in Louisiana and those who said “STOP THE GENOCIDE” are being branded as “terrorists”?

This is the time for Columbia and Harvard Universities, and for all other colleges and universities—as well as for all news papers and news outlets—to be loudly and assertively defending the First Amendment. This is a time when anyone in elected office should be loudly defending the First Amendment. Capitulation and oppression and the use of state and vigilante violence to attack students calling for an end to genocide did not prevent the far-right lobby from attacking the University in every way that they can wield their out-sized influence, chilling free speech for one and all.

Every unchallenged assault, every time members of Congress or the Universities choose silence or capitulation, another brick goes up in the wall they are building—the one walling us off from the freedoms it had seemed we enjoyed, tyranny—rights and freedoms we have always been told were ours by birthright.

The rights and freedoms disappearing every day before our eyes will become the new normal, and how far is too far, in this new normal?

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Thank you, readers, for sharing this space. We’re in this together. As Joan Didion said, we tell ourselves stories in order to live—we are narrative driven creatures, and at a time when the narrative is being hijacked, all our voices matter.

Love,

Padraic

It is OK to feel terrified at the rapaciousness of this blatantly fascist administration. The speed at which they have thrust people of color and queer people back to the margins, the mass firings, the unhinged war on DEI and the judiciary should cause everyone alarm. The claims of white people being victimised by the equality of their fellow citizens should frighten everyone—the equality of your neighbor does not diminish the rights your white Christian family enjoys. Everyone should be terrified that the Executive Branch has arrested a permanent resident, Mahmoud Khalil, a grad student at Columbia University, for opposing genocide (just today CNN referred to his protest against genocide as “discrimination”—western media is as white supremacist as their governments, and as hateful of the truth).

This is not a time for more performative “resistance” like we saw in 2016. Pink pussy hats and hashtags will not slow the progression towards authoritarianism. If we cannot approach intersectionality in our movements to oppose a threat aimed at all of us, then they will win. If Americans continue to drink the cool-aid and turn their fear and frustration on trans people or immigrants or anyone calling out the genocidal crimes perpetrated in Palestine, then Americans hand democracy to those who wish to murder it.

So far the “oppostion party”, the Democrats, choose to censure their own and to punch left, echoing the current administration’s loathing of DEI and wokeness and telling us the party needs to move even further to the right and must act even more like the Republicans. This is how European liberals handed their countries to fascists in the 1930’s—the ruling elites, even the “liberals” retain their privileges under authoritarian regimes. Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer do not care about you, your rights or democracy—they sold us out ages ago, and we were too distracted to notice, like when Pelosi said several years ago that legislating Roe v. Wade when the Dems held the Senate, House and Executive was “too divisive”. If a white liberal lady worth hundreds of millions will use the threat of abortion being criminalized to garner votes and donations while doing nothing to protect the right to abortion, or women’s rights in general, what hope can you have that she will stand up to mass deportations, the eradication of the First Amendment, war on transgender youth and the end of the Republic?

No one is coming to save us, least of all a Democratic Party obsessed with wooing Fascists and convinced that everyone who said “stop the genocide” was a Chinese operative or a Russian asset. The delusions and the fascist leanings and progression are bipartisan.

No one is coming to save us.

May all mother sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.

May they be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

May they have happiness that knows no suffering.

May they abide in equanimity, undisturbed by the sufferings of life.

I could not concentrate on the Refuge Tree, nor the Field of Merit and Accumulation because my mind was full of last night’s dreams: body parts I was helping to gather up into trash bags; pleas for help in Arabic, shrieked by children lost in dust and darkness; the deadly flight of the zanana. I prayed the seven limbs and, when I reached confession, I admit, I faltered. I have been plagued by the silence in the sangha, which is not unusual, in the west or the east. Our faith has a tendency to veer towards the apolitical, though our tradition also has its Aaron Bushnell’s. Have we, in the Tibetan traditions, forgotten the wave of self-immolations across occupied Tibet following the 2008 Olympics, and its attenuating wave of oppression? H.H. XIV Dalai Lama and Daw Aung Saan Suu Kyi were once our beloved Nobel Laureates; today I hear none of our voices calling for a ceasefire. I hear no one in our communities condemning or speaking out against Daw Aung Suu Kyi’s support of the Rohingya Genocide.

Every vow we take, we take with body, speech and mind, and we renew them daily—body, let us remember, is action. That which we do with our bodies. We cannot think peace, cannot think “may there be an end to all suffering, including that of the people in Palestine and Congo and Yemen”, cannot repeat such placid thoughts and prayers, and then pass off further engagement of crimes against humanity with speeches about the Middle Way, or emptiness or karma or the usual ways in which discussion of how to confront injustice is derailed and taken off the table.

Prayer is hollow when it is held up as the appropriate response to holocaust.

Reflecting on emptiness when families are being wiped out is not abiding by the Dharma, it is callous and nihilistic. Counselling the Middle Way as every university, mosque and hospital in Gaza is being erased seems to me a renunciation of the Bodhisattva vow, and all Root Vajrayana Samaya.

Prayer is not enough in the face of tragedy. Every one of us who comes from a faith tradition, who comes from a prayer tradition knows that rolling up one’s sleeves and putting one’s body into holy work is far more powerful than all our candles and chants and bells and silence. Raising our voices in holy advocacy is greater merit than 1,000 Nyung Ne fasts.

The Dharma, as an institution has been able to make itself useful to empires, and thus to ensure its survival over the last two and a half millennia. All institutions are liable to corruption, it’s inevitable, and one of the gravest corruptions in our shared Dharma institutions is a culture of silence in the face of the gravest crimes humans can commit against fellow humans. It is a culture of silence out of deference to power.

Now, the questions:

What is on your mind these last seven months as you bring your hands together in front of the holy objects of refuge?

What is on your mind when you reach the third of the seven limbs, confession?

Where is Palestine in your Field of Accumulation?

When does equanimity require rocking the boat so that all may rest there, in a place beyond extremes?

When does the need for holy speech and holy action, motivated by holy outrage, become important? Do you expect the Dharmapalas to act alone?

Will our communities remain silent, offering no resistance, offering only prayer?

Can you live with yourself and your practice if your second of the seven limbs, offering, is an offering of silence when we can, potentially, make the offering of saving lives, another ritual practice we celebrate? Can we not put ourselves to the saving of human lives instead of the fish we buy in markets and release into rivers and lakes?

The keeping of ritual, the keeping of the calendar, the holy days, the feast days seems illusion, seems illusory knowing the moon by which we mark our months is obscured by smoke and white phosphorous for those in Palestine who also measure prayer, who also measure time between holy days by following the moon. They have completed Ramadan as we look towards Saga Dawa, if we take no other stand, can the Nyung Ne’s fast of Saga Dawa be dedicated to Palestine, if that is all we have to offer, thoughts and prayers? Can we at least make that gesture, if we are willing to make no other, if we are unwilling to offer our bodies and voices in any other way?

If you must maintain your silence, if you must protect your precious Middle Way, please, I implore you, offer your dedications, for the rest of your life to those on the altar of human dignity, being sacrificed every hour in the charnel grounds of Gaza, and then make confession for having broken your vows.

It is fitting that American campuses should become scenes of oppression and violence. It is fitting that the United States, while it has lectured the world on the meaning of democracy and freedom of speech should be beating, tasing and tear gassing their own children at the behest of a foreign power, quite openly suppressing right of assembly, free speech and expression. It is fitting that Western academia enact for us the passion play, the morality tale, the folk tale or the parable: the emperor has no clothes. It is fitting that the children of the ruling class should turn against their parents, should turn against the quiet complicity that keeps their fortunes running and become vipers in the nest. It is fitting that as the ruling class destroys all post-war international institutions and frameworks for justice, that their children should be the bodies on which the empire inflicts its rage in wild attempts at self-preservation, and that it should be their children being suspended from Columbia, NYU or Harvard, evicted from their housing and called a terrorist as the world watches the west descend into barbarity.

No one was predicting the world to wake up and see what has been happening for more than seven decades in Palestine and to connect those dots to all of the others, and no one was predicting that we would be, in our billions, so linked together in opposition to one of the most powerful and destructive alliances in world history, and no one could have predicted that we would have the rulers, the managers and the mouthpieces of that alliance running scared. They see the end of the empire on the horizon, they see the end of the entire settler colonial project worldwide and they have been hoping we haven’t noticed, hoping we can still be distracted and redirected. They were not counting on people under fifty caring about anything more than avocado toast, and they hoped those over fifty would be too colonised to object to holocaust, let alone to stand as a human shield between a college sophomore and a squadron of militarised riot police. There is a collective awakening happening, and it is important to remember, as Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein and others keep reminding us, that regimes are their most dangerous at the end, during the death throes.

Vigilance. Courage. Solidarity.

We were hearing all last week of the atrocities, including rape taking place within Al Shifa at the hands of the Israeli military, and the Biden Administration responded by sending more weapons, including around 1,800 200lb. dumb bombs, which will undoubtedly be dropped on Gaza, each one with the power to leave a 15 foot crater in its wake. In the face of what witnesses were calling a week ago the worst six days of the genocide, Joe Biden, President of the United States sends some of the dirtiest weapons possible to the most violent army. This is beyond complicity, this is guilt of the vilest degree.

I think of Hoda Al Arouqi, her head bandaged from bombings, her wizened face pained and defiant, sitting in the rubble: The killing of children and civilians has become normal to them, she says of the occupying army, they want to wipe us out…they are forcing us to flee, but we will never leave. She was young when the war of 1967 saw the settlers seize all remaining occupied territories, further expelling and killing the indigenous population; she has seen every siege and bombardment and escalation of the ethnic cleansing to happen since. Her life, and those of her entire family have been shaped every day by the occupation and the perpetual goal of displacing all Palestinians, of cleansing Palestine, as Israeli’s like Mayor of Jerusalem Daniella Weissman make clear is and always has been the goal.

The first images out of Al Shifa are the most gruesome, vile and depraved to be seen in six months of barabarity, six months in which the western governments funding and arming genocide dither about self-defence and only democracy in the region and shared values while repeating debunked propaganda points, further green-lighting massacres such as the two week siege of Al Shifa, in which hundreds of medical staff were arrested (IOF is already claiming anyone kidnapped in their deranged siege of the hospital is a terrorist, as they claim for any Palestinian, living or dead). The first images are here and western media repeats debunked claims: tunnels, command posts, HAMAS!!!!

I think of what Aaron Bushnell said: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” This post, this statement included a link to facebook live, the link we all saw on 25 February, the video we all saw. Aaron Bushnell burning, yelling Free Palestine outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, while a police officer stands over the boy, his fire aim trained on someone incapable of posing a threat, a perfect demonstration of the struggle at hand.