Trying to start a letter-writing campaign of sorts with family and friends…with VERY limited success. Shout-out to @JohnBrady for being a great letter-replier, even just to online acquaintances! :)
Things feel so lonely, stressful, angry, and sad. I think I either need spring to get here fast, or for the fascism to crumble. Or maybe some more friends.
My trial subscription to The Dispatch is up in a week. Trying to decide whether to stick around. Lots of good stuff, but then pieces like this one about Biden’s “lawlessness” give me pause. I’m no Biden cheerleader, but, c’mon. thedispatch.com/article/b…
Does 2026 have, like, a 30-day return policy? Because good lort this all SUCKS.
Arresting journalists. Raiding election offices. Masked government agents trampling on constitutional rights by surveilling, terrorizing, disappearing, and killing people. Damn, I wish we had, like, a good word to describe all of this!
ICE spotted in downtown Toledo, OH. iceout.org/reportInf…
If you’re more conservative and your views have shifted toward opposing ICE’s current behavior, what specifically was most effective in changing your mind? How do we open more eyes?
If you’re trying to help conservative family and friends get up to speed about what ICE has really been up to and why people are mad, where would you point them, specifically? Is there a good catalog of abuses and critiques? Or at least a starting point?
From Ryan Holiday:
Immigration is a complicated issue. Crime is complicated. My dad was a cop for twenty years, I understand it’s a hard job. But this is not complicated.
Heavily armed masked agents should not be storming American streets demanding to see people’s papers. They should not be harassing citizens, making arrests and sorting things out later. They should not be harassing people because they don’t look or sound like citizens. They should not be entering schools or hospitals or courthouses or churches to try to take people away.
OK?
It should not be controversial to say that.
“Trump is taking the country on a path to tyranny. The first obligation for each of us is to see it and name it. The next is to figure out what to do about it.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/202…
Hey Fediverse peeps: (1) Is it worth replying to Substacks like this one? kevinbriggins.substack.com/p/minneap… (2) What’s the best way to do so, do you think? Create/sign-in to Substack and leave a comment? Post on my website and link?
Trying to put my finger on why I find “both-sides,” “don’t rush to conclusions,” “don’t fan the flames,” etc. so incredibly frustrating, especially from Christians. I think they’ve got the appearance of wisdom, but that, past a certain point, it’s self-serving cowardice underneath.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said the following in “Sermon for Evening Worship Service on 2 Corinthians 12:9 London, 1934”:
“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its apologia for the weak.—I feel that Christianity is rather doing too little in showing these points than doing too much. Christianity has adjusted itself much too easily to the worship of power. It should give much more offence, more shock to the world, than it is doing. Christianity should […] take a much more definite stand for the weak than to consider the potential moral right of the strong.”
Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London: 1933–1935, ed. Hans Goedeking et al., trans. Isabel Best and Douglas W. Stott, vol. 13 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 402–403.
Just angry. So, so angry. And I don’t see any hope for meaningful change in the current media/information landscape.
I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ American Revolution documentary lately and, historians can keep me honest here, but it feels like Trump/MAGA/ICE are every bit as bad, if not worse, than what drove the colonists to Revolution. Thoughts?
Isaiah 58, but it’s about Christians who will “March for Life” but won’t speak up for immigrants and everyone else terrorized, abducted, and even killed by ICE. Go read it.
Latest issue of “Steele Notes,” my email newsletter, is out: buttondown.com/joshuapst…
One man’s “via media” wisdom is another’s middle ground fallacy.
Let’s just hope the Southern Baptists don’t crank-out as many ICE pastors as they’ve cranked-out PhDs!
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Source: www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_…