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Sometimes all you can do is walk.
Or run.
Or sit.

Like Forrest Gump after the woman he loved walked away.

The man life always found felt hopelessly adrift—
until he started running.
And kept running.

That’s fiction.

Real life gives us its own versions.

A young Sam Shepard driving through the Midwest to see grandparents he barely knew—an experience that would inspire his Pulitzer-winning play, Buried Child. An odyssey not of conquest, but of return. A break from youthful whimsy or exhaustive ambition. A journey that opens a window, unlocks a door, reveals meaning. A reminder that life is more than whatever story has gripped us.

I love how Bob Dylan expressed this in Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.

For Dylan, it was Guthrie who reminded him that all the bullshit isn’t real. Dylan hitchhiked across the country to connect with that hope—an ember passed hand to hand, set ablaze for a generation—before retreating just long enough to save himself.

The monks walking for peace are not walking for pleasure.
They aren’t walking for a cliché.
They are walking because walking brings clarity.

A whole band of them walking attracts a movement. It’s simple—but so is an ember. So is running when you’ve lost everything and just want to feel again. So is retreating to Woodstock when you’ve crashed and need to restore the hope you can still sense. So is driving to your parents’ old home to understand why they are as they are.

Because sometimes outcome isn’t the point.

We don’t need a blaze.
We need the ember.

A fellow writer I respect posted a photograph of the monks—just walking, with their dog—and it mystified her. Do we need peace in America? Why walk here? Why not somewhere with “real” trouble?

It’s a fair question. But I think it misses the point.

Those of us in sleepy towns and busy cities—especially where things appear relatively peaceful—are the ones who need the ember most. We are the ones who can carry it forward. We are a confused and distracted mass with enormous potential, if we’ll only wake up.

I don’t pretend to know what’s in the minds of the monks. But I suspect that is the point: to wake us up. To wake the ones who can still do the most good.

Related reading:

• Buried Child, cornfields, and inheritance:

• Bob Dylan and the ember before the blaze:

It’s more than an attitude, although that’s part of it. We’re becoming the same, the author says — disconnected from one another, indifferent to others, too self-absorbed. That’s the attitude. But we’re also becoming less tolerant of people who think differently. It makes sense: the more self-absorbed we become, the less room we have for difference — for thoughts, patterns, or routines beyond ourselves.

The book also argues that society has moved away from virtue. It’s an epidemic of what, in French, is mal — illness, harm, perhaps even evil.

I’ve noticed that too — for the last decade or so.

A few days ago, a caustic thought took root in my head after someone mentioned politics. Maybe it was about the No Kings protest. I thought, you know, I’ve become rather indifferent to how bad things have gotten. Burnt out. Fed up.

Sometimes, when I read something online about humanity “losing against A.I.,” I catch myself thinking: well, we humans made the mess. We’re not as great as we thought we were. We’ve poisoned our planet — our only home — to sustain the lifestyle we can’t give up. We slaughter what’s animal but not human so we can keep eating junk. We run the beast until it collapses and then destroy it for being weak. We still can’t stop killing each other over ancient conflicts that make no sense anymore.

The book — De l’indifférence à la différence by Mazarine M. Pingeot (Grasset, 2025) — also proposes that our indifference extends to time itself. We’ve grown indifferent to the future, to the consequences of our behavior, and to the lessons of the past. This temporal indifference traps us in the self-absorption of the present moment — whatever gratifies right now. Humanity has been here before. I think of the early years of the twentieth century and the Lost Generation: painters like Modigliani, writers like Hemingway, wandering through the wreckage of meaning. And yet, from despair, said Kierkegaard, comes beauty—or maybe it’s hope.

So what if A.I. takes over? Maybe it could do better.

Those are the kinds of thoughts that creep in — indifference to the human fate. Numbness toward life. Hardened against loss, pain, and evil. Less empathy. Less tolerance.

Maybe that’s what the philosopher means — this slow drift toward indifference and away from difference.

The quiet sickness of a world that no longer feels. France, though. Feeling still comes from the French. Wonders never cease.

—A.R.

Ashley Rovira is the author of The Signal Between Us: A Father/Daughter Discovery Story and its forthcoming second-chance sequel. As the founder at Heavy Crown Press, she writes about what moves her, about the signals that cross and the ones that break the silence and clear the static.

A few impressed me about Jack more than anything else. One, he and his mother (his personal hero, he often says) came out strong in support of Kamala Harris for President in 2024; as selection committee members for the JFK Library’s Profile in Courage Award, they honored Mike Pence for courageously (yes) doing his job, as President of the Senate as the January 6 mob chanted for him to be killed;2 and more recently as the host of Test Drive, Jack has been honored by the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to be part of the America 250 Commission. Next year, 2026 will mark 250 years since the founding of the nation. Jack took some criticism from fellow liberals for doing a special livestream with the 74-year-old Senator, who is not well appreciated in the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Progressives insist he’s too pro-Israel (and therefore, insufficiently supportive of Palestinians) and that he is too soft in resisting Trump. Jack spoke with the Senator about his new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning. He also wanted to hear what Schumer had to say for some of the recent actions which have been widely criticized, like his decision not to shut down the government in March. “It’s fashionable to criticize Senator Schumer,”3 Jack said, but he went on to say that Senator Schumer helped him to see the forest for the trees. Schumer made his decision to allow the Republicans’ funding bill to advance to the Senate for a vote (instead of letting the federal government shutdown) in order to avoid giving even more unilateral power to Trump and Elon Musk.4 5 For the Senator’s part, he wanted to announce Jack’s appointment to the America 250 Commission.

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In my opinion, Jack has shown multiple times that he himself is a Profile in Courage. Not only is he bold and outspoken, he doesn’t back down. Lately, in his Test Drive episodes, he has devoted more and more time to his passion for environmentalism. Climate change, he laments, is something people hardly talk about anymore. He wants to reverse that trend, to remind people why clean water and clean air matter, and to remind us that eco-friendly doesn’t have to mean unprofitable. In fact, President Biden was committed to renewable energy and low carbon emissions in the two key bipartisan laws of his presidency, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. No one in the world has done enough to combat the effects of climate change, but some have done more than others. Biden is unarguably on the side of “more,” Trump being the opposite. That’s why it is especially important for people like Jack, with high numbers of followers and lots of watchers, to speak out on behalf of Mother Nature. With Trump decimating EPA regulations, Jack and those who support him need to be screaming out, making damn sure that people know what is being dismantled...because we are going to have to build it all back. Building it back will require knowing how the pieces fit together and what parts go where. We’re going to have to study the old blueprints and revise them to reflect new data. Science is taking a beating in the Trump Era, research is being defunded, but we can’t give up. There is too much at stake. We have to keep pushing to fill the gaps, teach critical thinking and spread awareness where we can. We have to push back. We have to resist. We have to combat lies with truth. Climate change really should not be a politically divisive issue. After all, it’s about the climate we all live in—the air we all breathe, the water we all drink, the oceans we all benefit from, the fish who depend on those oceans. Anyone who cares about the planet that makes our lives possible ought to care about its sustainability.

When it comes to Kennedys, there has always been that inevitable question: will they run for office? Here again, Jack has carved out an exceptional reputation and role for himself. One professional blogger speculated that Jack might be the Democrats’ answer to Joe Rogan.6 Like Rogan, he is unafraid of controversy, fearless to express unpopular opinions, and immensely savvy at getting attention on social media. Jack confessed to Jen Psaki last February that he thinks Democrats, in general, are too cautious and that’s why Republicans have been able to make such gains ahead of them in mainstream culture.7 Now, though, the 32-year-old is behind the wheel. Before long, he’ll have a million subscribers on YouTube; he’s near 700K on Instagram. Followers drop into his live videos to watch him shoot the breeze while he steers the van on unknown roads. We don’t know where we’re going with Jack, but there’s something about him that feels trustworthy. He is honestly testing himself, testing us, and we’ll just have to see where it all leads. In the meantime, buckle up!

RECEIPTS, NOTES, EXTRAS

5

The Pope’s words got me thinking much about the ways we consume information and how that information colors or filters both digital and real-life behavior. And then I saw a post on Substack, a very simple post—a black background and some text. It was a quote attributed to His Holiness. It said, “To be called woke in a world that sleeps through suffering is no insult.” I thought it a beautiful and wise idea, but I was skeptical of the attribution. I’m seeing more and more of these false attributions where Pope Leo is concerned. According to Snopes, the very day that Robert Prevost was elected Pope (May 8), the quote (in fact, part of a larger body of text) began circulating on the social networks. Snopes traced it back to a Threads user who fused it with a meme generator template and later admitted that the words were A.I. generated. The quote itself is actually quite lovely, and of course it is true that to be “woke” (simply put, to be awake to social injustices) is not a bad thing. Of course, the term “woke” has been distorted by various people, each having an agenda. The enemy of DEI, for instance, is against the idea of being “woke” because the enemy of DEI wants to maintain a status quo where white males sustain inherited privilege. The late Pope Francis was accused of being “woke” (the “woke Pope”) because he believed (and I agree) that all humans deserve dignity. Those of us who want so badly for Pope Leo to be like Francis are easy targets for the “woke meme,” as I will call it. I nearly fell for it, but only for a second. Oh! He said that? Really? A simple Google search provided an immediate denial. This “woke meme” is a perfect example of the importance of having the finely tuned instinct for inquiring into the source of information. Where did this come from? In the case of the woke meme, it came from Threads. How was it created? If something is an actual quote, ask the identifying questions: who, when, where, to whom?

Here is something that Pope Leo actually said, in Italian:

“Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication but rather communication that is capable of listening.”

We know he said this because….we can see him saying it? No, videos can be faked, but there were a lot of witnesses—more than a thousand journalists—watching him make this speech. 

There’s another video that made the rounds on social media, one that shows Pope Leo sharply denouncing the immigration policies of the Trump Administration and naming J.D. Vance in particular. It does, indeed, appear to be Pope Leo speaking, his image juxtaposed with images of Vance. However, it is suspiciously isolated audio and the video itself has noticeable moments of transition, as if it was edited and spliced together. That Pope Leo has been a recent favorite for A.I. manipulation just goes to show that his warnings are on point. He acknowledged the “immense potential” of A.I. if used responsibly, but as we see in the faked memes and videos of the Pope himself, A.I. poses a danger for its capacity to be used in propaganda. Used irresponsibly, it can mislead us. The fake memes of Pope Leo are proof, as if it was needed, that partisan interest groups are seeking to use him to promote their agendas.

It’s not that I don’t want, as much as any other progressive, the new Pope to sound like the late Pope Francis. I just want his words to actually be his words. Making him another “woke Pope” using words not his own is just…counterproductive. It doesn’t count. It is also too much of a projection of American partisan politics on the centuries-old Catholic Church, an institution that has so much more meaning than the ever-shifting conflicts between MAGA and Woke. Popes are larger than kings, not because they have more power, but because they endure. The Church has an omnipotence that politics cannot achieve. Presidencies change after four (or eight) years. I was not two years old when the papacy of John Paul II began. I was nearly 28 when it ended with his demise. That’s a generation. If Pope Benedict had not resigned, his papacy, begun in 2005, would have ended at his death in 2022. We had twelve years of Pope Francis, and now many of us are hoping that Pope Leo will be an extension of the compassionate, openminded path laid by Francis. On May 8, shortly after the Conclave elected Robert Francis Prevost, a cousin of mine posted on Facebook, no doubt echoing the thoughts of many, “I hope he’s just like Francis!” Between the middle name and the tweets from X account @ drprevost, there is little wonder that progressives are holding onto hope that he will be Francis 2.0 while the Far Right laments his lack of “America First” credentials.

The New York columnist David French warned against viewing the new Pope in the narrow-minded lens of partisan politics. Doing so is not just limiting, and short-sighted, but it also runs the risk of defining his pontificate prematurely. Pope Leo XIV is not a blank slate. In the short time since the Conclave, he has already expressed profound ideas about the state of the world and the issues that stymie us.

His path to ordination began at age 14 with his enrollment at the St. Augustine Seminary High School. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Villanova University, he went onto collect graduate and postgraduate degrees in divinity and canon law. As a novice priest, he chose to be initiated into the Order of St. Augustine. Augustinians are guided by the Rule of St. Augustine, taking a vow of poverty, committing to serious labor, and some period of solitude. They work hard and prize obedience and chastity on the one hand, but also are driven to make decisions in a community. The shepherd doesn’t rule the flock in a top down fashion, but rather consults with his sheep. The shepherd doesn’t lecture; he engages in dialogue. It is democratic and diplomatic. We have already heard the Pope talk about his view that his role is to among the people, not above; to make himself small, “move aside” and listen to the people. The people of the Catholic Church, as David French noted, are not a political party. They are “multitudes.” Using the shepherd analogy, they are many varied sheep, many flocks even, finding common ground under the Bishop of Rome. Leo’s international credentials—dual citizen of Peru and the U.S., fluent in Italian, Spanish, English, Latin—are his most often cited attributes as a Pope. Even his ancestry—uniting Creole and Cajun—adds to his universal appeal as a leader for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Although it is undeniable that the Pope seems to stand for everything in opposition to Trump—building bridges, not walls; unity, not division; inclusion, not exclusion; peace, not conflict; diplomacy, not empire; democracy, not authoritarianism—these are not stances of partisanship. They are strategies for long-term success, something the Church has always been rather good at despite occasional setbacks. As David French put it, the Pope’s views are hardly “Far Left” (something only the Far Right says). They’re actually just dyed-in-the-wool Christian views. French argues that the Pope’s views on justice, climate science and immigration are really just “mainstream,” unless of course you’re viewing him through a MAGA lens.

Yet as much as we all want Leo to follow in the footsteps of Francis, I think it is very important, when we see a meme online that expresses an opinion in his name, to pause, put on the librarian hat, and trust but verify its authenticity. We don’t want to spread fake news. Even fake news that agrees with us, that sends dopamine to our brains, has a cost to freedom. As Pope Leo said, “only informed individuals can make free choices.”

Did I just say “Prevost,” you ask? Why, yes, I did. It turns out his father descended from French Cajuns who settled in Louisiana, and his mother came from Haitian Creoles/Free Persons of Color in New Orleans. Her parents even listed as “black” on the 1900 census.5 So there you have it. The Americano/Peruvian/White Sox fan Vicar of Christ is also biracial. Robert Francis Prevost, aka Leo XIV, is probably not the first person of color to be Pope. After all, Saint Peter the Fisherman was born in Bethsaida, in what is probably modern-day Syria. Still, at this late date and after many centuries of European Popes, it feels like a novelty for Pope number 267.

The trivia about Papa Leone just gets better as we learn about his life and passion. Certainly, we have established that his choice of Leo to be his papal name was no whim. He explained why he chose the name as he addressed the College of Cardinals in his first papal Mass. He said he wanted to invoke the spirit of Leo XIII, writer of the Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891),6 which addressed ethical issues and human rights (direct quote from His Holiness) “in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”7 He sees the current time as an echo of the 19th century economic and social upheaval. This go around, we are challenged by even greater economic inequalities, unemployment, under employment, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Concern for the working class, for the poor, for immigrant justice, and social justice across the spectrum are core issues that the Pope has devoted his life to addressing.

Many commentators have noted the likeness between the new Pope and the late Pope, Francis. Indeed, as the Conclave got underway on May 7, it was widely anticipated that the 133 cardinals, 80% of whom had been appointed by Francis,8 were likely to favor someone like him. Conservative Catholics aside, Francis was very popular for the transparency and social responsiveness that he brought to the role. He was the first Pope of Twitter—that quintessential social media platform now known as X. He was all over that thing Trump hates, what is it—DEI? Yeah, that. Pope Francis hired more women to Vatican roles than any previous Pope. He granted women the vote in the Synod of Bishops.9 He formalized the Church’s opposition to the death penalty in all cases.10 He allowed Church blessing of LGBT marriages.11 Pope Francis, who died at age 88, never fully came around to the idea of a nonbinary gender world, but he was undoubtedly more progressive than any other Pope, and although his successor is on record, in 2012, expressing concern about the “homosexual lifestyle”12 and transgender issues,13 there seems ample reason for hope that Leo is absolutely sincere when he says that he means to be a Pope who is close to the people. He was against teaching kids in Peru about sexuality and gender in 2016 and then in 2023 he addressed a question from reporters about all of his prior comments on the subject.14

He is no enemy of change either. His views are not like an immovable rock. It was widely noted that the cardinals elected him precisely because he exemplifies the “bridge,” the “middle of the road,” the peacekeeper who can help us find a solution without letting the baby out with the bathwater. There is humility in his words about a shepherd’s to make himself small and not put himself above the flock.15 He belongs to the Order of St. Augustine, a Catholic order emphasizing communal life and charity. He told Vatican News that a bishop should not be like a “little prince” living in a remote palace, but rather stay close to the people he serves, walking and suffering alongside them.16 Walking and suffering with one’s community is the very essence of a dynamic life. There is no fixed point. Leo is the first Pope born after World War II. Like Francis, he is firmly in the Vatican II camp. As a cardinal, he used the X handle “drprevost” to express support for universal access to the COVID-19 vaccine, condolences for George Floyd, and criticism of Trump/Vance immigration policies. He voted in general elections from 2000 to 2024, with the exception of 2016 and 2020, although in those years he did vote in the Republican Party primaries. (Conservatives tried to spin that as an indication that he’s a Republican, but Illinois has an open primary system, so voters can choose which primaries to vote in, regardless of registration.)17 He voted in the 2008 and 2010 Democratic Party primaries, then the Republican Party primaries in 2012, 2014, and 2016. He voted in the 2024 presidential election by absentee ballot.18 I feel like his non-votes in the generals for 2016 and 2020 had to do with his distaste for Trumpian policies. I know I’m going out on a limb (thank God I’m not a journalist who swears by objectivity) but I seriously doubt he cast his 2024 vote for Trump. My guess is that, as far as partisan politics go, Dr. Prevost was an old school conservative, or at least right of center, and a Never Trump guy.19 He is known to be friends with Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, who is known for his liberal views.20 Cardinal Cupich did an interview for America: The Jesuit Review on Sunday, May 11. He talked about the new Pope and said he thinks Leo largely shares the vision of Francis toward a more inclusive Church. Of course, Cardinal Cupich was in the conclave and talked about why the cardinals ultimately chose Cardinal Prevost. He said, “you could feel the excitement as the votes were being announced”21 in his friend’s favor. Cardinal Cupich talked about the rising applause as the votes reached the necessary threshold to elect Cardinal Prevost as Pope. He could not see his friend from where he sat, but he heard from someone else that at one point during the final vote tally (the fourth of the day) the chosen man put his head in his hands. The excitement for me, and I believe for others too, stems from having such a decent and upstanding American on the international stage. Pope Leo XIV poses a much needed contrast to the current presidential administration. He reminds the world that there are nice Americans, who like immigrants, who respect diversity and difference, who support the invaded rather than the invaders, etc. The majority of Americans want justice for Ukraine and we were horrified by the way Trump and Vance treated President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on February 28. We need that contrast more than ever. We need to remind ourselves and our children than power comes with responsibility and that economic prosperity must be paired with ethical standards. Pope Leo was right to point out the dangers in our pandemic isolation and disillusionment. We need more than ever to be reminded that life has meaning, that leaders can be good, and that kindness and compassion are virtues that foster inclusion, acceptance, and friendship. The Church isn’t perfect, but God, it’s as good as any place to start. Ciao Papa Leone!

As of Easter weekend, it’s been 80 days since Donald Trump took the office of 47th President of the United States. You’ll recall that on his first day back in the Oval he signed an Executive Order to pardon 1500 people convicted of participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and commuted 14 sentences in connection with the attack.1 It might seem like it’s been years, but we are still short of his first 100 days, and he has done so much more damage than I ever imagined he could or would…. Of course, you might exclaim, “How could you be surprised? He told us what he would do!” And that’s fair. Nevertheless, there was a stubborn part of me that thought there’d be a red line. There would be something, or someone to stop him from crossing that next red line. I know, it was naive to think so. I read several books and subscribed to podcasts in the course of 2023 and 2024, educating myself about our government, our laws, how it all works, and exactly what recourse we had against the worst impulses of the Far Right. One book which I still have not quite finished but is, in my opinion, among the most relevant historical context, is Rachel Maddow’s book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. Maddow is famous for her meticulous, no-stone-left-unturned research. Her 20-minute monologues on MSNBC are legendary. She lives up to her reputation with Prequel. As a Louisiana native, I was particularly fascinated by her chronicle of the fascist experiment of Huey Long. Huey Long rose to be a U.S. Senator and might have ascended the Presidency if the assassin’s bullet had somehow spared him. Trump famously dodged a bullet twice, among several other threatening incidents at his rallies.2 Trump has invoked the spirit of McKinley, one of our four assassinated presidents, more than once. He likes McKinley because McKinley was president during the Gilded Age. Trump likes gilded things, did you notice? He wants to revert the Denali mountain in Alaska to its original name “Mount McKinley.”3 The Trump tariffs echo the McKinley-era tariff of almost 50% on imports.4 Trump’s tariffs are even more nonsensical, more unpopular than the McKinley tariff. They create more uncertainty and have done more damage to the stock and bond markets worldwide than anything in recent memory.

Anyway, it was not my intention to list every horrible thing Trump has done since redecorating the Oval Office (again) to echo the gold-plated decor at Trump Tower. Actually, my purpose for this article is to share with you Timothy W. Ryback’s article for The Atlantic on January 8, “How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days: He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.”5 In retrospect, the article feels like a warning to us. We should have heeded it. If Republicans in the Senate had read it and taken it seriously, maybe they’d have helped the Democratic minority stop confirmations of the worst of Trump’s nominations to his Cabinet. Then again, maybe not. It turns out it only took Hitler 53 days to make himself a full-blown autocrat. It has taken Trump just shy of 80 days to get to the point we’re at now—a standoff between the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch. Having already effectively neutered the Legislative Branch, and destroyed Wall Street confidence, Trump is now defying Supreme Court and federal court orders. His playbook echoes Hitler’s playbook almost to the letter. Recall how quickly after the November 2024 election that the MSNBC hosts “Joe and Mika” took themselves down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. Recall Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg falling in line to pay for VIP seats at the Inauguration, how Bezos used his ownership of The Washington Post to prevent its endorsement of the Democratic Party nominee (a longstanding WaPo tradition), how Zuckerberg pleased Trump by loosening restrictions on offensive speech and “ending diversity initiatives”6 on Meta platforms. That’s one angle of the playbook—get the press, subdue the opposition, and today (unlike in Hitler’s day) that includes social media.

Hitler took a number of steps to get the military and the police on his side. So far, Trump has largely relied on the Department of Homeland Security—specifically the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency—to act like the Nazis’ Gestapo, rounding up and detaining immigrants no matter what their legal status is, denying them any due process of law, and deporting them. First, his enforcers grabbed up Venezuelan immigrants and supposed MS-13 gang members (for some reason, “identified” for their Autism Awareness tattoos)7 for deportation to CECOT, Trump’s chosen gulag in El Salvador. (Trump and his friend RFK, Jr. have something against autistic people. RFK has said that people, like me, who are on the spectrum, “will never pay taxes, never hold a job, never play baseball, never write a poem, never go out on a date….many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”8 All I, as an autistic adult, have to say to RFK is this: I was successfully potty trained as a toddler, I don’t like it but I’ve played baseball, I pay taxes every year, and I’ve held many jobs. Oh, go to hell, Robert. I don’t have to prove my worth to you by rattling off your bullshit credentials. I know autistic people who could easily run circles around you in a competition of decency, kindness, and intelligence. You’re a disgrace to the Kennedy name. The real Kennedys are the ones making a positive impact in the world—like Maria Shriver, Caroline Kennedy, and Jack Schlossberg.)

Trump’s ICE enforcers have gone after teachers and students who are here legally on visas.9 It would be tedious to list all the arrests and deportations here, but there’s a quick reference for it. (See note 9.) The Trump administration is going after some of the students on the basis of their political activism. Some of the students were part of the massive protests for the dignity and rights of the Palestinian people. Trump thinks of himself as a great defender of Jews. He uses his friendship with fellow criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as credentials for that. However, it is a direct and full exercise out of Hitler’s playbook to grab off the streets people whose only offense is using free speech and expression in a way that displeases the dear leader. Biden’s ICE never arrested people for the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme. Biden never targeted Red Hats. In the United States of America, we let people come here to study and work, and political protesting is part of the academic experience. If Trump had his way, the only people in the USA would be those who agree with him or those who are afraid to express dissent. That’s not American. That’s fascism.

Fascism is here. It’s not just a scare tactic. It’s not just a meme. It’s here, right now. It’s not about the Left or the Right, only Power. The Judiciary is the last branch of government for Trump to bring under his heel. The Executive Branch was first, and that’s bad enough, given the scope of departments and agencies in its purview. With the help of his buddy Elon, Trump has rendered many agencies at worst null and void, at best highly reduced. Elon’s “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency) is the least efficient thing ever. You don’t make things more efficient by cutting staff. You don’t get cure diseases by cutting medical research. Nor will cutting things like USAID10 and PEPFAR11 make the world any healthier. Trump wants to make us unhealthy. He wants to cut the Department of Education and make us dumber. Meanwhile, he’s also making everything more expensive with his tariffs. Meanwhile, China is not cutting any research, not cutting education; far from it, they have been dumping money and continue to dump money into technology and innovation. Trump talks about wanting to make other nations pay their fair share, but all his bluster is doing is isolating us and making us less trustworthy. By cutting education, research, and innovation, he will make us less competitive and less productive too. Here, below, are a couple of talks I found helpful. The first one, from Ezra Klein on April 17, acknowledges what became obvious this week. The first step to healing is acknowledging that there’s a problem. The second one is a video in Substack from that I found…strangely comforting…because he reminds us that we’re not alone, and we all need to find the personal courage to do our part and fight this bullshit.

Adam Kinzinger

Emergency Video; April 14, 2025

Hey everyone. Today has a series of chilling things happen, and I wanted to discuss this…

Listen now

a year ago · 13666 likes · 477 comments · Adam Kinzinger

FOOTNOTES

Since my honorable discharge in November 2001, I have been a veteran of the U.S. Navy. Technically, I was discharged onto the Temporary Disability Retirement List, having to review my status periodically until I was finally determined to be eligible for full separation in 2005. So I became eligible for VA benefits in 2005, not 2001, and so this year marks 20 years that I have been going to VA clinics and hospitals for healthcare, including mental health treatment, and using the GI Bill for university tuition. I still remember the last review at the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton, where the doctor was determined to make sure that I knew how to connect with all of my VA benefits before I was permanently cut loose from active duty obligation—who to call, what forms and documents I needed, all of it. He knew I was sure to be released and he wanted to ensure that I made use of all the benefits I had earned. As always, even in walking away, the Navy made things easy for me. It may sound to a civilian who never served in the military like a strange thing to say, but it’s true. What makes things “easy” in the military is the consistency. (I was reminded recently from someone who quoted a line in Harold and Maude that consistency is not a common human trait.) There’s a certain code that everyone (enlisted in the military) learns in boot camp. The regulations, the procedures, the expectations….all are part of the code, just as every service member knows by heart the phonetic alphabet. I can’t speak for other veterans, but for me “the code,” as I’m calling it, is probably the thing I miss the most about the military. Nothing beats having that assurance about the people around you, that they all speak the same language. Prior to the military, I often had problems in communication with others. I was always on a different page, so to speak. My neurodivergent brain perceived and processed things my own way. Boot camp broke things down and reshaped the world, and suddenly I could form a puzzle that wasn’t totally out of step. One example of this was the M16 training. We had to learn how to break the rifle down, clean the parts, and put it back together; and do all of that in a certain time. I had never touched a gun before in my life and, I admit, at first the rifle was a total enigma to me. One day, though, one of my division’s RDCs, Petty Officer D—-, took me and some other poor struggling souls into a room where we could do some extra practice. Now Petty Officer D— was an interesting one. She was so tough. She was just like you would imagine an RDC in a movie, getting up in your face and yelling at you. She put me in her sights a lot. It was excruciating, but even as I experienced her scrutiny, there was something inside me that just knew….knew that it was doing me good. The best way I can describe her effect on me is to draw a comparison to Harry Potter’s relationship with Professor Snape. It was like having a teacher who literally seems to look right through you (Snape could read minds, and Harry could feel it quite early in their acquaintance.) You feel as though the teacher hates you, but later, as you gain more perspective, you realize what was actually happening. You are being changed because this person is not going to let you do anything the way you used to do it or even the way you’ve done it under others’ supervision. Those things you used to tell yourself, she’s not hearing it. Don’t even say it, don’t start. That rifle, it was just a puzzle. We take out the pieces and we put them back in. I don’t remember exactly how it clicked in my brain. There was just a point where I broke it down and put it back together in less than a minute. I stood up while everyone else was still working on theirs and I felt so weird. I’m pretty sure Petty Officer D— was smiling, but it was hard to tell; I think she was trying not to smile. I had to suppress my own smile. I couldn’t believe I finished breaking it down and putting it back together before anyone else, but that’s what happened, and it kept happening. I went from being one of the slowest to the fastest. To this day, whenever I watch Forrest Gump, I shake my head when he finishes putting his rifle together before anyone else. I just remember the drill sergeant getting in his face and screaming: “God damn it, Gump! You're a goddamn genius!....You must have an IQ of 160.” Petty Officer D— never did this, but only because she didn’t need to. She had a way of getting in your face….without getting in your face. After that remarkable moment, she pretty much left me alone. I guess she’d done what she needed to do with me. She never singled me out again.

The other RDC for my division was a Chief Petty Officer. Like Petty Officer D—, the Chief was unshakable, but she was different too. She was more personable than D—. I don’t remember her name, only her red hair and attitude of amusement. She was always in a jovial mood and would find a joke to make in every situation. Both CPO and D— were women who knew how to do their jobs. They did their jobs differently but to the same effect—very confidently and very well. One day we were at the medical center. I think it was the first week of boot camp. We were all assembled for Medication. The problem was that I had a hard time swallowing pills unless it was with food. There were two pills in a little cup and the expectation was to use another little cup of water to wash them down. CPO noticed that I hadn’t taken the pills. She told me to come forward, so I did. I stood in front of her, facing her. She asked me why I didn’t take the pills. I told her that I couldn’t do it, not with just water. She didn’t believe me. She told me it was just a mindset. It was a story I was telling myself. She said she wasn’t going to let me go anywhere until I swallowed those pills. She would stand there, I would stand there, until I did it. She was not unkind, just determined. This was not a suggestion, nor something to be debated. This was a thing that was going to happen. I was going to put the pills in my mouth, swallow them, and wash them down with water; and you know what? That’s exactly what I did. And swallowing pills was never a problem, ever again. I don’t want you to have the idea that it was easy. I didn’t do it on the first try, nor the second. I was uncomfortable, embarrassed, and there was a moment of gagging. She wouldn’t let me give up, though. She wasn’t mean. She just said, “We can do this all day if we need to.” She was serious. We would keep standing there until I swallowed those pills. I still love her for that. What she did, how she handled that, it set me free. At that moment, I did feel liberated. I know it seems like a small thing, but if you can’t do something, if you’re telling yourself a story that you cannot do something, that’s a barrier. CPO taught me how to overcome an unnecessary obstacle. What if a runner stopped on the track and said, “I can’t run anymore because of this barrier.” If that runner had jumped other barriers, but somehow this one prevented the runner from ever running again, he or she could either decide to stop running (just give up running) or remove the barrier—jump over it, walk around it, whatever. Do what you need to do to keep running. I mean, if you “can’t” run because you’re in a wheelchair, there are wheelchair races too. It’s like that character in the movie produced by my friends Sandon Berg and Michael Akers, the eponymous character, Morgan, a bicycle racer who, after an accident put him in a wheelchair, became a wheelchair racer.4

Speaking of running…. We had to do a lot of it in boot camp. Before boot camp, I was a lousy runner. I’m still not a great runner, and I still don’t enjoy running. I’m a much more natural swimmer. After boot camp, I always opted for the swimming test instead of the running test in the Physical Readiness Test (PRT). In boot camp, however, running was the only option, and we had to run the PRT in formation. We did regular formation runs around the track to get ready for the test. I remember there was shame in the division if you ended up in the back of the formation. Some people actually dropped out of the formation and lagged quite far behind. I was generally in the caboose of the formation or at least very close to it. I remember how badly my chest hurt, how hard it was to keep up. Petty Officer D— always ran slow so she could stay at the back and yell at the slowpokes to keep moving. CPO always ran in the front, a more encouraging, less demeaning presence. I don’t know how I did it, but I did manage to stay in the formation. I felt good about that, but I wanted to do even better for the actual test. When it came to the test day, I was lined up in the third row of the starting formation. I kept telling myself, don’t fall behind the third row. Whatever you do, stay in the third row. Just stay in the third row. And we were off, and I just kept repeating to myself, no matter how badly my chest hurts and I want to throw up, do not fall behind. I didn’t. I started that damn physical test in the third row and I finished that damn physical test in the third row. I don’t know what the motivational speakers would say about it. I guess they would attribute my success to “mind over matter.” Maybe that was it. I know that’s what my maternal uncles would say, that it’s a classic case of putting your mind to something and accomplishing it by sheer will power. I suspect “mind over matter” is part of the equation, but there was something more. It was just like CPO’s persistence about swallowing the pill and Petty Officer D—’s similar “we’ll this if it takes all day” approach to the rifle exercises. There was a stubbornness that had to be overcome. There was a story in my head that had to be tweaked. First, I had to accept that another story was possible. The military helped me to see the infinite possibilities in my story. There is very little about anyone’s life that is fixed and unchangeable. Only death and taxes, right? “Change is hard.” Not necessarily. It can be extremely difficult if you’re pushing against it. Resistance makes everything harder. That’s what it comes down to, what Petty Officer D— and the Chief Petty Officer drilled into me. Stop resisting. Open up. Find a way. See what you can do.

“What I can do” is a thing I as well as fellow veterans I know think about a lot. What’s possible? How can I contribute? How can I make something better? I’ve lived in a lot of different places. I’ve traveled a lot. I was born in Louisiana, but I graduated from high school in California. I joined the Navy from California. I served at a base north of Philadelphia and at the Naval Station in Norfolk, VA. I’ve lived in New York, Boston, and multiple places up and down California, including Los Angeles. In each of those places I have been served by the VA. The VA is my healthcare. I’ve seen up close how efficient the VA is. I’m not saying it doesn’t have problems. I just want to tell you what I’ve seen that is really good about it. The secure VA app and email system is incredible, allowing patients to easily communicate with doctors about care, prescriptions, and appointments. The medication mailing system is one of the best things about the VA, in my opinion. I hear about civilians getting their meds at CVS or Walgreens, and I’m sure that’s great, but I love that my meds come straight to my mailbox from the VA pharmacy. I also love being able to order my refills through the VA app. I don’t see any signs that my own doctors are part of the 80,000 planned employee cuts planned by DOGE and VA Secretary Doug Collins. They say it’s a “goal”5 (to cut 80K) and that they may or may not reach the “goal.” They’ve also suggested that they are targeting probationary employees, those being people who are in the first year of federal employment, but a federal judge already ordered them to rehire some of their probationary firings.6 I feel that my best contribution to this issue is to communicate as best as I can the importance of VA services. I’ve already named the ones I appreciate the most as a direct beneficiary—the pharmacy, the mental health services, and primary care. I hope Doug Collins is telling the truth when he says that essential services like those are not on the chopping block. My skepticism goes up when I see a disingenuous quote from him about “yoga teachers.”7 The VA, as far as I know, does not employ yoga teachers. The VA does partner with Ompractice to connect veterans with free yoga, tai-chi, pilates, meditation, and mindfulness classes.8 This is a partnership, not an employment. VA medical centers around the country are also partnered with research hospitals. For example, the VA Southeast Louisiana system is partnered with Tulane and LSU medical schools, offering residency training and teaching and research affiliations with those institutions.9 These kinds of partnerships are not employment relationships, but rather they are contracts that benefit not only the VA and veterans, but also the medical profession at large and, in the case of Ompractice, private practitioners of wellness therapies. Far from being a drain on taxpayers, the VA is an organization that gives and serves far more than it takes. The veterans who use the VA understand how important it is. It is up to us to watch DOGE and Doug Collins closely and then make sure our representatives in Congress know when they are getting it wrong. Do not despair. When the people speak and vote, good things happen. I’ll leave you with an article that made me smile. On Monday, March 31, published a report on the previous Saturday’s election in Louisiana, which was an incredible success (a BFD, Big effing Deal, as she said.) We got there because of high voter turnout. That’s how it’s done, friends.

Joy's House

That Louisiana win is a BFD (and a message to Wisconsin and Florida voters: yes we can!)

Jeff Landry didn’t even win in his own parish…

Read more

a year ago · 1046 likes · 19 comments · Joy-Ann Reid

NOTES

Institutions around the world stood up to help Ukrainian academics, researchers, and students not only find refuge but continue the important work of protecting and advancing the Ukrainian spirit. One of these was Philo Monaco, a philosophical institution based in, you might have guessed, Monaco. In solidarity with the invaded sovereign nation, Philo Monaco changed its social media logo from Monaco’s flag to the Ukrainian blue and yellow. Shortly after the invasion, Charlotte Casiraghi, one of the founders of Philo Monaco, addressed3 what she called an emergency assembly—in English, “Philosopher Now: By the Side of Ukraine”—to raise funds for French institutions to bring Ukrainian researchers and students to France, to participate in the philosophical meetings in Monaco, and to give financial aid to those academics who remained to do their work in Ukraine. Casiraghi, the niece of Prince Albert II of Monaco, also used the opportunity to say that Ukrainians would always be welcome in her country. She highlighted the fact that this assembly was held in the Principality’s Oceanographic Museum, founded by her ancestor, the first Prince Albert, who was a great scientist, oceanographer, navigator, and explorer. The first Albert was also a great diplomat, she said, who worked for international cooperation and peace. In 1903, the “Navigator Prince” founded the International Institute of Peace in Monaco. Not only was he a man of science, she said, but he laid the groundwork for Monaco as a place of “dialogue and exchanges between cultures and nations….” In that shadow, Casiraghi made her appeal for donations to the French institutional efforts to join hands with their Ukrainian counterparts, and she furthermore declared her own solidarity behind the cause. “We,” she said, “are in the same boat [with the Ukrainians, because] the war begun by Vladimir Putin is not only a war against Ukraine but a war against democracy which [impacts] us all and undermines the principles on which democracy was founded.” She said that “we are probably witnessing a perilous historical turning point” which calls on us who believe in “a certain idea of dignity and freedom.”4

As of February 2025, there were 249 “buildings of historical and/or artistic interest”5 damaged in the Russo-Ukraine war. One of the most devastating hits was the 2022 razing of the city of Mariupol, including the bombing of the city’s playhouse theatre, which killed the 600 people in the bomb shelter beneath it. The Russians declared victory in this battle and took over the city. Taking their cruelty to new heights, they restored the theatre for the self-serving purpose of staging a Russian propaganda variety show.6

I think the best expression of why this is all so relevant to what is happening in American (and let’s face it, global) politics right now is a comment on a YouTube video7 from a Ukrainian. A screenshot of the comment was then posted on Bluesky.

It reminds us of the recent history of Russian aggression into Ukraine, starting with Russia’s interference in their 2010 presidential election. Ukrainians fought back and are still fighting back. They are showing Americans how the defense of democracy is done. I don’t know if Americans are quite courageous enough to stage our own Revolution of Dignity. I’ve long feared that we are too spoiled, too pampered, too much like what Aldous Huxley prophesied in Brave New World. In spite of that, I maintain some hope that my fellow Americans will prove me wrong. Until now, the U.S. president has been hailed as “the leader of the free world.” For all his lip service about “free speech,” Donald Trump shows himself increasingly to be the antagonist of free-world ideology. I think Americans have much to learn from Ukraine, their history, literature, and their current leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That’s why Ukraine is to be the theme of the literary magazine I will publish in the Spring of 2026. Submissions are now open to all writers. Learn more: https://heavycrownpress.wordpress.com. Also, please do join our community on Bluesky. Remember always, our greatest power comes when we recognize that we are not alone.

The events of February 28 have me in a state of shock and despair. The moment I saw VP Vance arrogantly waving his hands, I didn’t have to hear his words. I knew from his body language what was going on. There are two sides here. There’s Good and there’s Evil. All the goodness and all the heroism is on one side. The other side—yep, that’s the side Vance is on—has nothing virtuous in its corner.

Donald Trump says to Ukraine, “You don’t have the cards.”1 That says everything about what this means to him. To him, it’s a game. It’s just a business deal, a negotiation, a chance to win or to lose, and we all know that Donald Trump will do anything to avoid the appearance of loss. Volodymyr Zelenskyy sees it all quite differently—not as a game, but as a very serious fight for survival, for the integrity and the autonomy of his people’s lives. What if their positions were reversed? What if it was Donald Trump whose country had been invaded? Would Donald Trump have stayed to lead his people through their defensive war? Maybe Trump would have negotiated with the aggressor and ceded territory instead of defending what was his? No? Well, that’s what he’s asking Zelenskyy to do. Trump himself would never back down, but that is what he wants Ukraine to do. He’s asking Zelenskyy to negotiate on the aggressor’s terms. He’s trying to gaslight Zelenskyy into accepting his own false view of the situation. The February 28 meeting ended badly because Zelenskyy refused to be gaslit. Zelenskyy maintained the mental acuity to stand strong in what he and every rational person knows to be true. I counted two times that Zelenskyy called out the marks of Putin all over this conversation. “I heard it from Putin,” the President of Ukraine said when Trump echoed Kremlin propaganda; and although in the other instance Putin was unnamed, he was unmistakably implied when Zelenskyy referred to the “influence” that Trump and Vance would one day feel themselves to be under.2

Then there was Marco Rubio, “Secretary of State,” slumped on the couch next to VP Vance, utterly emasculated.3 Here is the “Little Marco” of Trump’s mockery. He now dances for his torturer. It’s classic Stockholm syndrome. He sold his soul and now he is just a shadow of his former self, totally in the thrall of his dark lord. During the whole February 28 meeting, Rubio looked like he wanted to vomit.

“Just say thank you,” Vance said to Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy proceeded to thank the American people, and of course, as many people have pointed out, Zelenskyy has expressed not only gratitude but humility on a number of occasions. That’s not good enough for Trump. Trump wants the gratitude to be for him personally. He wants the credit for everything and the blame for nothing.

It was galling to hear Trump and Vance lecture about peace, as if Zelenskyy or any Ukrainian is somehow to blame because Russia invaded their country. In the Trump/Vance view, Ukraine should simply lay down arms, agree to a ceasefire, and let Russia take what they want. Trump and Vance fault Ukraine for fighting to keep their country for themselves and on their own terms. But again, Zelenskyy is too smart to be gaslit. He knows what this war is about. He knows whose fault it is. He knows that Putin cannot be trusted. He knows that because Putin has shown his colors time and time again. I think the most important thing said was from Zelenskyy in his summary of the conflict—that no one ever stopped Putin since the 2014 annexation of the Crimea, that through 2022 Putin occupied various parts of the Ukraine and still no one stopped him. “From 2014 till 2022, the situation was the same—people have been dying on the contact line and nobody stopped him. We had a lot of conversations with him, including a bilateral conversation. As a new president in 2019, I signed with him a ceasefire deal alongside Macron and Merkel. All of them told me that he will never go. We also signed a gas contract with him. But after all of that, he broke the cease-fire. He killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn’t do it.”4 5 6 Then three years ago, as of February 24, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of a NATO neighbor—and we still have people entertaining the idea that Putin can be stopped by some sort of appeasement. It didn’t work with Hitler, but somehow we think it will work with Putin? Make it make sense!

I don’t think it will do any good for Zelenskyy to try talking to Trump and Vance again. The malicious duo have made it abundantly clear they are not interested in evenhanded talks. For all that Vance said about diplomacy, what he and Trump really want is control. Ironically, Trump and Vance, in their bid for mastery, are really ceding the control to Putin. Because, yes, Zelenskyy was spot on when he said that, though they don’t feel it now, they will eventually feel the influence of Putin.7 The traditional alliances in the world order have been completely overturned, just as they were when Hitler was breaking diplomatic deals and crossing red lines to take control of sovereign nations. We now have Canada joining forces with Europe in direct opposition to the Trump Administration while the latter, in the name of the USA, finds common ground with authoritarian regimes. It is a situation that, left unchecked, will escalate into something very bad. Zelenskyy said it all: Putin will not stop. The only barrier to peace is Putin. He must be stopped. He won’t stop of his own accord. He won’t stop because he doesn’t care about anything except power. Evil only wants power and it never stops until it gets more of it…or some other force stops it.

Just like I said in “Why Libraries Must Fight for DEI,” this isn’t the time to be shy about taking sides. There is no neutral position. You’re either for Good or you’re for Evil. Neutrality is appeasement. It’s keeping your head down in fear. I know it’s terrifying, but what choice is there? Are we a nation that stands up for ideals penned in the Age of Enlightenment—those ideas about the fundamental rights of mankind by Thomas Paine, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the American founding fathers? Are we to cede this incredible legacy at the pinnacle of the Free World in order to debase ourselves under the puppet mastery of the KGB agent Vladimir Putin?8 I’ve seen lots of people pointing out that there’s only one side in this conflict who are defending (with their lives) the principles of human liberty and dignity, and for once, it’s not the side chosen by the American president. Human rights are at a crisis point. Ukraine is the front line for the defense of those principles. Putin is the antagonist of human dignity everywhere. It’s not a game. It’s not about who has the winning cards. It’s about who has the guts to stand up for what is right. I stand with Ukraine.

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The “cure is in the wound” is an idea I’ve come across multiple times. The phrase is not worth googling. You’ll find a quote from the Bible with an imprecise citation and you’ll find some literal interpretations, literally referring to physical wounds and healing. My meaning here is metaphorical, as I am thinking of emotional or psychological wounds, the kind that torment a person everyday, that inflame when triggered and cause a person to react from the amygdala, that part of the brain that releases adrenaline and cortisol in response to fear and anxiety. The amygdala senses danger—not necessarily some kind of external, real-time danger, but very possibly an imagined one based on past trauma. According to Ryan Dowd, who does training for de-escalation1 tools in the workplace, the amygdala also activates when a person feels disrespected. Dowd’s training largely focuses on homelessness and how to recognize and de-escalate triggers when talking to homeless people, but the training is applicable to everyone. We all have amygdalas. As he says, rightly, homeless people usually have a tremendous amount of trauma and so for them, the triggers are amplified. Just a bad day for a non-homeless person equates to a worse day for a homeless person. Also, homeless people experience disrespect and people ignoring/dismissing them, making them feel invisible and unimportant, on a regular basis—often several times a day. So while these kinds of triggers are painful for everyone, for a homeless person this happens so often that by the time you encounter that person, and you trigger them somehow, even if unintentionally, it might be the straw that broke the camel’s back. For me, as I completed Dowd’s Homeless De-escalation Training for work as a librarian, I was repeatedly struck by its applicability to multiple and common situations in everyday life. I’m going to give you one example from his training. I think it opens the door well towards a real understanding of how this works in every human being. In his talk, Dowd evokes the infamous Will Smith/Chris Rock “slap at the Oscars.” This is a perfect example of a person (Will Smith) being triggered on several points which are very common agitators of the amygdala. Dowd points out some key factors that set the stage for a triggered amygdala, one of these being an audience. Chris Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, on stage at the Oscars, in front of a huge live audience and for an even larger remote audience via television. Just because Will Smith is wealthy and a celebrity, that doesn’t mean he is immune to “fight or flight” impulses when he gets triggered. Of course, Dowd was not taking sides or accusing anyone. He merely pointed out the psychological process at work: the joke, the trigger, the laughter from the audience. Then he showed Will’s taped apology after the event, where he talked about hardly remembering what happened, because it was “foggy.” A “foggy” memory is a classic symptom after an amygdala trigger. A person literally seems to have somehow “lost it.” It’s very common to say things like, “I don’t know what came over me.” I want to elaborate on that idea—what indeed comes over us? What is it that is being triggered? What is the wound and what is its traumatic source? This is exactly what I’m working on with my therapist—pinpointing the triggers and tracing them to their source. This has been critical in building my awareness, although I’ll admit that it’s difficult to ‘catch it’ in the middle of the action, so to speak. That is the goal, though. If you recognize it after it happens, that’s only the first step. You have to keep going. Bring it into a meditation or do some journaling. Just get it all down. How did you feel? Notice the physical symptoms. Did a particular part of your body feel painful or heavy? I usually feel the heaviness in the solar plexus or in the hollowness in the stomach. Sometimes I feel pressure around the face and head, as if I’m being closed in; when I feel that, I start to panic. I feel scared, and “fight or flight” kicks in, overwhelmingly in favor of flight! But you can’t always flee. If you can’t get yourself out of the situation, you have to use other calming tools. This is when a therapist might suggest breathing or counting. Doodling works well for me. Just moving the pen on the paper, forming shapes, sketching lines, will take the edge off. That might be enough to get you through the situation until you are able to more meaningfully address the issue. Maybe you just sit down and try to think of something pleasant—something to get the dopamine pumping in your brain. Just saying my dog’s name has a calming effect on me. Dopamine is one of the hormones in the prefrontal cortex, which, in contrast to the fight-or-flight amygdala, is the more rational part of the brain. Once you start acting from the prefrontal cortex, you can think clearly. The body calms down. You de-escalate. Once I’m in the prefrontal cortex (and I know I’m being very untechnical here) that is the point when I start to be ok. That’s when I can start my meditation or journaling—I do one or both, depending on the situation I’m in. I have to do this practice everyday because, even though I’m increasingly aware of my trigger points, I don’t always catch it in a timely manner. I heard one spiritual teacher put it like this: “Are you catching it like a car at the top of the hill or only after you’ve begun to roll downward?” I always think of driving in San Francisco. Once you’re motoring down the hill, it’s going to take a lot of work to make the car stop. You might not be able to stop in a timely manner; you might get almost to the bottom before you can stop and turn the car to drive sensibly along a flat road. Maybe you’re able to stop the momentum but not before you’ve done some damage—busted up your tires, hit another car, or let “road rage” (another classic amygdala, “I don’t know what came over me” episode, usually triggered by fear, which leads to anger) take over your brain.

Most people are going through life unaware of their impact in the world. They have no idea how their words, facial expressions, and laughter are affecting other humans. That’s why I don’t rely on others to know my triggers. Even if they could be aware of my trigger points, the expectation would be tantamount to asking them to walk on eggshells. I really think this is something that we all should do for ourselves. I realize it might not be work that everyone wants or needs to do. Maybe you don’t have trigger points. Maybe you never “fly off the handle.” (You’re lucky!) Or maybe it’s just too scary, the trauma too intense, with or without a therapist. For me, it is essential work because the more aware I become, the more I recognize the patterns, and those patterns give me clues about the very meaning of my existence. What is that thing, what is it, and why does it keep showing up over and over again? There has to be a reason, even if the point is just for me to heal that wound and move on.

Astrological healers call it the “Chiron wound.” It refers to the very source of the pain that keeps haunting your life. It torments you. It lives in your head, festers, cries out, and is triggered again and again. The “cure is in the wound” is the metaphor for the healing that needs to take place in order for you to gain clarity and move on. Chiron was a half-god in Homer’s Illiad, a centaur who excelled in the healing arts. Chiron himself suffered two severe wounds. The first wound, as outlined by Dr. Neel Burton, was associated with the trauma of his conception and birth. He was the child of a rape—of the oceanid Philyra by Cronus, godhead of the Titans. Abandoned by both parents, he was raised and educated by Apollo. Right off the bat, we have a traumatic origin story followed by rejection. Then there is the lifelong conflict embodied in the centaur—the horse legs and the human torso. This is the struggle of being two things in one, not quite belonging to either group. Burton has an interpretation of the myth of Chiron and why it encapsulates so well the universal scope of childhood wounds: it is because Chiron himself focused on healing the “original wound,” finding within it the “source of motivation, even of inspiration, that leads him to great insight and achievement.”2 Like Chiron, we too can find the cure by ‘going to the wound’ and exploring for the source. Burton quotes the poet Rumi, writing about Chiron:

Whoever sees clearly what’s diseased in himself

Begins to gallop on the Way

….

Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place.

That’s where the light enters you.

The second wound Burton refers to is the one that led to his death: an arrow fired by his friend Herakles, accidentally hitting and fatally wounding Chiron. Despite being an expert healer, Chiron could not heal this wound, and yet as an immortal, he was unable to end his suffering through death. He thus made a bargain with Zeus whereby Chiron exchanged his immortality for the freedom of Prometheus. Burton compares this to modern euthanasia: “Chiron’s stoical decision to die in the face of unbearable and incurable pain, especially in light of his immortality, raises profound, and surprisingly modern, ethical questions about euthanasia and the desirability of immortality, questions that have never been more pertinent than today.”3

In Chiron’s story, there is so much that is familiar. He was the child of rape and rejected by both parents, but while these two things alone might seem like incurables, it was the training he received from Apollo which gave him the tools to understand how to overcome such painful foundations. Had his parents never rejected him, he would not have been adopted by Apollo; and then Apollo could not have taught him the medicinal arts. In other circumstances, he might have been wild and a hunter like the other centaurs. Yet the tragedy laid the groundwork for what became his real genius and the way that he found purpose in the world.

In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in 2024, a fellow librarian told me about an initiative to promote civil discourse, not only among patrons but in the Library and Information (LIS) profession as well and at large. The feeling seemed to be that partisan neutrality is not quite enough and that, in some cases, it is potentially counterproductive to the goal of inclusivity. While neutrality was once thought to be ideal in library spaces, there is a powerful argument against. Neutrality seems to say, “Don’t talk about some things; you might offend someone. Just keep your thoughts about it to yourself.” (It simply doesn’t work, no more than “don’t ask don’t tell” as a policy of the U.S. Military from 1994-2011.) Those kinds of thoughts produce a lot of anxiety. Anxiety puts people on edge. Public libraries especially are already beleaguered with tensions about parental-guardian rights, age-group-appropriateness, race and gender issues, and day-to-day struggles in the most vulnerable communities—like hunger and crime. It is quite common to find library professionals more than a little paranoid about touching anything that reeks of too much politics—and yet this attitude, that we’d better not talk about it, quite harmfully works against the atmosphere of inclusion we all should aspire to. Too much emphasis on being neutral puts a community under duress, possible oppression, and ignores our professional duty to encourage communities to engage with each other, individuals to think beyond themselves. Of course we want to build bridges. (Dankowski, 2024).1 We also want to remember the power of the collective and the critical role that libraries, as cultural institutions, play towards expanding human thought and knowledge. (Carr, 2002).2 We cannot be engaged with community learning without being mindful, and there is nothing mindful, or thoughtful about neutrality. Neutrality is passivity. Mindfulness requires alertness, attention, presence, and the willingness to allow individuals to think together towards a better understanding of things. Take the prevalent issue of DEI for an example. The Trump Administration has made an enemy of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies. One of Trump’s first actions as 47th President was to rescind a number of President' Biden’s Executive Orders, including E.O. 13985.3 That was the very first executive order of President Biden, a sweeping motion toward the “advancement of racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government.”4 Trump and his acolytes, most prominently the billionaire Elon Musk, outright call DEI harmful and “another word for racism.” (Ellis, 2025)5

Prior to Trump’s second term, the federal government had a longstanding policy of prioritizing woman-owned and minority-owned contractors. Affirmative Action is what we called it when I was in the military in the 1990s. Executive Orders in the 1960s established equal opportunity practices and so-called “affirmative action” in federal hiring and employment. DEI is the much more recent evolution and a more expansive approach to leveling the playing field and tackling systemic inequities on a wide scale, not just racial inequities, but ones that harm disabled and LGBTQIA+ communities as well. Between 2019 and 2022, DEI gained enormous traction not only in federal workplaces but also in the wider private sector, with businesses assigning “diversity and inclusion” officers to give training and promote widespread multicultural awareness. (Ellis, 2025).6 With the Republicans gaining not only the White House but majorities in both Houses of the 119th United States Congress, DEI has become an increasingly favorite scapegoat in the studios at Fox News. LIS professionals cannot take a neutral position in this polarized climate without running the risk of ignoring real harms to already distressed communities. Of course, we don’t want to merely pay lip service to DEI principles; “performative antiracist politics” (Mehra, 2021)7 are hardly more desirable than the Elon-Musk-led revolt against DEI. (Elon Musk, as a white billionaire with many government contracts, has a compelling economic interest in dismantling a policy that bolsters his competition.) Bharat Mehra warns that too many LIS institutions have merely scratched the surface of equity rather than slicing deep into racial and sexual inequalities to authentically hold the culprits accountable. Perhaps this is why it has been so easy for Trump and Musk to reverse what progress had been made; if that progress was barely more than just above the surface, it must have been feeble, indeed! What good, after all, is a performative strategy, with politically correct language, if nothing ever changes in a meaningful way? A lot has happened in the twenty years between David Carr’s call for a “community mind” in 2002 and Bharat Mehra’s substantial and authentic measures against institutional racism. Mehra’s warning about “crocodile tears” was published after the murder of George Floyd but before the second presidential term of Donald Trump. Trump’s annihilation of federal DEI initiatives will set us back such that we will undoubtedly have to start from scratch in the post-Trump era. Neutrality is not and will never be the answer. Neutrality in response to racial discrimination is like trying to be “color blind.” After the aggressive anti-racial policies of the 1960s, American institutions gradually adopted the doctrine of “color blindness,” which ended up being very unhelpful and outright damaging to the wellbeing of racial minorities. Color blindness, like neutrality, dictates that the issue must be ignored instead of combated. By pretending that the issue was already solved, society devolved into old habits and biases. For libraries to take a neutral stance, therefore, would be for them to tolerate endemic injustice and delay resolution until DEI is “politically correct” again. LIS professionals are no different from other professionals in belonging to an organizational culture where civility is prized. We are told to use “de-escalation” tools to deal with disruptive patrons. Some libraries are more tolerant than others when it comes to access to library spaces. For instance, some library systems carefully curate the list of groups who can reserve meeting rooms; they have policies that allow free access to such rooms on a first-come-first-serve basis, but only pre-approved groups can reserve them in advance. Such policies ensure that groups are not discriminated against for beliefs or affiliations and that everyone in the community is assured of access to services. Pre-approval status, though, hinges on whether a group meets the reasonable criteria and fair standards of safety and conduct. On the other hand, if a library decided to be “neutral” about reserving spaces, they could run the risk of hate groups utilizing spaces where the public quite naturally and reasonably expects to feel safe and respected. There is always a risk of disruptions in libraries, but these are largely mitigated when there are well-thought-out and consistent policies governing the access to services. A position must, therefore, be adopted and agreed upon in the formulation of these policies; anything like neutrality puts the library in serious danger of allowing chaos to reign. 

The Biden years between the Trump presidencies already seem, in retrospect, like an oasis—four glorious years when we didn’t have to watch the President’s every move, when mostly things he said in speeches were quite mundane and typical. Joseph Robinette Biden ushered in a short-lived return to normalcy, a general civility we might have taken for granted, and while no administration is perfect, the change back to Trump, has been so jolting to the national consciousness as to feel like an electric shock—no doubt literally shocking many Americans from a political snooze. For long stretches during Biden’s time in office, we heard little about Trump unless there was a court filing, indictment, or conviction; and then, suddenly last summer there was the strange shooting from a rooftop in western Pennsylvania, Secret Service trying to pull the shot ex-president to his feet, Trump looking for his shoe before pumping his fist in a show of bravado. Events rolled on in quick succession: the Republican National Convention, the nomination of Trump and Vance, “childless cat lady” comments, the Biden-Trump debate, Biden stepping aside for Kamala Harris, and the rest is history. Right out of the gate, Kamala Harris was mocked by Trump as a DEI hire. Recall the “black jobs” comment, and the backlash of black Americans boasting about their “black jobs”. (Brown, 2024 / King, 2024).8 The whole notion that anyone thinks of a job as typical of or belonging to a racial group underscored the perseverance of racial bias and the very necessity of DEI. If the white people who voted for Trump truly believe that there are unique “black jobs” for “black people,” surely that proves the need for DEI. It is a bias of perception that reveals the historic failure of “colorblindness” as an antidote to racism. We can’t talk of equality in the workplace without a baseline acceptance of equal potential. If we harbor a bias about the kinds of jobs suitable for (solve for x) group, that is a serious oversight in ethical reasoning. The backlash against Trump’s “black jobs” remark was encouraging. We saw #blackjobs become a thing on social media. (King, 2024).9 Yet, if we think about it, we don’t have to dig much to find historical precedent for the stereotyping of some professions—Jewish bankers, women as teachers and nurses, black American men as rappers and basketball players. I’m old enough to remember the rebranding of “stewardess” into “flight attendant” in order to overcome the rather demeaning stereotype about airline employees, and that’s to say nothing about the insulting distinction between “actors and actresses,” “authors and authoresses,” etc. It is not a coincidence that the MAGA movement has embraced the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto that outlines the GOP plan to reverse cultural progress and erase the ability of government to help perennially disadvantaged and vulnerable populations. The side of the aisle backing Project 2025 are pushing to restore the kind of cultural norms that made American society “a man’s world” when others could hardly compete with them for the top jobs in every profession, when non-whites were relegated to a servile class of sharecroppers and housemaids, and women would stay at home to clean the house, bake cookies, and care for children. At any rate, Project 2025 backer J.D. Vance does not see any point of the “childless cat lady” or the menopausal woman beyond her potential as a grandmother. (Pengelly, 2024).10 It is a two-gender-only paradigm in which LGBTQIA+ and transgender are forced to suppress their real natures and immigrants are pressured to know their place as they assimilate into the worldview promoted by Christian Nationalism. Neutrality in the year of Project 2025 means being silent. It means letting oppressors and abusers invade spaces that should be respectful, decent, and safe. It means complicity as LGBTQIA+ shrink into the shadows, as immigrants shrink from seeking help for fear of being deported, as women are forced to give birth against their will, and as black people live in fear of looking at a racist police officer the wrong way.

In library school I learned that, above everything else, librarians are optimal when they empower patrons, not when telling them to “shush.” Yes, the public library is a place where we expect people to use their “library voices,” but the reasons for that have to do with creating a contemplative, peaceful, and calm atmosphere—kind of like the one I talked about in my article about my visit to Shakespeare & Company in Paris. (Rovira, 2025).11  It has nothing to do with a misguided notion of telling people to hold their tongues and share nicely with Nazis. 

When public libraries across America tried to foster an attitude of civility during the 2024 election season, no one anticipated the way that a Donald Trump victory would embolden his most ardent supporters. Many of us hardly anticipated that he would indeed be victorious. Whatever one might say about Kamala Harris—that, perhaps, she was too much aligned with the status quo, with neoliberalism—one thing is certain: diversity would not be under attack right now under a President Harris. People convicted of horrendous crimes (in some cases assault on police officers) on January 6, 2021 would still be incarcerated. (Dreisbach, 2025)12 A Harris Administration would never have attempted to freeze funding to Medicaid and HeadStart. Elon Musk would not be allowed in the front door at the Treasury Department, let alone given sweeping access to classified databases that store social security numbers—not if the President was named Harris. If it had been President Harris at the Netanyahu press conference on February 4th, we would not be any closer to peace in the Middle East, but at the very least, we would not be talking about beachfront condos on the Gaza Strip. In such an alternative reality as Harris being “POTUS 47,” we might be able to talk about neutrality—because something like USAID—an international development agency that never ruffled feathers in previous administrations, and that gives life-saving aid to communities in crisis—would not be under active existential threat. Donald Trump reentered the White House with an agenda of destruction. He means to break all the metaphorical toys most of us thought were solidly baked into the system—just like we all thought that in our democratic notion of justice no man or woman is above the law. It turns out that, like so many other things we took for granted, is rendered just words on paper when maniacs rise to power.

I want to close this article with a pop culture reference that may take the temperature down a bit. In my downtime, I’ve been making my way through the original Charmed TV series, about three witches playing out their destiny as the fighters of the demonic community. Viewers my age—old enough to have watched the show when it aired on the WB Network eons ago—might recall the predominant story arc of star-crossed love-and-hate between Phoebe Halliwell (Alyssa Milano) and Cole Turner/Belthazor (Julian McMahon). Their relationship hits the ultimate snafu (no spoilers here) when Cole becomes the Source of All Evil in Season 4. In the episode “Long Live the Queen” Phoebe tries to have it both ways—to be Cole’s wife and Queen of the Underworld, but at the same time still save Innocents and help her sisters. There is that amusing scene where Phoebe orders a demon to leave his prey alone and, being obeyed, she wonders why her sisters don’t agree that’s not quite good enough. It’s just like something I see a lot of people doing right now—trying to help and do good for people in need while at the same time falling into the trap of Both-Sidesism. We can’t help someone by surrendering to their attackers. “Oh, it’s OK if they want to have their hateful meeting over there, as long as they don’t try to kill us.” As long as evil hangs in the air, the threat stands. Phoebe learns in her brief spell as queen of the demons that the critical difference between the good and the evil is that it’s only evil that is willing to compromise in existential terms—because compromise in life or death situations will always give evil the advantage. The good do not compromise when it comes to evil. Good cannot capitulate to evil without losing its essence. Evil must be vanquished or it will destroy all goodness in its path. The character of Cole is a perfect specimen of this truth in action. Cole himself is part good, part evil. Cole is his good half, Belthazor his evil half. It is Cole who falls in love with Phoebe and will do anything to save her, but Cole is in a constant turmoil as Belthazor fights for dominance. Of course, in real life, we all have metaphorical demons that stir inside us. Echoes of bad experiences haunt us and trigger our worst impulses. The spiritualist Eckhart Tolle calls them “pain bodies,” which if we don’t learn to be aware of, can overtake us and destroy the real essence of our being. Tolle instructs us to learn to transmute these pain bodies, which I think is a softer way of saying vanquish. Whether the “pain body” is macro or micro it is an evil that undermines the good into an existential crisis. Our best impulses as a nation (equal justice under the law, diversity and equity, to name just a few) are just like our personal virtues—they can thrive only in the absence of capitulation to their enemies. They are values that must be defended in the dark times, and strengthened in the good times.

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REFERENCES:

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Rovira, A. (2025). “Despair and Respair.” Heavy Crown Press.

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