Country

February 9, 2026

WHAT AMERICAN IS, WHEN WE REMEMBER (Super Bowl XL – Bad Bunny)

America is not a gate.

It is a field—

wide enough for sugarcane to grow

where yard lines once pretended to be borders.

It is a song that refuses translation

because it does not ask permission to exist.

A mother tongue lifted into floodlights,

each syllable a hand reaching forward

instead of a fist held tight.

America is a child

looking up at someone who looks like him,

not because fame matters,

but because possibility does.

Because belief still survives

in the small, unguarded places.

It is a blessing spoken outward,

never hoarded.

A roll call of neighbors,

names said slowly, lovingly,

as if geography itself were a family album

creased by use,

kept close to the heart.

America is flags moving together,

cloth breathing in unison,

not competing for air.

It is color without apology.

It is history that did not arrive quietly

and never will.

America is the courage to stand joyful

while someone else calls joy a threat.

It is love so visible

that hate reveals its true size—

small, brittle, afraid of music.

It is not purity.

It is not silence.

It is not fear dressed up as tradition.

It is not the narrowing of the world

to fit a frightened man’s vocabulary.

America is a place where language becomes rhythm,

where culture is shared like food,

passed hand to hand,

where no one asks you to erase yourself

to be welcomed.

It is the understanding that belonging

is not something you win

by excluding others,

but something you deepen

by making room.

America is a homeland that says,

We are still here,

not as defiance,

but as devotion.

And when the world is watching,

America—at its best—

chooses to answer cruelty

with celebration,

division with invitation,

and hate

with a love so expansive

it cannot be shouted down.

This is the America worth handing to our children—

not wrapped,

not polished,

but alive,

singing in every language it has ever known,

standing together in the open,

unafraid of itself.

January 12, 2026

WHEN SEEING BECOMES AN ACT OF DEFIANCE

There are moments when a single death feels heavier than death itself—when it becomes a symbol, a question mark burned into the public conscience. The murder of Rene Nicole Good is one of those moments. Not only because a life was taken, but because of what followed: the silence, the distortion, the insistence that we look away from what our own eyes and instincts tell us is wrong.

Authoritarianism does not always arrive in boots and banners. More often, it comes softly, wearing the language of order, safety, and expertise. It asks for trust while dismantling accountability. It does not demand belief outright—it conditions it. It repeats its version of events until exhaustion replaces scrutiny, until doubt feels impolite, even dangerous.

What we should fear is not merely violence, but the erasure that follows it. When a government insists that its narrative supersedes lived reality, it is not asking for agreement—it is rehearsing obedience. “Believe only what we say, not what you see” is not a slogan of democracy; it is the oldest reflex of power afraid of the truth.

The danger is not that lies are told. Lies have always existed. The danger is when lies are institutionalized—when they are delivered with the authority of law, amplified by compliant media, and insulated from challenge by accusations of disloyalty. At that point, truth becomes a subversive act, and memory itself is treated as a threat.

History teaches us that authoritarian systems do not begin by banning speech; they begin by ridiculing it. They do not begin by imprisoning dissenters; they begin by discrediting them. They do not begin by denying reality; they begin by reframing it—selectively, strategically—until reality feels negotiable.

What happened to Rene Nicole Good forces us to confront a harder truth: that citizenship is not a passive status. It is an obligation. A democracy cannot survive on compliance alone; it requires friction. It requires citizens who are willing to sit with discomfort, to ask questions that have no immediate answers, and to resist the seduction of easy narratives.

Resistance does not always look like protest. Sometimes it looks like remembering. Sometimes it looks like refusing to repeat a lie, even when it would be simpler. Sometimes it looks like saying, quietly but firmly, “That is not what I see.”

The strength to resist begins internally. It begins with intellectual humility—the willingness to admit uncertainty—paired with moral courage—the refusal to surrender judgment. Authoritarianism feeds on fear and fatigue. It withers in the presence of clarity and solidarity.

We should fear any government that treats skepticism as betrayal, grief as inconvenience, and truth as a managed resource. But fear alone is not enough. Fear must sharpen resolve, not paralyze it.

A free society is not defined by the absence of power, but by the presence of limits—limits enforced by citizens who understand that democracy is not something handed down, but something held up, daily, by vigilance.

If they want us to believe only what they say and not what we see, then seeing clearly becomes an act of defiance. And remembering—especially those they would rather we forget—becomes an act of justice.

September 11, 2025

Remembering 9/11: Twenty-four Years Later

Twenty-four years have passed since that September morning when the sky was impossibly blue, and then turned to smoke and ash. In the days and weeks that followed, we were broken, but we were together. Neighbors reached across fences, strangers held one another in crowded vigils, firefighters became our heroes, and compassion rose like a second flag over ground zero. Our grief was immense, but so was our unity.

Today, that spirit feels far away. We are no longer a people who instinctively lean toward one another in times of pain, but a nation divided against itself—sharpened by anger, weaponized by politics. Violence has become routine, and each new act of bloodshed is not met with collective resolve but with polarization. Gun violence, once unthinkable at this scale, has been politicized into endless arguments, and the blame is always placed elsewhere—never on us, never on our unwillingness to act.

America was once known, however imperfectly, for its compassion, its courage, and its sense of social justice. On 9/11, the world watched a nation gather its wounded heart and hold it tenderly, refusing to be defined only by tragedy. Now, we seem defined by division. The ashes of ground zero remind us not only of lives lost but of a unity that has itself turned to ash.

If this anniversary means anything, it must be to remember that in our darkest hour we found one another—and to ask if we are still capable of that kind of grace.

September 9, 2025

The Thin Edge of Freedom

It never happens all at once. Democracies rarely fall with a single catastrophic blow; they wither, slowly, under the weight of small, “reasonable” compromises — the kind that seem harmless until, suddenly, they are not.

The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court to lift the ban on removing people from the streets based on “profiling” has been defended as a matter of “public safety” and “order.” But behind the sterile legal language lies something older and far more dangerous — the sanctioned power to define who belongs and who does not. Once we give government bodies the authority to decide, based on appearance, behavior, or circumstance, which human beings are worthy of dignity and which are not, we step onto a road we should know by heart.

Poland, 1939, is often remembered for its devastating end. But before the gas chambers and ghettos, before mass deportations and camps, there were ordinances. Small ones. Laws that allowed authorities to “remove undesirables” from public spaces. A subtle shift in language: “public safety,” “social order,” “economic burden.” These justifications opened the door for exclusion — first social, then legal, and finally existential. It began with people being pushed from streets, squares, and markets, labeled as “problems” rather than neighbors, citizens, and human beings.

We tell ourselves that America is different, that our institutions are stronger, that our democracy is permanent. But history warns otherwise. The most dangerous erosion of freedom comes not with sirens but with silence — when we accept incremental cruelty in exchange for the illusion of control.

This Supreme Court decision is not about homelessness alone, nor about urban safety, nor about the aesthetic order of our cities. It is about power — who wields it, and over whom. When our highest court grants legal permission to strip rights from the most vulnerable, we are participating in a reshaping of our national character. Each decision like this redraws the moral boundaries of our democracy.

The parallels to pre-WWII Poland are not exact, nor should they be overstated. But they are haunting enough to demand our attention. Back then, profiling didn’t start with religion or ethnicity alone — it began with poverty, vagrancy, and “unwanted” populations. The system learned, step by step, who it could erase without resistance.

The warning signs are here. A government emboldened to control public space by removing certain bodies. A judiciary increasingly aligned with ideological power rather than constitutional principle. A populace numbed by exhaustion, partisanship, and fear.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s history, repeating in whispers before it ever shouts.

Democracy does not collapse in grand gestures — it crumbles under the weight of ordinary decisions made in the shadows of extraordinary consequences. The question before us is whether we will recognize these quiet tremors for what they are or wait, as so many once did, until the ground beneath us gives way.

For those who believe in freedom, equality, and the dignity of every human being, silence is no longer neutral. It is complicity.

August 28, 2025

Minnesota: Where Prayers Could Not Save Them

There were prayers still hanging in the air
when the sound broke through the hymn—
metal splitting silence,
bodies folding like fragile paper
in a place meant to hold them safe.

Another church.
Another town whose name
we will remember
only because of the blood on its floor.

Somewhere,
in the dim rooms of Washington,
they sit with folded hands,
offering thoughts,
sending prayers
like flowers tossed into a river
while the current drags us under.

The children are gone.
The mothers,
the fathers,
the soft elders who built these walls
now lie in the quiet the gunman left behind.

And still,
nothing.

Nothing
but the sound of lobbyists
counting their victories,
nothing but the rustle of checks
signed in back rooms,
nothing but the silence of a government
that looks away
because power has its price
and our dead
cannot afford the bid.

We were promised sanctuary.
Instead,
we have built an altar
to the weapon,
kneeling before it
while our children are buried beneath it.

How many more?
How many hymns must end mid-breath
before the halls of power
hear the echoes
screaming through the pews?

The candles still burn tonight.
The names will be read tomorrow.
And somewhere,
someone is already
loading the next round.

August 15, 2025

Woodstock – August 16

Woodstock

We came barefoot into the fields,
the sky dripping music and rain,
our bodies pressed close in the mud,
hearts warm as the campfires
we believed could burn away
the old world.

We thought love was a weapon
that could dismantle empires,
that every guitar chord
was a law rewritten,
that every sunrise
was the first day of the new earth.

We shouted peace until our throats bled,
until the flags frayed in our hands.
We thought we would inherit
the halls of Congress,
reshape the courts,
turn power into a public trust
for everyone,
not just for a fortunate few.

But the years are long and merciless.
We have lived to see
the gap between mansion and shelter
widen until it swallows the horizon.
Social justice is a banner
faded by wind and rain,
while politics is wielded
for grift,
for empire,
for the quiet corruption
of men in robes and women in power suits
who bow only to the wealthiest one percent.

I still hear the music sometimes,
faint, behind the static.
It smells of wet grass and patchouli,
of hope before the fever broke.
We were so young.
We were so certain.
And now,
the mud has dried to dust.

June 17, 2025

When Silence Screams: The Hubris and Apathy of a Broken Leadership

In the aftermath of the tragic shootings that claimed the lives of members of the Hortman and Hoffman families, what should have been a solemn moment of collective grief and unity was instead met with a telling void—no statement, no gesture, no condolences from the White House. Not even the minimal decency of recognizing innocent lives lost. In place of empathy, there was deflection. From the GOP, we witnessed what has become a familiar routine: politicized finger-pointing and bad-faith rhetoric that serve only to deepen divides and avoid responsibility.

This absence of compassion, this gross indifference, is not just morally staggering—it’s emblematic of the rot that has metastasized in our political leadership. Under Donald Trump’s influence, cruelty has not only become policy—it has become performance. Hubris has eclipsed humility, and political gain has all but extinguished our national conscience. The failure to even pretend to care speaks volumes about how desensitized and broken this administration is, and how far we’ve drifted from any recognizable moral compass.

We are watching, in real time, the normalization of violence—not merely as a societal ill, but as a partisan tool. When the lives of American citizens are reduced to narrative pawns in a culture war, when leaders refuse to grieve with their people because it doesn’t serve their agenda, we lose more than just lives. We lose a piece of our shared humanity. And when silence is all that comes from the top, it becomes deafeningly clear: the message is that some lives are unworthy of acknowledgment, depending on whose grief is politically convenient.

What kind of country have we become when our government cannot deliver even the most basic human response—sympathy? How is it possible that in the face of senseless violence, our leaders offer not unity, but opportunism? It is grossly, dangerously unacceptable.

This isn’t just a failure of leadership. It is a deliberate choice—a choice to divide, to deflect, and to harden the national heart. That choice diminishes us all.

I am deeply saddened—though no longer surprised—that this country has once again reached an all-time low. Under this administration, “lowest” has become a consistent signature, an evolving standard by which tragedy is not mourned but manipulated. We must not accept this as normal. We must not allow apathy to replace accountability, or arrogance to replace empathy. Because if we do, the silence will only grow louder, and the violence more routine.

We are better than this. We must demand better than this.

May 23, 2025

Why Memorial Day Still Matters

Every year, as the last Monday in May approaches, Americans gather in parks, around grills, and beside headstones. For some, it’s the unofficial start of summer; for others, it’s a day of solemn remembrance. But behind the barbecues and parades, Memorial Day holds a sacred place in our national conscience—a day not just of memory, but of meaning. It remains as vital today as it was when first observed in the aftermath of the Civil War.

At its heart, Memorial Day is about honoring sacrifice. It’s a day to remember those who gave their lives not for glory or reward, but to protect an ideal: democracy. These men and women wore the uniform of our country and carried its burdens into battlefields both near and far. Their courage didn’t just preserve borders—it preserved freedoms: the right to vote, to speak, to worship, and to dissent.

But Memorial Day isn’t only about distant wars and fallen heroes in foreign lands. It’s also about those who have defended democracy here at home. Throughout our history, from civil rights marches to courtroom battles, Americans have stood against injustice to ensure that the promise of freedom reaches every citizen. Some of them, too, paid the ultimate price—not with rifles, but with resolve.

In a world that often feels fractured and uncertain, the sacrifices we honor on Memorial Day ground us. They remind us that democracy isn’t inherited—it’s defended. Not once, but continually, by those willing to serve and, if necessary, to fall.

So we remember—not just to mourn, but to reaffirm our commitment to the values that those we honor believed were worth dying for. Memorial Day asks us not just to look back, but to look within and ask what we’re doing to keep the flame of liberty alive.

Because freedom endures not by chance, but by choice. And remembrance is part of that choice.

May 5, 2025

Cinco de Mayo: A Completely Serious and Accurate Historical Account (Not Really)

Let me begin by saying that I love any holiday that justifies eating guacamole before noon and drinking margaritas the size of birdbaths. Naturally, Cinco de Mayo is high on my list of favorite holidays—right up there with National Pancake Day and whatever Wednesday my local pub decides to call “Trivia Night.”

Like most Americans, I used to think Cinco de Mayo was Mexico’s Independence Day. I believed this confidently and loudly, usually while wearing a sombrero I got from Party City and holding a beer imported no farther than St. Louis. As it turns out, Mexico’s actual Independence Day is September 16th. Oops. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

Now, you may ask, “Why would the French invade Mexico?” Good question. Apparently, Napoleon III was bored, couldn’t get a Netflix subscription, and decided that Mexico would look fabulous with a little European flair. But the Mexicans weren’t having it. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, they beat back the French like a mom slapping a spatula out of your hand before the cake cools. It was a wildly impressive underdog moment—Rocky Balboa but with bayonets and mustaches.

And yet, despite this dramatic military victory, Cinco de Mayo isn’t even a big holiday in most of Mexico. In fact, most Mexicans are like, “You guys are still doing that?” while watching gringos attempt salsa dancing like caffeinated giraffes.

In the United States, however, Cinco de Mayo has become a glorious, guac-fueled celebration of Mexican culture, music, and tortilla-based architecture. It is a day when we collectively remember that tequila has consequences and that wearing a poncho to the office might raise HR questions.

Now, let’s be clear—Cinco de Mayo is not just an excuse to drink margaritas at 11 a.m. on a weekday. It’s also an excuse to eat nachos the size of a futon while pretending you know what a mariachi band is. If you’re lucky, you’ll attend a street festival where toddlers in tiny sombreros throw confetti at your feet like you’re some kind of queso-coated monarch.

And yet, despite all the fun, Cinco de Mayo offers something deeper: the opportunity to celebrate resilience, culture, and the triumph of the underdog. Also, tacos. Lots of tacos.

So this Cinco de Mayo, raise a glass (or three), learn a little history, and try not to refer to your neighbor as “amigo” just because he’s wearing sandals. And remember: the real battle is not against the French—it’s trying to eat a burrito the size of your forearm without it disintegrating into your lap.

¡Viva el guacamole! ¡Viva Cinco de Mayo! And most importantly—viva nap time afterward.

April 21, 2025

Easter 2025

In this season of renewal and remembrance, we are reminded of two timeless stories—stories that stretch across centuries and traditions, but speak to one truth: that liberation is born of courage, faith, and relentless hope.

Passover tells of a people rising from bondage, defying a brutal empire with nothing but faith and determination. Easter proclaims that even in the face of betrayal, injustice, and death, life and truth cannot be buried for long. In both, we find the fierce reminder that darkness does not have the final word.

Today, we stand in a moment that tests our endurance. The weight of this administration’s policies and rhetoric may feel heavy. It may tempt us to retreat, to grow numb, to give in. But we are not alone—and we are not without power.

This season calls us not only to reflect, but to rise. To be the voices in the wilderness. The hands that reach for justice. The stubborn hearts that refuse to accept cruelty as normal. Like those before us, we persist not because it is easy—but because it is right.

So stand. Speak. Refuse to be silenced. Whether you light candles or lift hallelujahs, let your courage burn bright enough to show others the way. We are descendants of exodus and resurrection. Resistance is in our bones.

Freedom is not a distant promise—it is a daily choice. And we will choose it. Again and again.

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