One of my colleagues has been named a terrorist by the Egyptian government. Authoritarian regimes, it turns out, don’t like it when human rights organizations criticize their efforts to quell dissent. For now, my colleague is safe, as he lives in the United States, yet in retaliation, Egypt has jailed and tortured his cousin and […]
Tag: press freedom
The Formation of Paramilitary Forces within the United States
Much has been written about the recent rise of authoritarian power here in the “free world,” but when we live it day-in and day-out, it’s also easy to dismiss these claims as alarmist. That’s fair on some level; we live in a world where every “memetic” moment is driven by some degree of hyperbole, and […]
Is America Headed Toward Civil War?
Societies–because they’re made up of people–function a lot like people do as individuals. Just as you or I might bottle up our anger and then one day explode, so can a society bottle up its collective anger and then explode all at once. On an individual level, as well as a societal one, we can […]
Quarantine, Day 58
The world outside my window just seems so surreal, the way it’s picked up and continued as though there is nothing deadly and invisible all around us. From my window, you would think nothing had changed. From my window, though, my worldview is so incredibly limited. It’s within the house that I’m painfully more aware […]
Don’t Be Afraid
Walking through the streets of New York City in the rain today, I had a brief moment where I thought I wasn’t in the United States. People have started wearing face masks to protect themselves from COVID-19, the “coronavirus,” and it’s a bit of a jarring display of something that falls somewhere between preparedness and […]
Trump Will Not Leave Office Alive
That is to say, he does not intend to ever have to step down or stop serving as President of the United States. And as outlandish a statement that may seem to those of us who still want to believe in and hope that our sacred norms and traditions remain sacred, the writing is already […]
The End of Democracy
It was my third grade homeroom teacher in Tennessee who spoke about the great melting pot or salad mixer. Or maybe the Cub Scout trip to the local courtroom for a civics lesson toward a merit badge to see the judicial branch at work. It was my Sunday school teacher taking her confirmation class to […]
In the Event of My Violent Death
This is an admittedly sobering and macabre piece for which I am providing a trigger warning of sorts given the discussion of violence and death herein. Though it’s personal on some level, I don’t really see this as something I am writing about me but rather something I am writing about my hopes for our […]
Reflections on Holy Week
Someone told me today this is “Holy Week,” that Easter is this Sunday, and it caught me off-guard. There was a time very recently when, not only would that have been incredibly pertinent to my life, but my work would have revolved around the whole week in some way or another. Nowadays, it couldn’t be […]
