Power outages in Detroit are common. I have experienced some disruption in electricity every winter for the last 50 years. Like many Detroiters, we have candles, flashlights, blankets, firewood, and emergency water tucked in corners, knowing they will be needed. This is just part of winter in Michigan.

The 20^th Century was marked by two world wars. The first Great War changed the world. The death toll was in the millions. Empires crumbled and new nations emerged. It was a war of arrogance, incompetence, and mass brutality. And it made some people very rich.

Within days after the US illegally attacked Iran, the war is escalating across the Middle East. The world is in a dangerous moment as small-minded men launch weapons of massive destructive power, simply because they can. This is soul-searing violence. It is being carried out with a level of callous disregard for human life that will have far-reaching consequences. There will come a reckoning. Chickens do come home to roost.

Somewhere, in dusty attics and cramped basements, there are postcards, tucked in shoe boxes or barely remembered family papers.  They are postcards of lynchings. From the end of the Civil War through the 1940s, the brutality of the Jim Crow South was captured in photographs. Centering on smiling white faces and brutalized black people’s bodies, these postcards circulated through communities. They were carried across the country by US postal workers, delivering messages about crops, children, and the folks back home. For some, the production and sale of these postcards became a “money-making venture.”

Tributes for Jesse Jackson have been flowing in from around the globe, in reverence for his life and good works. As Juan Gonzalez said, “Jesse was always there when people were fighting for some form of social justice. He could always be counted on to show up and express public support. And of all the U.S. leaders of the past half-century, I believe none had a more international view and a commitment to worldwide social justice as Jesse Jackson did. So, those of us who knew him will all be better for having known him, and it’s a tremendous loss that he’s gone.”

There was good news this week as Federal officials announced “a significant drawdown” of the 3000 ICE agents occupying the Twin Cities. For more than a month, people have been resisting masked men roamingthe  streets with guns, chemical weapons, and a lust for violence. These thugs are exhibiting disdain and open hatred of the people. They have used deadly force, abducted children, and gloated about it.

I have been unable to shake the twin images of Nekima Levy Armstrong. One is of what she actually is, a strong, confident African American woman speaking truth to power. The other is the AI doctored image from the White House portraying her as “hysterical — tears streaming down her face, her hair disheveled, appearing to cry out in despair. “ARRESTED” was emblazoned across the photo, along with a misleading description of Ms. Levy Armstrong as a “far-left agitator” who was “orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.”

The murders of Alex Pretti and Renne Good have shaken the country.  We have come face-to-face with the violence that is required to keep the empire of racial capital going.  Much as the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner reverberated around the country more than sixty years ago, the violence that is such a part of our culture has been laid bare for all to see. And it has sparked outrage.

This week the Boggs Center hosted a conversation with Andrea Ritchie focusing on her newest book, Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies. The book explores how the principles of emergence offer us new and imaginative ways of organizing towards futures that cherishes life.  It is a concise discussion of the foundational concepts of critical connections emerging out of practices rooted in adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization. It is a valuable book to study in this moment.

We have endured a year of cruelty, chaos, and corruption. Trump was inaugurated on Martin Luther King Day 2025. Many people acknowledged that grim irony.

Much of the globe is coming to terms with the reality that the US government sees no limit to the use of violence and deadly force in pursuit of its own interests. International law, sovereignty, and human rights were shattered with the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, by US military forces.

This is the season of miracles and mystery. People gather to light candles, build bonfires, share tidings of great joy, and look with hope in the turning of the year. We wish for peace on earth and goodwill to all humankind.

This week, I was reminded of the power of lies.  It happened in a meeting where a strong community advocate commented, “About half the people in Detroit can’t read. I just checked because I don’t want to misstate the percentage. It is 47% of the adults who are functionally illiterate.”

This figure is a lie.

The world would be safer without Pete Hegseth in a position of authority.  In the midst of allegations that he is guilty of murder, the Pentagon released a report by the Inspector General finding that Hegseth’s reckless behavior earlier this year endangered active military personnel during an attack on the Houthis in Yemen. Hegseth communicated classified information over Signal to a small group, including his wife, his brother, and a national journalist. The report noted that the information shared "created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots."

A fair argument can be made that every U.S. president has blood on their hands, beginning with George Washington. Certainly, those like Washington, who engaged in military campaigns, were no strangers to killing. Or as Noam Chomsky once argued, “every post-war American president could be considered guilty of 'war crimes’” under the Nuremberg principles.

The federal government is weaponizing food. Intentional starvation is a tool to control people, demand submission and force compliance. This time the guise for weaponizing food against the most vulnerable among us was the stalemate over the budget.

This week, I have been in the mountains of Pennsylvania at a gathering of the National Council of Elders. We began our meeting knowing that we are at a pivotal time in the history of this land. All of us have engaged in the struggles for liberation and peace that defined the 20th Century. We have seen brutality, violence, and cruelty employed in defense of privilege and power. Yet we agreed that this moment is the most dangerous time we have faced, calling for new thinking, a deeply rooted spiritual force, and the engagement of people to create new bonds of connection and community.

Over the last week, the President of the United States made two comments that illustrate the destructive force required to protect US imperial interests. He told reporters that he would continue blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean. He hinted at the possibility of an invasion of Venezuela.  He said, “I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we are just going to kill people who are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them, you know? They are going to be, like, dead.”

George Orwell has been on my mind this week. Orwell’s collected essays provide great insight into how fascists manipulate popular media. His ideas help us understand that the imagery flowing over social media from what is left of the White House is not playful, harmless vignettes. They speak to a deliberate destruction of reality anchored in the worst of the American past. Their outrageousness stretches the boundaries of what is allowable, diminishing the realities of constant cruelty.

In Western culture, reason has been understood as a defense against tyranny.  The “age of reason” was the foundation of the development of parliamentary authority and liberal democracies.

Reason was thought to be a powerful deterrent to the whims of a personal drive for power.  So, it is understandable that much of the commentary describing the establishment of fascist politics in the US criticizes outrageous actions being taken “for no reason.”