Securing our futures

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. 

Today, we are now painfully aware of the contrasting visions each man embodies. Yet we are perhaps closer to that vision of beloved communities than we were just a year ago.  Across the country, people are rejecting the brutality of ICE, the use of unrestrained power, and the dealings in death and destruction. The simple act of caring for our neighbors has become a strategy of courage and resistance.

I have spent years studying right-wing, authoritarian movements. I have a fair understanding of the sordid, violent history of this country. I know that there is not a single outrageous thing that Trump and his bully buddies have done that was not done before. The US was founded in violence; we have taken what we wanted by force. We have lied, killed, and delighted in the suffering of others. We have destroyed people and places to protect profits for a few.  

But knowing all that did not prepare me for the scope and speed of this administration’s move to create a white Christian nation willing to crush anyone and everything that resists it. In some ways, it is the sheer pettiness of his actions that are the most breathtaking. There is nothing too small for him to do, nothing too outrageous to avoid. Trump has consistently called on the most shameful moments of our past, glorifying violence, retribution, and the will to dominate the world as his guide to the future.

I did not imagine much of what we have collectively experienced. 

But now I believe that nothing is beyond this administration. It is perfectly possible that Trump will unleash a nuclear attack.  Just because he can. And just because it feeds the fantasies of some among us who have argued “we should just bomb them.”

Trump is fulfilling the prophecy of Dr. King’s understanding that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Trump and his forces are showing us what spiritual death looks like. It is the ability to shoot a woman in the face and call her a” fucking bitch,” to grab children from their parents,  to shoot people clinging for life, to display brutality and deride compassion.

For Dr. King, that way toward loving communities begins with a revolution of values against racism, materialism, and militarism. Only by confronting these triple evils could we knit a moral, loving fabric of new ways of living together.

Every day, more and more of us are recognizing that these evils are endangering our lives and futures. The racism behind these ICE raids and the vision of a white Christian America are repulsive to people who have come to know each other as neighbors, coworkers, families, and friends.

The use of military force to kidnap people at home and abroad is demonstrating that we are, as King warned, “the greatest purveyor of violence” and cannot be trusted to show restraint in the use of weapons of mass destruction. And the billionaires who are driving all of this for their own ends have shown disdain for democracy, community safety, and basic ideas of empathy and love.  

We are at a turning point. Many people are hoping that the coming elections will restore some semblance of normalcy.  But the past is gone. The institutions that were supposed to protect basic dignity and human rights have proved incapable of responding to a country dedicated to spiritual death. 

But the signs of new ways of being are emerging everywhere. Mutual aid, direct resistance, witnessing of injustice, and reaching out to stand with each other have also become part of how we live together. 

This week, in response to the escalation of ICE agents into Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz spoke directly to the good people in his state. He acknowledged that we are living in a moment that is both “scary and absurd,” but it is also a moment where people are acting with “courage, empathy, and profound grace.” Walz applauded the six federal prosecutors who resigned rather than evade the prosecution of the killer of Renee Good and the countless acts of public witness and mutual aid that Minnesotans are doing every day. 

Each of us has the responsibility to choose the vision of the future we want and to take action to secure it. This is the only way to grow our souls.