Sublime

if freedom and human dignity are to be defended, they must be defended honestly: against all tyrants and all corrupters.”

we distrust to the point that it becomes dangerous to be a judge, a Capitol Police officer, a doctor, a librarian, a poll worker, or someone installing 5G equipment—our civil society cannot function. The winners then will be those who try to rule by force rather than consent.

I think we deserve more than coping strategies: we need political ones.

“Once I realized that there was no hope in any sort of normal future,” he said, “I realized that I have absolutely nothing to lose by fighting back. Because it was all going to be lost anyway.”

We cannot allow this.

The oppression of false peace: we are taught that our truths are disruptive, and that disruption is a negative act.

“For the truth is,” wrote José Ortega y Gasset, “that life on the face of it is a chaos in which one finds oneself lost. The individual suspects as much but is terrified to encounter this frightening reality face to face, and so attempts to conceal it by drawing a curtain of fantasy over it, behind which he can make believe that everything is clear

was a dead British orator and writer who was on my mind. Edmund Burke said the problem with war is that it usually consumes the very things that you’re fighting for—justice, decency, humanity—and I couldn’t help but think of how many times I had violated our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them.