Masked ICE
11:03 Monday, 12 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 36.59°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 9.66mph
Words: 68
Masks hide the humanity of ICE agents, reducing them to mere instrumentalities of the violence of the state. They promote division and "othering," increasing the psychological and cultural distance between themselves and the citizens they purportedly serve.
The whistles, the taunting, the car horns are the actions of a healthy social immune system, responding to a malignant infection. An alien body in social system that must be expelled.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Ephemeral Nature of Historical Memory
09:16 Monday, 12 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 36.59°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 9.66mph
Words: 201
That's a rather grandiose title, I suppose. I'm not exactly clear on what I'm aiming for, but I want to get this post done, so the title, and by extension the reader, suffers. Mea culpa.
I'm struggling with some apparent contradictions or incongruities playing out in the present, from historical antecedents that seem to reach across the decades or centuries to sow chaos today. Perhaps it's a function of whose memory retains vigor, the victor or the vanquished.
In the United States, we have never ceased from grappling with the memory of the Civil War. The Confederacy has retained and nurtured a sense of grievance ever since it suffered a humiliating defeat in its violent rebellion against the Republic.
In Europe, after losing the Cold War, it seems as though at least Putin longs for a return to a greater Soviet empire, with much of eastern Europe under the Russian boot.
But the victors forget.
Does loss engender a more durable cultural memory? Durable, yet unreliable, because the losers must rationalize away the reasons why they lost. The history they recall never existed, but it fuels the sense of grievance, the bitter resentment that then colors their participation in the present.
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