STOP The (USIP Building) STEAL!
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Category Archives: Project 2025
EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace
March 22, 2025
From confidential Washington sources, the following excerpt is drawn from an account of the aftermath of the March 17 seizure and closing of the U. S. Institute of Peace, by armed agents of the DOGE administration. The account has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Brief Encounter at 2301
Mid-March, 2025, on the edge of the National Mall, not far from the Vietnam War Memorials.
It was almost break time, the leftover dinner pizza was hours cold, and Hennigan thought he heard something.
Standing up from the desk chair, he closed the Security Inc. employee handbook, which was making him drowsy anyway, and peered across the open atrium: first left, then right, following the protocol.
Everything seemed in order: several tiers of closed offices rose or each side. Lights were dim. Nothing moving.
Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace
Dread: Confronting a key tool of Authoritarian Rule
It was just a suitcase. Well-used, medium size, dun-colored, nondescript. Sitting upright on the porch, not far from the low railing, out of sight of the sidewalk.
Why was it so unnerving? And what’s it got to do with America 2025?
We’ll get to 2025 presently. First, consider the location: 1315 Lapsley Street on the corner of Academy St., in Selma Alabama. A Black middle class enclave, single family houses. Respectable, not lavish, some tall trees. Mostly quiet, not much traffic.
Continue reading Dread: Confronting a key tool of Authoritarian Rule
Trans & The Bible: Is God On Their Side? I Say —
Transphobia: The Bible Is Better Than That
2025 is becoming a crucible year for trans people and those who would be their allies: the Pete Hegseth-Trump Defense Department is after them; Iowa’s legislature just deleted them from its anti-discrimination statutes; other states may follow. And don’t even get me started on the Supreme Court.
But this post is not aiming for a comprehensive summary of ongoing transphobic crusades. Instead, I want to retrace my search for what’s at the root of the support for them. I have some idea of the politics, and a few of the major personalities; but what’s the nub, the “bottom line”?
It isn’t the “science” cited on behalf of anti-trans laws — much of it a curdled combination of cant and charlatanry. Or the panic over predators stalking “little girls” in public restrooms, which is almost all trumped up, and such assaults have long been illegal anyway.
Then there’s the huge public panic over a vanishingly few trans women competing (and not always) winning in girls’ sports. From all this and more we already know the cultural right has big issues over a gender binary (and male dominance), and that riling up its base about sex reliably works to boost its voter turnout.
But what is its basic justification? Continue reading Trans & The Bible: Is God On Their Side? I Say —
A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody
This past First Day (Quaker talk for Sunday) I Zoomed into worship in my Friends meeting, the one out in the farmland of Flyover County, North By-God Carolina, where I missed one of my favorite annual scenes there: the appearance in the back 40 of a big unruly spread of wild daffodils. But I did hear a stirring message.
No one among the elders knows when or by whom the daffodils came. Their location, out behind the community building we fondly call The Hut, isn’t visible from the road, so passersby mostly miss the spread, too bad for them. Continue reading A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody