An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
“More than 3,200 events took place across the country on Saturday [March 28, 2026], from New York City to Driggs, Idaho, a town of fewer than 2,000 people in a state Trump carried with 66 percent of the vote. Nearly half of the protests took place in Republican strongholds. Texas, Florida, and Ohio each had more than 100 events. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah had events in the double digits. Rural communities that have never hosted a political protest before, from Seward, Alaska, to East Glacier Park, Montana, showed up for the first time. The protests went international, with tens of thousands marching in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Madrid, and London, and in countries with constitutional monarchies, they called the protests ‘No Tyrants’.”
These allegorical figures hold dead babies. War always makes dead babies. I used to teach Mark Twain’s antiwar story, “The War Prayer” and ask my students to guess which war Twain was responding to. [The best answer: all of them.] The satire was tough for the high school juniors I was teaching; they almost never understood the story without help and maybe rarely guessed which war. (As a junior in high school, I would have got the satire—it was different war and I read newspapers, plus I’d been a solid fan of Twain since I was eight.) It was lies that took us to war in Twain’s time. It was lies that took us to war in my grandfather’s time, and in my time too. Over and over again… it is always lies that take us to war. Even the “righteous” wars begin with deceit.Continue reading →