Book review: On Tyranny

 

Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan, 2017. 127 pp.

These are weird times in America. This month President Trump dusted off the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in order to deport hundreds of immigrants to prisons in El Salvador; when federal district judge James E. Broasberg issued a temporary restraining order, Trump called Broasberg a "Radical Left Lunatic" and called for the judge's impeachment, while "border czar" Tom Homan said, "We're not stopping... I don't care what the judges think (Caputo 2025). Meanwhile, a number of American citizens as well as legal residents have been caught up in the administration's zeal for deportation and reckless disregard for due process (Foy 2025). At Trump's and/or Musk's behest, years of research data (Shendruk and Rampell 2025) and references to nonwhite troops (Warner 2025) are being removed from government websites. The Voice of America is gone, and the Federal Trade Commission disabled by (illegal) firings (cf. Mitchell 2025). And that's just this week. Congressional Republicans have approved everything Trump and Musk have done after the fact--including joining the effort to intimidate Judge Broasberg--while congressional Democrats seem baffled and helpless.

All this has been justified in the language of "emergency," against which Yale historian Timothy Snyder warns us in chapter 17 ("Watch for dangerous words"). Has America in 2025 become a tyranny? Is the elected President fomenting a coup? Whatever is going on, it's not the democratic constitutional system I taught about for decades. We need a new guidebook for a new regime.

Professor Snyder wrote On Tyranny after the presidential election of 2016, when no one knew what to expect of the newly elected President. Given Trump's petulant, hate-spewing campaign, and his disregard for either facts or norms, it wasn't unreasonable to expect him to try to do some very bad things once in office. And he certainly did try, but--thanks in large part to "babysitters" like Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Attorney General William Barr, and ultimately Vice President Mike Pence--he didn't get as far as some had feared. Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, and Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020. The American constitutional system seemed to survive four years of Trump, and while the COVID epidemic kept threatening to spiral out of control, it too eventually subsided.

Now, after an improbable series of events, Trump is not only back, but with a plurality of the 2024 vote--an achievement that escaped him in 2016, and making him only the second Republican to do this since 1988. Trump brought the hate back with him, but not the "babysitters." The two months-plus of Trump's second term have been chaotic and destructive, with particular animus directed at political opponents, regulatory agencies, minority groups, and Ukraine. Public approval has dipped a little of late, but so far is nearly ten percentage points higher than during his first term. It seems quite a few of us like Trump's promises, or are entertained by his antics (though see Morris 2025 for the complicated polling picture).

So it seems timely to pick up Snyder's little volume of advice again. He suggests, from observing authoritarian regimes in Europe, several ways that ordinary citizens can respond to what's going on with maybe some degree of effectiveness.

The first is Do not obey in advance, acting in ways that accommodate the regime before they even give a specific order. For towns, educational and medical institutions, arts organizations, private firms, and anyone else who relies on federal funding for much of their income, this can be difficult, especially when the regime is erratic or vague in their demands. Anyone trying to keep up with the Trump administration's many and varied threats might understandably do whatever they can to minimize the uncertainty. Iowa's laws about "obscenity" in school libraries came with similar lack of clarity, probably in hopes the librarians would overcomply.

The second "lesson" is Defend institutions, which leads into the next lessons on elections, symbols, professional ethics, the military and police. Trump has replaced the leadership of the military and FBI, all inspectors general, and Justice and Homeland Security officials, while gagging or defunding regulatory agencies. Before hobbling the FCC, he fired Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, National Labor Relations Board, and Equal Opportunity Commission to bring those panels below the number needed to act. And on and on. Snyder calls actions like these flashing red warning lights, but so far they have not visibly alarmed many people who weren't already opposed to Trump. Someone in our book group asked "How could we support" those who are being sidelined or who are being ordered to carry out Trump's orders? Maybe pointing out the trend and its significance can be a start, but pretty much anything you can say about Trump has already been said.

Some of us have less power than others, but we also might be less exposed, and so in a position to take more risk. The middle chapters of the book deal with taking personal responsibility. We are responsible for how we use language, treat others, and process information (especially when Internet rumors are too delicious to check out). Particularly poignant was his urging those in law enforcement to "be reflective." It is important to remember that Trump in his first term didn't tear children away from refugee families (in some cases losing track of them), charge into Portland and Seattle to use violence against protestors, or deport COVID-infected immigrants to countries that were ill-prepared to treat them. He ordered those regrettable actions, but somebody--a lot of somebodies, really--had to agree to carry them out, putting their jobs ahead of their humanity.

Chapters 12-15 discuss everyday life, particularly using our time (ch. 13) and social skills (ch. 12) and money (ch. 15) to build strong communities that can support vulnerable people. He concludes chapter 12: Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change. Be out in public, but maybe keep your electronic profile lower (ch. 14; see also Ingram 2025, cited below.) Chapter 15 also talks about building civil society by associating with people who share our interests. A group of amateur brewers or cyclists can sustain vulnerable members, while also softening the attitudes of those who now seem indifferent or even supportive of tyranny.

On Tyranny is brief and direct. Those who wish more comparative political context can hunt up Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018, and discussed here); those seeking more insight into the tyrannical mindset will be rewarded by Martha Nussbaum's The Monarchy of Fear (Oxford, 2018). But for a quick basic introduction to the inflection point that is 2025 in America, with pointers on how to respond, On Tyranny is an excellent start.

SEE ALSO: 

Anthony Faiola, "Autocrats Roll Back Rights and Rule of Law--And Cite Trump's Example," Washington Post, 24 March 2025

Matthew Ingram, "Be Careful What You Put on Social Media, They Are Listening," The Torment Nexus, 13 March 2025

"Constitution Day: Whatever Happened to the Separation of Powers?" Holy Mountain, 17 September 2020

Free online version: On Tyranny

Subsidiarity, congestion pricing. and books with sex in them

Shelf of probably-not-obscene children's books at
Trailside School library

David T. Koyzis (Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies [InterVarsity, 2003]) defines subsidiarity as the belief that "wherever possible, tasks are to be fulfilled by the lowest conceivable element in the social hierarchy" (2003: 218). He quotes Pope Pius XI, whose 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno Koyzis credits with first articulating the concept:

Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice... to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body [politic] and never destroy and absorb them.

Here at Holy Mountain, we are all about furnishing help to the members of the body politic, not to mention the knowledge that comes when diverse people are doing diverse things, so of course we are down with subsidiarity. Assuming voices are equal and individual rights respected--these are big assumptions, I realize--and that the capacity exists, citizens of local places should be charting their own courses, drawing in higher levels of government only when absolutely necessary. 

In our fondness for subsidiarity, we are joined by such urbanist icons as Jane Jacobs and Chuck Marohn. Jacobs, whose book Dark Age Ahead (Random House, 2004) I reviewed here, argued in chapter five that governmental powers that are exercised and taxes collected by distant, national governments instead of those directly in touch with people's needs and possibilities were eroding a core pillar of our culture.

The social and economic needs of urban residents and businesses are extremely varied and complex compared with those of simpler settlements. They require wide ranges of awareness and knowledge that are humanly beyond the comprehension of functionaries in distant institutions, who try to overcome that handicap by devising programs that disregard particulars on the assumption that one size can fit all, which is untrue. Even when sovereignties and provinces or states give special grants to this or that locality, the special grants almost always reflect the priorities of the disbursing institutions, not those of the recipient settlements. (2004: 105)

The Roman Empire's extracting wealth from cities "for schemes and needs according to its own, frequently crazed, priorities" (2004: 103) led to the medieval Dark Age; city-level innovations and economic activity began the long process of digging out. (Maybe such innovation can produce similarly happy results in America, too? I just hope it doesn't take 500 years.)

In 2020 I spent several posts chatting about Marohn's book Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley 2020). In chapter nine, he argued that local governments with restored decision-making power could make more rational decisions, and wouldn't have to rely for needed revenue on sprawl (or business subsidies, or game-changing projects, ...).

State and federal officials frequently express their reluctance to turn over decison-making to local officials they view as incompetent, ignorant, or worse. They fail to recognize how turning city councils into glorified dog catchers, by simplifying their authority and degree of action, Congress and state legislatures have created the conditions where the most competent, innovative, and dynamic local leaders tend to stay away from city hall. (2020: 197)

Local communities won't always make great decisions, even when they're in the best position to decide. But, Marohn concluded, local responsibility for local conditions will improve the quality of policy decisions. "By remaking local government to focus on the broad creation of wealth, local leaders will develop the capacity to assert their own competence. America needs this to happen" (2020: 198). (See also Marohn 2017 on how cities' dependence on national government funding got them into this predicament.) 

Earlier version of proposed Cedar Rapids casino:
City officials' relentless advocacy is not the best advertisement
for subsidiarity

Subsidiarity, like balanced budgets or checks and balances, is easier to get behind when someone other than you is trying to do something. But this year the news is full of local places trying to solve their own problems and getting shot down by higher levels of government. In Cedar Rapids, our mayor is fond of saying "Welcome is our language," but threatened with the loss of $306 million in federal money we shut down our diversity efforts faster than you can say "King Trump" (Hanson 2025).

Trump's Department of Transportation acted February 19 to revoke approval for New York City's first-in-the-nation congestion pricing program (Duggan 2025). Based on successful implementation in several European cities, the city was attempting to collect some of the social costs of traffic congestion by charging a fee on cars entering the core of Manhattan. Two months into the program, congestion and traffic deaths had both noticeably declined, while the city's transit system got an infusion of much-needed revenue. Trump argued that it threatened to draw visitors and business away from the city, which seems like a problem for the city itself to sort out. (It was this action that led him to post "LONG LIVE THE KING!" in characteristic self-praise.)

The Iowa state legislature has for years had a similar penchant for micromanaging local governments. A recent hobbyhorse has been books in community libraries that someone might consider "obscene." A 2023 law already prohibits "sexual descriptions" in school library books (Cheng and Gerlock 2025); a new bill aims to eliminate exemptions for "appropriate educational materials" in school and public libraries from state obscenity laws (Luu 2025). Neither the standards of obscenity nor who will decide on books is made clear in the legislation, possibly in hopes that libraries will censor themselves. Libraries are run by professionals, and are overseen by city councils and school districts. Who does Rep. Helena Hayes (R-Mahaska), sponsor of this latest salvo, think she is protecting us from?

The through lines that connect these two initiatives (and too many others) are rejection of community initiatives uncontrolled from above. Commenting on U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy's efforts to reorient federal transportation spending around marriage, birth rates, and motor vehicles, Lyz Lenz argues

It’s about isolating people into nuclear family units that have little connection to how people actually derive joy and happiness; cutting them off with the work of family and home. This isolation means the inability to act, to organize, to change. It makes it harder to create any communities, social ties or mutual aid — any meaningful connection outside heterosexual marriage. (Lenz 2025)

What traditionalists see as weird and threatening can prove adaptive to the many challenges we face as a country and as a species. But America in 2025 seems to be responding to these challenges with a gigantic act of self-mutilation, led nationally by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and cheered on by their many fans. Cities, those scruffy diverse and exciting places, might save us yet, but only if the judgy haters in Des Moines and Washington go soak their heads and leave them to it. 

SEE ALSO:

The War on Cars podcast episode on congestion pricing, 27 February 2025 (1:04)

American Library Association page on banned and challenged books 

10th anniversary post: Jeff Speck in Cedar Rapids

 

Jeff Speck talking about "The Safe Walk," 2015

Ten years ago this month, when urbanism was still relatively "new," our local Corridor Urbanism group was all of two months old, your humble blogger was still young and idealistic, and Jeb Bush and Scott Walker were the frontrunners for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, the prophet Jeff Speck appeared in Cedar Rapids. The Boston-based architect, city planner, and author of Walkable City [Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2011] was in town to promote some of the redesign recommendations he had made while consulting with the city. Our one-way-to-two-way street conversions, separated bike lanes, and four-way-stops where there used to be traffic lights all came out of his time in our city.

My report on Speck's presentation at the City Services Center is here. Corridor Urbanism co-founder Ben Kaplan scored an interview with Speck, which can be found here. Speck's presentation that night is still on YouTube:

(1:15:08)

2015 was an optimistic time in a lot of ways. Across America residents and businesses were returning to city centers, violent crime had been falling for 25 years, the economy had largely recovered from the 2007-09 recession, and our city was rebuilding after the 2008 flood. Urbanism's insights promised knowledge that would help us sustain all that in ways that were also environmentally and financially resilient.

I still believe in cities, and believe that urbanism has important things to say which can help us understand our present problems, or which we can ignore at our peril. The optimism of those days has been difficult to sustain, however. National politics is getting uglier by the week, thanks to President Trump and Elon Musk and their reign of hate and lies and casual destruction. In Cedar Rapids, the most visible policies were once those street designs and reconstruction in the core, promising many safe walks to come. Now the most visible policies in Cedar Rapids have changed the subject from safe walking to carefree parking, as we put suburban development (the MedQuarter, the casino, school consolidation) where it shouldn't be. We seem to be moving towards more car-dependence, not less, which I think we will come to regret.

More importantly, urbanism across America has entered a new phase of life. Not only are the easy lifts behind us, but new challenges have arisen.

Loftus Lofts construction, New Bohemia, September 2024

Redevelopment has not been as inclusive as it should have been. Pete Saunders recently re-posted a 2018 reflection in which he quoted Richard Florida on the new wave of problems. Florida, whose The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic, 2002) and Who's Your City? (Basic, 2008) promoted the ideas of cities building off clustering of knowledge workers, more recently published The New Urban Crisis (Basic, 2017, also discussed here) in which he laments not foreseeing the problems that would result from an insurge of higher incomes.

Just when it seemed that our cities were really turning a corner, when people and jobs were moving back to them, a host of new urban challenges--from rising inequality to increasingly unaffordable housing and more--started to come to the fore. Seemingly overnight, the much-hoped-for urban revival has turned into a new kind of urban crisis.... Gentrification and inequality are the direct outgrowths of the re-colonization of the city by the affluent and the advantaged.

The city boundaries were re-integrated, but people were not, so the new prosperity ran up against the limits of the middle class bubble. Some places gentrified and older residents got displaced; a lot more places remained isolated and "devalued" (Saunders 2025).

Arco Building, 2022, features recently remodeled offices

The pandemic rearranged decades-old commercial patterns. The daylong succession of human activities (residential, work, recreational, residential) imagined six decades ago by Jane Jacobs and decimated by Euclidean zoning might have been easy to rebuild in our city centers, if only work had held still. The COVID pandemic shifted a good deal of work to remote, and the succeeding years have seen only partial recovery. Kaid Benefield wrote in Place Makers of a recent trip to Union Square in San Francisco where he found Nordstrom's closed, with Walgreen's and Bloomingdale's weeks away from the same fate. And it's not just remote work.

I think a number of trends are contributing to declining urban retail, none bigger than a consumer shift to the convenience of online shopping and delivery. A second major factor is the rise of remote work practices and consequent decline in daily office workers who have traditionally supported businesses near their places of employment. A third factor is rising crime rates in some urban neighborhoods.

With regard to crime, urban areas are having a variety of experiences, but the miracle of 1990-2015 seems to be over (citing Farrell 2024).

Low income housing, SW side

Housing. Need I say more? Not too long ago, Pete Saunders noted that urbanism seems to have turned into all housing all the time. As demand for housing increasingly outstrips supply, costs in high-demand areas are making one of the basic necessities of life harder for people to obtain. (See this interactive graphic, complete with time slider.) I don't know where this is going--another crash, maybe?--but in the meantime we're dealing with big time market failure. 

At the bottom end, an ever-larger group of people have been forced into unstable housing arrangements or out onto the street. This is a nationwide problem that hits people locally. New data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development find the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness has increased 57 percent since the low point in--you guessed it--2015. (See the analysis at Torres 2025). The explosion of homelessness has made some urban areas highly unpleasant. They are our brothers and sisters, and they need a place to sleep and process waste just the rest of us do, but their increasing presence is making urban areas harder for the rest of us to use. 

Maybe if we can find ways to make office-to-residential conversion work on a large scale (Anderson 2023), we can stabilize the housing market, rejuvenate urban retail at least for necessaries, and thereby put enough eyes on the streets that they will look less ramshackle and feel less dangerous. There certainly a lot of people continuing to do the hard work of building great places, as the The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast and the Cities for Everyone webinar series seem never to run out of people to feature (although the international scope of Cities for Everyone often makes me wish I lived in France or Spain). The black urbanist movement described by Pete Saunders (2018 [2025]) continues to "focus on immediate concerns and push for pragmatic solutions."

Mostly, I still believe in walkable, compact development as the best for human quality of life as well as the most sustainable. Speck's four elements of walkability--safe, comfortable, interesting, and useful--will remain forever relevant.

Book Review: Doing Justice

Jacobsen, Dennis A. Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing. 

Minneapolis: Fortress, 2nd ed., 2017. xxx + 155 pp.

Doing Justice is a challenging book. Aimed principally at practicing Christians, it uses the words

of Jesus, prophets, apostles, and the author of the Book of Revelation to attack the status quo 

as ungodly and to provoke the readers into working to transform it in the direction of God’s 

justice. An epigram to chapter 1 concludes with Revelation 18:4: Then I heard another voice 

from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins.”

The test of this book is not so much how well it reads as much as how well it leads to 

constructive, collective social action. Its audience is rather niche: actively religious people who 

both are concerned about injustice and have a group with which they can join in acts of justice. 

For people who fit that description, Doing Justice is profoundly challenging (because my heart's 

in the right place but there are things I'd rather be doing), sympathetic (I'm also the quiet type at 

least in public), and encouraging (because wins are frustratingly few and far between).

 

Jacobsen, a pastor in the (mainline) Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who spent many 

years serving an inner-city Milwaukee, sees justice as a broad context in which people have 

access to the goods of life, both material (e.g. enough to eat) and intangible (e.g. dignity, 

freedom). 

The world as it should be is in direct opposition to the world as it is. The world as 

it should be is rooted in truth, love, and community…. People are able to trust 

each other sufficiently to be transparent and exposed…. In a world where forty-

thousand children die of hunger-related causes every day, the world as it should 

be has an abiding concern for children and their right to have a playful present 

and a human future…. The world as it should be is God’s dream engaging the 

nightmare that the world has become. (2017: 11, 12, 15)

Those of us who live in a middle-class milieu may have little awareness of the nightmare that 

people outside of that milieu live on a daily basis. Some of Jacobsen’s parishioners’ personal 

nightmares are mentioned in the opening chapter. Vulnerable people are easily derailed when

their lives’ loads get one brick too many, and then the bricks just keep on coming. We are 

admonished to be aware of others’ struggles, and not to get too comfortable or too 

accommodated to the world as it is (what he calls “pseudo-innocence” (p. 16), citing Martin 

Luther King’s statement that love without power is sentimentality).

Encampment, Greene Square, 2024

We know we are not the egregious bullies Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, sneering and 

mocking as Rev. Marianne Edgar Budde asked the administration to show mercy to gays 

and Lesbians in all families, and to vulnerable immigrant farmworkers. Yet we know we 

are not King, or Fr. Daniel Berrigan, or the Detroit pastor (Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman) who 

wrote the foreword to Doing Justice, ministering to the outcasts, and risking freedom and 

their very lives in the quest for justice. If working within the system is so accommodating 

as to give away the store, what then must we do?

Jacobsen argues churches and their members need to engage with the “harsh realities outside 

its walls” (p. 20). That requires more from the church than creating a peaceful sanctuary, or 

even engaging in charitable works if they don’t get at the people’s underlying (human) misery. 

“The Christians who are so generous with food baskets at Thanksgiving or with presents for 

the poor at Christmas often vote into office politicians whose policies ignore or crush those 

living in poverty. A kind of pseudo-innocence permeates this behavior” (p. 29). He turns to 

the example of Saul Alinksy (1909-1972), whose concept of community organizing sought to empower residents of impoverished neighborhoods to influence decisions that were being 

made elsewhere, like in company boardrooms and city governments. Congregation-based 

community organizing began in the Roman Catholic Church, but has spread throughout 

Christianity and even non-Christian faith communities. Six broad networks, profiled in 

chapter 4, provide leadership training as well as engagement in public action. Engaging in 

such action requires comfort with political power–Jacobsen notes dozens of references to 

“power” in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament–but also a willingness to share it 

(p. 67).

“Some fear the added responsibility that comes with power” (p. 61). Well, yeah.

Homeland Security Investigations office, southwest Cedar Rapids

As such, the first challenge, both for individuals contemplating their part in social justice 

and community organizers recruiting and challenging them (“agitation”), is to recognize their 

self-interest. This concept is at the core of modern social science, and a strong influence on

the worldview of pretty much everyone. Yet “[k]nowledge of one’s own self-interest interest also

cannot be presumed” (p. 75). Jacobsen argues in chapter 6 that for all manner of reasons, we

need an understanding of self-interest that lies between pure selfishness and utter self-abnegation (“selflessness”). The first leads us to “nearly soulless” (p. 78) transactional 

relationships with others, such as President Trump is supposed to have; the latter leads to 

getting taken advantage of, as in the cases of Christian women who stay in abusive 

marriages because they believe it's their duty.

The process of articulation might also involve distinguishing between short-term and long-

term interests (p. 75ff.). On any given day, I might prefer to relax and/or get things done around 

the house, and certainly to avoid confrontations. People like Jacobsen’s ex-con parishioner 

Jesse are so different from me that any contact is bound to be awkward. But over the long term 

I am better off living in “a liberative community in which people can live out their values, be 

connected to a network of significant relationships, and be agitated to summon forth their God-

given power and potential,” so it is in my self-interest actively to participate in the “weaving 

together” of such a community (p. 78). (If it sounds like urbanism, loyal reader–that’s because 

it is!)

Once committed to action, doers of justice are further confronted with defining and reading 

the field of play. In chapter 9, Jacobsen articulates a metropolitan conception, adding declining 

first-ring suburbs and well-heeled exurbs to the mission field of inner city-based organizing. 

Citing law professor Myron Orfield (Metropolitics [Brookings, 1997]), he argues: 

To counter the ghettoization of poverty, Orfield proposes regional strategies such as tax-

based revenue sharing, fair distribution of low-income housing, convergence of school 

districts, and equitable spread of transportation dollars to create access to jobs (p. 105). 

Opposition to metro-wide approaches is likely to be “entrenched” (p. 106), but the strength of 

the opposition should not be exaggerated, nor should wealthy and powerful opponents be 

considered permanent enemies: Metropolitan organizing offers a chance to end the warfare

against the poor and to heal the divisions of class and race that separate this sick society 

(p. 114, emphasis mine). It’s like Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton (The Regional City:

Planning for the End of Sprawl [Island, 2001]) meet the authors of Numbers and Luke!

 

Succeeding at this level has a promising payoff but requires “meticulous organization, militant 

mass action, and, above all, the willingness to suffer and sacrifice” (p. 115, quoting Nelson 

Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom [Little Brown, 1994], p. 104). “There’s drudgery in social 

change, and glory for the few,” sings Billy Bragg. The mess is huge, and that can be 

discouraging: Death claims urban America for itself…. The death of decaying neighborhoods. 

The death of decimated families. The death of joblessness. The death of dreams. (p. 133)

 

No wonder I quail at the struggle! Now, to “take part in her sins” may seem an attractive 

alternative. But many hands make light work, or at least make the workload lighter: Into 

the courtyard of such death, congregation-based community organizing proclaims the 

resurrection of Christ, the unbending hope in the power of life, the unyielding belief that 

God, not death, has the last word (still on p. 133). It is the "holy catholic church," discussed in chapter 11, that impacts the mess, not lone toilers. It is group action that not only says

“‘no’ to social injustice… but a prophetic ‘yes’ to life” (p. 139). In the face of oppression

and misery, the church not only engages the community with patches but with affirmation

and joy as well. And dancing–towards the end of the book he quotes Emma Goldman: If

I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution (p. 141).

 

In the same song quoted above, Billy Bragg also sings, “A poet with all the answers has never 

yet been built.” Apparently that goes for bloggers as well. My posts this year have been, I 

recognize, teeming with frustration and anger. All the MAGA pillaging (cf. Wilson 2025, 

Zipper 2025, or any day's post by the indefatigable Heather Cox Richardson) has certainly 

served to highlight the fragility of progress, and how much easier it is to break things than to 

build them. But there are people out there who carry on building, and they have room for me, 

and you. As long as they don’t mind that I dance like an arthritic cow.