What We Choose to Hold

Community, intention, and the slow work of imagining something better

Good morning! Marz joined me last night in the yard, moonbeam pointed skyward, attempting to will peace into existence. Marz cocked his head sideways, admittedly skeptical. When he had to admit I was not varmint hunting, he stood quietly beside me anyway, while I visualized peace and a sustainable world.

Donald Trump is once again on a taxpayer-funded golf holiday at Mar-a-Lago, charging the Secret Service for their lodging while he hides from the press and schedules exactly zero public appearances, operating the government remotely from a country club, while issuing threats abroad, vanity decrees at home, and fundraising emails that read like late-night spam texts from an emotionally needy ex.

On the foreign front, the administration is escalating toward Venezuela under a justification so historically illiterate it borders on parody. Trump now claims Venezuela “stole” American oil, land, and assets, language lifted straight from the authoritarian grievance playbook. In reality, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976, following a decades-long global trend that included Mexico and Saudi Arabia. U.S. companies never owned Venezuelan oil or land. They held concessions, lost assets, were compensated through arbitration, and largely accepted the outcome at the time. None of this resembles theft, but the fiction matters, because it’s being used to justify a blockade and the seizure of oil tankers, including at least one not under U.S. sanctions, in international waters. Myth becomes policy, fantasy becomes force.

This is happening alongside U.S. airstrikes in Syria, raising uncomfortable questions about Trump’s repeated insistence that ISIS was “utterly destroyed.” Apparently destroyed groups should not be killing U.S. troops. Yet here we are again: vengeance framed as defense, escalation wrapped in bravado, and no clear public accounting.

At the Pentagon, the ideology behind this posture has a name: Pete Hegseth. The defense secretary has spent years arguing that the laws of war are an inconvenience, that military lawyers are obstacles, and that “maximum lethality” should matter more than legality. That worldview is no longer theoretical. Lawmakers are now questioning a September strike in the Caribbean that killed survivors clinging to a wrecked boat, an act that appears to run directly counter to the Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual. The same man who fired top military legal officers for being “roadblocks” is now insisting everything was done correctly. The rules, it seems, are always clear after they’re ignored.

Back home, Trump is busy personalizing the state. The Kennedy Center has been rebranded to include his name, despite being a congressionally authorized memorial to a fallen president. The U.S. Institute of Peace has been renamed after him. Federal buildings wear his banners. Branding opportunities are emerging from currency, park passes, and pharmaceutical pricing portals. This is neither subtle nor normal. It is not how democracies behave when they are healthy.

The cultural damage is already visible. Musician Kristy Lee has confirmed she is canceling her upcoming Kennedy Center performance, while other scheduled artists say they will honor existing dates but refuse to return. Several spoke anonymously, citing fear of retaliation and economic vulnerability, a calculus no artist should have to make at a national memorial. Comedian and producer Rola Z, who has previously performed at the center, warned that politicizing the arts corrodes the very purpose of a civic cultural space. When artists start whispering instead of protesting, something fundamental has shifted. Authoritarianism doesn’t begin by banning art. It begins by making dissent risky enough to self-censor.

In Denmark, the national postal service will deliver its final letter this month, ending a 400-year tradition. Officials insist nothing meaningful is being lost, letters will still exist, just handled by a private company, routed through apps, digital IDs, and online systems. But what’s actually disappearing is redundancy: a physical communication infrastructure that doesn’t rely on electricity, logins, or centralized digital control. In one of the most digitized societies on Earth, even the postal museum director admits there’s no going back once the system is dismantled. Younger people, interestingly, have started writing more letters, not out of nostalgia, but as another simple but beautiful act of resistance to digital saturation. Scarcity has made meaning visible again.

Another act of resistance closer to home, a short, brutal video has been circulating online. ICE agents dragging a pregnant woman along the ground in the snow. Neighbors surrounding them, chanting “shame,” and using the only tools available to them, throwing snowballs, not to injure, but to interrupt. Leaderless and disorganized, just people recognizing harm and stepping in together. This is what resistance looks like when institutions fail and legitimacy migrates downward into communities who refuse to look away.

This is the pattern emerging everywhere now. The state grows louder, more performative, more punitive. Institutions hollow out. The spectacle intensifies. And beneath it, people quietly start protecting one another, withdrawing consent, preserving what they can, art, memory, letters, neighbors, until something better can be rebuilt.

Years ago, I read The Intention Experiment, by Lynne McTaggart, a book that cracked open quantum physics for me not as mysticism, but as a reminder that observation, attention, and collective focus shape outcomes more than we’re comfortable admitting. Whether you frame it as science, psychology, or simply human pattern-making, the implication is the same: what we hold together matters.

Which brings me back to the yard. Marz eventually sat down while my “moonbeam” stayed trained on the sky. We didn’t fix anything, but we held the idea that a sustainable world is still imaginable, one built less on domination and branding, more on care, restraint, and shared responsibility. Peace doesn’t arrive fully formed. Sometimes it starts as a pause, or as silence. Sometimes it starts with people standing together in the cold, affirming what they are willing to protect, and believing, just enough, that something better is still possible.