The Wild Reed

Thursday, October 02, 2025

An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”

A shocking incident unfolded in Chicago [in the early hours of September 30] when about 300 ICE agents descended from Blackhawk helicopters onto an apartment building, rounding up everyone living there. Many residents, according to witnesses, were pulled outside in zip ties, wearing little or no clothing, and children were among those caught up in this mass operation. With President Trump reportedly obtaining direct authority to deploy armed federal agents in Chicago, the move feels like an extension of what he has described as a war on blue states and cities, making the event feel as if it were ripped from a dystopian novel.

Across the country, these federal raids are being viewed as part of an escalating campaign to assert central power over communities that do not support the administration. The use of military tactics in domestic spaces looks less like a law enforcement effort and more like an outright attack on places that tend to vote Democratic. For many, the message is clear: cities that disagree with the current administration are being singled out for intimidation and collective punishment.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect is the deafening silence from major national media outlets. Instead of launching investigations or demanding accountability, mainstream networks have focused their energy on profit driven mergers and tax schemes to benefit their wealthy CEOS. That leaves local communities bearing the full weight of unchecked federal power and everyday people more vulnerable, as the role of the media as the public’s watchdog is abandoned.

– The Other 98%
October 2, 2025

Below is a 13-minute video by The Guardian, described as follows: “In the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing, Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to Chicago, where Donald Trump’s ICE deployment, codename Operation Midway Blitz, has been met by a defiant wave of sustained protests at the Broadview ICE facility.”

Related Off-site Links:
“Surreal Moment for America”: ICE Agents in Chicago Drag Children Out of Their Homes, Ransack Building – Brad Reed (Common Dreams, October 2, 2025).
Federal Agents Conduct “Targeted Immigration Operation” in South Shore – NBC Chicago (September 30, 2025).
ICE Agents Raid South Shore Apartment Building: “They Just Treated Us Like We Were Nothing” – ABC 7 Chicago (September 30, 2025).
When Trump’s ICE Invades Your City: An Interview with Jordan Chariton – Thom Hartmann Program (October 1, 2025).
The “Moral Monsters” Among Us – Adrian Carrasquillo (The Bulwark, October 1, 2025).
“F*ck Them Kids”: ICE Agents Drag Children Out of Bed, Ransack Chicago Building – Chris Hayes (MSNBC, October 2, 2025).
ICE Is Terrorizing Chicago. We Can Stand Up To Them – Kat Abughazaleh (via YouTube, October 1, 2025).
Chicago Activist on Organizing Community ICE Patrols as Trump Escalates Immigration Crackdown – Democracy Now! (September 30, 2025).
ICE Violence Is Out of Control – The Majority Report (September 27, 2025).

UPDATES: Protesters Clash with Federal Agents in Chicago as ICE Raids Continue – ABC News (October 3, 2025).
When ICE Deports Every Immigrant, Will Trump Aim Their Crosshairs at You? – Thom Hartmann Program (October 3, 2025).

See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Bowing to an Idol
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• Brent Molnar on the the Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• Memes of the Times – September 2025
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”

Image: Federal law enforcement agents confront demonstrators protesting outside of an immigrant processing center on September 27, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois. The demonstrators were protesting a recent surge in ICE apprehensions in the Chicago area, part of a push by the Trump administration dubbed Operation Midway Blitz. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Wednesday, October 01, 2025

Marianne Williamson: We Need an “Expanded Version of What it Means to Be Political”

In this time of rising fascism in the U.S., I can’t think of a better way to start the new month than with the deep wisdom and compassion of author and former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.

Following is how she introduces her recent 6-minute video commentary shared below.

Old thinking will not solve new problems. Our greatest tool for rising to this moment is an expanded version of what it means to be political. Politics comes from a latin root “of the people.” It is the people – each and every one of us – who must now become the conduits through which our country can overcome.

The question is not just what we are supposed to do now, but at least as importantly, who we need to be. Psychological, emotional, and spiritual dynamics are as important as traditional political activism in turning us into the people who can handle this moment.

Never underestimate your own contribution. Every thought, every word, every action contributes to a collective field of energy. Make yours a powerful expression of love for democracy and love for humanity. Every life and every moment matters. Step by step, we’re on our way to higher ground.

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

September Vignettes

Monday, September 29, 2025

The “Creeping Fascism of Trump’s America”: A View from Australia

Australian writer Michael Taylor has a cogent piece published today at both the Daily Kos and the website of the Australian Independent Media Network.

As an Australian living in the U.S., I found this piece (and Taylor’s follow-up remarks) to be both insightful and heartening. I share both in their entirety below.

The Distant Thunder
How Trump’s America Echoes
in Our Own Backyard

By Michael Taylor

Australian Independent Media Network
September 29, 2025

From the sun-bleached beaches of Surfers Paradise to the quiet verandahs of the suburbs, we Australians have long viewed American politics with a mixture of fascination and detachment. It was a dramatic, often chaotic, television drama unfolding an ocean away. But in the era of Donald Trump, that detachment has curdled into profound anxiety. What we are witnessing is not just another chapter in American political turmoil; from our vantage point, it resembles a step-by-step guide to authoritarianism, and the consequences are lapping at our own shores.

Let’s be blunt. A good majority of Australians see President Trump as the single greatest threat to world peace and economic stability. This isn’t a casual dislike; it’s a rational conclusion based on observable fact. We see an assault on the very pillars that uphold a democracy: the relentless attacks on a free press as “the enemy of the people,” the refusal to accept certified election results, the weaponisation of the justice system against political rivals, and the language of vengeance and retribution. These are not the actions of a robust democracy; they are the hallmarks of a creeping fascism, a playbook we’ve seen enacted in dark chapters of history.

The instability this creates is not contained within U.S. borders. A world where America’s commitment to NATO is transactional, where long-standing alliances are undermined by caprice, is a more dangerous and volatile world. Economically, the spectre of tariff wars and a rejection of global cooperation threatens the intricate supply chains and markets upon which our own prosperity depends. The “America First” mantra, in practice, feels like “Global Stability Last.”

But perhaps what is most concerning, and most visceral for us here, is how Trump has enabled the racists and bigots in our own country. He didn’t create them, but he gave them a megaphone and a permission slip. The toxic rhetoric that vilifies migrants, Muslims, and minorities – once confined to the dark corners of the internet – has been validated by the most powerful office in the world. We see it in the emboldened bravado of our own fringe groups, in the coarsening of our public discourse, and in the feeling that it’s now more acceptable to voice prejudice. He has, in effect, exported a licence for hatred.

To dismiss this as mere American political theatre is a dangerous folly. The fight for the soul of America is also a fight for the norms and values that underpin the free world, values Australia has long shared. It is a battle between pluralism and prejudice, between truth and “alternative facts,” between the rule of law and the cult of personality.

As Australians we cannot afford to be passive spectators. We must loudly reaffirm our commitment to our own democratic principles: a respectful multicultural society, an independent judiciary, and a press that holds power to account. We must call out the imported bigotry for what it is and reject the politics of division. The distant thunder from Trump’s America is a warning. We must ensure the storm does not reach our shores.

____________________

At the Daily Kos, one comment noted that:

According to this recent poll, 29% of Australians would vote for Donald Trump if given the chance, and 36% hold a favorable opinion of him. These numbers are striking – not just for what they say about Trump’s global appeal, but for how they exceed the traditional ceiling of Australia’s hard-right base [which] suggests all this isn’t just about ideology. It’s about identity, spectacle, and a kind of political tribalism that transcends traditional party lines – even in countries like Australia, where the political landscape is markedly different from the United States.

In response, Michael Taylor shared the following:

Down here in Australia, most opinion polls are churned out by the mainstream media, and – fun fact – Murdoch’s got his mitts on 70% of the print game, all leaning hard to the right. Not exactly a balanced chorus.

The real gut-punch poll, though, was the May federal election. Opposition leader Peter Dutton went full mini-Trump, mirroring Trump’s playbook and banking on his party’s deep-pocketed backers to seal the deal. The outcome? A walloping for the ages – biggest conservative smackdown in 60 years. Even Dutton got the boot from his own seat. It was such a wipeout, it’ll take the right wing opposition a few election cycles to even think about crawling back. The loud and clear message? Aussies gave Trump’s style a resounding “nah, thanks.”

Still, the Murdoch machine keeps belting out Trump’s tune, amplifying the extreme-right voices in the party like they’re the only act in town.

Photo of the Day

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• St. Michael the Archangel: Perspectives and Portraits
• The Archangel Michael as Gay Icon
• Michaelmas
• St. Michael: Archangel, Spiritual Warrior, Icon of Homoerotic Love
• St. Michael, “Wave Maker”
• Archangel Michael

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Sunday, September 28, 2025

Silver Lining

A marathon of a drive
beyond mni wak’áŋ
across Dakota plains

The prize?
Your face
behind scratched plexiglass
And your voice
edged with static
close to my ear

Awkward at first
No privacy permitted
No touch
No breathing-in
the scent of sandalwood
on your body

But I will be satisfied, my love
with your face
and your voice

And hearing you impart
that in the bleakness
of all you’re enduring
I am your
silver lining

Saturday, September 27, 2025

Photo of the Day

Friday, September 26, 2025

Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”

President Trump has declared that he will designate the decentralized anti-fascist movement known as “antifa” as a terrorist organization. This moves comes as conservatives continue to blame left-wing groups and ideas for creating the conditions that led to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination earlier this month.

The Trump administration is “using this as a catch-all to go against the broader left and anyone who speaks out against fascism right now, while at the same time giving continued unchecked authority to the FBI to ignore the rise of right-wing violence,” says Will Potter, a writer who focuses on attacks on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. “The intention is to capitalize on this to crack down on their opponents and to consolidate authoritarian power.”

Potter’s latest book is Little Red Barns, an investigation into the state repression of those who attempt to expose the harms of the factory farming industry. This repression, says Potter, employs “mechanisms to criminalize journalism and label civil disobedience as terrorism through [the state’s] crackdown on citizen journalists, environmentalists, and animal welfare activists.”

This past Wednesday, Potter was a guest on Democracy Now! It's a very insightful and timely interview

This is really a historic turning point and a radical escalation in the war on dissent and the war on protest. It’s not about antifa, because antifa is not an organization. I think what Trump is very clearly signaling here is he’s using this as a catch-all to go against the broader left and anyone who speaks out against fascism right now, while at the same time giving continued unchecked authority to the FBI to ignore the rise of right-wing violence.

[Fascists] deflect and misdirect. They use opportunities like [the assassination of Charlie Kirk] to rewrite the narrative and then shift and blame their opposition and usher in, frankly, calls for violence and crackdowns. And I think we need to remember that even though there’s no evidence linking Charlie Kirk’s shooters to antifa or any other left organization, they’re going to proceed recklessly anyway. The intention is to capitalize on this to crack down on their opponents and to consolidate authoritarian power.

– Will Potter
September 24, 2025

Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris's Book, 107 Days

I don’t know if Kamala Harris found writing 107 Days cathartic, but reading it certainly wasn’t. Instead, the book, which unfolds in strictly chronological order, is a frustrating slog. It seems likely to alienate her critics further and provides no closure or hope for her supporters.

Harris has always been accused of sounding phoney; criticism she brushes off in the book as sexism. When Charlamagne tha God, host of popular radio show The Breakfast Club, observed that she came off as “very scripted” on the campaign trail, she retorted that it was actually “discipline.” The memoir was Harris’s opportunity to go off-script. Instead she sticks to her talking points.

. . . [107 Days] makes it clear [that Harris] still has blind spots about what went wrong. While a January YouGov poll suggests Biden’s unconditional support for Israel significantly affected Democratic voter turnout, Harris is largely dismissive of Gaza. Of demonstrators who turned up at campaign stops she asks: “Why weren’t they protesting at Trump rallies?” Can she really not understand? Because Trump was not in power at the time, and she was. Because President Biden made it clear he had no real empathy for Palestinians. Harris doesn’t seem to have much, either.

– Arwa Mahdawi
Excerpted from “107 Days by Kamala Harris:
No Closure, No Hope”
The Guardian
September 22, 2025

Kamala Harris still does not understand that her administration’s support for an ongoing genocide was not only morally horrific but cost her the votes of people with two eyes and a conscience.

– Nathan J. Robinson
via social media
September 23, 2025

Kamala Harris lost not because she’s a woman. Not because of voter tampering. Not because of faulty polls. Kamala Harris lost because she’s every bit of a war-mongering hypocrite as the orange embarrassment. If we are ever going to get our democracy back, it’s going to take a large chunk of the American people demanding we go left. TRULY left. Not this “fake left actually right of center” bullshit that we seem to fall for every four years.

– Raul Smith
via social media
September 23, 2025

The situation in the U.S. is getting darker by the day. The country is creeping (a less diplomatic but more honest word would be “galloping”) towards full-blown autocracy. Given America’s outsized influence on the world, this has grave implications for all of us. . . . In this context, was it too much to expect the woman who was vice-president for four years and whose defeat allowed Trump to burst back into the Oval Office to indulge in some honest reflection on what she might have done differently? Or to attempt a substantive analysis of what has gone so wrong in America that someone like Trump can not only be elected but, in the space of less than a year, with virtually no opposition, dismantle so much of what passed for democracy? Or to offer us any hope that the Democrats might be in even the foothills of working out how to start fighting back?

Harris does none of these things in any meaningful sense. We read, for example, that “it was devastating to learn after the election that I lost some ground with voters under 30, especially young men.” But we get nothing of any substance from her on why that happened.

In a somewhat glib afterword to the book, she observes (rightly) that “the dismantling of our democracy did not start with the 2024 election”, that “the right wing and religious nationalists have played the long game” and that “their plans have been amplified by the rise of a right wing media ecosystem built to operationalise their agenda through massive propaganda, misinformation and disinformation”. All of that is true, but, to be blunt, we didn’t need a Kamala Harris book to point it out. What she could have offered are cogent thoughts on how we got to this point – on the watch of Democrats as well as Republicans – and what needs to be done to start turning the tide again. On the latter point, the best she can muster is this: “At the heart of my vision for the future is Gen Z.”

When we strip the book back to its core – and this is my biggest frustration with it – the only explanation she really gives for her defeat is lack of time. It is her repeated refrain that the campaign just wasn’t long enough for voters to get to know her or understand her policies. Indeed, this is the pay off line to the whole book: “One hundred and seven days were, in the end, not long enough to accomplish the task of winning the presidency.” At this point, it dawned on me that the book’s title isn’t just a description of what she is writing about – it is her excuse. She does genuinely seem to be saying that with just a few days, weeks or months more, she would have won. Does she really believe that? Because I’m not sure anyone else does. I know I don’t.

Even if we were to buy into her theory about the brevity of the campaign, Harris takes no responsibility for its ineffectiveness. Given that she had been vice-president for four years under Joe Biden, it seems valid to ask why voters didn’t know her better. All we learn is that it wasn’t her fault. It was because Biden and his team had sidelined her. She admits that Biden was allowed to stay in the race for far too long and concludes that this was “reckless,” but also absolves herself of any blame: “I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out.”

There is much in this book that I found exasperating, but aspects of it depressed me too. Without appearing to recognise it, Harris seems to embody one of the failings of modern politics: the constant quest for positions calculated to offend the fewest voters. Obviously, compromise is a virtue in politics – and an art that seems lost in today’s world – but triangulation often ends up sounding too much like moral equivocation. On Gaza, while I am sure it doesn’t reflect how she really feels, she gives the impression of having cared more about finding the formulation that would lose the fewest votes than she did about the clarity, or justice, of her stance. She also expresses irritation that the young people turning up to her rallies to protest against genocide couldn’t see what, in her mind, was the bigger picture: “The threat to withhold their vote got to me. It felt reckless.”

. . . [T]he hard reality is I felt more despondent after reading this book than I did beforehand. I also can’t shake the feeling that the purpose of writing it may be more about testing the ground for another tilt at the White House than making sense of the last attempt. If I was to make up my mind about the prospect of that on the strength of this book alone, I’d have to conclude that it is not a good idea.

– Nicola Sturgeon
Excerpted from “Kamala Harris Has No Lessons
for the Democrats – or Herself”
The Observer
September 22, 2025

In the following 35-minute Left Reckoning video, Matt Lech and David Griscom break down Kamala Harris’s failed 2024 presidential campaign and “why it seems she might be done.”

Related Off-site Links:
Kamala Harris’s Book Proves She Was Never Prepared to Be President – The Majority Report (September 28, 2025).
Briahna Joy Gray Eviscerates Rachel Maddow Over Pathetic Kamala Harris Interview – The Katie Halper Show (September 25, 2025).
Kamala Harris Failed Gaza and Voters – HasanAbi Archive (September 24, 2025).
What a Book of Excuses Reveals About the Democrats’ Future – The Opinions Podcast (September 27, 2025).
Kamala Harris Deserves the Backlash – Black Green Red (September 29, 2025).
Why Kamala Shouldn’t Run in 2028 – Raging Moderates (September 23, 2025).
The Real Reason Democrats Are Failing – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, September 28, 2025).

See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• On This Momentous Day in U.S. Politics, a Visit to the Prayer Tree (2024)
• Memes of the Times – July 27, 2024
• “‘Vote Blue No Matter Who’ Is Not Enough to Win in November”
• Progressive Perspectives on an American Coronation
• Marianne Williamson: “I Hope I Will Hear Things from Kamala That I Can Full-on Support”
• Progressive Perspectives on the Presidential Nomination of Kamala Harris
• Breaking Down Kamala Harris’s DNC Speech on Gaza
• Yousef Munayyer: Quote of the Day – August 30, 2024
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Peter Bloom on the Unmasking of the “Democratic Charade”
• “It’s a Systematic Slaughter That We’re Funding”
• Progressive Perspectives on the Harris–Trump Presidential Debate
• Miles Kampf-Lassin on the “Flashing Red Warning Signs” for the Harris Campaign
• Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris’s Faltering Presidential Campaign
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Presidential Election
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden/Harris Administration (2025)
• Yes, Just Imagine

Image: Kamala Harris, November, 2024. (Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”

Washington, D.C.-based digital creator Derek Johnson recently shared the following on Facebook.

_____________

“Fascism” isn’t a slur for politics we don’t like. It’s a precise word with precise meaning. And in the face of what’s happening in America today, it’s the most honest one we have.

If you know me, you know I care about words. Not as provocation or flourish, but as a matter of personal integrity. I use them to tell the truth, and it’s important to get them right. You’ll also know I’ve spent my professional life working on threats that seem unimaginable until the moment they define our world.

So I understand why people flinch when the word “fascism” enters our discourse. It feels impolite. Overheated. Maybe even a little unhinged. But that instinct to moderate, to sound sensibie and measured, is exactly the problem. It keeps us from seeing clearly what’s happening right in front of us.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been working alongside historians and scholars who’ve studied fascism across continents and generations – and with movement leaders who have lived through it and fought it in their own countries. Italy and Germany in the 1930s, yes. But also El Salvador, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil. What’s striking is how consistent the pattern is.

Fascism is a right-wing authoritarian ideology with defining features academics widely agree on. The signs are depressingly familiar:

• The myth of a golden past. Fascist movements imagine the nation was once pure and powerful until outsiders weakened it. Redemption comes not through looking forward, but by turning backward.

• Hypernationalism and scapegoating. There is always an enemy within: immigrants, minorities, intellectuals, journalists, activists. The circle of blame expands until dissent itself is suspect.

• The cult of personality. Loyalty to the leader eclipses loyalty to nation or constitution. Civil servants are purged, and government becomes a tool of personal fealty. Careers rise and fall on proximity to a single figure.

• The cult of strength. Fascism worships power for its own sake. The leader promises order not through community or support, but through force. State violence is normalized, vigilantes are valorized, and brutality is recast as virtue rather than a last resort.

• Assault on the free press. Reporters are branded enemies. Propaganda floods the zone. Sometimes the state directly censors. More often it uses its unique leverage to pressure the private sector into silence dissenting voices.

• Erosion of democracy from within. Elections continue, but the field tilts. Courts are stacked. Voting rights restricted. Maps redrawn. Rules rewritten until losing is no longer a risk.

• Rigid gender roles and family hierarchies. Women’s autonomy is stripped away, LGBTQ people are criminalized or erased, and “traditional” family structures are enforced by law. Private life becomes political terrain, with gender and sexuality policed as matters of state power.

• Persecution of dissent. Opposition becomes treason. The state’s machinery – sham hearings, investigations, regulatory threats – is weaponized to intimidate and silence.

• Militarization of civic life. Civic space itself is infused with force: paramilitary cosplay as patriotism, secret police with sweeping powers, armed troops deployed into neighborhoods as a show of dominance against our own people.

• Collapse of shared reality. So much depends on splintering the information environment and shattering our shared sense of what’s happening. Public life is flooded with lies and conspiracies until people can’t agree on the most basic facts. Trapped in these pockets of unreality, even reasonable people can look straight at fascism and not see it – and conversation with them so often feels impossible.

What matters is the combination. Any democracy can show flashes of nationalism or polarization. Authoritarian states exist on the left as well as the right. But fascism is a distinct phenomenon of the far right: nationalism fused with social hierarchy, patriarchy fused with violence, democracy hollowed out while the rituals and veneer of legitimacy remain.

I get why people recoil from the word. It’s ugly, it sounds extreme. But you know what’s uglier? Pretending this isn’t happening until it’s too late to stop it. Orwell was right: sanitize the language and you sanitize the mind. Euphemism is how societies sleepwalk into tyranny.

That’s why historians tell us to be careful, and also to be clear. Avoiding the uncomfortable truth doesn’t make it less real. It just makes it harder to confront.

We cannot allow Charlie Kirk’s horrific shooting to be twisted into a reason for silence. Fascist movements seize on moments like this not to prevent violence, but to weaponize it – to twist it into political advantage, expand repression, punish dissent, tighten control. We already see the crackdowns on journalists, comedians, teachers. It’s an accelerating event that the regime knows exactly how to exploit, and believe me when I tell you that more accelerating events are coming.

This isn’t hysteria or alarmism, and it’s certainly not an incitement to violence. It’s clarity in the face of real and escalating danger.

James Baldwin, in his deep wisdom, said it best: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

It begins with the courage to call fascism by its name.

– Derek Johnson
via social media
September 19, 2025

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Yes, Just Imagine . . .

Matthew Albracht is a writer who deftly explores the intersections of personal growth, collective healing, and systemic change. Recently, he shared a piece on his substack that begins by acknowledging that “What’s happening in our nation today feels quite like a dream.” . . . A bad dream that’s actually “all too real” as we watch “democratic institutions and norms crumble before [our] eyes, and critical government agencies . . . severely gutted and even eliminated.”

Yet as Albracht reminds us, it didn’t have to be this way.

Indeed, we could instead be “witnessing a radical strengthening of democracy and society, prioritizing healing instead of harming – beyond what we had ever dared to imagine, or maybe even knew was possible.”

We could, in other words, have a progressive Democratic administration led by President Marianne Williamson, rather than an increasingly fascist Republican regime led by Donald Trump and his “minders” Stephen Miller and Russ Vought.

Following (with added links) is an excerpt from Albract’s piece, “What if Marianne Had Won.”

__________________

Imagine . . .

A presidency that provides moral clarity in ways we haven’t seen before. Untethered to calcified norms and big-moneyed influence, it looks right into the heart and soul of the human experience.

It is tackling root causes, not just symptoms. Instead of gutting health and science agencies while paying lip service to “making America healthy again,” we are implementing a Universal Coverage healthcare system focused on preventing chronic illness rather than just treating symptoms. Working to empower real, deep and lasting health on every front possible.

. . . Imagine a president working to fortify democratic stability rather than tear it down. Someone pushing for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, among other critical measures, to secure a thriving democratic society. Someone willing to finally rein in our increasingly concentrated cohort of corporate/mega wealthy overlords, instead of empowering them further.

Someone who stood firmly against the neoliberal tide – the whole corrosive system of deregulation, privatization, corporate capture, corporate lobbyists acting as policy-makers, and the quarterly-profit-obsessed market straightjacket that treats money as supreme over human values – that has hollowed out democracy’s promises over the decades. And someone who resisted the newer authoritarian impulse to silence dissent and punish free expression, which threatens to shatter what remains.

Rather than economic chaos driven by reckless executive orders and wildly erratic tariffs, we see strategic investments in policies that lift everyone up – securing funding for the foundations of a flourishing economy and culture: universal childcare, debt-free higher education, and renewable energy jobs that sustain both our people and our planet.

This didn’t have to be an imagination, it could have been reality. This administration could have been led by a President Marianne Williamson. That was actually her Democratic Presidential campaign platform, her vision, what she believed in with every fiber of her being and would have worked for.

What inspired me to write this whole piece was that I had an actual (and much sweeter) dream recently. In it, Marianne pulled through as the Dem candidate after Biden had come to his senses and withdrawn earlier in the primary. She won the primary and then handily defeated Trump. In my dream, I didn’t feel the slightest bit surprised, as she was speaking to something much deeper in the human experience . . . and that resonated with so many people who are tired of all the political games (and lies).

In my dream, I and others were helping her assemble an extraordinary, leading-edge cabinet. She was moving boldly forward on so many fronts, everything described above and much more – visionary shifts in how we organize society so that it serves everyone, heals what’s broken, and repairs what’s been ignored. I could viscerally feel the magic of what was happening in my bones. It felt inspiring, sweet and true.

When I woke from the dream that morning, into our current reality, the sweetness of course quickly evaporated. “Disheartened” doesn’t begin to capture how I felt. I’ve worked with Marianne Williamson for more than twenty-five years and served as a volunteer policy advisor on both her presidential campaigns. So when I dream of her winning, it isn’t just idle fantasy – it’s the sadness of knowing how much her vision could have offered, and how thoroughly it was mocked, dismissed, and iced out by the establishment. While she was dismissed by many as unqualified, what should be obvious now is that she had the most important qualification of all: the prescience to see what was coming, and the courage to name what would be required to prevent it.

She saw what so many in the establishment and media could not – or refused to – see: that Biden represented the same corporate-controlled politics people were exhausted by, and that Democrats weren’t speaking to those frustrations or acting on them. And she warned that Trump had gained not just political traction but a psycho-spiritual hold on millions of Americans. She knew his message, however false, resonated with people’s fears and frustrations. She saw it clearly, long before most were willing to admit his force hadn’t waned in comparison to the milquetoast candidacies of Biden (and later Harris).

Marianne often quotes Franklin Roosevelt, highlighting three lessons we would do well to remember today. First, his insistence that we need not fear fascism as long as democracy delivers on its promises – promises like universal healthcare and tuition-free higher education, which she warned we had failed to fulfill. Second, his reminder that “a necessitous man is not a free man” – a truth made vivid in our current age of deepening inequality and inequity. And third, his conviction that the most important job of the presidency is not administrative, but moral leadership itself. Marianne embodied that principle in ways that could have moved the needle had she not been sidelined.

– Matthew Albracht
Excerpted from “What if Marianne Had Won?”
Matthew Albracht’s Substack
September 23, 2025

For highlights of The Wild Reed’s coverage of Marianne Williamson’s 2020 presidential campaign, see the following chronologically-ordered posts:
• Talkin’ ’Bout An Evolution: Marianne Williamson’s Presidential Bid
• Why Marianne Williamson Is a Serious and Credible Presidential Candidate
• Marianne Williamson: Reaching for Higher Ground
• “A Lefty With Soul”: Why Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson Deserves Some Serious Attention
• Marianne Williamson Plans on Sharing Some “Big Truths” on Tonight's Debate Stage
• Friar André Maria: Quote of the Day – June 28, 2019
• Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson: “We’re Living at a Critical Moment in Our Democracy”
• Caitlin Johnstone: “Status Quo Politicians Are Infinitely ‘Weirder’ Than Marianne Williamson”
• Marianne Williamson On What It Will Take to Defeat Donald Trump
• “This Woman Is Going to Win the Nomination”: Matt Taibbi on Marianne Williamson in Iowa
• The Relevance and Vitality of Marianne Williamson’s 2020 Presidential Campaign
• Quote of the Day – November 4, 2019
• Marianne Williamson: “Anything That Will Help People Thrive, I’m Interested In”
• Marianne Williamson and the Power of Politicized Love
• Quote of the Day – December 14, 2019
• Marianne Williamson: “I Am Not Suspending My Candidacy”
• Marianne Williamson on New Day with Christi Paul – 01/04/20
• “A Beautiful Message, So Full of Greatness”
• “I Learned So Much From the Experience”
• Deep Gratitude

The Wild Reed

Thursday, October 02, 2025

An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”

Wednesday, October 01, 2025

Marianne Williamson: We Need an “Expanded Version of What it Means to Be Political”

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

September Vignettes

Monday, September 29, 2025

The “Creeping Fascism of Trump’s America”: A View from Australia

Photo of the Day

Sunday, September 28, 2025

Silver Lining

Saturday, September 27, 2025

Photo of the Day

Friday, September 26, 2025

Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”

Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris's Book, 107 Days

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

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