Philanthropy in a fascist state

So many lines. The abductions. The cronies. The grift. The shameless cruelty. A Supreme Court Justice declaring the majority's decisions "indefensible." SCOTUS decisions to deny due process. Racism as the project. Death sentences for oppressed people around the world. Death sentences for children, the elderly, the disabled, the poor, the female, the brown and black-skinned, the Muslim, the immigrant, the Jew.

I don't have much to say on the eve of a nation's birthday, other than to note that it, as so many others have before it, has abandoned its core principles, given into the tyrant, sold its potential to return to the worst of its pasts. This is not to say we should stop fighting it, resisting it, or defying it. It is to say that the turn has been made. We won't be able to prevent it from metastasizing and worsening unless we acknowledge where we are. It can and will get worse. Way worse. We can and must continue to fight, resist, refuse, defy - it has already cost lives, more will be lost.

What we can't do - what I can't do - is pretend that the old assumptions hold. I co-edited a book only ten years ago called Philanthropy in Democratic Societies. The assumptions in that volume no longer hold. They can no longer be assumed. As I go forward with this blog I will need to state the old, the new, the unknown - for my own sanity and integrity. I hope I can continue to ask, to provoke, to name antagonists and protagonists as I see them. That I can do so safely is no longer a safe assumption.

Since the old is now gone, we only have room to imagine and create better.