By Dave Otto On September 30, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stood before senior military leaders and announced that the Pentagon would be redefining  the official meaning of “toxic leadership.” His message was sharp: demanding high standards is not toxic, and what he called the “real” toxic leadership is endangering subordinates by setting low standards, promoting by quota, or bending to political correctness. He went further, claiming that the very terms “toxic leadership,” “bullying,” and “hazing” have been “weaponized” to punish commanders and enforce a culture of weakness. This redefinition is not neutral. It is itself a weapon. What Doctrine Actually Says For years, Army and DoD leadership doctrine has been clear: toxic leadership is a pattern of self-centered attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that harm subordinates, corrode trust, and weaken mission effectiveness. It is about leaders who create climates of fear, undermine cohesion, and put personal ambition above the mission. That is not the same thing as “political correctness.” It is not the same thing as enforcing standards with discipline. It is about corrosion of the profession from the inside out. By blurring those lines, Hegseth isn’t protecting standards—he is erasing the doctrinal safeguard that prevents leaders from abusing their authority under the guise of toughness. Weaponizing the Concept When Hegseth says toxic leadership has been “weaponized,” he turns the mirror around. The real weaponization is happening at the top, where definitions are being rewritten to protect favored leaders and delegitimize the tools that soldiers and civilians use to hold them accountable. Under this new definition, it is no longer toxic to intimidate, belittle, or retaliate against subordinates—as long as you claim you’re doing it to enforce “standards.” But raising concerns about bullying, hazing, or abusive command climates? That’s what suddenly risks being labeled political, or worse, disloyal. This is not doctrine. This is poisonous pedagogy. Toxic Masculinity in Uniform The Secretary’s speech reflected a narrow ideal of leadership: the hard-charging warrior, defined by toughness, physique, and conformity. This is toxic masculinity masquerading as military virtue. It's the Putinification of the American armed forces. It dismisses empathy, moral courage, and intellectual agility as “soft.” Yet those very qualities—presence, trust, adaptability—are enshrined in the Army’s own Leader Requirements Model. A military that teaches young leaders that vulnerability, reflection, or care for subordinates is weakness is not a stronger force. It is a brittle one. Why This Matters Leadership doctrine and warfighting doctrine are supposed to mesh: mission command requires trust, initiative, and disciplined freedom of action. Toxic leadership, as defined in doctrine, destroys all three. By narrowing toxicity to ideological targets, the Pentagon risks legitimizing abusive behavior while silencing the voices that keep the institution accountable and adaptable. The consequences are real: Cohesion suffers  when subordinates are silenced. Readiness falters  when leaders value obedience over initiative. Legitimacy erodes  when the ethic of the profession is subordinated to personal or political ideology. The Real Danger The question isn’t whether we need high standards. Of course we do. The question is: who gets to define what counts as toxic?  If the answer is only those in power, then abuse is not just tolerated—it’s sanctified. Hegseth claims to be saving the military from weaponized accusations. But the greater threat is his own weaponization of leadership doctrine itself. It is an act of redefinition that shields toxic leaders, punishes dissent, and narrows leadership to a caricature of toughness. That is not strength. That is fragility dressed in camouflage. Closing Thought The military doesn’t need leaders who mistake cruelty for courage or domination for discipline. It needs leaders who embody the profession’s ethic: who can demand excellence without destroying trust, who can inspire initiative rather than stifle it, and who know that true strength is never afraid of accountability.

By Dave Otto This week, Charlie Kirk was assassinated in what appears to be a politically motivated act of violence. In the aftermath, MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd made the blunt observation that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”  For that, he was fired. Dowd’s comment was not an endorsement of the killing—it was a diagnosis. And, whether we’re ready to hear it or not, it was essentially correct . In his book Cultural Software , legal theorist J.M. Balkin offers a Talmudic story worth remembering: the last thing God created was a pair of tongs. Why? Because tongs can only be made with tongs—so someone had to make the first set. The parable suggests that every tool we use to shape the world is itself shaped by earlier tools. Meaning, intention, narrative, identity—all of it gets passed down, crafted with inherited instruments . But Balkin goes further with the tong analogy: once a tool exists, its creator no longer controls how it will be used . Even God couldn't stop the blacksmith from forging weapons of destruction. In that light, ideological memes, political rhetoric, and cultural incantations aren’t fixed ideas floating in the ether—they’re tools. Tools for sorting the world. Tools for naming enemies. Tools that are passed around, repurposed, and eventually acted upon. And some tools—especially those forged in contempt, dehumanization, and apocalyptic fervor —are dangerously sharp. They don’t just hang on the wall. They get picked up. They get wielded. Sometimes by people you didn’t expect. Sometimes in ways you didn’t intend. The alleged shooter in Kirk’s case, as more facts emerge, appears not to have been a leftist provocateur, he wasn't the blue-haired, they/them, vegan, liberal arts major of Nancy Mace's nightmares, but a member of the same ideological milieu Kirk himself helped forge . A young man steeped in the dark subcultures of online extremism, where irony and hate blend into violent fantasies. Where memes become manifestos. Where revolutionary play-acting turns real. This is the moment when the tool-maker loses control. And here’s the hard truth in a deliberative democracy: you can condemn an act of political violence while still holding its cultural architects accountable.   You can reject violence without ignoring the conditions that made it thinkable. The existence of tongs does not absolve the maker. That’s civic responsibility. MSNBC failed miserably in that regard (full disclosure, I don't watch MSNBC, never have) . If we pretend that violent rhetoric has no relationship to violent outcomes, we’re not protecting free speech—we’re insulating ourselves from consequence. We’re denying the moral feedback loop. And we’re ensuring that these tools will get sharper, faster, and more unstable in the hands of the next person who picks them up . We are not just the users of cultural tools. We are the passers-on. And whether we like it or not, we will be judged by the sharp tools we allow to proliferate .

By Dave Otto In ancient Rome, when a victorious general was granted a triumph, he rode through the city in a gilded chariot. Crowds roared, garlands flew, power radiated from the spectacle. But behind him stood a slave, charged with a strange duty: to whisper into the ear of the celebrated commander— “Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento! Memento mori.”  Look behind you. Remember you are only a man. Remember you must die. The whisper was not meant to spoil the glory, but to ground it. To remind the mighty that power is fleeting, that no one is above consequence. It was the voice of humility, a voice easy to ignore, yet essential if triumph was not to curdle into tyranny. For more than four decades, Washington, D.C. had its own whisper at the gates of power. The White House Peace Vigil stood across from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue beginning in 1981, a modest, often weather-beaten presence staffed around the clock. Its message was blunt, almost stubborn in its simplicity: nuclear disarmament, peace, a call to conscience. Tourists walked past, politicians looked away, but the vigil endured—an uninvited voice reminding us of what we would rather forget. The White House Peace Vigil, a constant presence since 1981 And then, in a flash, it was gone. After a reporter asked Donald Trump about the “eyesore” tent, he ordered it dismantled. The Peace Vigil, which had outlasted multiple administrations, wars, and Cold War threats, was silenced because its persistence offended the aesthetics of power. A persistent reminder of the follies of war. But the vigil was never about appearances. Like the Roman slave whispering in the triumph, it existed to unsettle, to keep a flame of humility alive against the floodlights of spectacle. Its small, ramshackle tent was a reminder that the machinery of war is not abstract policy—it is death, destruction, a moral abyss. To call it an “eyesore” is to mistake the point. Truth-telling often mars the stagecraft of authority. The Romans knew power without humility becomes delusion. Our own republic seems hellbent on ignoring that historic truth. The Peace Vigil may be gone from its post, but the truth it carried cannot be dismantled. We still need voices—persistent, uncomfortable, unpolished—that whisper across the roar of empire: remember your limits, remember your humanity, remember peace. Memento mori.

By Dave O. A lifetime ago—or maybe a handful of decades back—I walked the tiers and policed the halls of the Eastham Unit, one of Texas’s oldest and most brutal prison units. Eastham was an old-school Southern prison through and through: two parts head-knocking, one part toeing the line, and all of it shot through with the brutal rhythms of forced labor and institutional racism. This is a story about moral injury: the psychic wound that comes not from what is done to you, but from what you are made to do—what you witness, what you participate in—under the stripe of authority. The term may be clinical, but the experience is anything but. It is a reckoning of conscience. A shattering of one’s belief in the basic decency of the structures you served. At Eastham, cruelty wasn’t a malfunction. It was the operating system. It was not only tolerated—it was ritualized, mythologized, and, for those who played along, rewarded. It wasn’t just about sadism—it was about bureaucratized brutality, where beatings weren’t just allowed; they were tools of control. Building tenders —violent inmates unofficially deputized by the state—were armed and given more power than the guards. As one former tender put it: “We had clubs, bats, chains, knives—everything—and we formed what we called a ‘whupping line.’” — *Newsweek*, “Inside America’s Toughest Prison,” Oct. 6, 1986 The system turned prisoners against each other, white, Mexican, and black, turned guards into perpetrators and accomplices, and turned silence into currency. Those who resisted the logic of force were marginalized, punished, or simply worn down. Promotions went to those who lied on reports, looked the other way, or did what the warden didn’t want to sign his name to. One correctional officer remembered watching inmates being stomped unconscious—then instructed not to clean the blood: “Leave the blood on the floor, man, so those motherfuckers can see it.” — *Newsweek*, “Inside America’s Toughest Prison,” Oct. 6, 1986 That wasn’t just cruelty—it was messaging. A daily display of terror. I saw inmates who were badly beaten in the Major’s Office put on display in the central hallway, made to stand for hours for others to see. What do you call a system that demands this of its people? What kind of internal contortions must a person perform to survive it? And what should we make of a system that doesn’t turn to cruelty in defiance of the public, but in obedience to it? Because let’s be clear: brutality wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t a dirty secret. It was theater. Texans were proud of units like Eastham, Coffield, and Ellis—prisons that clung to vestiges of a brutal past. It was pageantry. It was punishment made visible so the public could feel reassured that vengeance was being served. The guards didn’t invent that desire. They answered to it. They were rewarded by it. Keep that in mind if you're expecting ICE officers to have a sudden epiphany. So long as the work feels rewarding, and the modern American zeitgeist continues to applaud cruelty dressed as policy, the machinery will keep running. Its grotesque nature will only grow. These systems don’t just reflect power—they reflect public appetite. A public hunger for retribution shaped the institution’s every gesture—from the boots we wore to the reports we filed, to the beatings. The racism, cruelty, and brutality weren’t just an unfortunate excess. They were expressions of collective will, disguised as discipline. And that may be the hardest truth of all. M. Scott Peck, reflecting on the moral vacuum that gave rise to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, wrote that *“evil is live spelled backward.”* Evil, in Peck’s definition, is not a monstrous other—it’s the erosion of empathy in the name of structure. It's the bureaucratic smoothness with which unspeakable things become protocol. Hannah Arendt saw it too. Her notion of the “banality of evil” wasn’t an exoneration—it was a diagnosis. Ordinary people, following procedures, checking boxes, enforcing rules. The system feeds on obedience and rejects conscience. When I think about the worst moments at Eastham—the beatings, the cover-ups, the casual racism woven into every corner of the place—I don’t just see the cruelty. I live with the complicity. I see the ethical culture that groomed it, protected it, promoted it, and infected me. And that’s where moral injury lives—not in the blood, but in the silence that followed. In the shrinking feeling at what I allowed myself to be a part of. In the dull ache of knowing I said nothing when something should have been said. To be clear, I did not have discernible moral objections to the work most of the time I was doing it. I was young, dumb, and poorly integrated in my emotional, intellectual, and moral life. I hadn’t yet developed the internal vocabulary to name what I was part of. But I know now that systems like Eastham don’t operate in defiance of the public—they operate as expressions of it. This shouldn't be lost on anyone who’s read Lord of the Flies . American policing in its most typical form is run by Jacks—people who conflate leadership with domination. At its worst, it’s when the Rogers take over: the ones who dominate not out of desire for order, but because of a lust for control. The ones with a sadistic streak. What I saw at Eastham was a system that cultivated Rogers—sought them out and sometimes gave them keys to the building. That’s not about law enforcement. That’s about appetite. Not every correctional officer beat inmates. Not every officer who did felt regret. But for those of us who do regret—for those of us left to navigate the contradictions of duty and humanity—the wound is real. And it echoes. It echoes in the political leadership of this country, which is dominated by sadists and sociopaths. It echoes in the weaponization of law enforcement and the normalization of cruelty dressed as law and order. It echoes in the militarized ICE raids on immigrant communities by masked marauders . It echoes in the joyful launch of an immigrant detention facilities deep in the Everglades It echoes in the administrators who say “it’s policy” and the masked agents who will claim “I was just doing my job.” Moral injury isn’t just a personal scar. It’s a social signal. It tells us when a system has broken faith with the human beings inside it. It’s not a weakness—it’s a warning. We live in a moment of performative cruelty. We are governed by people who mistake sadism for strength. If you feel sick watching it unfold, as I do, that’s not moral confusion. That’s moral clarity. You don’t need to have been inside Eastham to recognize Eastham in the world around you. Bull Connor, My Lai, Kent State, Attica, Ferguson, Derek Chauvin, Abu Ghraib, Rikers Island, the Chicago Police Department’s black site at Homan Square—when we let sadists have their way, bad things happen. But naming what’s wrong isn’t enough. We must imagine what’s right. Moral imagination is the capacity to envision a world beyond cruelty, to see dignity where others are told to see threat. It’s what sustains courage, even in systems designed to crush it. If you’ve seen it—if you’ve felt that sick recognition—then the question is not just what you’ll say or do. The question is what world you’re willing to imagine into being. Because silence, once again, is complicity. Imagining something different—and acting on it—is the first refusal.

Essays & Photographs by Dave Otto | ottoimagery.art A tide line of molten light. Wind through the grasses. Two surfers paddling out to meet the the rising sun. These images may seem simple—quiet even—but they ask a moral question: What does it mean to be here, to belong to a place, and to care for it as though it matters? We live on a thin raft—a delicate, interwoven miracle of life and breath and memory. The Earth is not a backdrop. It is the body we live in. The atmosphere is not endless. The ocean is not invincible. The soil is not bottomless. And still, we behave as though these things are ours to exhaust. But to be human is not to dominate. It is to participate. And participation carries responsibility. Stewardship as Moral Imagination If we believe in dignity—not just human dignity, but the dignity of life itself—then we are called to protect it. Stewardship is not a technical obligation. It is a moral act , a form of sacred listening to the rhythms of the world around us. To care for the Earth is to practice moral imagination : to envision a future where beauty is not rare, where breath is clean, where we are not strangers to the land or one another. It is not about perfection. It is about presence. Local Ground, Global Stakes Timothy Snyder reminds us that tyranny often begins with the erasure of the local—with forgetting the soil under our feet. Localization , in that sense, is resistance. To know the tide, the dune grass, the path of the sun—is to be grounded in something real. Something that can’t be monetized or abstracted or voted away. What We Owe We owe more than gratitude. We owe attention . We owe care . We owe action , not because it will save everything, but because it is the right thing to do. “The earth is what we all have in common. We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it.” — Wendell Berry Let this post be a reminder: To look. To listen. To live gently. To protect what remains. This is my expression of moral imagination. Estero Beach, Fort Myers Beach, FL

By Dave Otto Veterans for Peace and About Face vets occupying the Capitol steps On July 13, 2025, a group of veterans and allies gathered in Washington, D.C. to stage a public act of civil disobedience against militarism, state violence, and the politicization of the armed forces. What followed was not just a protest—it was a moral reckoning. Some came to be speak out, others to bear witness, but all came with purpose. This photo essay captures that day from the inside: from the quiet moments in a community center basement to the chants echoing across police barricades. I was there to participate to observe—and stood in solidarity. The story that follows is not the official version. It is the one I observed. Prelude: In the Company of Conscience Moments before heading to the SCOTUS, Vets gather for final grounding. No speeches, just clarity. Veterans from multiple generations stood shoulder to shoulder, preparing to act not out of anger—but out of conscience. We’d been talking for weeks—over chats, and calls, planning plans. Now we were here, together, in the basement of a D.C. organizing space. The kind of place that smelled of carpet glue and purpose. A space big enough for a potluck, an art-build, or staging an action. The walls were green in parts, beige in others. The chairs—gray, stackable, institutional—lined the walls or gathered in circles, rarely used, as most folks stood or leaned in conversation. There was a table with water bottles, handouts, and pizza. Enough fuel for what we came here to do. The room was as diverse as the country itself—Black, brown, white, queer, trans, disabled, immigrant, native-born—all of us bound not by uniform, but by conviction. A kind of gritty, principled solidarity that felt like the best of what America could be. There were Cold War vets among us. Vietnam vets, an old fellow  in a red shirt with a Ho Chi Minh quote on the back.  Gulf War veterans and seasoned peace activists who knew this rhythm well. For some in the group, it was a reunion—grizzled hands clasped over decades of shared struggle. For others an introduction—those from the post-9/11 wars—it was something newer, something rawer. The war stories the younger vets carry are still hot to the touch. Some found quiet corners, backs against walls, legs outstretched. Others gathered in tight knots, joking, reconnecting, prepping. One vet in full Coast Guard blues sat cross-legged on the carpet, his green duffel bag nearby like a shadow from another life. Someone passed out sharpies and cards for contact info Our main organizer, a former Army Captain, sat behind a laptop covered in stickers: Fight Poverty Not the Poor , Vote With Love , About Face . She looked up, calm and unflinching, ready. With the hurry up and wait part of the day over, we formed a loose circle. Not for a sermon, but for grounding. Support teams were introduced, the media and police  liaisons. The roles were clear. The risk was real and well understood. After all, hadn't the President promised a crack down on any and all dissent? We were aware also of reports of militant Trump supporters looking to cause problems. Then the ask: a collective affirmation of nonviolence. Not theoretical. Not “unless.” Nonviolence even if provoked. Even if threatened.  If you couldn’t commit to that, you were in the wrong place. No one came to battle the Capitol Police, smear shit on the walls, or hang the Vice President. That was never the point. This wasn’t about theatrics or confrontation for its own sake. It was about bearing witness—to a future worth fighting for. I hold as a core principle of existential-humanistic thought that if you truly value something, you will choose it freely—aware of the alternatives and understanding the consequences. And that’s what this was: a gathering of people who had made a clear-eyed choice. Veterans who once followed orders now choosing to resist them, not out of bitterness, but in service to a deeper loyalty—one rooted in justice, care, and the refusal to be silent. In that room, it was clear: this wasn’t nostalgia, and it wasn’t performance. It was the embodiment of a promise—to never again be used against the people, to turn the tools of war into instruments of peace. Most wore old uniforms, some wore T-shirts with slogans in bold red letters, but all wore the weight of what we know, what we have lived.  The room held quiet resolve, a gentleness, not rage. And as we prepared to walk toward the Supreme Court and ultimately the Capitol, toward whatever came next, it felt less like a protest and more like a rite. A line was being drawn—not in defiance alone, but in fidelity to something higher than orders or flags. In choosing to resist, we were once again serving our country. Not the spectacle, but the soul. Part 2: Moving into Position We didn’t march—we walked. Quiet, deliberate, unspectacular. A hundred veterans and allies making our way to the Supreme Court in the thick D.C. heat. No chants, no signs. Just presence. We didn’t call it a march. There were no formations, no bullhorns, no banners, no slogans echoing down Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a walk. A friendly, loosely gathered stroll under the thick humidity of a D.C. summer, the kind of heat that makes your skin remember where you’ve been stationed, what you’ve carried. We walked past commuters, office workers, tourists, and an occasional police cruiser. We weren’t trying to provoke attention—we were trying not to. That was the point. We didn’t want to invite confrontation with militant counter-protesters looking for a reason. That would fit thier narrative, not ours. We had a message to deliver. Some of us wore T-shirts with bold red text: “Veterans Against Fascism” , “Feed the People, Not the War Machine,”   “Healthcare Not Warfare.”  Others wore pieces of uniform—camo jackets, old boots, a Coast Guard jumpsuit, faded unit patches. Patches stitched to sleeves for us old-timers, velcro for the younger set. Each step was quiet, but not casual. We were walking in the service of a shared conscience. We arrived in front  of the Supreme Court not as a flash mob, but as a presence. The press had been alerted, and a few cameras were already waiting. That’s when the banners came out— “VETS SAY MILITARY OFF OUR STREETS”  stretching wide across the steps, flanked by signs that read “MONEY FOR PEOPLE, NOT PARADES.”  It wasn’t long before the chants started: “Benefits Not Bullshit.”  It came out of someone’s gut like a dare, and the rest of us picked it up. It was loud, then louder. People stopped. Tourists. Staffers. Dozens, then hundreds, formed an informal crowd around the press conference. And then came the testimonies. Veterans stepped forward—some shaking, some unshakable—and told their stories. About moral injury. About being sent to fight abroad while their neighbors at home couldn’t afford healthcare. About watching tanks roll into American cities, not in training drills, but in protest crackdowns. They spoke about promises made, broken, and reclaimed. They spoke not as victims, but as witnesses. This wasn’t just an action. It was an intervention. In the shadow of the nation’s highest court, we declared a deeper loyalty—not to blood and soil, but to humanity. Not to orders, but to truth. Not to spectacle, but to solidarity. Part 3: The Walk to the Capitol Steps The press conference at SCOTUS had ended, but something in the air had shifted. Without fanfare, we turned west toward the Capitol—quickened steps, tightened packs, a quiet urgency passing through the ranks. Not everyone knew what was coming, but everyone felt it. The press conference dissolved the way good ones do—without ceremony. A final chant, a round of claps, a few hugs, and then a subtle shift in the current. The front of the Supreme Court emptied, but nobody scattered. We knew we weren’t done. Not even close. There wasn’t an announcement. No orders barked, no whistles blown. But something moved through the group—an unspoken signal. We know the destination. People began walking—not milling, not wandering— walking  deliberately toward the Capitol. You could feel it in the air, like the moment before a storm. Some folks in the crowd—bystanders, supporters, maybe even a few press—may not have known the next step. But they knew something was coming. We turned west, toward the dome—toward power, toward history, toward the line was about to be crossed. It’s a short walk, maybe a quarter mile. But we took it at a pace that was brisk, decisive. It wasn’t hurried, but it wasn’t casual either. This was a move , and everyone knew it. Some adjusted their backpacks. Others tightened scarves, rolled sleeves, and passed water bottles. A few took deep breaths, shoulders back. It wasn’t rehearsed, but it was prepared. The Capitol came into view, glowing white behind haphazardly erected barricades and fencing. The same building where just a few years earlier, mobs stormed the halls in rage and delusion. But this wasn’t that. This was something else entirely. There was no bloodlust in our step. No chaos in our eyes. This was intentional. A calm and courageous decision to bear witness and share our truth. We were headed toward the east plaza—not to destroy, but to reclaim. Not to provoke, but to insist. We were about to cross a different kind of line. One not marked by tape or fencing, but by conscience. Part 4: The Steps Things happened fast—faster than any plan could fully contain. One moment we were clustered at the barricade, the next, people were in motion. There will be official versions of what happened, filed by police, framed by press. But we had our own truth. We were there. We saw it unfold. From where I stood, I wasn't in the middle of the chaos, but it felt  it—like a pulse surging outward. The barricade wan't a barricade at all. There were fences in places, no fence in others. I asked a Capitol Police Officer if I could move forward, and I got a gruff "No!", as I watched ten other people with cameras casually walk past. Note to self for next time: it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Veterans surged forward fast before the Capitol Police even realized the push had begun. I was reminded of a young Kevin Bacon playing a police officer in the 1978 hit film "Animal House". The flow was too much to contain. Those who had committed to bear witness were moving, and the rest of us were there to support. There were shouts—some of urgency, some of joy. I saw a few get tackled, hard. One elder with a walker made it partway before being detained. Saddest police chase ever. But most people simply moved quick and clean, up the stone expanse of the plaza and onto the East Capitol steps. And then they sat . The banners unfurled like a promise kept: VETS SAY MILITARY OFF OUR STREETS BENEFITS NOT BULLSHIT MONEY FOR PEOPLE, NOT PARADES The crowd looking on matched them in voice. Call and response rang out across the plaza. Their chant on the steps, our echo at the fence. It was a communion of purpose, divided by a barrier but united by conscience. Police reinforcements poured in—helmets, zip ties, radio chatter. But no violence came from our side. That was the point. This was not about provocation. It was about presence. A moral interruption. Civil disobedience at its clearest. As Vets were detained—some gently, others not—we watched, documented, and supported. We called out names, took photos, sent texts to jail support. Our job was to witness, to protect with presence and accountability, and to ensure no one disappeared without someone noticing. The real breach didn’t start at the barricade. Long before we crossed the line, our political leaders had crossed theirs—red lines of truth, justice, and human dignity. We occupied the Capitol steps, however briefly, not for spectacle, but as a moral warning: That if they will not be bound by conscience, we will make our presence the alarm. To be continued...

By Dave O. Family stories are the first history lessons most of us get. And like a lot of history, they’re messy. I grew up being told that my ancestor, Porter McGhan, was a First Nation person—an Indian child adopted into a Scottish immigrant family. That story held a certain reverence in my heart. I was a step-child, adopted, in a fashion, and I was always acutely aware of it.  But the past doesn’t always sit still. Recent DNA testing suggests that Porter may not have been Indigenous at all—but Corsican. Mediterranean roots, not Native ones. And while that DNA test might change the narrative, it didn’t make me think any less of Porter. In fact, it made me think more about how we define identity—and who gets to draw the lines. "tintype' portrait of Porter McGhan A Beginning Without a Clear Origin Porter’s beginnings were uncertain. Family lore holds that he was abandoned or orphaned as an infant, new to a complicated world from his first breath. His mother died in child-birth. After burying his wife, Porter’s father reportedly abandoned the baby and disappeared into the unknown. As the story goes, Farmer McGhan, himself an immigrant, hearing the plight of the family, walked ten miles and rescued the orphaned baby. McGhan, a man who had come to America not with wealth or pedigree, but with enough grit to build a life from scratch. That act—of taking in a child, giving him a name, and raising him as his own—wasn’t just a kindness. It was a declaration. In a world obsessed with bloodlines, McGhan built his family differently: with intention, not inheritance.  Into the Fire In May of 1862, as the Civil War escalated, Porter joined the newly formed 17th Michigan Infantry. He was just one of thousands of young men, many of them first generation immigrants, swept into the currents of war. Just weeks after Porter’s enlistment, on August 27, 1862, the regiment boarded trains to Washington, D.C., Their first test came fast: South Mountain on September 14, then Antietam three days later—September 17, 1862. It was the bloodiest single day in American history. Porter was there. And he was wounded. A wound to his leg, ending his military career just weeks after it had begun. He was sent home on a medical furlough. In January 1863, Porter was discharged in Detroit, the paperwork citing a “gunshot wound - inner and lower aspect of right thigh.”  We Don’t Get to Look Away So who was Porter McGhan? He was a child taken in. A soldier wounded in one of this nation’s bloodiest battles. A man whose life crossed the boundaries of blood, nation, and certainty. He stood when called—not for a narrow idea of heritage, but I'd like to believe, for something larger. For belonging. For future generations. For home. And now, I look around and wonder what he would think of the country he helped hold together. Because today, nativist passions are boiling over. What was once billed as a crackdown on dangerous gang members has morphed into a brutal assault on immigrant communities—indiscriminate, inhumane, and escalating. People with legal status are being taken from homes, workplaces, and schools by masked marauders. Families are being torn apart in broad daylight. We are witnessing children ripped from their parents’ arms. Not by necessity. Not according to law or custom. But by design. And we are expected to call it policy instead of what it is: cruelty. Maybe it’s because of Porter—because of the uncertainty around his origins, the fragility of his belonging, the debt I feel to those who made space for him—that I can’t see this moment as anything but an assault on humanity itself. This post is for him. And for every child who doesn’t know if the adults in their life will retun home work tonight. For every parent who crossed a border not to break the law, but to keep a promise, to feed a family. For every American who believes that who we claim and how we treat the most vulnerable is what defines us in the end. We don’t get to look away. Not if we’ve inherited anything worth keeping.

(Cirrocumuli Field Notes) Yesterday I watched two people talk—really talk—about politics. Not shouting, not posting, not retreating into algorithmic corners. Just a long, intense, frustrating conversation between two human beings trying to make sense of the mess we’re all swimming in. They went at it for a solid half hour. Body language animated but respectful. No fists. No eyerolls. No easy exits. When they finally paused, both looked a little worn down. A little exasperated. You could see it on their faces— “Why don’t they get it?” But maybe that’s not the point. We’ve grown so used to measuring political discourse by conversions and victories—by who came out on top or who changed their mind on the spot. But that’s not how people work. That’s not how learning works. Engagement isn’t always about being right. Sometimes it’s about being real. Present. Willing to risk the discomfort of not being agreed with. In the mid-90s, I was invited to hear Noam Chomsky speak. I disagreed with almost everything he said. I sat there thinking, This guy doesn’t have a clue.  But I heard him. I really heard him. And over the years—through a hundred different glitches in the matrix, through moments of crisis and clarity—I’ve had to admit to myself, Oh fuck… he was right. That moment didn’t change me on the spot. But it left a seed. And that seed has rippled outward for decades. That’s the kind of engagement I hope to nurture - to learn - not the kind that wins arguments, but the kind that plants something deeper. A habit of listening. A muscle for holding tension. A willingness to stay at the table even when it would be easier to walk away. We don’t need everyone to agree. We need more people who are willing to stay in it . Because democracy doesn’t require unanimity. It requires presence. And sometimes, that’s more than enough to begin. Engaging with different viewpoints isn’t about surrendering your convictions—it’s about strengthening your capacity to live in a world where other people exist.

Estimating crowd size is a tricky business in D.C., but long experience helps. By every reasonable measure, the  Unite for Veterans Rally  on the National Mall yesterday brought out  at least 25,000 to 30,000 people —a conservative estimate. What’s clear is this: something has shifted. Gone is the groping disorientation of January and February. The mood now is focused. Angry. Resolved. People aren’t just showing up—they know  why  they’re showing up. And they know this isn’t a season. It’s an era.  We are in the fight of our lifetimes. The speaker who grabbed my attention was  Cecil Roberts , a sixth-generation coal miner and Vietnam combat veteran, with the Capitol dome standing tall behind him. Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, didn’t deliver a speech—he delivered a call to conscience. Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Roberts spoke about the moral imperative of fighting for something greater than oneself. “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live,” Roberts quoted. The meaning was clear:  this is a fight , and yes, you’re going to take some lumps. But the lumps are nothing compared to the deeper purpose—the cost of freedom, the price of dignity, the shared struggle for justice. A few minutes later, the Dropkick Murphys came on. The atmosphere cracked open—electric, alive, defiant. Mother Jones once said, “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”  That spirit hung thick in the air on the Mall. This isn’t about pageantry. It’s about policy. It’s about who gets to live with dignity, who gets care, who gets heard. The call now is to  organize, amplify, and protect each other . Not someday. Not in theory. But right now. Bring your voice. Bring your art. Bring your outrage. We need all of it. We’re awake now. And we’re not going back to sleep.

Timothy Snyder begins On Tyranny  with a warning that echoes louder every day: “ Do not obey in advance .”  It’s not just a lesson from history—it’s a diagnosis of the present. Tyranny doesn’t always arrive with a bang. More often, it creeps in through silence, courtesy, and deference. It thrives not on orders, but on anticipation—when people adjust their speech, their values, their gaze, before anyone even asks them to. The problem didn't start with Trump. American society, for all the talk of independence, is remarkably obedient in this way. An example that comes to mind is Colin Kaepernick. Here was a man who, quietly and respectfully, refused to stand for the anthem as a form of protest. Not violence. Not disruption. Just dissent. And the cost? He was cast out. Not officially. Not with fanfare. But with a collective shrug—a professional blackballing that many treated as justified. As if we had all silently agreed that refusing to go along, even when morally compelled, deserved punishment. It was preemptive obedience that made it possible. The kind that says, “Well, he should’ve known better.” Or worse: “He made his choice.” The kind of thinking that justifies erasure because it’s uncomfortable to witness conviction. What about the War on Drugs? One of the most staggering examples of preemptive obedience in American history—a campaign waged not just through laws, but through cultural consent. Over decades, we constructed a vast custodial complex to punish addiction and poverty, branding it as protection. We locked people in cages—millions of them, disproportionately Black and brown—under the banner of public safety. But who were we really protecting? Often, the justification came dressed in paternalism: “They need discipline.” “It’s for their own good.” As if criminalization was a form of care. And through it all, the objections were minimal. Obedience didn’t require agreement—only acquiescence. Politicians gained points for being “tough on crime,” while entire communities were gutted. Schools became pipelines. Neighborhoods lost fathers, sisters, sons. And the rest of society watched, largely unmoved, convinced the system was working—or at least not working against  them. The machinery of mass incarceration wasn’t just built with bricks and bars. It was built with silence . More recent—more quietly, but just as corrosively—on platforms like LinkedIn. Communities of professionals, many impacted by the recent wave of unconstitutional, illegal, hostile, and in many cases needlessly cruel actions taken by DOGE, remain largely silent. And when someone does try to speak up, they’re often met with disdain or tone-policing from peers. "No politics here on Linkedin!" No one’s ordering people to be quiet. We just are. Because obedience has become habit. Snyder’s lesson isn’t abstract—it’s personal. It asks: Where have I gone along with something I didn’t believe in? Where have I stayed silent because I thought it was safer? There’s no shame in admitting it. That’s where the work begins. Do not obey in advance  is not a call for rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s a reminder that democracy is lived one choice at a time. One conversation. One refusal to nod along when something feels wrong. We don’t need permission to resist. But we do need each other. Thought For The Day: Think of a moment—recent or long past—when you felt something was wrong but stayed silent or went along. What stopped you from speaking or acting? What were you protecting? What did it cost? Now consider: What would it take—individually or collectively—to respond differently next time?

There’s a strange symmetry in American political discourse: the more fabricated an outrage, the more airtime it receives; the more devastating and real, the more it is buried beneath the noise. We are, in many ways, a nation trained to feel more than we think, to react harder to symbols than to systems. Consider the enduring myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran—a story so deeply woven into our national memory that it often goes unquestioned. But as Vietnam veteran and sociologist Jerry Lembcke  painstakingly documented in his book The Spitting Image , the narrative doesn’t hold up. Through a thorough investigation of media reports, court records, and military documentation, Lembcke found no credible evidence  that anti-war protesters spat on returning soldiers. In fact, many in the anti-war movement viewed soldiers as victims of the war machine, not its enemies. Some veterans even became anti-war leaders themselves. So where did the story come from? Lembcke argues it was a political construction—a narrative designed to delegitimize dissent, to paint the anti-war movement as unpatriotic, ungrateful, and dangerous. The myth found a powerful ally in pop culture, with films like First Blood  cementing the imagery of the disrespected warrior betrayed by the public. And yet, here we are. Decades later, the very people who invoke this myth to stir outrage have remained largely silent  in the face of a very real, very current betrayal : the massive cuts to veterans’ services embedded in recent budget proposals. Where is the wall-to-wall media coverage? Where are the performative floor speeches? Where is the righteous indignation? It’s one thing to defend veterans from imagined slights. It’s another to defend them from real material harm—cuts to healthcare, mental health services, housing, and job programs. These aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. They are lifelines. And they are being severed with hardly a whisper of public outrage. It’s easier, perhaps, to be angry at a phantom than to confront the mechanisms of actual suffering. Outrage is a renewable resource in American politics—but empathy, especially when it involves policy, seems to be in shorter supply. Let’s stop feeding the myths while ignoring the facts. If we truly care about those who’ve served, we should be shouting now—not about what may have happened in a movie script decades ago, but about what’s happening to real people, right now.

In two days, I will step away (pushed) from a long career as a federal employee.  It’s a strange, weighty moment—the closing of one chapter and the beginning of something I’ve been quietly building toward for years. I’ll have more to say once retirement is securely in place. And yes, when the time comes, I’ll step out from behind the nom de guerre (did you really think I was named Porter McGhan?). For now, I want to speak to what’s next—and what I hope to build. The technical vision for No Act Too Small  is largely complete. The foundation has been laid. The site is live, stable, and growing—capable of hosting flyers, streaming audio, managing events, and offering tools for action, reflection, and connection. The structure is there. Now comes the harder, deeper work: creating content  and telling stories that matter . This past weekend, I performed live at Columbus Circle alongside the incredible folks at MaydayMovementUSA . The show went well—despite a few technical hiccups that kept me from recording it. But that moment, standing there among organizers, music flowing across the plaza—it reminded me: this is how we move people. With sound. With story. With presence. This was the original vision—to be out in the streets with my thunder cart, bringing the funk. The Thunder Cart has been deployed. I’ve dabbled in DJing and music production for years. But in early February, when I watched in horror at what DOGE was about to do to the federal workforce—and to constitutional government—I knew I’d need to take to the streets. But I wanted to do more than hold a sign. I wanted to bring a lifetime of skills to the project. I wanted to help tell stories—with songs, with images, with everything I had. This week, I’ve dusted off the camera gear. The mic is ready. The timing is right. The federal chapter is closing, and a new one begins. Content creation is the next frontier—and there are so many stories that need to be told. To that end, I’m looking for collaborators. When I first put the call out, it was for coders to help build the site. Ben from theblop.org gave me an important nudge and introduced me to 21st century coding (ChatGPT). Beyond that I didn’t gain much traction on the tech side. But I had a vision and i muddled through. But now that the platform is in place, I’m shifting the call: I’m looking for writers, videographers, DJs, photographers, editors, organizers, and storytellers . People with something to say. People who know what’s at stake. If that’s you—get in touch. Let’s build something lasting. This is just the beginning. —Porter (for now)