We’ve Been Here Before

There are moments when the world feels heavier than the body was designed to carry. When the news scrolls faster than your heart can keep up. When you look at your phone and realize you are watching fear try to pass itself off as authority.

Last night felt like one of those moments.

Not because of a single speech or a single city or a single headline. But because something underneath it all became visible. A familiar shape. An old strategy. Fear as leverage. Control as reassurance. Power insisting that compliance is safety.

And yet, outside the frame, people were standing in the streets.

Not reckless. Not unaware. Not confused.

Unafraid.

There was something quietly historical about that. And about the words that followed. Not focused on federal abstractions or policy jargon. Not reduced to talking points about drugs or immigration or crime. But naming the thing beneath the thing. Fear. Control. And the quiet, stubborn strength of community as its counterweight.