Slava Ukraini. ✊🇺🇦

@frogdog.bsky.social

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Some of America’s worst national security failures have involved intelligence shaped by political influence. The Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction debacle remains the defining modern cautionary tale: When policymakers want a conclusion badly enough, and institutions fail to resist them, the result can be catastrophic. Putting an unqualified partisan atop the intelligence community weakens it precisely where it must be strongest. In the hands of a political operative, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence can become a platform for laundering partisan narratives through the authority of classified information.
Screen shot of article linked in post.
Screen shot of a portion of the Substack text linked in the quoted post/ repost.
Lisa Kaelin wrote maybe the country has lost its soul. did we ever really have one? Not during slavery. Not when Indigenous people were slaughtered and displaced. Not when women were treated as property. Not during segregation. Not when Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps during World War II. If you ask a straight white man what I mean, he may genuinely not understand the question. But ask a woman, a Black American, a gay person, an immigrant, or almost any minority, and you may hear a very different answer. Many of us have spent large parts of our lives calculating safety in ways others never had to think about. A woman learns young to watch her surroundings in a parking lot. Black parents have long had “the talk” with their children about surviving encounters with police. Gay kids learn early which rooms are safe to be themselves in. Entire groups of people have spent generations learning how to survive discomfort, discrimination, or fear while being told they should simply be grateful. So when people speak nostalgically about America’s greatness, I often wonder: great for whom? And yet, as I look through history, I do see courage. Just maybe not where we were taught to look for it. The bravery was never only in presidents, generals, or institutions. It was in abolitionists. In civil rights marchers facing dogs and fire hoses. In workers demanding dignity. In women insisting they were equal. In people who hid Jews during the Holocaust. In caregivers, teachers, protesters, whistleblowers, and ordinary people who chose humanity when cruelty would have been easier. Maybe the soul of this country was never in its institutions. Maybe it lived in the people who kept trying to drag those institutions toward humanity. I’ve tried explaining criticizing my country does not mean I hate it. Love without accountability is not love at all. It’s permission. Patriotism should not mean silence. If anything, love of country should demand honesty about its failures.
Out of shape, masked ICE agent
Meme stating a Democratic Senator should hold a filibuster by reading Virginia Giuffre’s entire memoir on the floor.
Screenshot of post from another media. Essentially asking people to buy only essentials that one day boycott will not make enough impact to change corporate policy. Research products and do the best to support the least objectionable.