citizenship
Robert Pape, University of Chicago:
Iran is not a palace dictatorship resting on a handful of men. It is a state of roughly 92 million people, with governing institutions embedded across society…. Roughly one in eight Iranians works for the state or in state-linked institutions. The regime’s authority is threaded through provincial administrations, economic networks, and local security structures. Removing several dozen senior leaders — even highly placed ones — touches only a small fraction of that governing apparatus. It does not dismantle the structure; it activates it.
There are moral and legal cases against Trump’s Iran attacks. But a purely practical one is that heavy bombing doesn’t drive the other side to surrender, as history has shown again and again: The Blitz, “bombing North Vietnam back to the Stone Age,” Shock and Awe in Iraq …
Letters from children held in detention by the United States government in Dilley, Texas.
Michael Wear, The Dispatch, February 8, 2026,
This last decade of American politics cannot become the new standard. If it does, few of our institutions will survive… This is the danger, of course. That everything will orient around this man [Trump]. That he will succeed in making everything subject to his interests and his whims. He’s willing to do it with God, and he’s certainly willing to do it with the country. Our nation’s choice about whether to elect him is in the past, but the choice we have to make about whether we will become like him is ongoing.
If you want to jump in on the side of humanization, join the Great Conversation. This is the tradition of debate that stretches back millenniums, encompassing theology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, music, the study of global civilizations and the arts. This conversation is a collective attempt to find a workable balance amid the eternal dialectics of the human condition — the tension between autonomy and belonging, equality and achievement, freedom and order, diversity and cohesion, security and exploration, tenderness and strength, intellect and passion. The Great Conversation never ends, because there is no permanent solution to these tensions, just a temporary resting place that works in this or that circumstance. Within the conversation, each participant learns something about how to think, how to feel, what to love, how to live up to his or her social role.
Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated …
The world is built on relationships, not leverage, and relationships are built on reciprocity and respect. It is not Trump’s genius to recognize America’s unused strength; it is his blindness to see that our strength was a function of our restraint.
Other institutions – non-profits and for-profits alike – must call out ICE and Trump. This article about clergy (and others) pressuring airlines is an example.