Josiah Daniels

I love too much to battle. –el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz Did you finish killing everybody who was against peace? –Wendell Berry I saw a lot of things in Palestine that made me think about my gun. I had purchased it some years ago, when I realized what little democracy we had left in the United States was deteriorating. When you live in a country where an individual has the right to bear arms as a stopgap against tyranny, and then you suddenly realize you are witnessing tyranny’s rise, you arm up.

“Stranger danger!” This was a popular thing kids were taught to say in the ’90s. I think that my parents’ motivations for teaching me this phrase were primarily for my protection, but looking back, I think the phrase also portended some of the paranoia that we, as a Western society, have uncritically embraced. Now, “strangers,” which can also be read as “foreigners,” are not just dangers, but “criminals” or even “terrorists,” according to the current administration.

During his life, Otto Maduro, the late Venezuelan sociologist and liberation theologian, lamented how the majority of Latin Americans were being treated to “fatten the bank accounts” of a small minority. This deeply troubled Maduro.