They say history repeats itself, but sometimes it doesn’t just echo, it spirals. Loops. Returns, with uncanny precision, to an earlier point in time, like a record skipping back to the same haunting chorus.
This week, a storm named Hurricane Erin began churning off the Atlantic Coast. To most, it’s just another late-summer weather event, the kind we’ve come to expect, brush off, or scroll past. But for those paying attention, that name rings a bell.
On September 11, 2001, another Hurricane Erin was headed directly for New York. Then, almost overnight, a cold front appeared. The storm veered off course, leaving behind an eerily clear blue sky. That sky gave full visibility to the planes that struck the World Trade Center. And in the days that followed, as Americans reeled, the government passed the Patriot Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that would reshape the balance of power in this country and quietly erode constitutional freedoms for decades to come.
Now, here we are again. Another Erin. Another moment of tension. Another spiral returning.
At the same time this storm gathers offshore, President Donald Trump is reportedly assuming control over the DC city police. It may sound like bureaucratic reshuffling, but to anyone who’s read the Constitution or remembers the lessons of authoritarian regimes, this is a serious breach of checks and balances. This is not the role of a president. This is not the role of any one man. George Bush grinned as he signed the Patriot Act, never imagining that one day, Donald Trump would use it to annex the capital of the United States.
For a country supposedly built on a triad of powers (executive, legislative, judicial), this kind of consolidation should alarm everyone, no matter your politics. But instead, it’s being absorbed like background noise. We’ve become desensitized, distracted, disconnected.
And yes, I know just pointing this out gets labeled conspiratorial or alarmist. But I’m not interested in those narratives anymore. I’ve seen too much.
I once wondered if Trump might actually be a disruptor in a good way. A wild card meant to shake the system and reveal its rot. But now, it’s becoming clear that he’s not here to fix the system. He’s here to dismantle it. And what he’s dismantling isn’t the deep state or the elites. He’s dismantling the last fragments of democratic infrastructure we have left.
And while all of this plays out at the top levels of government, it’s the people at the bottom who suffer the most. Always.
I know, because I’ve lived it.
I worked in DC. I investigated cases for the Public Defender Service. I saw what happens to the poor, especially children, when a system decides they are expendable. I remember one boy in particular. Fourteen years old. Arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. Picked out of a lineup because he “looked like” the suspect. That just meant he was Black and wearing a white t-shirt. That was enough.
His mother was falling apart. Crying, desperate, powerless. He was terrified, traumatized, and far too small for the jumpsuit they gave him. I remember the deadness in his eyes. I remember what he told me was happening to him inside Juvenile Hall. Violations so horrifying I can’t repeat them here. He was just a child.
You want to talk about crime in DC? Start there. Start with what happens to poor children, not what they do. Start with the prison guards who are supposed to protect but instead become predators. Start with the schools that are falling apart. The hospitals with empty rooms full of bloodied towels. The housing projects that smell like mold and look like prisons.
You think federalizing the police is going to solve that? You think more boots on the ground will fix the rot? You think militarization equals justice?
No. Justice begins with empathy.
And we’ve lost it.
People like to say, “not my problem,” when they pass someone suffering. I’ve lived through poverty. I’m a disabled single parent, and still the refrain I hear is, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Well, what happens when your body no longer works? When you’ve been systemically worn down and no doctor will listen?
You want to know how we survive this? Kindness. Compassion. Community.
My grandmother lived through the Great Depression. She was poor, wood-stove poor. But her family always kept a pot simmering on that stove for the "hobos" in Oakland. Into it went every leftover: bones, scraps, vegetables, whatever they had. People in need would come from the train tracks, and they knew they could eat there. A small flag on the door signaled, “You’re safe here. You’ll be fed.”
That was America, once. Not perfect. But human.
I used to carry a little statue of Baby Black Jesus that a grieving mother gave me during one of those DC cases. I lost it, like I’ve lost almost everything else over the years. I’ve been stripped down by life more times than I can count. But I still remember that statue. I remember what it meant.
I don’t write this out of bitterness. I write this because we are at a critical juncture, and too many are still asleep. The storms are not just meteorological. They’re spiritual, political, emotional. The spiral is returning, and this time we must choose differently.
We must not let fear make us cruel.
We must not let power become sacred.
We must not let another Patriot Act sneak past us while we argue over party lines.
If you care about this country, even in its broken, bloodstained form, then now is the time to pay attention. Not to the talking heads. Not to the slogans. But to the patterns.
The hurricane. The power grab. The silencing of dissent. The militarization of community spaces. The rhetoric of “order” over freedom.
This is the same playbook playing again, just with a darker ending if we let it run its course.
So what’s the answer?
Empathy.
Solidarity.
Refusal to abandon the innocent.
Radical kindness in the face of systemic cruelty.
Don’t wait for a savior.
Don’t wait for the storm to pass.
Be the flag on the door.
Because if we don’t reclaim our humanity now, there won’t be much left to save.
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