The Resistance of a Thousand Suns

"Freedom is like religion to us" - Common

John Lewis is a [hero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIozPJWTPM)

John, we love you.

Martin, we love you and miss you, but your strength and justice lives on in us -- it lives on in me.

However, Donald Trump had no obligations to the United States of American in Vietnam. Let's be clear about that. The Vietnam war lead to the genocide of 1-3 million Vietnamese civilians and the deaths of 58,000 US military personnel. It was largely developed on a false flag operation in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Drafts are unethical and violate the principles in the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, e.g. governments are created to serve the people -- not vice versa. No government can ask a citizen to risk their life, without their consent, to defend the nation. If the nation cannot mobilize an all voluntary force to resist the violence of outsiders (which sometimes actually exists), then the nation fails and ceases to exist. And that's okay. Because we don't care if nation-states exist: we care that just nation states exist when and only if they protect the rights of all the people.

To close, here is my poem I wrote in response to the events at Selma:

> I think you can make an argument that not only is the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s an important part of the American story, but that it is the single most American story of America.

>That those Americans with darker skin that struggled for justice on the streets, in buses, in restaurants, in our capitols were the most pure, the most sublime instantiation of the spirit of America.

>They didn't achieve equality. They didn't acquire what others had but for which they had been denied. No. They taught us what America is and should be.

>Those who looked upon those marchers, these protestors, these leaders, could not help but feel their power and nobility. You couldn't help but feel proud of them. You couldn't help but feel empowered, wondering what you might accomplish when your strength met your love. You couldn't help but feel driven to imagine future worlds that for so long had been described as off limits to us.

>You couldn't help but hope.

Walks with John and Martin...

Donald, I will resist your tyranny and anti-intellectualism with the intensity of a thousand suns.

To the people of Vietnam, I apologize on behalf of the United States of America.