The one who cares the most, wins/ Nefarious Knitters

Update:

I just walked into my local coffee shop, above, and they are engaging in Nefarious Feed Your Neighbor activities!! They have dedicated an area where people can drop off food donations on Fridays and Saturdays – – and then they distribute them to people in hiding from ICE.

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What do I know about military strategy and psychology?
Nothing much.

But I've seen stuff. We've seen stuff, right?
Growing up during the Vietnam War, I saw that...
The side that cares the most, wins. (Eventually.)

And in the Cold War, as military historian Sarah Paine * says, 
The side who gets tired first, loses. 

The Twin Cities has HOME-GROUND ADVANTAGE.
We care the most.
And we are not going to get tired.

ICE? 
Do they even have a dog in this race?

This real-life, first-person shooter game must be fun ("fun") at times, but it must be getting tiring and, damn, it's cold!
And slippery. 

Any decent man must have some reservations in his heart, lying in bed at night. Or maybe he's too hopped up on dude-hormones to feel it now, but he will suffer later. (Not that that affects the outcome of the game in the moment, but it affects the long term.

Life, and history, is a long game.
To win in any meaningful way––(to protect, or build, or repair a good society)–– you gotta play the long game.

I know this is not popular opinion, but I expect a lot these guys are (or would be) basically decent guys. They're not psychopaths. (Some are! but not most.)
They're people in need of money and meaning, being manipulated by people who are NOT decent human beings.
Yeah, they're dangerous dudes, but they're also dupes.

However, those in charge are hardly brilliant strategists. 
They are making so many mistakes.
Don't let your goons murder young, pleasant-looking, innocent, do-gooders--and let,s be honest, especially not ones who are white! 

And...

"Never get involved in a land war in Asia!"
 [Princess Bride, ya know.]

That is, a large cold continent with people who will engage in guerrilla combat.
Minnesota, a state in the middle of a continent with scrappy inhabitants, seems close...

This poor strategy is to our advantage.

From an article from the Hoover Institute, Why Can’t America Win Its Wars?

From 2016--nothing to do with today, but related:

The American military today is in danger of revisiting the history of the German military in the twentieth century—tactically and operationally brilliant forces that nevertheless managed to lose two world wars 
due to the inability of their leaders to think strategically.

--Peter Mansoor, hoover.org/research/why-cant-america-win-its-wars

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Nefarious!

Okay, folks, so--I don't read the news in-depth. I do look at it—here, a round/up of photos in today’s Guardian, who’s been doing a good job covering this:

theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2026/jan/26/protests-against-ice-violence-in-minneapolis-in-pictures

Before I started working at the thrift store, I worked in libraries and publishing for thirty years. I'm a fact-checker, and I do diligent background reading. 

(My opinions are my own—I try to keep those separate.)

But I don't flood myself with incoming horror.

I didn't watch the planes flying into the World Trade Towers until  I saw it in the background of a movie two years later (The Barbarian Invasions, 2003). 
I've never watched the video of George Floyd's murder––or Renee Good's, or Alex Pretti's.

I know myself: 
too much would crash my operating system.
I don't know how people who ingest horrific news all the time do function. 
(Some don't, of course. 
They consume news like watching sports:
 they don't get out there and play the game. 
But some people I know have a high tolerance--they do both.

Anyway, my news is friend-filtered:
friends tell me all sorts of bits and pieces of writing. (Not usually video--it also floods the system.)

This morning, Krista (thank you!) texted a clip from today's "Letters from an American", by Heather Cox Richardson:

"Reports out of Minnesota say that in the face of the terror inflicted on it by federal agents, the people there are even more closely linked together in community solidarity. 

They are patrolling the streets, donating food, delivering groceries, helping with legal services, 
organizing to look out for each other in a demonstration of community solidarity so foreign to administration figures that Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday suggested that there was 
something nefarious about how well organized they are as they protect their neighbors."
--heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-25-2026

Nefarious!
I LOVE it! 
Something nefarious––wicked!–– about common human decency?

Who are these people?!!
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I want to call my Sunday craft gathering, Nefarious Knitters.


So far none of the eight people who have come are knitters, primarily, but we can still claim it.

The etymology of "knit" is Old English cnyttan: 
"to tie with a knot, bind together, fasten by tying,"

Perfect. We are binding together--yarn, yes––but, more importantly, that stuff Pam Bondi doesn't seem to recognize:
Love for neighbor. 

Have a good day, ya'll:
Love and Light!
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* I find Sarah Paine surprisingly compelling to watch--
even for two hours, as here "Why Russia Lost the Cold War"
youtube.com/watch?v=FdkpWrlR5zg&t=32s
--exhaustion was part of it.

Paine starts with the claim that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War--which Trump promotes in one of the plaques he wrote to attend presidential portraits. 
(Trump reminds me of comic cock-ups like Costello, of Abbott and... Except his slapstick really lands--those are real bone-breakers.)

But yeah, the US build-up of arms under Reagan (started with Jimmy Carter!) did drain the Soviet economy to exhaustion. 
And Reagan's speeches WERE great. 
"Mr, Gorbachev, pull down this wall."