The Mt. Rushmore Chronicles

Friday Morning, January 9th, 2025

Good morning, my Fellow Earth Travelers—

I woke up angry today.

Not the loud kind.

The kind that settles in your chest with the first cup of coffee and refuses to leave.

Yesterday in Minneapolis, a 37-year-old woman was shot and killed by an ICE officer.

Dead.

Gone.

Over.

And almost immediately—almost on cue—the machine kicked on.

You can hear it if you’ve lived long enough.

The gears grinding.

The press statements warming up.

The talking points being folded neatly, like clean laundry laid over something very ugly.

Because this administration?

They are very, very good at spinning a tale.

They’ll tell us it was complicated.

They’ll tell us it was necessary.

They’ll tell us the officer feared for his life—as if fear has become a universal permit to kill.

They’ll tell us what she might have done.

What she could have done.

What she should have done differently.

Funny how the dead always end up carrying the blame.

They won’t linger on the fact that she was driving away.

They won’t sit with the reality of an armed federal agent firing into a car.

They won’t ask why militarized immigration enforcement is operating inside American cities like an occupying force.

Instead, they’ll wrap it all in a flag.

They’ll sprinkle in “law and order.”

They’ll sell it back to us as strength.

I’m 65 years old.

I’ve seen this pattern before.

First comes the killing.

Then the justification.

Then the normalization.

And if we stay quiet long enough, it hardens into policy.

What gets me isn’t just the bullet.

It’s the performance afterward.

The way cruelty gets polished until it shines.

The way a human life becomes an “incident.”

The way words are used to bleach the blood out of the story.

A woman is dead.

A family woke up shattered.

And somewhere this morning, a room full of professionals is congratulating itself for “controlling the narrative.”

This wasn’t an accident.

This wasn’t a one-off.

This is what happens when power stops seeing people and starts seeing obstacles.

Yes, I’m outraged.

But not the kind that burns hot and fast.

It’s the tired outrage.

The kind that comes from watching the same lie get recycled with better lighting.

So I’ll finish my coffee.

I’ll step back out onto the porch.

And I’ll keep writing it down—because silence is what they’re counting on.

And this?

This wasn’t in the retirement plan.

Coda

The porch is quiet this morning.

No sirens.

No headlines.

Just the hum of traffic somewhere beyond the trees and a coffee cup cooling faster than it should.

This is usually the part of the day when the world feels small again—manageable, even gentle.

And that contrast matters.

Because the danger isn’t just what’s happening out there.

It’s how quickly we’re asked to move on.

So I won’t.

I’ll sit here a little longer.

I’ll let the quiet do its work.

And I’ll remember her—not as a narrative, not as a footnote, but as a person who should still be alive this morning.

That feels like the least I can do.

If you’d like to keep walking these porchlight mornings with me—

you can subscribe to The Mt. Rushmore Chronicles on Substack here:

👉

No ads. No outrage machine.

Just words, coffee, and a stubborn refusal to forget.

This wasn’t in the retirement plan.