Every time someone tries to defend the indefensible, it comes wrapped in the same two words:
“Yes, but…”
“Yes, Trump is a fascist, but he stopped the illegal aliens from coming across the border.”
“Yes, the ICE agent shot her, but she was about to run him over.”
“Yes, the ICE agent shot her, but she did not obey orders.”
“Yes, Esrati speaks truth to power, but he is so damn (annoying, brusque, crude, direct, evil, foul, gruff, fill in the blank).”
The “yes, but” is how we sand down atrocities until they fit in polite conversation.
On Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good was shot in the face by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The “yes, buts” started immediately. She did not comply. She did things wrong. She “FAFO’d” which is internet shorthand for “Fuck Around and Find Out.”
I have watched the videos. I have listened to the legal rationalizations. None of them change one basic fact:
Cops, of any kind, are not supposed to be judge, jury, and executioner.
They are not supposed to film themselves on their phones while they do it.
And any masked man with a gun and body armor barking “Get out of the fucking car” is not representing me, my government, or the best of us.
This is not normal. It is not law and order. It is how you slide into a police state one “yes, but” at a time.
Why this hits me the way it does
It still shocks some people to learn that I am Jewish.
My father was born in Berlin in 1927. My mother was born in England in 1928. They met on a kibbutz in Israel in 1954. My father had just gotten his U.S. passport back, my mother was there looking for an “MRS degree.” She stepped off a bus, saw him, and the rest is why I am here.
My last name confuses people. It does not sound Jewish. People hear it and think Italian, because “Esrati” sounds like “Maserati” without the “Ma.”
In 1933, in Palestine, my grandfather was told: why keep a German sounding name. So he changed it. According to my father, he picked the name of the “washer woman.” Later, when they came through Ellis Island in 1937, he did not know how to transliterate Hebrew into English. He used German phonetics instead. What should have become Ezratty, or Isardi, or something similar turned into “Es,” because in German that is pronounced “Ez.”
When masked, armed men demand to see your papers, I do not experience that as an abstract civil liberties dispute. I hear family history.
My grandfather left Berlin because of people like that. His attempts to get the rest of the family out, his parents, my grandmother’s parents, others, yielded exactly two successes, my grandmother’s sister and her daughter. Everyone else stayed. My great grandmother reportedly said, “What would they want with an old woman like me.”
Years later, my father, who re learned his fluent German after joining the U.S. Army and being stationed in Gorizia, Italy, at the end of the war, dug into the archives. He found the inventory of everything in my great grandmother’s apartment, down to the number of teaspoons and dessert forks in the silverware drawer. Germans are very efficient record keepers.
He also found the record of her “death” in Theresienstadt in 1943.
In February 2025, I finally met the only known relative on my extended paternal side, a second cousin in London. His grandfather and my great grandfather were brothers. He survived, somehow. Thank you, Ancestry DNA.
So when I see masked, armed thugs roaming American streets, demanding papers, I do not think “security.” I think “We have been here before.” And I hear my father’s voice warning that a country that prides itself on freedom can still be very good at looking away from cruelty.
Papers, please
In America, you are not supposed to walk around with “papers” you must produce on demand. That is the theory, at least.
Since 9/11, we have been backsliding. “Homeland Security,” the phrase alone should have made us flinch, normalized the idea that we are all potential threats. My tiny pocketknife with a one inch blade is contraband at an airport, at the Federal building, but a metal barreled pen, a much better weapon by the way, is just fine.
I say that as someone who was part of a well regulated militia, the U.S. Army, attached to Special Forces. If I want to tear out your jugular in the field, a pen is far more useful than a one inch blade as a field expedient weapon.
But one idiot tried to blow up a plane with explosives in his shoes, so now every shoe is a potential bomb. We were told to accept constant scanning, searching, and stopping as the price of “freedom.”
Somewhere along the way, freedom left the conversation.
Every action is now tracked. Clicks. Street cameras. Purchases. “Rewards” cards. Phone locations. Facial recognition. Unlike Europeans, we shrug and tell ourselves it is necessary because:
The Haitian in Springfield are “eating our dogs and cats.”
Farm laborers, who have always done the jobs Americans do not want to do, are “taking our jobs.”
“Illegal aliens” are “committing crimes.”
Yes, but. Yes, but. Yes, but.
Trump, pardons, and the corpse of the rule of law
While we are busy being afraid of our neighbors, we have a president arranging to bail out Argentina for 40 billion dollars and pardoning people who should be cautionary tales.
On Dec. 1, Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, claiming without evidence that Biden had “set him up” because Honduras has drug cartels. Hernández had been convicted of trafficking drugs to the United States. You can read more at FactCheck.org if you like:Examining Trump’s Pardon of Former Honduran President Convicted of Trafficking Drugs to U.S [1].
He also pardoned the January 6th rioters who assaulted Capitol Police, all by himself.
Yes, but, we are told, we still have “checks and balances.” Three co equal branches of government, just like they taught you in elementary school.
Yes, but, “all men are created equal,” except the ones Trump tells us to fear, deport, imprison, or ship off to foreign concentration camps without due process. (note, this is the official video on 60 minutes channel, may not be the original that they shelved)
The rule of law is not fraying. It is being torn up in our faces.
My problem with God and with his self appointed bodyguards
The Christian right has sworn fealty to this charlatan king and somehow convinced themselves he is the second coming.
I have never understood why Christianity needed to exist in the first place. Jesus was a Jew. If he followed anything, it was what we now call the Old Testament. There was no printing press, no motel nightstands with Gideon Bibles, no Bibles tucked into mangers like a motel room prop, and most people could not read.
If you really wanted to be “like Jesus,” would that not mean keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath from Friday night to Saturday night. Seventh day Adventists at least have that part right.
As for me, I have a hard time with religion. A God who lets six million of “his people” be slaughtered at the hands of evil lost his claim on moral authority a long time ago, certainly with my great grandparents.
I call myself an “Atheist Jew.” I do not believe in the parables and fables. I do believe in the cultural commandments:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Love thy neighbor.
Educate yourself.
Give to charity.
Do not let children go to bed hungry.
Do not let bankruptcy become a medical condition.
I believed in serving my country and swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution. God had nothing to do with it. I do not invoke his name to tell others how to live. I do think we should all try to live so that if there is a judgement day, at some set of holy gates or just in our own conscience, we can say we lived honestly, honorably, and tried to be a light in the darkness.
No “yes, buts.” Just “yes, I did.”
A different America I once saw
Most kids’ fathers do not write them a whole book about what it means to be an American, but mine did.
When we moved to Toronto in 1968, because my father did not trust what Nixon was about to do to this country, he started a book for me called “Dear Son.” Later, together, we added a subtitle: “Do You Really Want to Be an American.” It has been a free download on this site for a long time. [2]
He did not fill it with flag waving. He filled it with stories about the country as he had actually seen it. He wrote about sitting on a bus in Virginia in World War II while a Black soldier with a Purple Heart ribbon on his chest was ordered to the back by a new driver, and how his own silence in that moment has haunted him ever since. He wrote about the day a church in Birmingham was bombed and four little girls at Sunday school were killed, and about the column he wrote asking his readers to think about “those small coffins.” For that, he got an unsigned letter that said “Get out of town you nigger loving bastard. We do not need any of your Comsymp (communist sympathizer) ideas.”
The lesson to his son was clear. Sitting quietly while uniformed men abuse power is its own kind of guilt.
At the time, dual citizenship was not an option. If we had stayed in Canada until I turned 18, I would have had to choose.
Looking back on those two years, I see a country that:
Provides health care for all.
Outperforms us on multiple indices that actually measure quality of life.
Does not spend more on “national defense” than the next eight countries combined, most of which are our allies.
Does not have jackbooted thugs in masks and battle gear roaming the streets with guns, demanding papers.
We were supposed to be the example. Somewhere along the line, we stopped acting like it.
Dear Son is still there for anyone to read. If you ever wonder why I end up sitting silently at a city commission meeting until Mayor Mike Turner had me arrested [3], or why I file a Quo Warranto to try to remove a crooked clerk from office [4], the answer is simple. I am his son. He taught me that pretending not to see or stand up is not an option.
“Papers” in Trotwood
Around 2012, I was driving to a small independent restaurant in that strange triangle where the Trotwood Connector ends near Salem and Shiloh Springs Road. Police had set up a sobriety checkpoint.
I was stopped. The officer asked me to roll down my window and produce my license. I cracked the window.
Me: “Officer, did I commit a crime”
Officer: “We are conducting a sobriety check”
Me: “I served my country because I believe in freedom and the Constitution. This is not Nazi Germany. You cannot stop me and ask for my papers”
Officer: “Thank you for your service, have a nice day.”
Yes, but, I could have been drunk.
Yes, but, I could have stolen the car.
Yes, but, I could have had a warrant.
Not today, Satan.
I am an American. There are no “yes, buts” when it comes to what used to be the laws of our land.
“Nazi Germany all over again”
Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, a former Navy SEAL and pro wrestler, looked at what happened in Minneapolis and said it plainly: this is Nazi Germany all over again. He told people to read their history.
I am with Jesse.
Compare that to the draft dodger, convicted felon, who turned a reality TV show into a launchpad for the White House.
Apparently, a lot of Minnesotans are with Jesse too, including the mayor of Minneapolis, who told Trump to get ICE the fuck out of his city.
There are no “yes, buts” here. What happened to Renee Nicole Good is not what our founding fathers fought for. It is not what the Constitution authorizes. It is not what my immigrant parents taught me America was supposed to be.
Bravery, not excuses
We are being asked, daily and hourly, to excuse the inexcusable:
“Yes, but, she did not obey.”
“Yes, but, he is keeping us safe.”
“Yes, but, that is what it takes now.”
What we need instead is what we have seen in Minneapolis, in Portland, and across what used to be a great country:
People marching.
People protesting.
People refusing to let anyone hiding behind a badge and a mask operate without accountability.
People insisting on being treated with respect and on feeling safe from their government, not just by it.
We need braver people in government, people like Ventura and the mayor of Minneapolis, who are willing to say “Not today, Satan. We are still America, and we still have laws that protect us from tyranny.”
The “yes, but” is how cowards sleep at night.
Bravery is just “no.”
No more excuses.
No more rationalizations.
No more pretending this is normal.
And no more “yes, buts.”