The Iraq War was an illegal, immoral, irrational five-trillion-dollar (or more) war that the US chose to wage, chose to use torture, which ignited terrorism, and literally killed a country in front of our eyes—corrupting democratic opposition and destroying media institutions that endorsed it.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and New Yorker magazine endorsed the Iraq War, and now claim to be defenders of truth and democracy—yet they are still in positions of power shaping discourse despite their massive credibility failure.

Sacco's father was a Presbyterian minister who was pushed out of the church for supporting LGBTQ rights and civil rights, but rather than comply, he held an Easter service celebrating LGBTQ marriage as a sacrament—choosing freedom and principle over career security.

When Sacco was told by the New York Times he could no longer speak publicly about the Iraq War, he faced a choice: maintain career and pension by muzzling himself, or walk away and keep his integrity—he walked away, realizing his father had given him the freedom to make that choice.

Effective resistance at Standing Rock was understood not as winning against the pipeline but as the spiritual-communal act of resistance itself, rooted in what Reinhold Niebuhr called 'sublime madness'—acting faithfully without expectation of success.