Trail West Dispatch #13 December 14, 2025

 “Practice Corporeal Politics.  Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen.  Get outside.  Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.  Make new friends and march with them.”  --Timothy Snyder

Some of you may have noticed that this Dispatch is a whole week later than expected.  It wasn’t entirely due to my body softening in my chair and my emotions dissipating on the screen, although I admit that writing about practicing corporeal politics would have felt like fixating on a dripping faucet during a whole-house fire.  Paralysis ensued.   I don’t often get sick, but I was not feeling well part of the time, so that’s also part of the explanation for the silence. I’m still recovering. 

The fire:  Oil from Venezuela is desired, and war seems to be the plan for acquiring it.  The buildup to a formal declaration appears to be underway.  If Congress cooperates in declaring war, the floodgates of presidential discretion open, with potentially disastrous results for survival of a democratic society.  Having already handed the president broad immunity to prosecution for any action taken while in office, the Supreme Court now seems poised to award almost unfettered power to fire anyone the president doesn’t like and to hire anyone he does—with no regard for qualifications or consequences. The same people who unethically collected data on all of us immediately after January 20 are now able to take control of that information to give people who are insufficiently loyal to the regime no place to hide. 

Somali immigrants in Minnesota, most of whom are law-abiding citizens, have been singled out for public shaming and name calling by the president, possibly to clear the way for draconian—and almost certainly arbitrary--immigration enforcement actions planned for their area.  Overseas markets for grain and other farm products are disappearing.  Leaders of foreign countries are repeatedly ignoring US efforts at leadership, purposefully snubbing the US and turning elsewhere, or, in some cases, directly asking for our leaders to be called to account in international courts.  Economic indicators point to runaway costs for consumer goods and health insurance, a tight job market, and growing trade chaos.  US lawmaking bodies by turns fail to function at all, or function only to rubber stamp whatever their leaders propose.

The dripping faucet.  “. . . [M]arch with them” likely prompts uncomfortable visions of protesting while walking purposefully in big groups.  Consider several related ideas that seem better suited to people in our context.  Instead of marching with them, how about conversing with them and extending hospitality to them?   As a preliminary step, how about at least showing up in groups where unfamiliar people gather, observing their actions and the influences that shape them, and offering your own input wherever a need shows up that you might be able to supply?

Maybe it will look like what our family did years ago when we joined the newly-formed Partridge Community Association.  Hiromi said “We live here, and it’s our responsibility to help make this a good place to live.” We joined potlucks, helped plant trees in the park, picked up trash along the highway, helped organize city-wide cleanup events and garage sales, and helped rehabilitate dilapidated housing.  Our children joined others for story hour and summer reading program at the library.  Every opportunity to interact grew the feeling that we lived among friends.  We never thought of it as practicing corporeal politics, but maybe entering unfamiliar places and encountering unfamiliar people is just another way of saying “widen your circle of friends.”  We can probably all agree that this is a good thing, no matter what it’s called.                                                                                                         –Miriam Iwashige