You may have seen a few public statements recently.
Like Nobel Prize winning-economist Paul Krugman, who recently left his column at the New York Times after 25 years, saying that unlike in years past, in 2024
“The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice... and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence," [as well as more and more pressure] “to dictate the subject.”
Or this, from now-former CNN journalist Jim Acosta:
Jim Acosta announces on air that he's leaving CNN and says, "it is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant ... don't give in to the lies."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-01-28T16:01:17.662Z
And probably everybody's seen this, from Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde last week.
The point is not that we should, or have the privilege to, all make the same choices. Or that we might express our choices all in the same way (we just know about these because they're public.)
But this particular moment of US crisis does offer us the opportunity to think big-picture about who we want to have been, so that we can start becoming that person, no?
When we think about our legacy, we can replenish the work that we're doing with a purposefulness, with heart and soul.