Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any log… - Chelsea Manning

The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We've been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we've had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.

It's not like there's anything wrong with the lockdowns, right, and I wanna be clear about that. That's come up before, it's like, no, the lockdowns were necessary for public health reasons, 'cause we had a mass casualty event hit the United States and we needed to try to keep people safe. But the impact of being locked down for a significant chunk of time is going to produce an added layer of that trauma. And we just kind of have to take care of ourselves and be gentle with ourselves.

The most violent people in prison, time and time again, were the prison staff. Always. There was never an exception, right? [...] When you have the state, you know, to back you up, and you have state immunity, and you have authority over another person, like, almost absolute authority over another person, and you've stripped the other person's credibility away, then you can just do whatever you want. And the things that they do are just cruel. You know, sure, not every prison guard is cruel, but every single one of them looks the other way at the ones who are and backs up the ones who are.