Frank DuNN: Conversations at the junction of faith and politics
The Lingering Pain
For all its detachment from stark reality, the threads of freedom, fairness, justice, and equality are still predominant in the fabric of our nation.
Frank Dunn
6/23/20266 min read
Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty. And so legislators legislated, building border walls, barring citizens of there from entering here. “The pain we feel comes from them, not ourselves,” said the banners, and people cheered, certain of all the certainty. But the next day they’d wake up and find that what had hurt in them still hurt.
— Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!, A Novel , Kindle edition, page 209.
I learned a long time ago when interviewing and hiring staff members that the best indicator of what someone will do in the future is what they have done in the past.
I’ve learned to trust the rule: what you see is what you get. More than once, I’ve had people tell me that I had to consider the circumstances of someone’s behavior, as if the circumstances explained or justified it. If someone is grieving or is particularly stressed or is in a tight squeeze financially, of course, such circumstances matter. But early in my career, I noticed that when I was seeing someone in any such context, I was seeing how they handled themselves generally and consistently. The person who is generally open and expressive might be exaggeratedly so in some situations. The person who is negative about most things will be even more negative when the situation is bleak.
It sounds a bit pessimistic, deterministic—don’t you think? I agree, and, as a positivist, I don’t much like that.
But I’m also realistic.
What might follow these horrible years in which the wrecking ball crashes into law, demolishes norms, devastates democratic structures, ruins reflecting pools, tries to rewrite history (the list is too long to go on!). The best clue lies in our past.
In the long arc of American history—going back to Spanish colonization—we can see some dominant patterns. Although many of those things have changed over the centuries, cultures have a way of replicating the same things repeatedly.
America is an example, not an exception.
Sometimes, for instance, we fantasize that we can get over racism. That’s a hill I’d die on to make it happen. But the fact is that traces of racism are going to be with us for a long time. That doesn’t mean we ought to resign ourselves to it.
As I have pointed out before, anti-intellectualism is a continuous facet of our history. I wish there were a way to minimize it, if not to scrub it away entirely. The current mess in Health and Human Services is evidence of the harm anti-intellectualism can inflict.
But for all its detachment from stark reality, the threads of freedom, fairness, justice, and equality are still predominant in the fabric of our nation. What we cannot do, lest we risk the entire bolt of cloth, is ignore the rot, the rust, or the mold growing in and threatening to ruin the goodness, truth, and beauty of the fabric.
The autocrats, technocrats, and oligarchs want us to believe that democracy just won’t work. By their own admission, they are “flooding the zone” of public discourse so that there are so many things flying around all at once that we come exhausted, then dispirited, then cynical, and then totally apathetic and resigned to capitulating.
We are beginning to see plenty of signs that people are not having it. The regime continues to lose in court far more than it wins. Worthless prosecutions are being tossed out. Grand juries are refusing to be bamboozled into issuing sham indictments. Some members of Congress are reportedly growing spines. Even here and there, diehard MAGA types are waking up and smelling the coffee. Religious leaders, judges, lawyers, medical personnel, scientists, and others are speaking out louder and clearer.
Ordinary citizens are running for office in increasing numbers[1]. Left-leaning liberals are calling out the “establishment liberals” and demanding action and accountability. Independent journalists are rising with dogged determination not to cede trustworthy information to manipulative billionaires.
Moreover, a network of ordinary people across the political spectrum, including MAGA voters, has forced a total capitulation, compelling the regime to completely abandon its $38.3 billion scheme and sell off the industrial warehouses it intended to use as holding pens for potential deportees. Communities are stalling the installation of huge AI centers and, in some cases, stopping them outright because they are abrogating environmental regulations and zoning laws.
Recent Gallup polling shows that 71% of Americans now oppose local AI data center construction in their areas. Experts track that just in the first few months of 2026, over $130 billion in data center projects have been stalled or blocked by local protests across the United States.
I think these developments are important beyond their immediate effect. Each testifies that American citizens have not forgotten that we are the ones who shape our society. From California to Missouri, a coast-to-coast grassroots network has already stalled or blocked $130 billion in AI data center projects, with cities passing overwhelming ballot-measure bans to stop tech oligarchs from bulldozing local zoning laws and draining power grids.
Many things have gone wrong in the United States of America. You, as well as I, could compose a long list of ills. But one thing we have in our DNA is revolting against unfairness. Uprisings aplenty have embodied the shadow side of Americans, notably the Confederate States of America, in their rebellion against the Union. Robber barons in the Gilded Age, tycoons in the 1920’s, and a succession of privileged people, religious demagogues, and haters of all stripes have whipped up frenzied movements that have led not towards but starkly away from freedom, equality, and community. But that does not eclipse the progress that we’ve made. As President Obama commented on Trump’s first election, “History does not move in a straight line. Civil rights in America did not move in a straight line. Democracy in Greece did not move in a straight line. The evolution of a unified Europe certainly has not moved in a straight line. And progress is never guaranteed. Progress has to be earned by every generation."[2]
So back to the lingering pain. As I see it, the pain lingers because it isn’t being treated. It is being projected. The enemy has shifted over the generations. The enemy was the British King and Parliament. Then it was the federal government. Native Americans bore the blame. Then it was all those foreigners from God knows where that were swamping “us.” Next, it was (depending on which side you were on) the slaveholders or the abolitionists. Before long, it was the newly freed black people, and often the poor whites who initially made alliances with them. Then it was the robber barons or the labor movement. Then it was the federal government or the State’s right-ers. Then it was the Communists. Then the enemy became the women’s movement, or the LGBTQ movement, or the religious right or the ...
The spiritual problem with all this is both simple and not simple. Projection—a psychological term—is something as old as humanity. In the biblical account, Adam projects the problem onto Eve, and Eve projects it onto the snake, which ultimately is blamable on the snake’s creator, namely Yahweh. Not quite projection, but close: it is the mechanism of seeing one’s deficiencies or predicament as the fault of somebody else. That never works very well, because on some level we know better.
What does all this have to do with the future of democracy in America? On the most basic level, we must stop kidding ourselves that the fault lies elsewhere and instead begin to see our own roles and responsibilities, rather than imagining that it’s someone else’s job to come to the rescue. And that’s quite painful because it means claiming our own power. Often it isn’t just weakness and perceived deficiency that are projected onto others, but strength and power too.
In the next blog post, I want to focus on how one society—in many ways a most unlikely one—is demonstrating how to break out of a cycle that historically has fed on hopelessness. If it can happen in an unlikely place, how much more likely is it to happen here?
[1] The influx of young, diverse, and unconventional candidates stepping up to run for office is a measurable, definitive shift in the political landscape. Groups like Run for Something (RFS) are not just participating in this shift; they are the primary architects of the pipeline driving it.
The current 2026 data and organizational figures highlight how this generational surge is taking shape:
When looking at how many young and minority people are actively stepping into the political arena, the numbers are staggeringly high—especially at the local and state levels where the vast majority of these candidates begin.
The Mass Pipeline: Organizations tracking next-generation leadership report that the potential candidate pool has exploded. Run for Something’s active pipeline now includes over 250,000 young people across all 50 states who have raised their hands to explore running for office.
Active Explorations: Just in the first half of 2026, prospective young leaders have formally explored or mapped out campaigns for over 23,000 specific local offices.
The Bench is Rising: This isn't just limited to school boards. The "alumni" network of young leaders who started at the local level has matured; as of 2026, there are at least six RFS alumni running for the U.S. Senate, six running for governor, and dozens more launching campaigns for the U.S. House and high-profile statewide seats.
[2] Barack Obama in an address in Athens, Greece, November 16, 2016. (Obama White House archives; Time magazine; UC Santa Barbara).