Strap In: What I Told Danish Students About America’s Collapse

On institutional failure, generational fights, and building from the ruins

I returned yesterday from a two-week break to find the government shut down. While I was away, ICE agents had detained Black American citizens in Chicago—midnight raids without warrants. Stephen Miller had declared people ‘nothing’. The regime had fired almost every member of the National Endowment for the Humanities council, keeping only four of Trump’s favorites. They did it in one afternoon, by email. And the Tylenol-autism foolishness continued its march through what remains of our information ecosystem.

We’re eight months into this administration now, and the pattern has become unmistakable. We’ve grown accustomed to the chaos, normalized what should be abnormal. It seems random, but it isn’t—there’s methodology here, even if most people can’t pronounce acetaminophen.

I came back from my break thinking about what Kennedy called “long twilight struggles” and what they mean for students trying to build lives and careers in this moment.