In writing, there is a common piece of advice designed to engage the reader: Show, don’t tell. Don’t TELL me the moon is beautiful tonight; SHOW me how its beauty changes everything below it. The concept is also used in other media. For example, Steven Spielberg is a master of this in film. The Spielberg Face is best illustrated many times in the 1993 release Jurassic Park. The term was popularized by video essayist Kevin B. Lee in 2011 to describe Steven Spielberg’s signature style of using an expressive close-up shot—often paired with a slow camera push-in or dolly zoom. One example, I am sure you are familiar with, is the slow close-up of Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) seeing a live dinosaur for the first time.
DOES THIS FASCISM MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?
Happening in America, between 2024 and today, there are plenty of visual expressions of the state of our union. If America were a poem, it might be short, direct, and still somehow say too much. Maybe disguised in simile and metaphor. If it were a song, a movie, a novel. A painting, a house, a flower. An artist could illustrate America as a babbling brook, a charging horse, a winking trout, rolling hills in the Midwestern plains. Examples are plentiful. Oh, but we do not need such lofty examples these days. The rush of excavators and bulldozers attacking the east wing of the White House, or sludge floating to the top of the reflecting pool, are prime for the plucking. None, in my opinion, compare to the stench and long shadow cast by the over 220 I.C.E. detention centers across the nation and the growl and punches of Steven Miller’s masked I.C.E. dogs. This is our state of the union. This is America, November 2026.
IT’S BEGINNING TO FEEL A LOT LIKE WEIMAR
Detention centers are not new to American soil. From 1942-46, America set up 10 main Japanese-American “detention centers” or War Relocation Authority (WRA) incarceration camps. They detained approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent. The government utilized large fairgrounds and racetracks for this purpose. Interestingly, Americans of Italian and German ancestry were not suspected of being spies. Only the Japanese Americans.
You can look to see where the nearest concentration camp is from your home using this interactive map. The closest one from my town, Bellingham, Washington, is about 122 miles south in Tacoma. This is a 3-4 hour drive depending on the traffic. I feel like a citizen of Weimar going about my day-to-day. Just out of view, a few miles away, heinous atrocities take place as casually as a person ordering a pumpkin spice latte.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – 2026
Interactive Map – U.S. Immigration Detention
This past summer, when it was announced that I.C.E. hit an all-time record of close to 50,000 people detained in July and then again in August, I thought about other times in history when people were gathered against their will. The haunting WW2 Buchenwald, Germany story rested on a bed of nails at the forefront of my mind.
July 2026: ICE logged 49,571 arrests (reported by NPR and the Associated Press), which marked a 15% increase from June and the highest monthly total of the administration’s enforcement surge.
As the news of the Holocaust began to come out, citizens around the globe slowly heard and read about various war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis. During WW2, U.S. forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in April 1945. US soldiers escorted German civilians from the nearby town of Weimar (5 miles away) through the Buchenwald camp. The American liberating troops had a policy of forcing German civilians to view the atrocities committed in the camps.
SHOW AND TELL
Today I am thankful for so many people taking their hearts into action, using their bodies and voices to show the fascists who America desires to be. I’m thankful for the Kennedy Center protectors. On September 18, 2026, thousands of folks circled the center as a symbolic gesture of protection for the beloved art and performing arts center named after a former president who enjoyed and supported the arts.
I am thankful for the millions who marched at the “No Kings” protest in their local city. I’m thankful for people who place their bodies between victims and masked thugs, blow I.C.E. whistles, dance in front of rows of American Stormtroopers, provide legal aid to victims, write articles, film attacks, and visit the detention centers across America. Thank you.
ACTION
MSNOW Maddow 9/29/2026, 07:00 mark national ICE protests
