Suffering

A Beginning

Image: Federal detention center in the Everglades, Florida. Rebecca Blackwell/Getty.

Image: Flood at the Guadalupe River, Kerrville, TX, July 4, 2025. Eric Vryn/ Getty.

America has always called it redemption:

Men wept for Lee but left the freedmen to starve.

They built statues to defeat but none to repair.

They praised the Union, then walked away from Reconstruction—as if justice had already spoken.

We are a nation that learns through fire—and then forgets the flame.

Not all pain is redemptive. Not all suffering is equal.