LETTER: Not ‘untouchable’

Published 1:30 am Saturday, February 14, 2026

I look back at history when my grandparents, great grandparents, great aunts and great uncles experienced the Great Depression and both world wars.

During those years, a great realignment of the global order occurred, and from that great realignment came institutions such as the United Nations and NATO.

My ancestors collected a lot of trauma from these experiences, and it colored how they moved and operated in the world.

As Heather Cox Richardson put it in one of her recent videos, we are once again witnessing a “major realignment of the global order.”

We are experiencing a collective trauma, and while we are responding through protest, we awaken to the greater tragedies being perpetrated upon humans here at home and abroad by evil fascists.

We have moved from playful protesting to a more frenzied and angry response to great injustices.

We must continue to awaken, we must continue to rise to meet this moment, and we must beat back our would-be oppressors.

We do what we do to ensure equity for everyone. This is a righteous fight, and may we never shirk from our duty to one another.

But make no mistake. The horrors have not completely unfurled. The fascists will continue to raise the temperature.

We have seen this play out before in history, and for far too long, Americans have assumed that we are untouchable.

We are learning that we are not.

Philip Holman

Port Angeles