Downtown Peabody welcomes visitors in October 2025. During World War II, Peabody was the site of a German prisoner of war camp. (Photo by Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)

What if an authority figure directed you to pull a lever that delivered a painful shock to an unseen victim?

If you’re like most people, you’d do it. And you’d keep doing it, at the urging of that authority figure, despite the howls of pain from the poor sap on the other side of the wall.

You’ve probably heard of the Milgram experiment, in which a Yale psychologist faked electric shocks to study the willingness of ordinary people to obey orders in conflict with their personal conscience. Nobody was really hurt, because no shocks were delivered and the yowls of pain came from actors. We’ll return to Milgram shortly, but let me explain how I got to thinking about the famous experiment in the first place.

It was Gov. Laura Kelly’s last State of the State address, delivered Tuesday.

“Kansans are the most civil, decent people on earth,” she declared.

I couldn’t agree more. But our nature is part of the problem.

Kelly, a Democrat, was trying to make a point about civility and bipartisanship in politics. She urged Kansas lawmakers, the supermajority of whom were Republicans, not to let the loudest and most extreme viewpoints “drown out the voices of the vast majority of Kansans, who want to see us work together.”

Problem is, the Legislature has ignored what the vast majority of Kansans want for years — and right-wing extremism already rules. That’s why we don’t have legalized pot or Medicaid expansion. About 65% of Kansans support recreational marijuana, and 74% think expanding Medicaid would help rural hospitals stay in business. Those figures are from the Fall 2025 Kansas Speaks public opinion survey by the Docking Institute for Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University.

Much of the daylight between what Kansans want and what we get is because of historic GOP majorities in the Kansas House and Senate, which routinely block any measure that might give joy or comfort to anybody but the rich. But some of the blame belongs to a collective culture in which Kansans are so desperate to be polite and cooperative, and not to be regarded as different, that we’ll defer to power even when we shouldn’t.

Not all Kansans are like this. I’m not. My journalistic training and the books I’ve read and the friends I’ve made have allowed me to transcend Sunflower bashfulness. But it hasn’t absolved my guilt about being different.

There’s no guilt like Kansas guilt, and it lurks inside us like a vestigial organ from our founding. Although admitted as a free state on the eve of the Civil War 165 years ago, Kansas throbs with the political memory of the struggle that made us bleed. In our collective conscience there nags the worry we haven’t lived up to our promise, that even though we helped end the stain of slavery we still struggle with other deadly civic sins. From racism to hunger to inequality, the job remains unfinished. Nobody today remembers the state’s founding, but every living and reasoning Kansan takes their catechism from the pages of history.

We Kansans are not only a civil lot, as a whole, but a decent lot.

My definition of decency is behaving in a moral way, whether or not it conforms to accepted notions of respectability. You probably know a neighbor or a friend who has put their own self-interest aside to help you or someone else, and that’s the kind of approach Kelly specifically mentioned. Perhaps you donate food in a blessing box or give what you can to charity. But let me give you an historic example of Kansas decency in a time of trial.

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of captured German soldiers were sent to POW camps across America. Some of these camps were in Kansas, including one that held 100 or so prisoners at Peabody.

The POWs were billeted in town at a warehouse that had been turned into a prison. During the day the POWs were sent out to work, for meager pay, at surrounding farms, as long as the work was not dangerous and didn’t involve war production. POW labor helped alleviate a wartime manpower shortage at farms across Kansas.

“At first only the Mennonites invited the prisoners to work,” recalled Marian Franz, in the Mennonite Weekly Review in 1989. She had been an adolescent farm girl during the war. “Then others, observing the comfortable arrangement, employed them also.”

Franz wrote that she was more afraid of the armed U.S. guards than of the German prisoners. The Mennonites are historically known as pacifists and, during the war, many were conscientious objectors and given alternative service.

The German worked hard, were grateful for the quality of the food they were given, and even had a little time for hobbies such as sketching or whittling. The commander of the Peabody camp obtained soccer balls and boxing gloves for the prisoners. Even the guards who accompanied the prisoners to the field work developed a degree of trust.

“The original tension between the U.S. and German soldiers was relaxed by the hospitality that our Mennonite home and community extended equally to friend and foe,” Franz remembered. “As time went on fewer guards accompanied the prisoners. The guards no longer brought the guns into the house at mealtime. On occasion we sang together at the piano.”

Not everyone liked how well the German prisoners were being treated. Every time an American casualty list was printed in the papers, there were calls for some POWs to be executed. Once, when three farm women drove prisoners back their barracks in Peabody, they were unexpectedly met by a group of politicians, army officials and newspapermen who were conducting an official inspection. Wharton Hoch, a newspaper editor from nearby Marion, was particularly incensed. He condemned the practice of women transporting prisoners without guards, according to the Kansas City Times.

The commander of the four prison camps in central Kansas immediately put an end to the practice.

“When these prisoners first came to Kansas there was an urge on the part of the people to kill them,” the commander, Col. H.L. Shafer, told a town meeting, as reported by the Times. “Now there is a tendency to swing just as far the other way and fraternize with them. Treat them fairly but as prisoners.”

Franz became friends with one of the prisoners, Berthold Schwarz, who had been captured in North Africa after Erwin Rommel’s defeat. He returned to Germany at the end of the war. In 1988, Franz was reunited with Schwarz during a trip to Europe.

“It was evident the prisoner-of-war experience was emotional for Schwarz,” she wrote. “He pored over photos of how the Peabody prison looks today.”

I didn’t know of the German POW camp at Peabody until October, when I visited the historical society there and was surprised to see a wooden model of what appeared to be a twin-engine Heinkel bomber. It had been carved out of scrap wood by a German POW. There I also learned of “Spoils of Victory” by Daniel Markowitz, a 2025 novel about the German POW experience among Mennonite families in Kansas.

Franz, who for 24 years as director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund lobbied Congress unsuccessfully to establish the right of conscientious objectors not to fund wars, died in 2006. She was 76.

I’m not a pacifist. But I am worried about our current blundering into war, the increasing threat of nuclear annihilation, and the loss of the stabilizing influence of American power on the world stage.

I’m also not naive enough to think German prisoners during World War II were treated well in Kansas just because it was the right thing to do. Had they been Japanese prisoners, they likely would have been treated far worse, as were the Japanese Americans in the concentration camps at Manzanar and elsewhere. Also, there is the problem that the German POWs, decent people by appearances, were part of the Nazi regime. Hardcore Nazis, including SS officers, were barred from farm work, but even Rommel’s rank-and-file soldiers were fighting for fascism.

Which brings me back to Milgram and his famous experiment.

“Obedience, as a determinant of behavior, is of particular relevance to our time,” Milgram wrote in his 1974 book detailing his experiment. “It has been reliably established that from 1933 to 1945 millions of innocent people were systematically slaughtered on command. Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances. These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single person, but they could only have been carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed orders.”

In 1960, Milgram devised the test, in which subjects were paid $4 an hour to administer the shocks, ostensibly to study the effect of pain on learning. The subjects were the ones with their fingers on the button. There was an “experimenter” who directed the shocks be increased while a “learner” supposedly tried to memorize word pairs, but the learners were actually actors who were in on the scheme.

Milgram found that two-thirds of subjects turned their machines up to the maximum of 450 volts when told to do so, despite the cries of pain from the learner. Perhaps more disturbing, every subject was willing to inflict some pain.

There has been ample criticism of Milgram’s work, particularly from psychologist Gina Perry, who in 2013 wrote “Behind the Shock Machine,” in which she interviews the original subjects and concludes Milgram may have overstated his percentages and erred in his broad generalizations. Yet, Milgram’s results have been replicated so many times that his conclusions remain substantially valid.

The real unease with Milgram’s experiments, I think, lies in the central question that drove him to experiment in the first place: Why are otherwise decent people disposed to obey orders that result in cruelty, suffering and death to their fellow human beings?

It is the essential question of civilization.

On presidential Election Day in 2024 I visited several polling places in my town and observed, from a safe and legal distance, as scores of my neighbors cast their votes. The polling places for some of the precincts, like mine, were churches. For others it was a public building, including the municipal auditorium. It all went smoothly enough, with voters behaving cordially and the volunteer poll workers doing their jobs with efficiency and dedication. As I watched, I recalled the Trolley Problem, a thought exercise in which you’re given the choice to kill one person in order to save five.

But I was wrong. What I was watching was akin to the Milgram experiment in real life.

No experimenter was giving orders to shock, but each person voting had the memory of authority figures — politicians, preachers, activists, family members and even journalists — crowding the booth with them. There were no fake electrical shocks or cries of pain, but there were real cultural and economic shocks and actual pain for unseen human beings radiating beyond the ballot.

We can think for ourselves, but often we do not. Every day is an actual Milgram experiment. The key to casting a moral vote is to seek reliable information, find the moral compass within yourself and act accordingly.

Failure leads to severe moral dissonance.

Just take Coldwater. This Kansas town overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump and Kris Kobach. Yet, as Kansas Reflector Opinion Editor Clay Wirestone wisely points out, they also mourned the loss of their mayor, Joe Ceballos, who could face deportation after Attorney General Kobach filed fraud charges against him for voting without being a citizen.

Much of the rest of the country must be experiencing similar political vertigo. ICE is a murderous American masked police, the GOP-packed Supreme Court is poised to render yet more Dred Scott-like bad decisions, we’ve abducted the president of Venezuela and we’re risking the collapse of NATO by threatening to conquer Greenland.

Welcome to the new world disorder.

Most Kansans are civil and decent humans. But we need leaders, elected and otherwise, who will clearly denounce the moral collapse at the center of this political chaos, not call for more compromise or deference to authority. Now is the time not for civility, but for civil disobedience.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

This week’s question comes to us from Gwen Dubois:

How do I keep functioning in a capitalist world?

I am going to tell you a very shameful story.

Erika got me a Kit Kat clock for Christmas. For those who are unaware, a Kit Kat clock is shaped like a cat, with a clock in its belly, and eyes and a tail that go back and forth like a metronome. I’m sure you’ve seen one. They go back to the deco age of the 1930s, and if you’ve ever dated someone with bangs they have one in their kitchen. They’re usually black. Erika got me a kelly green one. (Go birds. Fuck ICE. Free Palestine.) I was very happy to get it.

On Christmas night, after friends and family had all left, I decided to hang up my Kit Kat clock. I rummaged through the junk drawer (I’m kidding, they’re all junk drawers.) until I found two C batteries, inserted them in the clock, then hung it up. The eyes and tail weren’t moving. I gave the tail a little push. Nothing. Hmm. I took it down and checked the batteries, which had expired in… 2018. Batteries expire? I decided to deal with it tomorrow. The next day I walked up to my local ma and pa drugstore (I’m kidding, it’s a fucking CVS) and bought a fresh pack of C batteries. I went home, put in the new batteries, put the clock back on the wall, and… nothing. Gave the tail a little push, and… nothing. This time I decided to see if the clock itself was working. I checked the time, came back 30 minutes later, and… the clock was working. This most likely eliminated the batteries as the source of the problem. By this point Erika was on the internet doing what she does best, research.

Readers, there are a lot of videos out there on fixing Kit Kat clocks.

We tried a few different things and none of them worked. Finally, we found a video that told us the most likely culprit was that the magnets used in the clock to make the eyes and tail move probably weren’t strong enough but could be easily fixed by adding more magnets to the clock. I was into this solution for two reasons: magnets and a reason to go to the hardware store, which I love. So off I went to the local hardware store.

“Do you have 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets?” (The video was very specific.)

“All we have is what’s in the case.”

They weren’t in the case. No biggie, there’s another hardware store five blocks away, and it was a nice day for a walk. Sadly that store didn’t have 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets either.

(Fun medical fact! Neodymium magnets come with very large warnings about keeping them away from children and idiotic adults who will think it’s funny to swallow them, except that they’re so strong they’ll get stuck in different parts of your colon and accordion your colon when they attract each other, as magnets do. The results aren’t good, but on the upside the surgery is incredibly expensive.)

Having struck out at the two local hardware stores I could walk to, I decided to wait a few days and go to the even bigger, but still locally run, hardware store by work. (Shout-out to Center Hardware!) Which I did. They had an extensive supply of magnets, neodymium and otherwise (No, I don’t know what the difference is.), but unfortunately, not the specific size I needed.

Here comes the shameful part. At this point I was so frustrated that I opened the Amazon app on my phone and ordered 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets, which of course they had. A couple days later a shame-filled envelope showed up at my door with one hundred 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets inside. (I need two.) And, yes, I realize I hadn’t exhausted all other options, including other online options, before resorting to Amazon. But I let frustration get to me and took the easy way out.

None of this specifically answers your question, but it’s related and I needed to get it off my chest. Still, I feel like I at least tried to buy these magnets at three local stores before letting frustration get the better of me. And what I’m maybe saying is that it’s sometimes hard to use the system differently than it's been designed to work. Because at this point, the system is definitely designed to get me to go to Amazon first.

A few days ago I was sitting in the local dogpark when the ever-popular topic of San Francisco’s downtown came up. Apparently another big store had shuttered. And the Old Men of the Dogpark™had much to say about “the state of things” including crime sprees and other make-believe bullshit that was keeping people from doing their shopping downtown. As they’re saying this I’m watching various Amazon trucks circle the park. Finally I asked one of them when he’d last bought something at Amazon.

“Last night.”

“Where would you have bought that before Amazon?”

“Downtown.”
Three things are happening here: our options are disappearing, we’re being sold a bullshit narrative about why our options are disappearing, and the evil alternative—which isn’t an alternative at all because it’s killing all its competition—feels incredibly easy. Because it is. You open your phone. Every item you could ever want is there. You push a button. It comes to you. Your city dies.

I’m gonna turn into an old man for just a minute. There was a time, not that long ago actually, when I could’ve walked four blocks to a Radio Shack and said “You got magnets?” And they would’ve showed me a wall of magnets. Then, just to rub it in, I could’ve stopped next door at Tower Records and spent an hour looking at magazines before picking out a record and walking back home. And I honestly miss doing shit like that, but I realize that these are part of my past, and trying to convince people that my past was better than their present is incredibly annoying, doesn’t solve shit, and is deserving of all the eye-rolls you are now giving me. And yet… Radio Shack was fucking glorious. Rant over.

So how do we function within capitalism?

I lied. Rant not over. Not quite. Because the lesson we can take from how “things used to be” is that we used to have options. The endgame of surveillance capitalism is to take away as many options as possible, which sounds to me a lot like a company store. Where your dollar can only go to the one place that provides the thing you need, at the one price it costs, at the one quality it’s offered. And honestly, if I were to look outside and see a lot of joy and happiness and people enjoying their one life here on Earth I’d be inclined to say “Good job, here’s my dollar!” But that’s not what I see.

Half my neighbors are afraid of being shot in the face by the government, and the other half are providing that same government with their own surveillance data by covering their homes in nest cams inside and out. Orwell fucking wept.

Unfortunately, capitalism is here and will probably remain here for the foreseeable future. Even if we, hopefully, start adopting some of the tenets of socialism, we will be interweaving it with capitalism. Which means we need to be more intentional about where we put our dollar, and we need to be aware of what we’re actually trading for our dollar.

Once upon a time (here he goes again), if I went to the hardware store and bought a light bulb that is exactly what I got. A light bulb. Depending on the hardware store my purchase might trigger a subtraction to their inventory database, and if they were really fancy, there might be a record that I bought a light bulb which might could be useful in a few years if I were to go back, be confused, and ask them if they knew what kind of light bulbs I’d bought last time. But for the most part, me walking out with a pack of light bulbs was the end of the transaction. These days, a light bulb purchase is the beginning of a transaction. You screw in the lightbulb, you fire up your lightbulb app, you set up a scenario, you get the light bulb to talk to your phone, you make it behave depending on your phone’s distance to it, or the time of day, etc. All of this creates juicy data that is then bought and sold by the light bulb company, the app manufacturer, and probably Palantir who then sells it to ICE so they know when you’re home. Motherfucker, you just needed a light bulb, man. So yeah, I miss the capitalism where I exchanged my dollar for your light bulb and that was the end of that. Turns out smart homes are anything but. Peter Thiel does not need to know what kind of light bulbs you use. Or when you’re home.

If we are going to keep functioning in a capitalist world we need to be more careful about where we are spending our money. The local hardware store will only be there as long as you keep using it. Same for the local grocery store, the local café, the local record store, the local pet store, etc. And while it might be easier to get something delivered to your door, I’d encourage you to pay those folks a visit once in a while. Those people are part of your community. Jeff Bezos is barely part of humanity. He does not deserve your dollar. The people at Target do not deserve your dollar. The union-busters at Whole Foods do not deserve your dollar. As someone who does a lot of shipping of zines, books, and assorted other shit, Uline does not get my dollar. (Special shout-out to the DSA for sending out their calendar in a Uline mailer. Fuck yeah, I’m gonna call your ass out on that!) And yes, sometimes the right thing is gonna cost. $8 might seem a great price for a t-shirt—and if all you have is $8 and you need a t-shirt, go ahead and get it!—but selling you an $8 t-shirt means somebody somewhere is getting fucked. (To be fair, if you are at a concert and a t-shirt is $80, the person getting fucked is you.)

The TL;DR on functioning in a capitalist world is to move a little slower, with a little more intention. Your dollar helps people stay in business. Be careful where you put it. I’m not saying it’s easy. As I told at the top of the story, I shamefully let frustration get to me and I took the easy way out. This’ll happen. But every time we keep doing it, we get closer and closer to having no other options than having to shop at a company store run by white supremacists.

America has one neck, and it’s the economy. If you want to change how things are going, you have to change where you’re putting your dollar.

🙋 Got a question? Ask it! It’s fun for both of us.

💰 Speaking of where you put your dollar, gimme $2/mo and help me keep writing this newsletter.

📣 There are a few seats left in next week’s workshop. If you’re job hunting this workshop will help you get your dollar. Grab ‘em!

🍉 Please give what you can to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. The ceasefire is bullshit.

🏳️‍⚧️ Please give what you can to Trans Lifeline.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In a decisive move against the Trump regime’s mass kidnapping and human trafficking agenda, Kansas City’s City Council passed a five-year moratorium Wednesday banning permits, licenses, and zoning approvals for any detention facility not owned or operated by the city.

The ordinance, introduced by Mayor Quinton Lucas, comes amid reports that Kansas City is under consideration as a potential site for a federal concentration camp capable of holding up to 10,000 people. The moratorium takes effect immediately and applies to all pending and future applications through January 15, 2031.

Councilman Johnathan Duncan, a vocal advocate for the measure, did not mince words about the federal threat in a statement to The Kansas City Defender.

“I will use every tool at my disposal to fight this federally funded terrorist organization that is ICE,” Duncan said. “While today’s moratorium vote was a good first step to stopping this mass incarceration concentration camp from being built in our City, this fight is far from over. We will need to put public pressure on any business that thinks they can sell out our community for personal profit. That comes next.”

A Victory with Limits

For abolitionists and immigrant rights advocates, the moratorium represents a significant, if incomplete, victory.

The ordinance effectively blocks ICE concentration camps and private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group from establishing operations within city limits. These corporations have profited billions from immigrant detention, operating facilities notorious for torture, medical neglect, and deaths in custody.

However, the moratorium’s language reveals the limits of the city’s commitment to ending mass incarceration. By restricting only “non-municipal” facilities, the ordinance preserves Kansas City’s ability to expand its own carceral infrastructure. This includes the new detention facility slated for construction through funds from the public safety sales tax.

In other words: Kansas City will block the cages built by others while continuing to construct its own.

The Federal Threat

The Trump regime has made mass kidnappings and human trafficking a centerpiece of its agenda, proposing concentration camps across the country capable of holding tens of thousands of people. ICE, operating in the tradition of the Gestapo and American slave catchers, would carry out these raids, tearing families apart and disappearing people into a sprawling network of camps and cages.

These facilities would require cooperation from local governments, private landowners, and contractors willing to participate in a machine that mirrors some of the darkest chapters in American and world history.

Kansas City’s moratorium represents one of the first concrete moves by a major city to obstruct these plans. By denying permits and zoning approvals, the city forces the federal government to either find alternative sites or engage in protracted legal battles.

Mayor Lucas framed the decision in terms of economic priorities.

“We consistently hear from residents that Kansas City’s focus should be on economic development and housing, not mass detention facilities holding thousands,” Lucas said. “Our priority is building businesses, homes, and schools that strengthen and grow our community.”

What Comes Next

As Councilman Duncan noted, the moratorium is a first step. Advocates are already turning attention to the private sector, where businesses and property owners may be tempted by lucrative federal contracts to facilitate kidnapping operations.

The fight will also extend to the state level, where Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature could attempt to preempt local ordinances blocking federal immigration enforcement.

For Kansas City’s immigrant communities, the moratorium offers a measure of protection in an increasingly hostile political landscape. For abolitionists, it stands as a reminder that the struggle against cages and detention cannot end with blocking federal facilities while local jails continue to rise.

The work continues.

This is a developing story.

The post Kansas City Passes 5-Year Ban on Mass Detention Facilities appeared first on The Kansas City Defender.

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is in line to potentially earn $35 billion in stock options, so long as the company hits a $100 billion market cap. One way to hit that target is by cutting costs, and one way of cutting costs is to close down a bunch of stores. The company closed 590 stores in fiscal year 2024, and said in a recent SEC filing that it anticipates "closing a significant number of additional stores in fiscal 2025." With the fiscal year set to end on January 31st, it appears the race is on, and according to a blog tracking closures, GameStop is planning on shuttering (or already has) over 430 stores this month.

As of Sunday, January 11t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Since X's users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple's and Google's app stores. The fact that it hasn't happened yet tells me something serious about Silicon Valley's leadership: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are spineless cowards who are terrified of Elon Musk.

Here's the relevant Apple App Store developer guideline: "Apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy." Huh! How about that.

Read the full story at The Verge.