Echoes of Their Minds

Everybody’s talking about him and that’s the way he likes it; there’s nothing more important in his life. Nothing. It vibrates every fiber in his body to know that everybody is talking about him.

As Harry Nilsson sang in his 1969 hit, Everybody’s Talkin’, Everybody’s talkin’ at me/I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’/Only the echoes of my mind.

It is a fitting tribute to Donald Trump who is motivated most by centering everyone’s attention on him. Money, outrages, lying, cheating, stealing, victimhood, violence, threats, sex, politics—all instruments for getting the attention that he craves; affirmation that he is somebody.

This, according to the Mayo Clinic, is a narcissistic personality disorder—people suffering from “an unreasonably high sense of their importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them.”

Trump clearly exhibits this disorder. As does the industrialist Elon Musk, who appears to think that because of his success building on the thoughts and ideas of those in the automotive and aerospace industries before him that he is the genius that his loyal fans claim him to be.

That is the problem—the Trump and Musk fan bases feed egos that are incapable of regulating behaviors. These two men have become legends in their own minds. When fans think of you in that way, that’s adulation; when you think of yourself that way, it’s dangerous.

Particularly for these two men who are very capable in their chosen pursuits, which impact the nation on so many levels, but see everything through the lens of “it’s about me!”

As Nilsson sang, I'm goin' where the sun keeps shinin'/Through the pourin' rain/Goin' where the weather suits my clothes.

So, you have Trump and his millions of followers who believe that only he could run the country and his single idea, which earns cheers and applause at his rallies, is retribution—jailing political opponents, abolishing courts, executing military leaders and federal employees who don’t show sufficient loyalty to him. This is called dictatorship. It is a serious threat to our democracy.

Trump promises a fascist state – run by him alone – and the abolishment of democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution. If you want to get an idea what that looks like, visit Germany, 1933-1945 or Italy, 1922-1945. Those nations barely survived their one-man fascist rulers.

There’s plenty of dictatorships today to consider – from China to North Korea to Hungary where one-man rule hurts the people and undermines economic progress.

Look at Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a one-man fascist ruler who strives for world conquest through military adventurism. He is destroying his great country and himself as he tries to take Ukraine, a democracy backed by the world’s democracies that is valiantly and fiercely fighting back.

Unfortunately, Putin gets help from an eager Musk, who apparently thinks he understands the geopolitics of the war because fans and the press tell him he’s a genius. As owner of Starlink, a communication satellite system vital to Ukraine’s war effort, Musk behaves as if he is a nation-state, deciding when Ukraine – out-gunned and out-manned, despite its military effectiveness – can and cannot use the comsats to deploy its drone offensives against Russian aggression.

Or Musk deciding to blowup a rocket ship that he and everyone else knew was not ready for its test flight. He claimed that’s how rocketry research works, and he’s right, but back in the 1940s and ‘50s, when rockets were experimental and space flight aspirational. This need to self-explode seems questionable.

However, listening to Musk and his loyal followers, you would think when Space X’s first liquid-fueled rocket reached orbit in 2008 that he was the first man in space. Let’s not forget the prior 60 years when governments put satellites into space, men went to the moon, and a little probe, NASA’s Voyager 1, escaped the solar system to explore deep space.

The United States government has contracts with Musk’s comsat systems and his antics with Putin – deciding to cut off Ukraine because he believed it would lead to nuclear war – means the U.S. needs to revisit this relationship. It has become volatile.

U.S. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith and Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis are moving toward bringing Trump to justice for inciting insurrection and organizing a failed coup on Jan. 6, but Trump continues to incite and threaten violence against democratic institutions

And Musk uses X (formerly Twitter), a media platform he seemingly bought on a whim and that he clearly does not understand, to allow disinformation and to opine on matters the users of X are quick to point out are inaccurate or anti-Semitic.

What makes these two men the most dangerous is that neither of them seem remotely aware or concerned about how damaging their behaviors are to democracy and to themselves.

They go about their lives much like the final lines of Nilsson’s song describes: Bankin' off of the northeast winds/Sailin' on summer breeze/And skippin' over the ocean like a stone.

Everybody's talkin' at me.

Question What You Think

In winter 2022, self-help author Joseph Nguyen released, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking is the Beginning & End of Suffering.” He offered readers ways to deal with anxiety, self-doubt and negative thoughts—emotions that afflict us all.

Just the first part of that title, “don’t believe everything you think,” seemed to speak to an era of social abandon wrought by vast technological changes, from AI to hyper social media.

When our children were in those growing years of confusion and anxiety (made even more so by social media), we used this aphorism – we still do, even to remind ourselves – to help them try and see things more clearly.

We wanted to free them to question what they think, but also what they read, hear, watch and are told, which, admittedly, when a parent is doing the telling requires patience at times.

To be sure, I have not read Nguyen’s book (only just learned of it, in fact), nor am I trying to shill for him, but I am using him to make a point in this essay.

I went to Nguyen’s website to learn whether my interpretation of “don’t believe everything you think” aligned with his. It did and more.

His opening chapter quotes Canadian philosopher Matshona Dhliwayo: “One who looks around him is intelligent, one who looks within him is wise.” Self-help writer Sydney Banks, “Thought is not reality; yet it is through thought that our realities are created,” starts the chapter.

Banks, a welder with a ninth-grade education who died in 2009, developed a “Three Principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought” philosophy practiced today by mental health counselors and therapists.

In one of his lectures, Banks recounts explaining his insecurities to a therapist who told him his troubles were rubbish.

“What I heard was, there’s no such thing as insecurity, it’s only thought. All my insecurity was only my own thoughts! … It was so enlightening!”

A passage in Nguyen’s book seems to speak to what Americans grapple with today:

It’s not about the events that happen in our lives, but our interpretation of them, which causes us to feel good or bad about something. This is how people in third world countries can be happier than people in first world countries and people in first world countries can be more miserable than people in third world countries. Our feelings do not come from external events, but from our own thinking about the events.

Despite the technological advances to inform, learn and communicate, many Americans seem to live in dread – of the world, their country, their community, a neighbor, a relative – instead of examining why they feel this way.

As if they fear enlightenment or prefer to be fearful.

Q Anon followers strike me as a group that believes everything they think, as do the thousands of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Enlightenment can alter, sometimes significantly, narratives of what you believe or what you think you believe, but you have to open yourself to being enlightened.

Some claim enlightenment when their preferences in media, political party, politician, celebrity, “influencer,” religious figure, billionaire, etc. confirms what they think. That’s confirmation bias, not greater knowledge or insight that true enlightenment provides.

It is difficult, but not impossible, to change a viewpoint or thinking on which you’ve established a worldview of yourself and others. But just as Banks realized his insecurities are only thoughts, it is freeing to see new perspectives.

Then you realize, there isn’t as much to fear as there is to learn.

Pictured: Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker."

Exorcising America’s Demon(s)

Until U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Luman Smith special counsel, Donald Trump seemed unstoppable, despite mountains of incriminating evidence compiled by the bipartisan (only two Republicans joined) House Select Committee on the January 6th attack.

In his bid to win the White House again, Trump has operated like he’s untouchable, staging rallies, flaunting civil discourse, and stealing and mishandling secret U.S. documents on military preparedness, nuclear technology and more.

Could no one stop this man from destroying democracy?

Most certainly not Republican-elected officials who feared Trump’s MAGA base in the party and thus losing power. They use “whataboutism” to excuse away his alleged crimes. Social media and the airwaves crackled with anger and indignation that Trump would escape justice while MAGA supporters reacted with anger and indignation over perceived unfair treatment of their man.

Critics of Merrick Garland wondered whether the Department of Justice would ever investigate Trump for executing the January 6, 2021 attempted coup and violent insurrection by thousands of his supporters. They accused DOJ of fearing prosecution because of Trump’s mob-boss threats of “civil war,” if he is indicted.

With this backdrop, Smith, a relatively unknown prosecutor, arrived in Washington, D.C. in the 2022, somewhat like that of the exorcist priest Lankester Merrin in the 1973 horror film, “The Exorcist.” In fact, when Garland announced Smith’s appointment, the only photo of Smith the media seemed to have was of him in a priestly looking white-collared, black and purple robe that prosecutors in the International Criminal Court are required to wear. Smith had just finished a stint there chief prosecutor for war crimes committed in the 1999 Kosovo War.

The robe seemed to affect the former president. Just as the devil who possessed teenager Regan MacNeil screamed Merrin’s name upon his entering her Georgetown home, Trump used his Truth Social posts to scream Smith was a “deranged lunatic,” a “Trump Hater,” and a “psycho that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with ‘Justice.’”

Seems the devil draws the line at name calling.

In his role as special counsel, Smith is neither friend nor foe but an attorney for the federal government assigned to ensure that in our judicial system, as he says, “no one is above the law.”

I don’t know Jack Smith, but I’ve watched him speak at his two brief news conferences and read his indictments against Trump. I’m guessing his love of country, democracy and the rule of law eclipse any feeling he may have about the man he’s about to try in a courtroom, possibly as early as this fall.

Smith’s middle name sounds like “lumen” – a measure of visible light emitted from a source – and the charges he will argue are related to Trump’s January 6 coup attempt. The other federal case, stolen classified documents, will likely be tried next year.

Set aside the characters in this legal drama, the case against the defendant is simple, concise, and brilliant in its jurisprudence and execution. The specter of jail looms for Trump. And yet, similarities to a 1970s film about a couple of priests fighting a demon possessing a young girl resonate on the circus level, where Trump prefers to exist. He plays the role of victim, defender of the little people that he constantly lies to and fleeces following every indictment – four and counting – and at every rally. Alabama MAGAs gave him $1.2 million after his third arraignment because they believe when he tells them, “I’m being indicted for you.”

After these “Christ the Savior” allegories Trump spews, you almost expect Jack Smith – here in his role as exorcist priest Lankester Merrin – to start showering Trump with injunctions while loudly praying, “The rule of law compels you! The rule of law compels you!”

In reality, what Smith is doing is prosecuting Trump for his alleged crimes to undermine American democracy and to sell American security to foreign bidders.

Most Americans, exhausted by a man they fear can get elected and destroy democracy, hope Smith will win convictions and thus exorcise the body politics’ “demons.” But that’s not his role; that’s the individual voters’ role because there is no guarantee Trump will be convicted of anything, and if convicted, there’s no guarantee that he won’t get elected.

To stop Trump, who has stated his authoritarian anti-democratic plans to alter the nation forever if returned to office, vote against him. To stop candidates who oppose democracy, vote against them. To be sure, there are tens of millions of Trump supporters who will be voting for him. Some of them, unfortunately, actually believe he is fighting demons.

That’s the power every individual in a democracy possesses—the right to vote. There is no guarantee – even if Trump were to make a guarantee – that this sacred right would continue to exist if he is elected.

Remember, one of the charges for which he is about to stand trial is “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted,” which is usurping the will of the people, that is, taking away your right to vote.

Also remember, that while we have the right to vote, only we the people can exorcise our political demons.

Defeated

In the mugshot seen around the world, the scowl on the 77-year-old face under a combed-over “strawberry blond” mane was intended to sow fear in those prosecuting him under federal and state laws.

Despite the fearsome mask, the four-time indicted Donald Trump showed fear and defeat, both of which seemed to weigh heavily in his body language as he ambled – slumped-shouldered – across the airport tarmac after getting booked in the Atlanta jail on Aug. 24.

This is no longer MAGA’s inevitable triumph who boasts of slaying imaginary enemies that are out to get him and thus them. This is a pathetic man long broken – probably since childhood –with a diminishing base of supporters who struggle to hang onto his lost cause.

Trump performs, even if all he does is play himself, but great actors are confident in themselves, highly imaginative, with sharp understanding of human behavior; you can’t tell how they actually feel when they perform, you just think you do.

Whatever mask he wears – bluster, braggadocio, arrogance, cockiness – Trump always lets us know how he feels, projecting his anger, fears, hurts, deviousness and lusts onto others.

A fortunate son of a New York City developer, Trump spent a life using wealth and privilege to attain wealth and power, a singular focus that deprived him of essential self-reflection.

We know Trump is transactional and angry, but we know little else about the man. I wonder if Trump even knows who he is, lost in his performance of the caricature “Trump.”

Loneliness must consume him.

Tellingly, at every one of his arraignments, none of his family or friends are there for him. From all the news footage and photos, the only people who are ever there are Secret Service agents assigned to him, his staff, some hangers on, and the media.

Despite calls to his supporters to turn out for massive protests at each of his arraignments, Trump has seen only small gatherings who are outnumbered by the media. After each indictment, the din of “unfair charges” from GOP politicians and conservative media becomes quieter.

At the Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News the night before the Fulton County Jail arraignment, no one gave a full-throated roar of support for Trump. Two candidates on the stage denounced him and the one candidate that sought to emulate the former president, Vivek Ramaswamy, was constantly attacked by the others.

Trump is aware of this. In the fragmented way that he often speaks, he seemed to subconsciously allude to his lack of support on the tarmac when he told the media, “I’ve never had such support.”

If latest polls are any indication, Trump has already been defeated in his bid to become president again, even before voters go to the polls next November. He may win the GOP nomination, but a majority of the country believes he should stand trial for his attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021 and his pilfering of secret documents.

He may voice defiance as juries of citizens are prepared to hear evidence and render verdicts, but this fourth indictment seems to have unsettled him. Trump no longer appears like the historic figure that he always tries to emulate, World War II Gen. George S. Patton.

Unsurprisingly, he does exhibit many character traits of the general, according to a 2016 article in Politico that compared the two men:

Twelfth Army Group commander Omar Bradley, who knew Patton well, described him as “colorful but impetuous, full of temper, bluster, inclined to treat the troops and subordinates as morons. He was primarily a showman. The show always seemed to come first.” Patton acted as though he didn’t care what people thought, but he “harbored a burning ambition for personal recognition,” wrote [Supreme Allied Commander Dwight] Eisenhower’s son John.

Since he doesn’t like to read, Trump’s understanding of the general is solely based on the 1970 film biopic, “Patton.”

Trump should watch the movie again and heed a quote from “Old Blood and Guts” himself that actor George C. Scott, who portrayed Patton, narrates in the final scene:

“For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

Trumpism’s High-Water Mark

By Matthew Durantine

I have been reading recently a rather detailed account of the Battle of Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland. It prompted me to think also of the second invasion of federal territory, the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Like the afternoon of July 3, 1863 in Gettysburg, was Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. the high-water mark for Donald Trump and Trumpism? 

Was the violent invasion of the Capitol Building comparable to the assault on the Union Army’s center, where, at the clump of trees on Cemetery Ridge,, Confederate General George Pickett’s famous charge broke? 

Keep in mind the rebels fought on for almost two more years after that turning point in the Civil War. They scored victories and launched other assaults into federal territory. There were many times when the outcome was uncertain and victory for the nation seemed unlikely. 

Trump and Trumpism are winning some battles these days, particularly in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Trump made three appointments to the nine-member bench while he was in office. The court has effectively reversed more than half a century of progress for racial and economic equity and diversity.

But are the Trumpists ultimately losing the war?

President Abraham Lincoln was vilified and lampooned in the press as an ape and a buffoon. As commander of the Union Army, Gen. Ulysses Grant was pilloried as a drunken butcher who bludgeoned his way south without concern for the death toll among his troops.

For a time, Gen. William Sherman, commander of federal troops in the west, disappeared along with his army on his drive to the sea after the Battle of Atlanta. A tremendous amount of uncertainty and doubt persisted among voters in the North still loyal to Lincoln’s vision of a nation once again united but without slavery.

And then, just like that, the war ended.

Union troops launched a siege around Petersburg, Va. in June 1864. Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 was in doubt as a former Union general, George McClellan, ran against him. McClellan enjoyed tremendous popular support, even among some of the troops. His platform was to sue immediately for peace and divide the country in two.

Such thinking is echoed today by Trump, Trumpists in Congress and MAGA voters who oppose President Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine and its fight against Russia’s 16-month unprovoked and unwarranted invasion. Trumpists in Republican-led states like Texas clamor for secession from the nation.  

Lincoln managed to win in November 1864 and the Petersburg siege didn't break until March 25, 1865. But within a few weeks, by April 9, the conflict that began five years earlier – and must have seemed interminable to the country – was over. Just like that.

They say history doesn't actually repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Are we in a similar paradigm today?

I'm finding it easy to become disheartened after eight years of Trump and Trumpism fighting against the rule of law to take and hold power at any cost in order to serve their needs and not the nation’s.

I have found some hope in our justice system, which Trump and congressional Trumpists vow to dismantle if returned to power. Federal indictments against the former president and his lieutenants, and convictions against MAGA insurrectionists, proceed methodically and determinedly.

In the United States, as federal special prosecutor Jack Smith said in his indictment against Trump for violating national security, no one is above the law.

Maybe this is how history always plays out. You never know until you know. Things don't change until they do. Things seem inevitable until they're not. Has Trump and Trumpism reached the high-water mark?

Time will tell. 

Matthew Durantine is a writer from Silver Spring, Md.

Guns Fought the Law and the Guns Won

The two organizationsmost responsible for the gun violence on American streets today, the Gun Owners of America (GOA) and their partner, the National Rifle Association (NRA), have much to celebrate these days.

America has more guns than people and thanks to their willing partners in Congress, state legislators and municipal governments, laws have been fashioned to allow gun owners to shoot whomever whenever for whatever. This is the freedom conservatives long sought—the power to kill and maim with your firearm of choice without consequence.

Just the last week, freedom-loving gun owners have exercised their right under such state laws as “stand-your-ground” and “conceal-and-carry” in a variety of ways that must warm the hearts of the GOA, NRA and every guns-for-everyone politician and gun-fetishist everywhere.

We had an 84-year-old gun owner shoot and nearly kill a teenager for knocking on his door; a gun owner shoot and wound two cheerleaders for mistakenly getting into his car; and a gun owner shoot and wound a 6-year-old and her family because a basketball rolled into his yard.

These were just some of the shooting for the week of April 16, which, having become like any week in America, also included plenty of mass shootings, illegal discharge of guns, gun violence to settle disputes, etc.

Earlier in the month, a mass shooting at a private school in Tennessee took teenage and adult lives. How many? Why ask? Body counts are always increasing, and lawmakers in that state certainly didn’t care.

They took action to ensure freedom for gun owners (and thus less freedom for non-gun owners and future victims) by passing more gun laws to make more guns available to anyone without any restrictions. Oh, a red flag law failed to muster support because it would temporarily keep guns out of the hands of gun owners with such high-risk behaviors as shooting everyone in sight to address mental and emotional problems. Lawmakers saw that as violating a freedom-loving gun owner's Second Amendment rights.

They also voted to kick out two Black lawmakers because the two young men had the temerity to demand more gun safety measures after the school slaughter and because they are Black. Cooler heads prevailed in the districts they served and they were re-instated.

Civility is dead, stupidity reigns. America belongs to the freedom-loving gun owners who believe that around every corner, in every heart and mind, someone – in particular someone who is Black, Hispanic or Asian – is out to get them. As the 84-year-old Kansas City gun owner who shot the Black teenager without any provocation other than to glimpse his skin color believes, shoot first, and then shoot again. If you feel like bothering, ask questions later.

For more than 50 years, the GOA and NRA and the gun industrial complex have spread the fear that without a gun you as an American are in danger, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Own a gun. Own many guns. Keep several in your home, in your car, in your boat, your camper, your kid’s lunch box. At any moment, someone is going to get you!

Forget thoughts and prayers, America. Guns now rule, and for those who don’t agree, tough. Shut up and get a gun or just shut up.

And if you get a gun, don’t worry about unloading it and locking it up in a safe place at home (Hell, someone could break-in at any moment and get you!). If your 6-year-old happens to take it to school and shoot his teacher, well, that’s America, where the GOA and NRA wants every kid from the time their born to get a gun. Just be proud that he aimed correctly.

Yes, America, we are a gun republic, many of our congressional members have even replaced their flag lapel pin with an AR-15 lapel pin to show their loyalty to the gun, under God.

America is steeped in the John Wayne and movie Western mythology that the gun won the West (It didn’t. It was the federal government and a powerful military with a genocidal policy) and that men and guns are what make men, men.

Two hunters once told me this when I told them I had no interest in guns. What an idiot I must have seemed to them as they informed me about stirrings they feel when fall comes, the birds fly south, and hunting licenses arrive in the mail. They were almost disbelieving when I shared that I never experienced such longing, which made me question my white manhood.

It’s just not the conservatives and Republicans and Democrats and the GOA and the NRA and the gun industrial complex at fault for gun violence. It’s not even the fault of Americans who hate guns but own one because they are fearful of the other gun owners.

Hell, in a gun republic like ours, gun violence is the daily rhythm, no one is ever at fault, other than the victims who were not armed at the moment of their demise. Tough, but, hey, the GOA and NRA warned you to get a gun because someone would get you.

We are a democracy – in our gun republic that ideal is slipping fast – and if we truly want an America without gun violence as many civilized and developed nations enjoy, then we have to change the conversation that the GOA and NRA have dominated and we need to make the serious sacrifice of banning guns. It’s not impossible to ban guns, just hard.

Until that happens, the only people who will be making sacrifices are those who are killed and wounded every day by guns.

Standing Up to Bullies in Power

Something happened in a Florida federal court a few weeks ago that showed what it takes to standup to bullies, and not just any bullies, but bullies who wield power.

U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks sanctioned former President Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba, ordering them to pay nearly $1 million in fines for filing what he deemed a frivolous lawsuit. Trump claimed that his political opponent in the 2016 presidential campaign, Hilary Clinton, as well as others involved in the Russian investigation, conspired to damage his reputation.

Middlebrooks said Trump was a sophisticated litigant who made it a practice to use the courts to seek revenge against his political opponents and called the former Republican president’s lawsuit against Clinton a “political manifesto.”

"He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions," Middlebrooks wrote in his opinion. "As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba."

The judged ordered Trump and Habba, who as a member of the bar clearly knew the frivolity of her and her client’s actions, to pay 18 defendants $938,000. Of course, they vowed to appeal, but that seems doubtful.

Indeed, the very next day, Trump dropped another one of his “revenge lawsuits,” this one against New York Attorney General Letitia James whose fraud investigation into the Trump family seeks records from his private trust.

Last month, the same Judge Middlebrooks denied Trump’s lawsuit against James and called Trump’s claims of harm “quintessentially speculative.”

In sanctioning Trump and his lawyer for the Clinton lawsuit, Middlebrooks made clear, unequivocally, to Trump that he would not tolerate the dishonest bullying tactics Trump has employed most of his life, using lawyers and friendly courts to hide his misdeeds and attack those who legitimately question those misdeeds and seek accountability.

Unlike his colleague in the Southern District of Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, Middlebrooks rendered a decision without fear or favor. Cannon – who Trump appointed despite her apparent lack of necessary qualifications to sit on the bench – granted Trump’s request last year to effectively delay the Department of Justice’s investigation into his mishandling classified documents. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Cannon’s ruling that appeared to return a favor to the former president for appointing her.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

In regard to the lawsuit Trump filed against Clinton, Middlebrooks wrote, “This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”

Trump’s complaint that the Russian investigation tarnished his reputation is yet another bullying tactic. Despite what he and his minions including former US Attorney General Bob Barr say, the Mueller Report clearly demonstrated Russia interfered and influenced the 2016 campaign in favor of Donald Trump.

And for Trump, all roads lead to Russia. For the last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stood against an international bully, Vladimir Putin, a Trump ally.

Remember, Trump asked Zelenskyy in 2019 for a “favor” in return for releasing a $400 million congressionally mandated military aid package then-President Trump blocked. The quid pro quo that he sought, which lead to his first impeachment, was for Ukraine to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden.

This incident is seen in new light with the Russian dictator’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which Trump cheered, and which hundreds of thousands have died since the war began last February.

But Putin’s invasion is failing, spectacularly, and largely because the Russian military is neither well equipped nor properly skilled. Many Russian soldiers sent mercilessly into battle appear to lack motivation for carrying out orders of a would-be czar who wants to re-build a Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.

Despite the world’s fears leading up to Putin’s aggression against his supposedly weaker neighbor, the Ukrainians stood, undaunted (and with immense help from the West led by the US), and bloodied the bully’s nose, month after month as missiles rain down on their country.

Late last year, following one Russian defeat after another, Putin, who vowed never to negotiate, signaled, then called for negotiations. But Zelenskyy knew Putin was stalling for time to build an army for a winter offensive. Ignoring Western pleas to negotiate, Zelenskyy demanded Putin first return all territory taken since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and restore Ukraine to its 1991 border.

As Russian exiles Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, co-founders of the pro-democracy Russian Action Committee, wrote this month in Foreign Affairs, Ukraine is on the verge of victory and Putin defeat, militarily and politically because of Zelenskyy’s fearless refusal to back down from a bully.

“This is a make-or-break moment for Ukraine,” the authors said.

However, Kasparov – chair of the Human Rights Foundation and a former world chess champion, and Khodorkvosky, a businessman and former political prisoner – advise that the West, and in particular President Joe Biden, must not fear the bully’s threat of nuclear war or that Putin’s fall from power would mean something worse in Russia.

“Biden can turn the tide in Kyiv’s favor by backing up his declarations of support with the delivery of tanks and long-range weaponry,” the authors said. “He can also hasten the demise of Putin’s regime, opening up the possibility of a democratic future for Russia and demonstrating to the world the folly of military aggression. The United States cannot let its fears stand in the way of Ukraine’s hopes.”

If we let them, bullies will intimidate and brutalize us. Stand up to them, and you will see how weak they truly are. At this point in human history, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

It Has Happened Here

Fascism can slither into a democracy unnoticed until a moment of social dysfunction, then it strikes hard, its poison seeping into the psyche of the nation as its political leaders struggle for constitutional coherence.

Despite his decisive election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump refused to relinquish power, and waged a deadly insurrection with an army of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021 to take control of the United States government before Biden was inaugurated.

This is fascism in 21st century America, where Trump, once considered a billionaire buffoon until he won the presidency in 2016, directed thousands of loyalists, many armed or ready to retrieve an arms cache nearby, to attack the U.S. Capitol and stop certification of the 2020 election.

Hundreds were injured, five people died and one woman was killed in the melee before the mob was turned back.Yet, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate still voted to overturn the election in favor of Trump, even after his loyalists destroyed property, beat police officers, and voted to hang Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence.

Gallows for Pence on Jan. 2, 2021.

Credit: Tyler Merbler

Meanwhile, a presidential hopeful for 2024, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, signs laws by a complicit Sunshine State legislature that dictate what school children and high schoolers should learn. Are checks and balances, one of democracy’s pillars, no longer valid there?

In Pennsylvania, Trump-endorsed Republican Doug Mastriano, a conservative Christian and ex-army officer, vows to disenfranchise voters if he becomes governor and doesn’t like the outcome of statewide elections. Mastriano was among those who marched on the Capitol Jan. 6.

Not since Huey Long of Louisiana has there been governors or candidates for governor willing to tear apart democracy to keep or get power. Long was a beloved populist with a fascist fist. As the Democratic and demagogic governor (and later U.S. senator), he ruled the Bayou State from 1928 to 1935 when he was assassinated at the state’s capitol.

The iron-fisted Long.

Credit: Library of Congress

The conservative wing of the Republican Party, having long desired to dictate social mores from the pulpit of government, finally succeeded after jerry-rigging the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided recently that women have no rights under the Constitution.

Five conservative justices took away a fundamental right of privacy under Roe v. Wade, thus effectively banning abortion. They also struck down a gun-safety law in New York and several other states that restricted gun owners from openly carrying weapons.

Justice Clarence Thomas who delivered the opinion on guns appears to have no problem with Trump’s armed insurrection, which his wife, Ginny, supported, if not helped organize.

Thomas said the court is now considering stripping more rights including same sex marriage. In the history of the United States, the Supreme Court has never taken away a constitutional right, but this court is only getting started. Thomas wants to nullify years of gun-safety laws.

This fall, fascist forces could succeed in controlling Congress. If Republicans win one or both houses, they have threatened to impeach Biden for no other reason than to impeach him. If that occurs, the coup Trump started on Jan. 6 becomes a fait accompli.

No matter who wins the presidential election in 2024, a conservative-controlled Supreme Court and a Republican Congress dominated by conservatives will maneuver to decide the winner.

In 1935, during the rise of fascism in Europe, writer Sinclair Lewis penned a novel about a fascist leader taking power in the United States, “It Could Happen Here.”

Since that period, fascist forces have banged at America’s door, and conservative politicians and religious-right leaders have tried to let them in, eager to serve their own self-interests and thirsts for power. Their wish appears on the verge of coming true. It has now happened here.

Some of the leading forces of fascism in this country have largely been conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians. From the anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin, who embraced fascism on his Detroit radio programs in the 1930s, to today’s Supreme Court Justices like Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch (now Episcopalian), Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts.

Perhaps fascism’s absolutism resembles the dogma of religions like Catholicism and evangelical Christianity and that’s why churchgoers find appeal in both.

The three largest countries in Europe that turned to fascism in the 1930s were Catholic: Italy, led by Benito Mussolini; Germany, led by Adolf Hitler; and Spain, led by Francisco Franco.

While Mussolini and Hitler were raised Catholic neither man believed in their faith. They led the most brutal war in world history. Franco was a devout Catholic who, with Hitler’s help, waged a brutal Civil War (he stayed out of World War II), and then led an evil dictatorship for 39 years.

The five conservative justices who took away the right of a woman to choose her own health care based their ruling not on constitutional or even science-backed constitutional law. They based it on their religious beliefs. Could we be headed to a sort of Franco-theocratic rule?

If conservative Republicans manage to succeed in their fascist quest, their next task is re-writing the Constitution. They will surely take away more rights and eliminate the Establishment Clause that, at this tenuous moment, prevents the government from making religious-based laws.

Since 2014, 19 state legislatures – everyone one of them Republican controlled – have passed resolutions calling for a constitutional convention. Four – Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia, South Carolina – did so this year. The effort is led by wealthy business conservatives such as Charles Koch.

Conservative Republicans claim they want to re-write the Constitution to reign in federal spending and limit government. That is devious. A convention will allow them to throw out our current Constitution for a document that could create an authoritarian government and restrict rights for everyone by heterosexual Christian whites.

Legal scholars have long warned of the dangers of a convention, particularly in an era so politically polarized as today.

As one former Supreme Court chief justice, Warren Burger, explained during his tenure on the court from 1969 to 1986, “there is no way to effectively limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda.  Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey.”

Conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia (yet another Catholic), who died in 2016, was even more succinct in his opinion: “I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?”

Trump's March on the Capitol

From the June 28 House hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided details on former President Donald Trump’s insistence on joining his supporters as they left his rally outside the White House and marched on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump knew they were armed and told his aides he was not worried about getting injured by the mob, where five people were killed and hundreds injured that day. The Secret Service overruled the president and whisked him from the rally and back to the West Wing.

“’I’m the ‘effing’ president, take me to the Capitol,’” an infuriated Trump told one Secret Service, according to Hutchinson. She said Trump tried to attack the agent assigned to protect him.

So, the question: Why was Trump so insistent on joining the march that what we’ve now learned was part of the coup plot by the former president and his inner circle?

Perhaps the answer is found in the history of Italian and German fascism.

On Oct. 24, 1922, Benito Mussolini called at a rally of 60,000 fascist militants in Naples to march on Rome.

“Our program is simple: we want to rule Italy,” the soon-to-be fascist leader told the crowd.

Four days late, about 30,000 Black Shirts marched on Rome. Mussolini did not march with them, but made sure he got photographed with the marchers before they headed to the Capitol, where they planned to take power through an armed insurrection.

However, Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing a civil war, capitulated to the marchers and handed power to Mussolini to avoid violence.

Mussolini and his Black Shirt marchers.

One year later, inspired by Mussolini’s march, Adolf Hitler and the nascent Nazi Party staged a coup attempt in Munich against Germany’s government, the Weimar Republic.

Unlike Mussolini, though, Hitler joined the 2,000 marchers in their infamous “Beer Hall Putsch,” which the police stopped after killing 16 Nazi Party members. Hitler escaped, but was caught two later, charged with treason.

Widely publicized, the trial gave Hitler a platform in which to spout nationalist sentiments, but he was found guilty and sent to prison for five years. He served nine months, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf.

Hitler in "prison" with his fellow insurrectionists.

Credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz

Afterward, he returned to politics and within 10 years, thanks largely to a weak and ineffective Weimar government, Hitler was essentially handed the chancellorship after conservative leaders persuaded the ailing President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint him in 1933.

Once Mussolini and Hitler assumed power, fascism consumed every level of society and politics and the two leaders effectively extinguished any opposition to their rule through murder and terror.

An admirer of history’s authoritarian leaders, Trump may have considered these moments in history as he plotted his coup.

However, from what we watched in real time on Jan. 6 and what we’ve learned from the hearings – including Trump’s plotting with Congressman Scott Perry (R-Pa) to enter the House chamber (which could have been with armed insurrectionists) – his motive may have been darker.

The Sorrow

Among the endless news on the gun-front is that of a 10-year-old girl who shot and killed a woman because the woman was arguing with her mother. This occurred more than a week after the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, and two weeks after the massacre of 10 African American grocery shoppers in Buffalo, New York by a white supremacist armed with the gun owners’ weapon of choice, the AR-15.

More horrific statistics about our nation that decades ago chose unbridled access to guns over the safety of its children. No other nation on Earth allows gun violence to go so unchecked.

Whatever legislative solutions Congress passes and the President signs won’t stop the violence. The gun industry, its subsidiaries and their customers will make sure of it. No one is safe from gun violence anymore, which is what the gun industry wanted—because more people will buy guns in fear of their safety, a safety that is not secured by gun ownership. Guns haven’t saved anyone from gun violence and Uvalde is yet another example.

Rampant gun deaths in the United States, now the leading cause of death in school children, is the fruit of a decision long supported by gun owners. For decades now, I have written about the need for gun control, to limit weapons used to “assault” (a word gun owners get angry when used) and kill large numbers of people. Initially, I blamed the National Rifle Association; the Gun Owners of America; and lawmakers, governors, and presidents (some too afraid or too bought by these group) for the slowly escalating violence.

And gun violence has been slowly escalating as states and Congress passed more and more promiscuous gun laws – conceal carry, open carry, “permitless” carry, eliminating assault weapon bans – while gun manufacturers not only sold more guns, but more powerful weapons. It’s like a frog in a pot of cold water on a stovetop burner, ignoring the danger as the water gradually heats to boiling. The nation is awash in guns, all kinds of guns, corresponding exactly with the gun violence that, with 250 mass shootings in the last month, has the nation boiling in death.

Government officials at federal, state and local levels, the NRA, and the GOA are certainly to blame, but so are the law-abiding gun owners (NRA, GOA members and non-members alike), as well as the media treating each mass shooting as an individual event instead of what they collective are—a narrative of denial and madness; religious leaders who are more interested in condemning people for their sexuality rather than their support of weapons of mass murder; the education system’s failure to muster the will to demand gun control; gun retailers and their failure to take background checks seriously, and voters who quickly lose interest.

In fact, there’s a lot of blame to go around, so much blame that no one individual and no one group can or will assume responsibility for the carnage. Until we all accept responsibility, until we all acknowledge there is no exception, no middle road, no two sides to the argument, that roiling cauldron will get hotter; more and more bodies of children, the elderly, anyone, will float to the top.

We all are in the line of fir—including citizens packing a weapon to protect themselves and those toxic personalities who like to threaten that if anyone takes their gun it will be from their “cold dead hands.” The years have seen a lot of cold dead hands. Their statistic is just as grim and is another contradiction to the “good guy with a gun” lie, particularly since there are many cases of “good guys” killing “good guys” with their legally acquired weapon. Or “good guys” killing or threatening their partner in domestic violence.

Like a deadly virus, no one knows what goes on in the minds and lives of all these “good guys.” They could perhaps angrily overreact (and who doesn’t do that?) and use their weapon in a burst of anger, something they may not normally do. They could experience a life event that stressed them to a breaking point and they begin firing. In fact, that’s exactly what some of the statistics show. Unfortunately, “good guys” with guns are just not, well, perfect, and ensuring a society safe from gun violence requires near perfection.

Guns are a disease in this country, the vaccine is gun control that would reduce the nearly 400 million guns infecting our society with violence and death. Gun control also needs to start the long-overdue process of changing mindsets through an honest reckoning with ourselves.

We have allowed 50 years of sloganeering about guns and distortions about the actual intent and purpose of the Second Amendment, which has poisoned thinking to a level where the nation’s view of life is callous and inhumane. Gun violence is a daily occurrence. We just shrug.

That is the sorrow of our age.

Legalized Slaughter

Until the moment the shooters, armed for mass killing, entered the schools at Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Robb Elementary in Uvalde, they had broken no laws.

For the last three decades, Republican-led legislatures and governors along with Republican-led Congresses and Presidents have passed and signed the most non-restrictive gun laws or blocked federal research into gun violence.

The result: gun-violence today is the leading cause of death in children; mass shooting deaths occur weekly, sometimes daily, and gun deaths, intentional or accidental are daily on average.

The National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America along with Republican and Democratic legislators at the state and federal levels have ensured the country is awash in guns, high-capacity weaponry built and designed to slaughter schools, classrooms, churches, grocery stores, parks, etc. Pick any place and it is a designated kill zone.

While the aforementioned are responsible for this carnage, there is another group that has so far escaped any scrutiny: the average gun owner.

And not just the gun owner who equates their manhood (or womanhood) with toting open and concealed handguns, hunting rifles and assault-style weapons such as the AR-15 that don’t care how many children are slaughtered by guns because they are confident in their ignorance about the Second amendment.

No, it is the gun owners who like to say they support common sense gun regulation, but never do anything about it other than to vote Republican (or Democrat, if the NRA approves).

We’ve seen mothers march and students march in support of reducing gun violence through such measures as eliminating high-capacity magazines and automatic and semi-automatic weapons; we’ve seen them march for universal background checks.

We’ve never seen gun owners for common-sense gun regulation march or give up their AR-15s, even though countless children and adults have given up their lives as bullets rip their flesh apart.

At this point, after the latest massacre of 19 children and two teachers by an 18-year-old with an AR-15, we can only believe that talk cheap for gun owners and so is life. Year after year, polls show an overwhelming majority of voters wants these and other gun reforms, yet nothing ever happens.

After all these years, and all these senseless gun deaths, gun owners have been getting away with murder by not accepting responsibility for their indirect, but supportive role in gun violence. Legislatures and Congresses have gone out of their way to protect them with one law after another that ensures they have amble weapons and ammunition with little fear of restrictions or law enforcement interference.

Not just politicians, judges and juries, too. Just one of the more recent examples is then 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse who intentionally shot three men, murdering two, but who a Wisconsin jury with the judge’s blessing, acquitted of all charges, despite overwhelming evidence.

For years, the NRA’s popular refrain against gun regulations was “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” but now neither guns nor people kill because the laws of the land says so. America has legalized gun slaughter because gun owners love their guns more than their children.

Fear and Self-Loathing

Until America reckons with slavery white supremacists will continue killing people of color and conservative Republicans will continue adopting laws and policies that block the actual history of this country.

As a middle-aged white male afforded opportunity and privilege in a white dominated society, I believe that reckoning is coming, and I believe that all white people know it, too. While some of us, or, as I like to believe, many of us, welcome that moment, other whites fear it.

It is a fear passed on since the end of the war that broke one chain of that abominable institution, a fear that has promulgated the other chains of slavery: Jim Crow, systemic racism, white supremacy and the violent ignorance it breeds.

It is a fear both political parties have exploited to gain power, to divide their opponents and thus the state, and to inflict harm on non-whites. For Democrats, it was in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly those in the South who eventually became Dixiecrats when their party embraced Civil Rights. When voting rights legislation passed in the 1960s, they joined Republican conservatives.

The fear is familiar to everyone—an emotion that swirls deep, a nudging uncomfortable truth that we choose not to address to avoid the great responsibility of knowing, understanding, and acknowledging. It’s like looking in the mirror and realizing you’ve grown older, but not wiser; it’s the first-time hearing your recorded voice and realizing you don’t sound like you think you do.

Whites need to accept that racism exists like a virulent strain in this country, that it did not end with the election of President Barack Obama to the White House. In fact, Obama’s election stoked white fears about losing privilege (in the coming plurality I hope it’s shared among all races and tribes) and having to answer for America’s slave-holding past with reparations.

Indeed, on the eve of Obama’s election in 2008, a Republican conservative white woman of European background with whom I worked was in an absolute panic about soon having to pay reparations even though her family did not come to this country until the early 20th century.

Only someone privileged because she is a member of a racial majority would worry about that.

I’m sure that some whites worry about these things, which is why a concept called critical race theory, about this nation’s systemic racism discussed in some universities, was recently banned in the public schools of some GOP-controlled Southern states, even though it was never taught.

Curiously, those same states have not rushed to ban the teaching of the great replacement theory, a racist conspiracy Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and Republicans espouse.

What these whites fear most about a reckoning is the truth about how this nation was built—with the sweat, toil, ideas and visions of enslaved Black people; with the exploitation of other minorities of color. Their contributions were (and are) significant in making this country great.

The truth they fear is that whites today are the beneficiaries of slavery. They enjoy this benefit by largely by not accepting the truth that this country was born of slave-holding, which became an institution enshrined by the white men who founded it.

If the nation had reckoned with slavery in 1865, by building on the Emancipation Proclamation and re-building the South with equality for all, we might not feel the need to own guns today and thus not have mass shootings and mass deaths. Instead, our politics allowed hate to fester.

Within the core of the conservative movement there is self-loathing expressed through myraid policies and laws that are intended to harm Americans, from allowing more than 400 million weapons into the streets to voter suppression to banning abortion. Democracies are not about codifying grievances.

None of these laws help people or address an individual’s dignity or human rights. Despite that many of them were slave holders, the Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution to address human dignity, not provide a how-to-guide for living in a democracy; they left that up to future generations to determine.

Slavery is the greatest indignity that one human can do to another; forcing women to have children is another indignity. Both are violence against individuals.

Until the reckoning, we will suffer death and indignity.

World at War

One week into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launching the largest military conflict in Europe since 1945, the world is again at war; and it appears the man who decided to wage aggression against his neighbor was not prepared for the response.

Yet, that is how conflicts of the 20th and 21st century typically begin, from World War I to World War II to the America-led invasion of Iraq to Vladimir Putin’s invasion today—never well thought out by the people eager to war, they dismiss evidence disputing their reasoning.

Consider Adolf Hitler’s grievances for invading his neighbors, his claim of protecting German minorities in Czechoslovakia and staging an “attack” by Polish soldiers; Lyndon Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin incident to fight North Vietnam; elusive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and Putin’s bogus claim, among many, of de-Nazifying Ukraine whose president is Jewish.

None of those reasons are true or accurate, but it led, as it’s leading Putin today, into devastating wars that produced more harm than good, particularly for the aggressors. History has shown that no one escape war unscathed; whether its lives, property or psyche, the damage is lasting.

Word to the Wise

In November 1800, on his second day in an Executive Mansion still under construction, President John Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, that included these words – "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof."

In 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt had those words inscribed in the fireplace mantle in the State Dining Room, where they remain today.

Since George Washington, the men who have run this country have neither been always wise nor always honest, but they have been human, with behaviors good, bad, indifferent and, in some cases, pathological.

Despite achieving through their ambition, drive and hard work the high office, what sets a President apart from everyone else is the house they inhabit and the power the voters give them for a brief period of time to administer a nation that remains a work in progress.

Government is not always answerable to the people (look at the latest failure for voting rights), but this is what Americans cherish about democracy—casting a vote for their candidate, from local tax collector to President, which makes them a part of the government that serves them.

Deep within the American spirit is the firm belief that presidents are determined neither by divine right nor wealth, but by every adult-age American registered to vote.

Voting today is under threat by anti-democratic forces unleashed by former Republican President Donald Trump and his failed attempt to thwart the Constitution to keep his grip on power. No longer in power, Trump now encourages lawmakers in state houses his party controls to draft and pass laws to suppress, if not altogether deny, Americans their right.

No President in the history of the Republic attempted such autocratic moves and for such a petty narcissistic reason—he was embarrassed to look like a loser. That’s an autocratic trait that becomes increasingly dangerous when those around the autocrat feed his narcissism.

Trump turned to loyalists among his staff, Congress, state houses, former and active military, the judiciary, law firms and the GOP in his effort to steal the 2020 election. They spread disproven claims of voter fraud, swamped the courts with one baseless lawsuit after another, and organized a coup attempt that left five dead.

In contrast, Trump’s predecessors, whether they won or lost, relied on their abiding faith in the will of the voters, the Constitution and the rule of law. They also accepted their loss.

In light of the hundreds of investigations and arrests by the Justice Department related to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, and the hundreds of witnesses interviewed by the House’s January 6th Committee, can we ever again expect, as Adams prayed, “honest and wise Men [and women]” to occupy the White House?

That’s relative, of course, but what about future Oval Office occupants?

Trump’s strongman approach has inspired like-minded candidates for local, state and federal office. Since his 2016 election, Republican voters seem to show preference for autocratic leaders who rule rather than democratic leaders who govern. They should be careful what they wish for.

Preference for autocratic rule has simmered in the GOP for decades. Conservative congressional members, governors and state and local elected officials started to show disdain for democracy when they refused to accept the legitimate election of the first African American as president, Barack Obama. Instead, they entertained conspiracy theories about his birthplace.

It was not just his skin color that riled them, but Obama’s election represented the progressive sentiment they don’t want to admit runs deep among voters.

Since the 1990s, GOP conservatives have struggled to reshape a nation that was forged through depression and war on Rooseveltian principles (that’s FDR and Teddy) that government would help ensure fairness and equality for all. New Deal programs like Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act (provided the minimum wage, banned child labor, etc.) ingrained that philosophy in federal policy and the American mindset.

Unable to get a majority of American voters to agree to dismantling such programs, to returning to an era when business dictated to government what kind of government voters would get, the GOP turned to building a conservative-dominant Supreme Court that could help achieve what the party long sought, to drown government “in the bathtub.”

In this effort, Republican leader and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell ruptured Senate rules and decorum to block Obama from appointing a justice, leaving a vacancy for the next President, which McConnell hoped would not be a Democrat. Seeing the chance to perhaps secure even more justices, he and the GOP went for Trump, despite their grave doubts about the man.

As President, Trump was able to appoint three conservative justices for a 6-3 majority that has demonstrated a dislike for Rooseveltian principles. It recently overruled mandating vaccines in the workplace, which means those who take measures to protect themselves and others around them are subject to the unvaccinated worker who can freely infect fellow workers, even some who may be immuno-compromised, and face no consequences.

Now, following Trump’s presidency and its one-year aftermath, the prominently white GOP is essentially an autocratic movement. A majority of Republican voters, contrary to all evidence, believe Trump’s lie that Joe Biden stole the election. In some of the state’s the party controls, Republicans enacted laws that allow one person or a small group of persons to decide the winners of elections no matter the will of the people or the principles of the Constitution. GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to create an election police force answerable to him.

As history shows, autocracies never serve the people and certainly never end well. Autocratic leaders are consumed with serving themselves, regardless of the damage to their nation. Just look at what Vladimir Putin has done to Russia and some of his neighbors like Ukraine. Look at what two of the world’s most notorious autocrats – Hitler and Mussolini – did to Germany and Italy. Look what Saddam Hussein did to Iraq.

The Founding Fathers chose democracy because – contrary to Trump’s “I alone can fix it” claim – one person cannot effectively lead a nation without advice, consent and compromise with voters and their chosen representatives. The three-branch system – executive, legislative and judicial – ensures checks and balances. There is neither checks nor balances in an autocracy.

A word to the pro-autocratic forces moving to re-make America, keep in mind that no autocratic ruler has proven honest or wise, just harmful and destructive.

Last Gasps of the ‘White’ Man

He has a complicated history when it comes to slavery – married into a slave-owning family and eventually purchasing a human himself. However, Ulysses S. Grant’s words on the issue resonate today as America reckons with its systemic racism.

Commanding general of the Union Army during the Civil War and afterward President of the United States, the unassuming Grant is an enigmatic figure, largely misunderstood; remembered mostly for being a drunken general and a hapless president with a corrupt administration. He was not perfect in either role, but, to the contrary, neither was he inept or corrupt. 

 

As general, he understood his Confederate opponents, their strengths and weaknesses, and confounded them with risk-taking strategies that often won the battle. He refused the surrender of Confederate officers unless they released their slaves. As president, he advocated for the 15^th Amendment that gave African Americans the right to vote, created the U.S. Department of Justice, which fought the Ku Klux Klan, and the agency that is today’s National Weather Service.    

In September of 1875, President Grant appeared in Iowa for a gathering of about 200 members of the Army of the Tennessee, the former band of Union soldiers named for the Tennessee River who fought under Major-General Grant during the Civil War.

 

Grant said to the veterans, “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” 

 

The very contest that he predicted began almost immediately after the Confederacy’s surrender in 1865 with cries of “the South will rise again” and rise of the Klan. Fear, ignorance and ambition has bedeviled society and politics since; duly elected officials of all stripes and station have sought to deny African Americas the rights afforded to all Americans under the Constitution.

 

Since the war ended 157 years ago, some “historians” have framed the Confederate’s lost cause as a “states’ rights” issue rather than a slavery issue. The Constitution grants states the power to govern at the local level; not create a confederacy and wage war. According to legal historian Paul Finkelman, Southern states seceded because free states exercised “their states’ rights in opposing slavery.”

 

In its purity and essence, the Confederacy was about slavery, the economic system that provided cheap labor to enrich already wealthy landowners. The men who led the sedition, and the generals who fought for the cause under the Confederacy’s Stars and Bars flag, were traitors to the nation they once swore oaths to defend—against enemies, foreign and domestic. 

 

General Grant at Cold Harbor, Virginia, in 1864.

As an Ohioan from an abolitionist home, Grant understood that President Lincoln’s reason for war was foremost to keep the nation, North and South, whole; Lincoln knew the union of the state could not survive with slavery. 

 

Grant himself was ambivalent about slavery, he stood neither for nor against it. Much to Grant’s abolitionist parents’ dismay, his wife’s family believed, righteously, in owning humans. Some of those slaves helped build their home, during which Grant worked alongside them, treating them as his equal, which his in-laws and neighbors sorely disapproved. A year before the Civil War, Grant’s father-in-law sold him one slave, 35-year-old William Jones, who Grant freed before the outbreak of hostilities. 

 

In 1862, the war’s second year, Lincoln issued a presidential decree, which changed the legal status of slaves to free. Many of them fled north to enlist in the Union Army because of the Emancipation Proclamation’s promise. The decree hardened the Confederate’s resolve to fight for an institution that never benefitted the average Southerner. 

 

In his memoir, penned shortly before his death in 1885, Grant wrote, “The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country. Their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.” 

Confederate dead on the battlefield at Antietam

In September of 1875, President Grant appeared in Iowa for a gathering of about 200 members of the Army of the Tennessee, the former band of Union soldiers named for the Tennessee River who fought under Major-General Grant during the Civil War.

 

Grant said to the veterans, “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” 

 

The very contest that he predicted began almost immediately after the Confederacy’s surrender in 1865 with cries of “the South will rise again” and rise of the Klan. Fear, ignorance and ambition has bedeviled society and politics since; duly elected officials of all stripes and station have sought to deny African Americas the rights afforded to all Americans under the Constitution.

 

Since the war ended 157 years ago, some “historians” have framed the Confederate’s lost cause as a “states’ rights” issue rather than a slavery issue. The Constitution grants states the power to govern at the local level; not create a confederacy and wage war. According to legal historian Paul Finkelman, Southern states seceded because free states exercised “their states’ rights in opposing slavery.”

 

In its purity and essence, the Confederacy was about slavery, the economic system that provided cheap labor to enrich already wealthy landowners. The men who led the sedition, and the generals who fought for the cause under the Confederacy’s Stars and Bars flag, were traitors to the nation they once swore oaths to defend—against enemies, foreign and domestic. 

 

As an Ohioan from an abolitionist home, Grant understood that President Lincoln’s reason for war was foremost to keep the nation, North and South, whole; Lincoln knew the union of the state could not survive with slavery. 

 

Grant himself was ambivalent about slavery, he stood neither for nor against it. Much to Grant’s abolitionist parents’ dismay, his wife’s family believed, righteously, in owning humans. Some of those slaves helped build their home, during which Grant worked alongside them, treating them as his equal, which his in-laws and neighbors sorely disapproved. A year before the Civil War, Grant’s father-in-law sold him one slave, 35-year-old William Jones, who Grant freed before the outbreak of hostilities. 

 

In 1862, the war’s second year, Lincoln issued a presidential decree, which changed the legal status of slaves to free. Many of them fled north to enlist in the Union Army because of the Emancipation Proclamation’s promise. The decree hardened the Confederate’s resolve to fight for an institution that never benefitted the average Southerner. 

 

In his memoir, penned shortly before his death in 1885, Grant wrote, “The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country. Their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.” 

Interestingly, the socio-economic status of the Southerners that Grant described sounds similar to many of former President Donald Trump’s core white supporters. On election night 2016, the Republican declared, “We won the evangelicals, we won with young, we won with old, we won with highly educated, we won with poorly educated! I love the poorly educated.”

 

Trump exploits the ignorance and fears his poorly educated supporters have of the 21^st century’s whirlwind of social, economic and technologic change that have left them, particularly those who are white, no longer feeling that sense on invulnerability they once could rely on, even if it was always an illusion. Their ignorance leads them to believe in non-existent racial superiorities and unfathomable, but dangerous, conspiracy theories. Remember Pizzagate?

 

Trump’s narrow election win that year was not by popular ballot, where Democrat Hilary Clinton won with 2.8 million more votes, but by the Electoral College, where about 78,000 voters in three white counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin handed it to him, according to data scientist Hamdan Azhar and the Cook Political Report. The Electoral College, by the way, was formed in part so slave-holding states could have equal representation because roughly 40 percent of the South’s population was comprised of slaves who, of course, could not vote. 

 

Trump’s four years as president sharpened racial tensions stoked by his social media rants on Twitter and rally speeches: increased killings by police of innocent African Americans and Hispanics, voter suppression in Republican strongholds, a ban on Muslims who seek to enter the country, separating Central and South American immigrant children from their parents, gassing peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors, a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. during which a white supremacists killed a white woman activist, and on. 

Trump’s divisiveness emboldened some of his gun-toting racist, anti-Semitic supporters to attack non-whites and non-Christian whites. As they did in 2016, the Klan again endorsed him in 2020.

 

Trump’s election in 2016, the subsequent increase in white supremacist organizations and activities, and the insurrection by his (predominantly) white supporters on Jan. 6, 2021 that followed his defeat for a second term in both the popular and Electoral College vote—all dying gasps from a white cohort that believes whites should always dominate American society.

 

This misguided belief that the United States is reserved for white European descendants to rule socially and politically was diminished by Democrat Joe Biden’s defeat of Trump, 51.3% to 46.9%, in 2020. 

 

Nonetheless, it remains a dangerous belief in the minds of a minority of white voters. Since the 2020 election, just nine months ago, predominantly white conservative Republicans in GOP-controlled states such as Georgia, which Biden won narrowly and where Democrats took two U.S. Senate seats (one of them Georgia’s first African American senator), are gulping for air as they take extraordinary steps to pass one bill after another to suppress minority voters. 

 

Like elections, legislation has consequences. Enacting restrictive-voting laws is one thing, but put into practice, these laws could have an unintended consequence such as suppressing the vote for everyone, not just minority voters. Nevertheless, voting reform legislation now under debate in Congress should nullify some of the worst impulses of these state laws to ensure voting his accessible and fair for everyone. 

 

White supremacy was never a general view of the Founding Fathers, although 17 of them owned slaves as did the nation’s first 12 presidents. However, they affirmed unequivocally that “all [people] men are created equal.” Despite this aspiration, racism has eaten away at the American soul for well over 200 years.

Black Lives Matter protestors in Ohio in 2020.

A rude awakening awaits—within 10 years, demographic changes in the nation will cause about a 4% decline in the white majority (this does not include Hispanic or Latino), from about 59.7% to 55.8%. By 2045, the white population is expected to become a minority.

 

The cry of “The South will rise again!” seemed possible not too long ago: Confederate flags flew from the capitol buildings of Southern states, U.S. military bases were named after Confederate generals, and across the South (not to mention parts of the north and west) stone and bronze edifices had been erected to honor slave owners, politicians and generals of the Confederacy. 

 

Despite Trump’s attempts to stop this movement last year, flags and monuments came down; Mississippi’s governor signed legislation to take down their Stars and Bars, and in Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy, protestors toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, while the city’s mayor ordered the removal of other Confederate statues.

 

The military promises to change military base names and the once dismissed Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality became a nationwide and international movement of people of all colors in 2020. In his post-presidency, as he toys with supporters about running for president again in 2024, Trump regretted not sending the military out to stop BLM from protesting, no doubt some red meat for his white supremacist supporters. 

 

That Trump decided not to issue the order is telling on two levels. First, the nation’s military leaders, in particular Gen. Mark Milley, told Trump BLM protests against racism were just that, protests, not an insurrection. That made him aware that “his generals” would not follow his order. Second, Americans of all color are standing up to what Time Magazine called the “Overdue Awakening” to systemic racism. 

 

Grant, despite having crushed the slave-holders’ rebellion, is nonetheless called out not only for owning a slave, but for his treatment of Jews during the Civil War and for waging an illegal war against the Plains Indians as president. In San Francisco, protestors toppled his statue. Grant was humble and compassionate. I wonder whether he would have thought.

 

In his memoir, Grant recalled the 1865 meeting at Appomattox, Va. when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to him: “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” 

 

This present period in our history may well be the final battle of the Civil War, when a South reckons with its slave-holding history instead of wallowing in a mythical past, and we enter the final days of systemic racism in the United States.