Revenge Is Mine, Sayeth The Loud

 

When gun violence occurs, Democrats point to easy access to lethal weaponry, Republicans point to, well, anything else, and nothing changes. This time, though, following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Trump and his accentuators trod new ground, demanding wholesale retribution against “them.” They’ve always scapegoated everything wrong with everything, but this is different.

“It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization,” wrote Laura Loomer, Trump’s new-favorite autocracy specialist, before knowing anything about the assassin. Implicitly calling for eradication of liberalism, his other favorite, Stephen Miller, called it “... an ideology ... which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.” J.D. Vance has been conflagrating ever since it happened. Asked on Fox “news” about toning it down, Trump, who once mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi and who pardons violent felons, said, truthful for once, “I couldn’t care less.” The public, yes. But America’s government has never been so intentionally malignant.

“You own this,” raged Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) to Democrats, on the floor of Congress. (Who owns Minnesota’s Democratic state Representative Melissa Hortman’s and her husband’s assassination, Nancy?) Later, atop a pre-beaten horse, she fingered university brainwashing. The killer spent one online semester before enrolling in tech school.

One after another, rightwing media declared “war” on “the left.” Disregarding the deaths of JFK, MLK, RFK, innocent Black children and freedom workers during the Civil Rights struggles, Jews in synagogues, the Hortmans, Officer David Rose defending the CDC against a brainwashed anti-vaxxer, and innumerable more, Elon Musk explained, “Democrats are the party of death.” Trumpists say comparing people like Miller, Loomer, and Musk – and Trump! -- to fascists crosses a line. Where on which line does their rhetoric fall? Based on what information are they blaming “the left”?

In detestable contrast to presidents who rose to tragic occasions with words of comfort and calls for restraint, Trump lowered to this one, attacking “radical left lunatics,” adding “we have to beat the hell out of them,” explicitly sanctioning violence. From which his in-pocket DOJ, already promising retribution, would surely look away. 

After the murder, a Facebook “friend” messaged me: “... You unfortunately by your constant negativity encourages a breeding ground for this type of behavior... you are part of the problem with your constant negativity. hatred breeds hatred. Your posts are consumed by hate you view it as journalism but its not.” (sic, severally.)

I’m unworried that thoughtful readers of my column will be driven to violence. Given Trump’s provocations and threats from less thoughtful readers, I’m unsure about the other way around.

Perhaps we can agree:

One: Killing Charlie Kirk was horrible, despicable, and antithetical to democracy, even our dying one. It made me physically ill, as it should everyone, but didn’t. Anger, I understand and share. Gloating, I abhor.

Two: The perpetrator must be deeply disturbed, whatever his “ideology.” Friends had noticed his gradual social withdrawal, spending time in dark recesses of the internet. If, in his disordered mind, he thought he was helping the cause of anti-fascism, he accomplished the opposite. In any case, his actions seem to have been his alone. Don’t tell that to Trumpists, though. They want “they.”

Three: In no way justifying his murder, Kirk’s oeuvre was discord. If my rhetoric is “hateful” (it isn’t: it’s outrage), his belittled everyone not white, male, native-born, heterosexual, and Christian. He even advocated death for President Biden. I won’t list more here. You can look them up. Nevertheless, he ought still to be taking his combat evangelicalism to campuses, alive and well.

The response to 9/11 excepted, events like this have separated Ds and Rs for decades. Despicable comments pollute social media from the fringes of each; but, contrasted with Democratic leaders when Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated, Trump and many high-ranking Republicans are calling for extermination. It feels familiar.

Political violence should horrify everyone who believes in democracy. So should leaders suborning unbounded revenge, for the same reason. Trump glommed Charlie Kirk’s murder as an exploitable windfall, supercharging his anti-democracy aims, extant long before. He’s using it, enthusiastically, to justify more suppression of dissent, while MAGAs cheer him on. Opportunistic geopolitical foes are exploiting it, too, as always.

Well-meaning words to the contrary, violence is who we are. It birthed America and has shaped our history thenceforth, infecting, at one time or another, people of all political persuasions. But if the arc of violence is long, in the time of Trump it bends toward the right, by actual count. (Those data have suddenly disappeared from the DOJ website.) 

In response to an unspeakable atrocity, MAGA Republicans promise Trumped-up, scorched-earth retaliation upon half the country, with brutal totalitarianism the intended result. Coming from our government, it’s without precedent in the US. But it’s exactly how Trump is perverting Charlie Kirk’s death, with malice aforethought, seeking absolute authority.

As Charlie always said, “Prove me wrong.”

Weaponized Fluffery

 

The murder of Charlie Kirk makes me feel ill. So does Elon Musk’s response to it. Beyond that, nothing useful can be said, so we move on. 

Trump’s recent made-for-MAGA “Cabinet Meeting” was nothing about policy and everything about serial assculation, a showcase of Trump’s bottomless need for fawning sycophancy. If MAGAs don’t see it for what it is, namely a gaping vulnerability in an American “president,” other world leaders do.

Like many clear-eyed observers of Trump’s obsequious deference to Vladimir Putin, I once assumed there must be blackmail behind it. The rumored “pee tape,” for example, or recordings of likely “ungentlemanly” behavior while he was in Russia, tending to his Miss America ladies. There were hidden recording devices in my room in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow while on tour in college, so I’m certain there are recordings of Trump when he was there, too, whatever the content. I was talking with a young artist, wrongly unworried about speaking in my room, who spoke longingly of America, where artists are free to create. Immediately after accompanying us to the train station, he was arrested.

The recent showcase in Beijing, featuring Putin, Modi, Kim, and representatives of many other countries, including some of our pre-Trump allies, all aligning with China’s Xi, made me realize Putin didn’t need blackmail to get what he wanted from Trump. For Putin, a former KGB operative trained to take the measure of people, sizing up Trump was easy as pierogi. He saw a man so in need of flattery, so prone to bragging undeservedly and lying unreservedly, that manipulating him must have been lesson one of KGB Spying 101. So, seizing the opportunity fate handed him, using fake media and other methods, he helped to get him elected.

Unlike Trump, whose thought timeline measures in seconds and who suffers from premature emanation, our adversaries think long-term. Grooming Trump, for example, for years. It’s taken decades for China to achieve world economic and scientific dominance. By happy coincidence, Trump’s self-pleasuring tariffs sealed it, convincing the world to abandon America for more reliable trading partners.

There’s no strategy to Trump’s spur-of-the-mouth declarations. His destructive tariffs were meant to bully other countries into respecting him, consequences to our country be damned. The result, predicted by politicians and economists of both parties, is that our economy is shrinking like his approval ratings while prices rise like global temperatures. The latest jobs report showed net job loss in every sector except healthcare. Because he has the same understanding of economics that he has of Constitutional law, he promised supercharged job growth at home, spurred b y his ill-conceived, ego-driven tariffs. Instead, manufacturing jobs have declined for six straight months. We should be grateful for growth in healthcare jobs, though. RFK Jr’s attacks on science-based medical institutions mean we’ll need every one of them.

If Putin didn’t foresee that Trump would weaken America by imposing tariffs (or maybe he did), he knew it’d happen some way. He probably saw that, in Trump’s need for adulation, he’d seek democracy-ending authoritarian power at home, no matter how destructive. We “Never Trumpers” saw it and predicted it. So must have Putin. It wasn’t subtle.

The content of Trump’s private meetings with him remains unknown. But it’s a solid bet that bolshoi stroking of Donald’s ego was included, flattering him into wanting more. And he knew how to get it: by doing whatever was asked of him. The firing, by unqualified DNI Tulsi Gabbard, of 37 CIA Russia experts immediately after the Trump/Putin/Alaska fiasco didn’t go unnoticed by Putin’s state media, who gloated that Trump and Gabbard did exactly what Putin wanted. More recently, Trump announced his intent to end financial support for Europe’s security initiatives, including border fortifications intended to discourage Russian invasion from the East.

The pattern is clear. In the Kremlin, they must be doing high pyahts. Unlike so many other players, Putin didn’t need to buy Trump’s bitcoins or stay in his hotels. Just well-placed but insincere, approbation turned the trick.

But, some might say, Trump seems finally to be getting tougher on Putin. Doesn’t matter. Thanks to Trump, Vlad has what he wants from the countries he needs.

Putin’s kind of weaponized flattery trickles down. Trump uses it on his besotted followers. Certain of their credulity, he’s posting signs at infrastructure projects under construction because of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, against which Trump bleated vociferously. “President Donald J. Trump,” the signs lie, shamelessly, “Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure.” It’s disgusting.

MAGAs, whose news sources are Trump and his fawning media, will accept it as God’s truth. As they will his “hearing it now for the first time” lie regarding that botched Seal Team Six operation in North Korea. Right. Incursions into enemy countries are always undertaken without sign-off by the president. MAGAs will believe that, too, just like they’ll believe that raiding a Hyundai plant in Tennessee is consistent with encouraging foreign investment.

It’s embarrassing. And frightening. The putative “Leader of the Free World” is an easily manipulatable liar. Our global foes exploit it. Millions of Americans continue to believe him, unwittingly validating the long game of those foes.

Brain Worms Everywhere

What’s a sociopathic narcissist to do? Poor Trump: In the before times, he rightfully bragged about getting the Covid vaccine up and running at “warp speed.” He hadn’t spent much time with beakers and Petrie dishes, and he benefited from the prior twenty years during which the groundwork for mRNA vaccine development reached its zenith right on time. Nevertheless, initial fatuity aside (disbanding President Obama’s pandemic preparedness team, it’ll be over in weeks, bleach, light, etc.), he deserves credit for that.

So, what to do when the craziest of his crazy patronage hires claims those vaccines were ineffective, deadly, and should be banned, replaces vaccine experts with quacks, and defunds further research? Does he defend RFK, Jr.? Does he fire the guy he touted before, saying he’d let him “go wild” at HHS? It’s a horned dilemma. He’d rather be grifting.

Junior Bobby Kennedy is nuts. Has been for a long time, well before Trump put him in position to kill Americans; well before every Republican senator except one, including four medical doctors, voted to confirm him. The exception? Mitch McConnell, the hypocrite’s hypocrite most responsible for keeping Trump in office.

Bobby Junior Kennedy claims he can tell which children are “overburdened with mitochondrial challenges” (not a thing) just by looking at them. He quotes medical research reports that don’t exist, and misquotes and misunderstands those that do. He couldn’t tell properly-run science research from the roadkill in the trunk of his car. There’s a worm in his brain that died after eating part of it, possibly killed by the heroin that once poisoned his bloodstream.

Bobby spreads misinformation like a farmer spreads manure, but, unlike farmers’, his manure ends, rather than stimulates life. Bobby-J is nuts. Truly, deeply, dangerously nuts. Nevertheless, Trump, who hugs the flag, hugged him, too, putting him in charge of America’s health. Republican senators who knew better confirmed him. For a country purporting to be great again, it’s shameful.

Pathological liars know they’re lying. “I’m president,” Trump recently said. “I can do whatever I want.” It’s not supposed to be that way. The Framers believed they’d prevented it by creating “checks and balances.” But they couldn’t imagine sociopathic narcissists being unchecked by the unbalanced.

Contrarily, because he’s nuts and can’t tell the difference, Junior believes what he says, thinks he’s saving lives rather than endangering them. If Trump cared about anyone but himself, he’d have fired him by now. If there were even a dozen Republicans in Congress who weren’t self-serving cowards, they’d have joined Democrats to impeach Junior K the minute he started firing all the competent people at NIH and CDC, replacing them with conspiratorial know-nothings.

Unless every red state and every district within those states has managed to elect only stupid people, which seems unlikely even given the political insanity running amok in those states, there must be at least a handful who do recognize the danger RFK presents. Not to mention people like Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth in the White House’s orbit. And Steven Miller, who calls RFKJ the administration’s “crown jewel.” Removing those other threats to bodies politic would require a level of integrity lacking even in the theoretical few.

Elected Republicans won’t act. There can be no clearer proof of the descent of a once-respectable political party than the spectacle of K-J doing incalculable damage to the health of Americans while that party’s Congresspeople, elected to further the interests of their constituents, sit silent and afraid.

The same applies to standing up to Trump as he systematically overruns the constitutionally-mandated guardrails meant to keep an incurious authoritarian from unbridled power. And if the existence of Bobby K in government is proof of the fall of the Republican Party, the reelection of Felonious Trump is confirmation beyond doubt.

The downward economic impacts of his immigration policies are just beginning to be felt. Pocketbooks aren’t yet as thin as they’ll be due to his tariffs. Worse still is the end of America’s ability to influence world affairs, to remain a respected leader in science and technology. And benevolence. Instead, Trump is sidelining our country, making it dependent on others, disrespected and dismissed. The implications are grave.

Witness the gathering in China of leaders of our economic and political adversaries: Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi, and India’s Modi, forming an anti-US trading alliance. NoKoKim showed up, too, bearing his own toilet. India’s and China’s technological and scientific advancements are surpassing ours. Trump’s policies couldn’t be more favorable to them. It’s almost as if handing them the world was his intention all along.

As he inflicts his bizarre, reality-rejecting vendetta on renewable energy, those countries are racing ahead with better harnessers of sun and wind, developing battery technology that will end concerns about dark nights and windless days, while making electric cars cheaper, faster charging, and with more range than a full tank of gas.

Maybe, if our next president ends Trump’s “see-me-flex,” economy-killing tariffs, they’ll even let us buy some.

Devolution

Serving in Vietnam, I shrank my world to about eight feet in diameter. Other than doctoring, I was concerned mostly about what might happen within or near that circle. Rockets landing, for example. One did. Getting shot at. That, too.

My wife sent me a book that brought my thoughts beyond myself again, Carl Sagan’s “Intelligent Life in the Universe.” Given the overtaking of our country by people wrapped in the Flag (don’t burn it) and carrying a Cross (wear it prominently), it’s relevant today.

Boiled down, Sagan’s message was that no matter how improbable the existence of life is, how unlikely for it to have arisen spontaneously, it was a statistical certainty. One in a million? A billion? How about one in a trillion? Or a trillion-trillion? That’s approximately how many stars and planets there are in the Universe, all made of the same atoms and molecules, bumping into each other. Forming compounds. Random, Brownian. It’s chemistry. In this universe, anyway.

How many bumps to form self-replicating molecules? Who knows? But there’s worlds enough and time. Of the trillions of places where it didn’t, the one (or more) where it did would seem, to sentient life-forms that appeared, miraculous. Special. The chosen ones. Impossible to have happened without intent, the odds too long. Like one in a trillion-trillion. Viewing from beyond the Milky Way, happening on a tiny grain of sand in an unbounded desert containing uncountable grains whose chemistry, though similar, happened not to generate life, as opposed to the view from the grain itself, it’s no miracle at all. Just one of the monkeys with a typewriter.

Though we can’t grok it, something very complicated exists without creation. Either it’s the universe or a creator. The late Pope Francis, a scientist, was able to accept the obviousness of evolution without finding it antithetical to his religious beliefs. It is, after all, undeniable. We see it and have confirmed it on a macro level; microscopic, too; in DNA, and more. To deny evolution would be as mind-blind as, oh, denying anthropogenic climate change or the results of fair elections.

We humans can barely analogize that much time, such large numbers, much less internalize them. It’s hard to imagine Earth 500,000 years ago, let alone several billion. But we see evolution happening in real time, before our eyes, the evolution of which has been explained quite nicely too. Still, it’s all but impossible to conceive of what could happen over hundreds of millions of years.

In the process of replication, DNA is prone to copying errors: mutations. Some amount to nothing. Some are dilatory, some fatal. Some, though, cause useful, incremental changes in its product. That’s what “natural selection” is all about. Organisms that have mutated a change, however tiny, that enhances survival, even only a bit, have an advantage, however small, over those that didn’t. And so it goes, time over time: existence favors the better versions. Sahelanthropus tchadensis over Ardipithecus ramibus. Australopithecus giving way to Homo sapiens, to leap over a million intervening years.

For a while, in medical school, I came to question all of this. How could something as complicated as the nephron, for example, the microscopic essence of the kidney, simply have evolved? What cascade of steps would it have taken? It’s so elegant, so intricately complex, so perfectly structured to do its many jobs. And then I thought, well, yes, but it’s also hard to imagine the cumulative effects of little mutations occurring over billions of years. Earth, it’s calculated, formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and life, as defined by organisms having the ability to replicate themselves, began about a billion years later, 3.5 billion years past. Fathom that! For reference, I’ve gone from a single, fertilized cell to 6’ 4” and, now, back to 6’2” in only eighty years.

I don’t know if there’s a capital-C Creator or not, but I have doubts. And because, in addition to those perfect little nephrons, we also have renal cell carcinoma and glomerulonephritis, childhood bone cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, if there is, he/she/it must either be more careless or less pleasant than is commonly believed.

I can, however, imagine our universe being a terrarium in some cosmic space-kid’s science experiment. The terrarium I made got overgrown with mold within days.

So, what’s my point? Only that there’s logic and science behind religious skepticism. And that, among the thousand or so Earthly religions, there’s no reason to consider one more veracious than another; nor, among those that have them, their Good Books, each claiming singular, divine origin. Which means no religion, especially the unchristian perversion flaunted so publicly by Holy Mike Johnson and White House denizens, belongs anywhere near our government. And that, among believers, humility is warranted.

Many of my friends and family are religious: Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist (I think). None approves the Trump-loving, power-craving, cruel strain infecting today’s Republican Party.

Of course not: They’re my friends and family.

Summit Tells Me...

 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: An adjudicated rapist/multiply-convicted felon and a war criminal under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court walk onto a red carpet in Alaska...

Dang. I can’t remember the punchline but I don’t think I was laughing.

In his base camp with war criminal, free-world pariah Vladimir Putin, Donald “Day one war-ender” Trump humiliated himself and our country. Having forced US troops literally to kneel and roll out the red carpet for Putin, welcoming him like storied royalty rather than the murderer he is -- “his excellency Vladimir Putin,” as designated in left-behind plans for a luncheon that never happened, post-thud – Trump showered gifts and all but begged the KGB-trained liar for praise. Which he got, probably scripted in Moscow.

Like all world leaders, Putin knows he can hustle Trump by feeding his unquenchable need for adulation. Played him like a three-ruble balalaika. After predictably made-for-MAGA tough talk, Trump predictably caved. No ground given (literal or figurative) by Putin.

Sealing the no-deal, Russia’s dictator told America’s that if it weren’t for vote-by-mail he would have won in 2020, after which Trump announced he wants to ban it. And Putin “confirmed” Trump’s perseverating confabulation that if he, Trump, had been president at the time, he, Putin, wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. If Putin feared Trump then, why hasn’t he yielded to him now, when he is president? Does he, as rumored, have “something” on Trump? Totally believable.

If I’d become a nuclear physicist instead of a physician, I’d have solved cold fusion.

Ensorcelled by Putin’s weaponized fluffery, Trump surrendered his demand for a ceasefire and defended Putin’s claims to the Ukrainian territory he stole by kidnapping children and by bombing hospitals, shopping centers, and homes. In response, because, unlike Trump, they understand history and world affairs, European leaders reasserted their support of Ukraine. Humiliated, Trump slunk to Sean “Safe-haven” Hannity to serve up Putin’s talking points, assuring the Fox host and his credulous listeners that the meeting was a “10 out of 10.” The self-congratulatory gaslighting he produced online afterward was emetic. And Kim-ian.

As expected of anyone Trump hires, NATO ambassador Matthew Whitaker, integrity-free because if he had any he’d not have been appointed, suggested that Russia could keep the parts of Ukraine it “earned on the battlefield.” Earned! Then he puffed that “only Trump” could end the war, because he’s a “peacemaker.” He must have forgotten January 6.

Monday, Ukraine’s President Zelensky arrived at the White House, along with seven European leaders who, because they don’t trust Trump, rushed there to protect Ukraine’s interests. Meekled by men and women of resolve, he ended up pledging to support them. We’ll see. Tuesday, he backslid. Living eternally in opposite world, MAGAs thought the leaders’ presence signaled respect for Trump. Maybe because, knowing the drill, they performatively thanked him.

Trump’s failure to art a deal is so unambiguous that, for now, we’ll leave it there. Instead, here’s something that, because I’m a physician, troubles me greatly: Through RFK, Jr., his hand-picked, Republican-senator-approved science-illiterate crank, Trump is making it harder for doctors to do their jobs. 

Busy doctors don’t have time to read every new research paper. To stay current, they rely on reputable sources for their findings and their summaries of the work of others. On an online Q&A forum in which I participate, I’m often asked how to trust online medical information. Till now, along with places like Mayo and Fred Hutch, I’ve advised searching CDC and NIH websites, which many doctors also do.

Now, not only can laypeople no longer rely on them, neither can doctors. Bobby J stripped those institutions of their most important researchers and fired members of oversight and advisory committees, replacing them with science-deficient hacks who’ll fill third-rate journals with crap research showing predetermined results. Because of ArfKay’s brainwormed delusions, your docs will fly a bit blinder.

It’s worse. Trump is the first president actively trying to lose the war on cancer. Well, sure, he has more important issues than caring what Babbling Bobby does. Growing the billions he’s made from his bitcoin scam since Inauguration 2.0., for example. If he cared more about Americans he swore to protect than about personal enrichment, he’d have stopped Junior from drastically defunding cancer research. Also mRNA vaccine research, which has encouraging potential for treating many, if not all kinds of cancer. It’s idiotic and deadly and MAGAs voted for it twice. But they’re too busy loving ICE brutality to care.

I know people who voted for Trump to stop the “woke mind virus,” which threatens an epidemic of thoughtfulness. There’s another virus, though, whose deadliness isn’t imaginary, infecting the White House and Congress: Trumpism. In the next election, America needs decontamination by massive, enlightened voter turnout.

Which is why Republicans hate mail-in voting: it eliminates deliberately created long lines in minority districts and makes it easier for workers’ voices to be heard. Democrats, mostly.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Donnie Does D.C.

 

Trump’s latest “law and order” fantasy isn’t about law and it sure as hell isn’t about order. It’s about power. Naked, unaccountable, permanent power. And he’s aiming the first strike straight at Washington, D.C.

The plan is as blunt as it is dangerous: put federal troops in the streets of the capital, under his personal command, no local authority in the way. Use D.C.’s status—no governor, no state sovereignty—as the legal crowbar. Call it “restoring safety.” Wrap it in a flag and sell it to people who think authoritarianism is fine so long as the boots aren’t on their necks.

Then, once the shock wears off, do it again—Chicago. Philadelphia. Atlanta. Los Angeles. Anywhere a political opponent holds office or a crowd holds a sign becomes a “security threat.” Send in troops. Normalize it. Repeat until soldiers patrolling our cities feels routine.

He’s been rehearsing for years. Lafayette Square—troops and riot police gassing peaceful protesters so he could strut to a church and hold up a Bible—wasn’t an accident. It was a live-fire test. There was outrage, but no real consequence. The precedent stands.

The District is the perfect laboratory for an aspiring autocrat. No messy state constitution, no governor to push back, just a Congress that will tie itself in knots and a Supreme Court stacked with loyalists. Once troops are in, there’s no natural brake. And the moment military control of civilian streets is treated as “normal,” it becomes the default answer to dissent anywhere.

This isn’t about crime. Trump doesn’t care about crime unless he thinks it’s committed against him. This is about eliminating obstacles—political, legal, and literal. Federal troops don’t answer to city councils or police chiefs. They answer to him. If he controls the chain of command, he controls what gets shut down, who gets arrested, and which “orders” matter. And because they wear uniforms, he gets to sell it as patriotism.

The cheering section will love it. The shrugging middle will think, “Maybe it’s necessary. Maybe it’s temporary.” That’s the fatal mistake. No strongman in history has handed back power once he’s grabbed it. They keep it. They expand it. They justify it with every crisis they can gin up.

Picture the rollout: Troops in D.C. suppress a protest—doesn’t matter what it’s about. The media covers the crackdown; he calls them traitors and sends “security” to their offices. Legal challenges crawl through the courts while the precedent metastasizes. Next, a spike in crime—real or invented—in a city with a Democratic mayor becomes the excuse for “federal intervention.” Local cops are told to coordinate with the military, meaning obey them. From there it’s a straight line to troops “monitoring” polling stations, “securing” state legislatures, “protecting” his rallies. By then, the Constitution will be something read at ceremonies while the real operating manual is a stack of executive orders signed behind closed doors.

Once this gets baked into the system, it’s not just Trump we have to fear. Any future president—left, right, or lunatic—will have the same weapon. The Founders didn’t give the executive this kind of domestic military power for a reason. They knew what it would be used for. Trump’s betting most Americans have forgotten.

He’s not even subtle. He says “dominate the streets” and people clap. He says “take back our cities” and people nod. He’s counting on fear—of crime, of immigrants, of each other—to grease the skids. Fear makes people trade freedom for the illusion of safety every time. And once you’ve traded it, you don’t get it back without a fight.

D.C. is the first domino. It’s where he can make this legal, visible, and irreversible. If he pulls it off, he’ll have proven that Americans will tolerate soldiers policing their own citizens if you tell them it’s for their own good. That’s the green light to do it anywhere. Everywhere.

This is not a hypothetical. This is a man with a proven taste for using force against civilians, an open desire to silence opposition, and a legal loophole big enough to drive an armored convoy through. He is telling us what he wants. He is telling us how he’ll do it. And if we wait until the plan is “official” to object, we’ll be objecting to soldiers in our streets—not the idea of them.

Stopping it means naming it now, hammering it now, refusing to let anyone sell it as “temporary” or “necessary.” Because the moment it’s accepted in one city, the rest of the map is just a matter of time. The capital is the test. The country is the target. And the man aiming at it has never missed an opportunity to turn fear into power. If we let him fire this shot, we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to pry the gun out of his hands.

Note: this was written entirely by ChatGPT, using the prompt, “800 words about Trump military takeover of D.C. in the style of Sid Schwab.”

Blame Game

 

When Trump dies, his tombstone (gilded obelisk, more likely) will say, “I blame Obama.”

Never has a “president” so readily blamed others, much less admitted mistakes. He takes credit for anything positive, like good job numbers or stock market ups, and reprehends his predecessors (or Hillary Clinton) for bads and downs. Usually, he’s wrong both ways.

Democrats’ warnings were right: turning the DOJ into his personal lawfare apparatus; skyrocketing budget deficits; ignoring judges and the law; imposing inflationary, job-killing tariffs. Then, having made unkeepable economic promises (some might call them lies), when the check-ins came home to roost, he fired the messenger, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economist Erika McEntarfer, who’d been confirmed 86 – 8 by senators, including JD Vance, who recognized her integrity.

The BLS (not the Commissioner) gathers employment numbers and reports them. And, when they need revision, revises. It’s safe to assume Trump’s replacement will reinforce Trump’s “down is up, up is down,” making the BLS, like every department in Trump’s “government,” untrustworthy. Ratify his lies or be gone. Do it, be moved to a “Club Fed.” 

Trump’s bleats notwithstanding, employment data can’t be “rigged.” Preliminarily miscalculated, evidently. But, in the end, hiring is binary: yes or no. MAGAs will believe whatever Trump says, but even right-leaning economists approved of Ms. McEntarfer’s corrected data. Shall we trust numbers from one who says he weighs 225 pounds, stands 6’3”, and promises to lower drug prices by 1,500 percent? 

It’s what Trump and the dictators he emulates do: Remove people who say things they don’t like. Fire (in the case of Putin, defenestrate or poison) watchdogs and investigators who reveal corruption or speak truth. Pam Bondi’s totally not weaponized DOJ is “investigating” Judge James Boasberg for the crime of enforcing the law. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, too, for looking into Trump’s crimes, which he did so scrupulously and painstakingly that Trump was able to run out the clock. Other judges who ruled against Dear Leader are reporting serious threats from his America-greatening minions. Collaborators.

Until they eliminate them altogether, dictators ignore laws. That’s Trump. Same with facts. His EPA just un-scienced the finding that greenhouse gases are bad, paving the way to deregulate fossil fuel production. Snap of the finger: years of scientific research and documentation, gone. If the preceding outrages merely kill democracy, this will kill people. But, say MAGAs, Trump loves us. Warmly. So does his lunatic HHS Secretary, who just canceled $500 million for vaccine research. Including for flu and Covid. 

Is it getting Pyongyang in here? Part of the ransom Trump extracted from CBS was inclusion of a “bias monitor” who’ll report directly to him about any content deemed “too critical.” What’s worse: that Trump demanded it, CBS agreed to it, or Republicans rejoice in it? Criticism of leadership is indispensable in healthy democracies. What Trump wants and Republicans, who would hug our Constitution if it were a flag, are fine with, is untouchable monarchy.

“Nothing in this is, or shall be interpreted or construed as, an offer, promise, or acceptance of any form of bribery, undue influence, or corrupt practice.” So says the agreement for “gifting” that palatial Qatari jet to the U.S., the down-to-the-frame retrofitting of which, it’s calculated, will cost American taxpayers a billion dollars. Dollars that recent Fox talk-show host and current DEI-obsessed Defense Secretary Hegseth hid in a secret transfer from dedicated DOD funds. After renovation to Trump’s kingly standards, he’ll have personal use of it till death do he face. Well, then. Interpret, we shall not. Nor construe.

While Trump flies around in taxpayers’ billion-dollar bunko, if he carries out his dream of replacing the East Wing with a gargantuan, royal ballroom, we’ll be left with a desecrated White House. The People’s House, welcoming visitors from all walks of life, will become Trump’s auriferous legacy, a grandiose homage to his need for veneration. One person’s pathological narcissism will despoil something beautiful, its timeless architecture so understatedly American. It’s metaphorical.

Trump’s and his party’s war on facts, science, and truth is easy to understand. Those values expose their lies and failures. Campaigning on cruelty can’t win forever, and they know it’s all they have. On governance, they lose. Which is why Texas, as demanded by Trump, with all red states sure to follow, is taking its already-egregious gerrymandering to unseen levels, eliminating five Democratic districts. And now, Trump’s IRS says multimillionaire-run megachurches can endorse candidates and maintain tax-exempt status. Everywhere you look, it’s undisguised corruption. Like ending free tax-filing after a million-dollar donation from TurboTax. 

These perilous times for democracy demand that Democrats fight as dirty as Republicans; do the same in blue states as legislators are doing in red ones, for as long as it takes to return to voters the right to select their representatives, not the other way around. Then enact fair voting laws forever, or until the SCOTUS Six rewrite the Constitution yet again.

Whichever comes first.

Gaza And More

 

I took one of those send-your-spit DNA tests. As expected, it showed me to be 99% Ashkenazi Jewish, because both sides of my family are Jewish, going back past Adam and Eve, probably to Graecopithecus. I've written about why I'm not proud of things over which I had no control, born Jewish among them. But I'm glad of it.

When I meet Jewish people, I feel unspoken kinship. Jews have contributed disproportionately to the arts, technology, science, medicine. If I'm not among those contributors, I admire them from closer than afar. Jews have survived centuries of hatred. My grandfathers lost family in the Holocaust, which, contrary to the belief of many in the MAGA camp, actually happened. Seeing pictures of those skeletal outlasters of incarceration makes me physically ill. As does the rise of antisemitism under the leadership of "good people on both sides" Trump.

I'm glad for the existence of modern-day Israel, in awe of its research achievements that have benefited humankind. If its re-creation after World War II as haven and homeland for survivors of the Shoah engendered unceasing animus within the countries surrounding it, it was the right thing to do. As have been its wars of survival, like its stunning victory over the outnumbering, attacking nations in the Six Day War.

My point: I'm not someone you could consider antisemitic. So when I say I'm revulsed by what Israel is doing in Gaza, it's not about religion or ethnicity. It's about humanity. If a strong response to the horrifically cruel attacks by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, was absolutely called for, Israel has long-since gone beyond justification. I'm angry over it, and filled with sorrow. If I can't claim pride in being born Jewish, I can feel uneasy - embarrassed, even - to be associated, however tangentially, with the brutality, the indiscriminate slaughter being carried out by Israel. Starvation. Interdicting aid. Killing people, children included, as they scramble to receive what little nourishment is available. Recently allowing some food convoys back in, plus Trump's meager contribution of cash last week: too little, too late.

I abhor what Benyamin Netanyahu is doing and I hate that our "president" openly encouraged him. "Finish the job," he said. "Do whatever you want." No one should be surprised, though, because what Trump is doing to immigrants in America, adults and children, recent arrivals and law-abiding residents for decades, if not causing as many deaths as Israel's, is equally heartless and dismissive of the humanity of his victims. Plus, because Republicans cheer Trump's immigration cruelty at home and Trump facilitates Bibi's abroad, both are being done in our name.

Criticism of Israel's actions does not equate to antisemitism. Nor does it justify Trump's rounding up, imprisoning, and deporting students, here legally, who've been protesting them. (Which he's not doing to protect Jewish students: it's an excuse to subjugate universities to his will.) America has supported Israel since its creation and, as long-term policy, that shouldn't change. To preserve its existence, Israel will likely need America's help forever. But, especially now, it ought not be unconditional. Seeing children of bone and skin, barely holding off death, knowing there were many who couldn't: Enough is much more than enough.

The US could put its aid to Israel on hold. It might not halt the carnage, but it would disassociate us from the inhumanity. It would also, no doubt, cause outrage among many of Israel's American supporters. Matters of conscience, though, are more important than politics or the flow of money that's become indispensable to American politicians of all persuasions. They used to be.

I'd like to believe the majority of Israelis, like the majority of Americans who disapprove of virtually all of Trump's policies, reject Netanyahu's scorching of Gazan earth. Hamas is a barbarous terrorist organization that needs to be eradicated. Surely, though, a country as skillful as Israel could find a way to do it without starving civilians and, like MAGA's BFF Putin, bombing their hospitals and homes. Maybe that's impossible, but it ought to be the goal.

Enough said. If the Gaza tragedy is overwhelmingly awful, the Epstein saga continues to confound. Trump's former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, now an obedient DO"J" employee, has been interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's chief accomplice and pedophilic facilitator, serving twenty years for her crimes. Trump, who never lies, says he hasn't been following it, says issuing her a pardon after she says whatever they get her to say "… is not something I've thought about." Only the most Trumpomagafoxified could consider that, or her spillage, credible.

MAGAs have another challenge to rationalization: Trump only "wins" tournaments at his own golf resorts. From his taxpayer-funded trip to promote his courses in Scotland, there's now video proof of his oft-reported cheating. Defend, worshippers, the character of the man you revere, who cheats at golf and brags about winning. Because character isn't conditional. His explains everything he does.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Sometimes it’s necessary to beat a reanimated horse. The Epstein “situation” is about more than the horrific crimes of that man, Trump’s best buddy for years, who once received a wink-wink birthday letter from him. His denial of sending it floated like a Sherman tank in his birthday parade. The salience of the Epstein affair isn’t only the criminal exploitation and trafficking of young girls. That’s been known for decades. Nor is it news that Trump palled around with him; speculation on the extent of his involvement is understandable, but, for now, unprovable.

What’s more important is that even the most successfully MAGAfied Trumpists can no longer deny he’s a shameless, recidivist liar. Or that he and the people with whom he’s surrounded himself for protection, and his media enablers, are trying, as if everything depends on it, to hide what’s in those files. People don’t do that for something that, according to Trump’s cravenly obedient Attorney General, never existed. MAGAs are starting to notice.

Releasing Grand Jury testimony is a distraction attempt, a scam, more proof that Trump considers his voters stupid. If a judge allows the unlawful release of the testimony, it’ll contain nothing about Trump. That’s why, unlike the actual files, he ordered Pam Bondi to release it. It’s transparent non-transparency. Publishing the MLK, Jr. files, though, is transparent, proving how desperate he is to change the subject.

If Trump didn’t fear the Epstein files, he wouldn’t be calling them a hoax created by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Moreover, calling it a “hoax,” which it clearly isn’t, explains every not-hoax he’s called a hoax. Till now, lies as idiotic as that would be swallowed by Trumpists like cheeseburgers he forces on college athletes. Knowing the lies dropped from the same place as cowpies, Congressional Rs would nevertheless feed them to their constituents like strawberry shortcake. No longer. For once, some seek the truth. 

Trump doesn’t just think his supporters are stupid. He’s saying it out loud. So desperate is he to squirrel MAGA into looking the other way that he posted a fake video of President Barack Obama being arrested by ICE, hauled out of the Oval Office, and imprisoned. And another, akin to his picturing himself as Pope and, later, as Superman, as lead guitar and drummer for the rock band Journey. In addition to proving his dread of the truth, it’s a national embarrassment. For worse and worser, he’s President of the United States, and he’s beclowning himself and his voters. Having gotten away with lies all his life, he’s panicking at the thought of not, changing the subject any way he can.

Other presidents have had scandals that invited investigation. Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, for three. In those bygone days, Congress wasn’t controlled by people intent only on taking the dictations of their president. Those offences had special prosecutors and/or congressional investigations, whereas Trump’s DOJ and his congressional facilitators are doing everything they can to quash his. To avoid voting on a bipartisan demand to release the files, presumably told to do so by God, Holy Mike Johnson shut down the House prematurely, for months.

Via Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, Trump fired the prosecutors and agents who did their job by pursuing his and the J6ers’ criminality. Presumably following orders, Tulsi Gabbard, his obedient Director of National Intelligence, wants President Barack Obama and his team tried for treason, for the crime of investigating how Russia helped Trump become elected. Which, non-hoaxally, it did. Do it, Tulsi. Do it, Pam. Show us what ya got.

Democracy’s survival depends on the willingness of its citizens to follow the rules, for reasons bigger than themselves. It stumbles when people in power realize courts wield only words, not swords, and it dies when they conclude courts have no means to stop them. Trump, who knows nothing about many things, does know what to say when judges order him to stand down: “You and what army?” In increasing numbers, he and his administration are brazenly ignoring judicial orders. 

When will their Epstein-based recognition of Trump’s lies awaken MAGA Republicans to the danger this represents to every American, including themselves? For the good of the country they claim to love, when will they join the effort to vote the current crop of Republicans out of office?

Freed from judicial restraints, Trump is ending more than the rule of law. What looks like cruelty for its own sake, or, maybe, payoffs, he closed the office in charge of combatting human trafficking; federal buildings will no longer need accessibility ramps; HUD will stop investigating housing discrimination; The EPA will end research into dangerous chemicals; Homeland Security will begin deporting child victims of domestic abuse, previously protected as “Special Immigrant Juveniles.” (Links provided on request.) Is this what MAGAs voted for? Are they all as inhumane as Trump?

MAGA has finally stopped hiding its meaning: Make America Go Away. It was always the point.

It's Almost Here

 

Example number infinity that FOTUS can do or say whatever he wants and he’ll get no resistance from the MAGAfied, much less Congressional Republicans: Speaking of Rosie O’Donnell, Trump said, on unTruth Sociopath, “I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” You’d be excused if you thought that can’t possibly be true, even considering the sort of bizarrity he bleats hourly. 

As dismissive of the Constitution as he is, Trump might believe he has that right. We know he wouldn’t be informed otherwise by A.G. Pam Bondi, whose only legal concern is doing whatever Trump demands, unlawfulness notwithstanding and immaterial. Nor would his base stop to think about the implications, if a Democratic president were to assert that power. They hate everything Ms. O’Donnell is as much as Trump does. It’s a major motivator for their votes.

Thinking of thinking, think how much better off America would be if Trump hadn’t hired, and Congressional Rs hadn’t bent over to them, nothing but arrogant incompetents. According to him, it’s “evil” to ask questions about Kristy Noem’s requirement to get her permission for FEMA expenditures over $100 thousand and how it delayed critical responses to the devastating Texas flood. That’s but one of many accouterments of dictatorship we’re seeing: suppressing probing questions, demonizing dissent. Inklings of a nascent police state have become inkblots, but MAGAs see only butterflies. 

Under Trump’s Bogus Belligerent Budget Bill, ICE will soon have more funding than the FBI, making it America’s largest and most well-financed “law enforcement” agency. Unlike the FBI, which requires college degrees and puts agents through months of training, including teaching what the law does and doesn’t allow, ICE, by rapidly increasing its numbers, will require practically nothing; not even a high school degree. With those enthusiastically brutal arrests by masked, anonymous ICE agents so widely publicized, people who apply must picture themselves doing it, and want in.

In addition to personnel, ICE’s budget includes billions for building new “detention” camps, modeling MAGA’s new objet d'amour, “Alligator Alcatraz.” And what of the hoped-for millions of undocumented residents to be incarcerated, who, according to law, are entitled to bond hearings for release until adjudication? Not under Trump. Millions, his acting ICE director says, must now remain incarcerated until trial, which means months or years. To that end, he just fired seventeen immigration judges. 

Other than arriving illegally, fleeing mortal danger, many are law-abiding, productive contributors to society. Until Trump’s supremely obedient courts allow him to disappear the Fourteenth Amendment, they’ll have children who are American citizens. But maybe they’ll be allowed out during daytime to join Medicaid recipients working as slave laborers on farms. 

The reason Trump, his henchfolk, and MAGAfied Americans countenance these outrages is simple. They see non-white migrants as less than human. They’re “the other,” and othering is a time-proven method dictators use to sneak their way to unchecked power. If “sneak” is the right word. Trump and MAGA’s lack of empathy, their penchant for undisguised cruelty, couldn’t be more obvious.

What people with any claim to righteousness would stand by as the Trump administration orders the incineration of 550 tons of food intended for children starving in war or disaster zones, as part of their heartless ending of USAID? They couldn’t let another organization distribute it? How confident is Trump that his base of believers will never push back? The White House, no joke, recently published this. Why is House Speaker Holy Mike Johnson, who waves his so-called Christianity like panties at a rock concert, silent on any of this?

Since it’s an increasingly hot topic, let’s not ignore those Epstein files which disappeared from Pam Bondi’s desk so thoroughly that they never existed. It’s not speculation to say Trump was in them. For years, by both of their accounts, they were bromantically involved. Because I’m not into conspiracies, I’m just asking. Which is more likely: Epstein hung himself to avoid trial and just happened to do it when cameras weren’t working, or that word got out that he was ready to tip over the bean jar to get a light sentence? Kowtowing to Trump instead of doing what’s right, per usual, House Republicans just voted down a Democratic effort to require release of the files. Might they know there’s there there?

Which makes the MAGA revolt over Ms. Bondi’s claim of nothing there puzzling. One assumes they expected dirt on the Clintons, the Bidens, and more. Because all lefties are pedos. MAGAs must assume Trump is featured, too, but, like everything else Trump, they’d manage to excuse it. He’s playing 4-D checkers. But he sure wants it to go away.

But wait!! Evidently, the files DO exist. Trump, fonda Bondi, is now saying she should release "whatever she thinks is credible." Because that’s how transparency works: his yes-lady will tell us what to believe, and Drump the rest. Pure as the melting glaciers.

America, We Hardly Knew Ye

Fantasy: If every voter knew and understood everything that was in Trump’s Big Bad Bogus Belligerent Belied Bereft Baleful Budget Bill, seventy percent of them would vote out of office every Republican who voted for it. It’s safe to assume, though, that those who get their “news” from the White House official media outlets, Fox, Newsmax, OAN, or their talk radio equivalents will never know. Add together Democrats’ signature inability to produce a coherent and clear message and Republicans’ Machiavellian methods of vote suppression, it’s a bad bet.

What did it take for the performatively recalcitrant but predictably foldable “holdout” Republican Congresspeople to fall in line? A trip to the Oval Office featuring Trump-signed tchotchkes and presidential puffery. To paraphrase the old saw, they know what they are; they were just arguing about the price. 

Those legislators are so sure their constituents care more about punishing immigrants than they do about their own healthcare or food security that they’ll overlook what’s being done to them. If not to them, to millions of others about whom they don’t care. They’ll have been convinced that the billions dedicated to DHS for incarceration and deportation are worth it, even though, of the people now being rounded up, fewer than ten percent have committed violent crimes. 

Now, most of the incarcerated are people who’ve obeyed the law since they arrived illegally, who’ve been here for years, contributing to society and our economy. People whose absence will put businesses out of business. But to MAGAs, it seems, the more immigrants are rounded up, the worse the conditions in which they’re imprisoned, the more gratified they feel.

In addition to the disinformation from rightwing media, Trump’s voters will have seen video of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the El Salvador mimicking concentration camp in Florida’s Everglades swamp. Cages, admired by jocular, visiting Trump. They’ll have seen the tasteless, unbecoming gloat from Kristy Noem’s Department of Homeland Security. They’ll have loved it, taking selfies by the tasteless, unbecoming signs outside the gulag. They’ll buy RNC-approved merch, while chuckling over Trump’s favorite adviser Laura Loomer’s sadistic commentary. Approval of the inexcusable: Team Trump counts on it.

As one who once considered this country fundamentally good, this is stomach-turning. Few, if any, disapprove of deporting murderers and rapists, the committers of violent crimes that constituted Trump’s least inconsistent campaign promise. But what’s happening now is cruelty for its own sake, spearheaded by Stephen Miller and his racist desire for an all-white America. In the future, will we be remembered not for building great things, but for stalags and gulags?

The BBBBBBBBB contains more intentional cruelty. There are, no doubt, people receiving healthcare and food benefits who take advantage of the system, but they are relatively few. Most people on Medicaid are working or can’t. Now, they’ll all have to fill out paperwork at least twice a year; some as much as monthly. Why? Because today’s Republican Party has long since internalized Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” vision of people in need.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “There are no change (sic) in benefits. There’s a change in requirements to get the benefits.” Translation: “It’s there. We’ve just made it hard to get, which we hope you don’t.” The same applies to food stamps, the cost of which is less than that now allotted to incarcerating or deporting migrants, and of which more white people partake than black or brown. Because of the same upside-down, Robbing-Hoodwink priorities, funds for school lunch programs will be eliminated. Climate change is a hoax, as we know, so tax credits for alternative energy will phase out. Because oil. Adapt or die.

Tariffs? Who knows? Trump has flipped, flopped, and flipped again. The bizarre letters he wrote to leaders of Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, and Tunisia thud somewhere between Mafia threat and freshman writing assignment. 

Between now and the election of 2026, it’ll be a battle of words. Truth vs. lies. Straight talk vs. deflection. What characterization applies to which side will be retinized by the beholder. As usual, burdened with a predilection for factuality, Democrats will fight with their hands behind their backs, against a virtual state media conglomerate within which lies and deflection are what bring and keep their viewers and listeners.

We can’t depart before changing the subject to the – what to call it? – strangeness of the DOJ, whose words are its Bondis, announcing there’s no Epstein client list after all, having previously said it was on General Pam’s desk being reviewed. And that Epstein definitely, absolutely, no question killed himself. Nope, not at all suspicious. The DOJ is independent and liars don’t lie.

Another: Now that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in US custody, why haven’t we seen pictures of the MS13 knuckle tattoos that Trump assured us were absolutely, definitely, pinky-swear not fake? 

Independence?

 

Independence Day. May it trigger a desire for freedom from the cult of MAGA for enough people to restore America’s greatness. May those waving Old Glory do so while shedding the chains of Trumpism, weighing them down, unrecognized. May they join in furthering the day when America regains its defining goodness.

Pride, according to Christian teaching, is a deadly sin. I’ve never been proud of things over which I’ve had no control. I’m tall. It has given me undeserved advantages, for which I'm not proud. I learned to be a surgeon; I think I did a good job of it. Should I be proud of not being bad? I’m not. No more than having never robbed a bank.

I’m glad I was born in the USA, but, having had no part in it, it’s not a source of pride. Nevertheless, for all its faults, I admire how, as it evolved, America hasn’t denied them, but has worked, if imperfectly, to correct them. Until about ten years ago, I believed our democratic republic was the most moral, ethical, generous, and productive form of government there’s ever been. I’d bet our founders had pride in their product. Then again, most of them were Deists, not Christians.

Because it all happened without me, I’ve never felt proud to be American. If I ever had, though, I couldn’t now. For the same reasoning as pridefulness, I shouldn’t feel shame on this day of celebration, either. I didn’t create nor would I ever join MAGA. So, not ashamed. Deeply disappointed. Sad. Embarrassed. And very, very worried.

It’s not just the unkindness into which America has descended, as if on a down escalator, at the hands of Trump and his punitory cabineteers. It’s that so many Americans – a people I’ve always considered generous, welcoming, and mostly moral – are not only fine with what we’ve become: they’re proud of it.

At every Trump rally, “Proud To Be An American” is played while the congregants sing along. Their pride must be real, but for what? Clearly not for America’s eventual commitment to civil rights for all: they’re glad to see it disappear at the hands of ideologically blinded Justices. That, except for Native Americans, we’re a nation of immigrants is obviously not a source of pride.

Nor, incredibly, are our world-leading institutions of higher education, or the advances in science, technology, and medicine for which their American creators, until Trumpism, were admired gratefully, worldwide. MAGA loves his attacks on them and his attempts to dictate what’s taught.

Are they proud to see immigrants, following the rules, outside courtrooms awaiting hearings for citizenship, snatched by masked, unidentifiable men, sent to prisons abroad? Does it shake their belief that immigrants are “moochers” when it’s workplaces being raided? Does pride burst forth, knowing children are starving and, according to a study in The Lancet, millions of people will die as a result of ending USAID, America’s world-leading beneficence? Not in me. Did our nation’s lifesaving generosity mortify them?

What fireworks are best to celebrate Trump’s undisguised corruption? Are they singing their pride for handing world leadership in research and development to China? Or for America’s role in the resurrection of measles? Do they agree with JD Vance that millions of Americans losing health insurance under Trump’s just-passed Big Bogus Bill is “immaterial”? 

Maybe not. Endungeoned within news sources that ignore those horrors, they probably haven’t heard of them. So they require no proof the election was stolen, that Democrats want to change their children’s gender, that they plan to replace Caucasians with illegal, brown voters. They accept that migrants who fled danger to come here decades ago and have made a better life for their families deserve unadjudicated deportation.

Perhaps not all set out to believe Trumpism’s falsehoods, but they chose news sources that provide nothing else. Telling them diversity in a population destroys it, equity of opportunity diminishes theirs, inclusion of people not like them means exclusion of them. So they find nothing ominous in Trump’s banning of words and books that refer, even obliquely, to those values.

MAGA pride must include seeing reporters who told the truth about Trump’s paltry bombing of Iraq accused by Trump and his belly-baring Cabinet of “demoralizing” the troops who carried out the raid. Like all Trumpish phantasms, they believe it.

On Independence Day, they'll profess pride in America, founded on free speech and the right of assembly, happy that, under Trump, those rights no longer apply to liberals; glad that institutions designed to rebuff authoritarianism are caving to his autocratic threats. Who can be surprised, though? Their movement was founded on Kenyan birth and “Lock her up.”

Surely, many under the spell of MAGA retain reachable decency. What will it take to bring them back? They could start by watching this. And, to understand the appeal, hear this. 

On July Fourth, I’d be proud of those who break free.