TODAY, I CAME ACROSS A REMARKABLE EXAMPLE of that kind of joy when citizens of a country realize they are on the right track after years of oppression and gloom.
      That country is Hungary, and the event was the May 9 inauguration of a new leader, Peter Magyar, whose Tisza party last month defeated the 16-year authoritarian regime of Viktor Orban.
     What made this occasion especially stirring was what the incoming health minister was up to: he literally was dancing for joy.
     Dr. Zsolt Hegedus was leaping, swooping, doing the Chuck Berry one-legged duckwalk, swirling, twirling and playing an air guitar to the music of Jalja, a British singer.
     You can see Hegedus’ dance moves better than I can describe them by clicking on the video at the top of this post, which I downloaded from The Guardian newspaper, or by following this link to the article in The Guardian. 
     (The Guardian doesn’t have a paywall, so you can view both its article and the video without a subscription).
     For Hegedus, an orthopedic surgeon, who once worked in the British National Health System, his May 9 performance was a second act.
     He spontaneously broke out into a dance when the election results were announced in April, marking the astonishing victory overturning the oppressive Orban government.
     Video of that performance went viral, and although Hegedus had been reluctant to repeat his act when the time came for the victors to take office this weekend, he got caught up in the spirit of the moment, which turned into huge street party of dancing politicians and thousands of spectators.
     Who knows how the future will turn out for Hungary. 
     We Americans know from sad experience that one election, one crusade, one reform does not necessarily last. Six men and women wearing robes just trashed decades of voting reform and reignited a new version of discrimination against Black voters, especially in the South.
     But of this we can be certain, and forgive me for the obvious pun:
     Most Americans, like most citizens of the world, are hungry for the joy expressed by Hungary’s dancing doctor

IT’S NOT A FAIRY TALE WISH.
     I came of age in the 1960s, when it seemed that the United States was on a relentless course of reform, rushing to do great things, as change – change for the better – became an everyday occurrence.
     Civil rights, environmentalism, medical miracles, women’s equality, car safety, new and great music, nuclear disarmament, souring on war, walking on the moon, all were part of a national effort to have America live up to the words and promise of its founding documents and, in that way, atone for our original sins.
     Today, we are hungry – starving – for another era when we can think big and make great dreams come true.
     Reform and democracy don’t come easy or all at once. And there are no guarantees.
     But I believe there can be a time in America, once again, when we can take to the streets and dance for joy.

I’M STILL SHAKING from the series of threats Donald Trump has been making  this month about Iran, variously vowing to destroy its civilization and to bring it “back to the stone ages.”
     I’m writing this on the evening of April 11, and so far, the commander-in-chief has not unleashed the ultimate dogs of war on the Middle East, despite the failure of his vice president, JD Vance, to negotiate a solution to the conflict after 21 hours of talks.
     What 's next?
     Who is to say America’s unhinged president won’t blow up Iran, or a good part of the world, before I finish this? You never know when he might get the urge to set of a nuke or two before breakfast.
     Clearly, Trump has been daydreaming in perilous terms.
     The remark about the “stone ages” was made on April 1, part of Trump’s TV address to explain the Iran war.
      "Thanks to the progress we’ve made I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly. We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong."
     Given the date, it’s possible it was Trumpian humor, an April Fool’s joke.
     The problem, though, is that Trump kept following the theme of terror and horror.   
      One statement that grabbed people’s attention came five days later, in a tweet discussed by my friend, Henry Abraham in a Substack column headlined “The F-bomb and the A-bomb.” 

      Trump's tweet was history-making, because it was the first public, deliberate and  official use by a president of a derivative of “fuck.”
     The tweet, which popped up at 8:03 a.m., April 5, on Trump’s “Truth Social” platform, was a masterpiece of concise writing. 
     In just one paragraph, Trump managed to get in six obscene, bullying and juvenile concepts, some of which might be found on the walls of a middle school bathroom:

• War crimes – bombing civilian structures, namely bridges and generating stations.
• Demands that Iranians cease their blockade of the “Fuckin’ Strait,” known on most maps as “the Strait of Hormuz.”
• Name-calling,labeling Iranians as “crazy bastards.”
• Bullying threats, that Iranians risked “living in Hell” for disobeying him.
• Reliving his TV days, with this stay-tuned admonition: “JUST WATCH!”
• A snide religious slur: “Praise be to Allah.”

     Thinking about Trump’s tweet as the work of a middle-schooler, I wonder if the student would be hauled into the principal’s office, then to a police station, followed by months of supervised counseling while wearing an ankle bracelet.
     Instead, the war raged on, and Trump authored another Truth Social tweet that envisioned a catastrophe unknown since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II.  
     “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump mused, posting that tweet at 8:06 a.m. on April 7.

      
     Later in the message, Trump seemed unsure of what might happen, typing: “WHO KNOWS?”

WHICH IS THE CENTRAL QUESTION of our time, similar to Hamlet’s anguished “To be or not to be” question.
     However, the solution is not as unfathomable as Trump or Hamlet make it sound.
     To continue being, instead of not-being, the United States needs only to remove Trump from office, preferably by impeachment.
     Of course, it sounds preposterous, given the Republican majorities in Congress and their disgraceful devotion to Trump.
     But for their own survival, Republicans, and all of us, should acknowledge the obvious, that Trump is unhinged. 
     Is he mentally ill? Just plain evil? It doesn’t matter. He’s been obsessing out loud about Armageddon, and that makes him dangerous, too dangerous, to be president.
     Please don’t tell me that not even Donald J. Trump would use nuclear weapons, or their “conventional” equivalents.
     Don’t argue that Trump himself has said his presidency is about preventing use of nuclear weapons.
     Because, if we know one thing about Donald Trump, it’s that he’s a liar.
     An unhinged, serial liar.

 THE NEXT DAY QUARTERBACKING of the pundits was whether the  demonstrations will translate into something practically and  politically important.
     One noted that there didn’t seem to be a single theme, policy or politician favored by the demonstrators that could counter the enormous damage Trump already has done.
      What did the protesters protest against? The economy? The war? Mass deportations? Anti-democratic move?
      All of the above, and more,  of course. Trump has done a lot, meaning that there’s lots to complain about, to reverse, rebuild and reform.
      The point is that substantial numbers of people were and are concerned about lots of things, and we should be grateful that do.

I WENT TO A DEMONSTRATION that drew people from Newport, Middletown and Portsmouth,  the three communities that make up Aquidneck Island, which is the “Island” part of the State of Rhode Island.
     I’m terrible at counting crowds, and I left early, just as the protest site on both sides of four-lane West Main Road in Middletown was filling up. I put the number at 500 to 1,000 and wouldn’t argue if advocates puffed up the numberto 2,000 and maybe more.
     What I found just as heartening as the big numbers was the spirit of the participants. It was joyful event. People praised each other’s hand-drawn signs. Most were strangers, but didn’t act like they were. 
     It’s a cliché, but it really felt like family,  probably because everyone knew why they were there, and it was the same reason everyone else was.
     It was a sunny, but not a “nice” time to be outdoors. The National Weather Service put the temperature around the freezing mark, and the 10-mile-an-hour wind produced a windchill of 26 degrees.
     But rather than discouraging folks, the cold seemed to give participants one more thing that they could agree on.     

      There are weekly protests at the on and off ramps to the Newport Bridge, and those participants skew old – really old – probably because retired people don’t have jobs or kids and other routines that take up lots of time.
     The No Kings rally in Middletown surely did have lots of oldsters like me – I’m headed for 84. But they were a cheerful, resilient cohort. One lady raced her walker up a hill, and when she fell, lots of hands reached out to get her and her  contraption to the top, with laughs all around.
     There were also college students, “regular” Mom, Dad and the Kids nuclear groupings, and the lines stretched  on both sides of the highway, from the Middletown Public Library to the Two Mile Corner, where West Main and East Main Roads intersect.
     Sign carriers waved at cars, whose drivers honked approval. Thumbs up vastly outnumbered middle fingers.
     One thing you have to remember about Newport and its neighbors is that they may comprise a world-famous tourist center, but a big part of the area’s hidden economy is military. The island is home to Navy education centers, including the national Naval War College, and there also are  major big naval research activities.
      What impressed me about the occupants of the cars and pickups who passed the No Kings protesters is that they seemed so supportive. I’m thinking that some were military folks, who have little taste for frivolous wars and a clownish Secretary of Defense. (Maybe, too, they keep their thoughts to themselves).
     One thing that worried me was that demonstrators edged closer and closer the cars zipping by, making sure their signs were visible. But a No Kings monitor politely, but firmly, patrolled the sidewalk, moving the line back a few inches to safety. 
     It all worked, logistics and purpose.

 I LEFT EARLY, only after about a hour. Despite three layers and an L.L. Bean parka with an insulated hood, I felt the cold felt like it was making me sick, down to my bones.
     Later at home, it took me hours, with the help of a woolen cap, an Irish sweater, a bedtime comforter and too much hot chocolate to  start to feel warm.
     I cursed my aging body that could not seem to tolerate an even moderately New England winter-like day, even for a patriotic cause.
     But I was also grateful that the old thing at least took me back and forth, to witness one of the landmark days of the country’s crusade for freedom and democracy.

------------
If you want to see some of participants and their clever signs at other R.I. No Kings events, go to the Substack site of Steven Ahlquist, who does an impressive job of covering progressive local politics. Here’s the link: https://steveahlquist.substack.com/

  IT'S WORTH THINKING  a little about the money-signing gambit, because it touches on several of Trump’s shortcomings that have dire consequences on national and world affairs.
   The Trump signature itself hints an egotistical brain. It’s an outsized jumble of Sharpie strokes meant to dominate whatever piece of paper on which it lands. 
      The signature drew a lot of attention last year when the Wall Street Journal disclosed that it had appeared in a collection of good wishes compiled by Epstein’s associates in 2003 for the sex ghoul’s 50th birthday.

      Here is the signature using Trump's full name, via Wikipedia.

 In either version, Trump has liked to use a Sharpie pen, which produces broad, thick lines, all the better to make a splash.

TRUMP’S OBSESSION WITH SHARPIES came into focus March 26 during a cabinet meeting where the Iran war and other life-and-death matters were being batted around by Trump and his sycophants.
     But, as he often does, Trump detoured from subjects of state to expound for five minutes or so on the wonders of something else, in this case the Sharpie and its bargain-basement price. 
     “I came here,” Trump explained to the cabinet, according to the New York Times. “They have thousand-dollar pens, and you know, you hand pens out, you’re signing and you hand them out. You’re handing them with all these people, sometimes you have 30 or40 people and they were $1,000 a piece.”
     Whereas, he said that Sharpies go for $5. Of course, even when it comes to pens, Trump cannot be believed. The New York Times said some  previous presidents used pens made by A.T. Cross, a Rhode Island headquartered company, which retail not for a grand, but between $99 to $270 each.
     Sleep well, America. Trump, who demolished the East Wing of the White House so it can be replaced with a $400 million ballroom (albeit funded by private donors maybe looking for favors) knows a good deal on not-so-fine writing instruments.

THERE ARE LESSONS, which we already know, but are forced to relearn day after day.
     The unhinged leader of what is still the free world cannot discuss something important without drifting into  something that’s not.
     And even then, he can’t tell the truth, even about the cost of something that nobody cares about, except a deranged man who wants to put his mark, his face and his name on your money, your buildings and anything else that comes into his not-so-Sharpie mind.
    Fortunately, there’s a No Kings Day demonstration near you Saturday (March 28).

 TRUMP HAS DRAWN a fair amount of criticism for not more formally addressing “the American people,” to outline his reasons for starting the war and to explain his goals for finishing it.
      I’m not sure I understand this, since Trump is a serial liar.
     Why would anyone want to hear from someone who never tells the truth? Trump  says one thing one day, another on the second day, so whatever he says on any day is meaningless.
     In this, the second week, there is only one reason for the war, and it’s the same as on Day One: there is no reason.
     The war on its first day was illegal, and remains so today, since only Congress can declare war and it has done no such thing, despite some feeble attempts in the Republican-controlled Congress.
     By the time the war is finished, little will have changed except the extent of the horror. 
     There will be more deaths, more mangled bodies, more ruined real estate, more refugees, more haunted psyches and more reasons for one enemy to hold a grudge, and the same for the other side.
     It’s not likely much will be different for everyday Iranians after the country puts itself together.
     If there is such a thing as regime change in a dictatorship, the new one likely will be as odious as the one it replaces.
     By then, Donald Trump will care less.
    Depending on the war’s eventual toll, and how seriously Americans regard the price, Trump will move his capable and obedient military to his next target, whatever nation or region has somehow displeased him.
     Cuba. Greenland, Canada. Spain.
    There seems no end to Trump’s Wars of Whimsy, fought on a single, continuous battlefield that so far has no limits.

ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES in coming to terms with Donald Trump is the fickleness of the word “president.”
     Just saying the word “president” suggests elements of wisdom, competence and control associated with the country’s highest political office.
     Every time we hear or read the word, we assume that the president, or at least the people around him, knows what they are doing.
     What’s needed is a means of explaining the particularly flawed nature of Trump’s presidency, noting that every time the title is used, it’s out of step with our history.
     As a remedy, we can attach a short explanation, signaling the special circumstances of Trump’s presidency – that it’s not normal.
     “Unhinged” does the job, and it should be associated with Trump every time he’s introduced in a news story. It would work this way: 
     “Donald Trump, America’s unhinged president, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc. ….” 

“UNHINGED” IS A SIGNAL THAT NOBODY IS MISLED or argues that Trump is a standard president. Instead, there’s an acknowledgement that the system has made a tragic, dangerous and historic mistake.
     Take a recent Trump outrage, his reposting of a racist social media item that featured the heads of Barack and Michelle Obama attached to the bodies of apes.
     Here’s the lead paragraph to a New York Times story about the controversy:
     
     President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, but he insisted he had nothing to apologize for even after he deleted the video following an outcry.
     
     That's a pretty damning summary: blaming Trump for the posting a “blatantly” racist image; noting that Trump pulled back the post; and calling attention to the fact he didn’t apologize to his predecessor. But because “President” Trump” did it, it was somehow “presidential.”
     However, what if we add our special Trump qualifier?

     Donald Trump, AMERICA'S UNHINGED PRESIDENT,  posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, but he insisted he had nothing to apologize for even after he deleted the video following an outcry.

     This does a couple of things. It uses his full name, which sounds a little less godlike; it puts Trump’s action in its proper context, something being done by someone who holds - but maybe shouldn’t -  the nation's most important office.
     Let’s try it with another story.

BEFORE:
     President Trump moved on Friday to allow commercial fishing in the only marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, an area the size of Connecticut that is home to dolphins, endangered whales, sea turtles and ancient deep-sea corals.

AFTER:
     Donald Trump,  the country's unhinged president, moved on Friday to allow commercial fishing in the only marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, an area the size of Connecticut that is home to dolphins, endangered whales, sea turtles and ancient deep-sea corals.

     Let’s try it again.

BEFORE:
     WASHINGTON, Feb 5 - U.S. President Donald Trump,  offered last month to drop his hold on funding for a key $16 billion New York Hudson River tunnel project in exchange for Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer supporting the renaming of Washington Dulles Airport and New York Penn Station after Trump, a source told Reuters Thursday.

AFTER:
     WASHINGTON, Feb 5 -  Donald Trump,  the unhinged U.S. president, offered last month to drop his hold on funding for a key $16 billion New York Hudson River tunnel project in exchange for Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer supporting the renaming of Washington Dulles Airport and New York Penn Station after Trump, a source told Reuters Thursday.

MY EYE CAUGHT THE WORD in a comment by Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader of the House, reacting to Trump’s racist post:
     "The Obamas are brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans. They represent the best of this country. Donald Trump is a vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder."
     I thought all three descriptions of Trump were accurate, but that “vile” was a too editorial for routine news duty, and that “malignant bottom feeder” was similarly biased, as well as being too wordy.
     
     “Unhinged,” on the other hand seems more descriptive, even objective, and gets to the heart of what’s wrong with Trump.
     Also, with Trump, there’s always a temptation to sink into name-calling, or to diagnose Trump as mentally unfit. 
     “Unhinged” isn’t a gutter word, nor is it a medical term.
      It also doesn’t suggest that Donald Trump was unfairly elected. It just says something has gone wrong, politically and Constitutionally, and now we have someone who’s inappropriate for such a powerful position. 
     Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definition of "unhinged," an adjective, goes like this:
     “Highly disturbed, unstable, or distraught.”
     Perfect.
     It fits all sorts of scenarios, even those with loathsome  supporting actors.

BEFORE:
      Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump in Washington on Wednesday to discuss developments surrounding negotiations with Iran, the Prime Minister’s Office said. 

AFTER:
     Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Donald Trump, America's unhinged president, in Washington on Wednesday to discuss developments surrounding negotiations with Iran, the Prime Minister’s Office said. 

BEFORE
     President Trump said on Friday that the U.S. and Iran had "very good talks" in Oman on Friday and claimed the Iranian position is more favorable regarding a nuclear deal than it was before the 12-day war last June. 

AFTER
     Donald Trump, the unhinged president of the United States, said on Friday that the U.S. and Iran had "very good talks" in Oman on Friday and claimed the Iranian position is more favorable regarding a nuclear deal than it was before the 12-day war last June. 

     Works every time.

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE REPORTERS, or the news media in general.
     But you should  treasure what they are supposed to do, which is to bring all of us vital information, especially about the workings of democracy.
     Which is why the Trump administration’s arrest this week of two reporters who were on the scene of one of the many stories out of embattled Minnesota is so alarming and dangerous.
     And why I found this weekend’s absence of updated stories from the major news sites upsetting, as if the arrests were just another of the scores of Trump-era events that disappear after a day or two and are virtually forgotten.
     The arrests – and similar attacks on freedom of the press – are the one story that news organizations should keep on the front burner, both for their own survival as well as that of democratic government.
     This is no time for “balance,” “fairness,” and “even-handedness” by the media. We’re talking a life-and-death fight that needs to be told on every news platform with urgency and ferocity.

I’M TALKING ABOUT THE ARRESTS last week of two independent journalists, Don Lemon, a one-time anchor for CNN, and Georgia Fort, both of whom operate news sites, Fort’s based in Minnesota.
     They were doing their jobs on Jan. 18, reporting how demonstrators disrupted services at Cities Church in St. Paul, where one of the pastors is an official of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
     A federal indictment last week accuses the reporters of interfering with religious freedom and depriving church congregants of their religious rights.
     Think of the potential to end the news media as we know it if the federal charges are upheld: journalist could be jailed – muzzled – just for reporting controversial stories.
     Indeed, the arrests got appropriate media attention when the arrests were made on Friday  – Lemon was detained in Los Angeles, where he was covering Grammy events.
     Later, the New  York Times said that “thousands” of protesters marched from City Hall to the courthouse and detention complex, including actress Jane Fonda and LA Mayor Karen Bass.
      “I have spent my entire career covering the news,” Lemon said after a court appearance. “I will not stop now. There is no more important time than right now, this ever moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.”
     The following day, Saturday, and today, Sunday, I searched the online sites for the Times and the Washington Post for fresh stories and analyses.
     But in both cases, I couldn’t find word one as I made my way down the stack of headlines.
     There were stories about the federal reserve, another winter storm, the “Melania” documentary. I had to use the search functions to find the latest, which were published later Friday, only to fade the next day.
     This was business as usual: stories break, are covered in some depth, and then disappear as the news cycle moves on. It  makes sense on ordinary news (if there is such a thing during Trump times). But when it comes to press freedom, it’s a disastrous approach.
     Indeed, the media critic Dan Froomkin advised the opposite approach.
     “Every major news organization in the United States should be calling this out for what it is, and demanding that the charges be dropped. And they should use every possible platform to do so -including their news stories,” Froomkin wrote.
     “The coverage should state clearly from the get-go that this represents the most dramatic violation of freedom of the press of the Trump era. And it should remind the public why freedom of the press matters,” he said.

JOURNALISTS CAN BE ANNOYING.
     Lemon was canned at CNN in 2021 for making sexist comments about women and aging.
     The conservative commentator Gary Abernathy told the PBS News Hour that “Don Lemon quit being a journalist a long time ago. He became an activist.”
     But Abernathy doesn't get to decide who is and who isn't a reporter. In this case, Lemon and Fort were carrying out their duties as reporters covering the church demonstration, and as I said, you don’t have to like every reporter or pundit to honor their vital role.
     My hope is that people who are running the major outlets will keep this story alive and kicking.
     There are endless ways to do this, beginning with the decision to make sure the issue remains front and center:

• Profiles of the two reporters.
• Backgrounders on the questionable legal basis of the indictments.
• Reports on how the two unaffiliated journalists will pay their legal costs.
• Historical examples of how an aggressive press has made a difference.
• Roundups of the many ways that the Trump administration has tried to limit journalists’ access – such as excluding some reporters from the Pentagon and White House.
• Timelines of how the cases against Lemon and Fort developed. Initially, judges had declined to approve their arrests.
• Detailed coverage of the next steps in the legal process.

     You get the picture.
     There are pitfalls. Consumers of news tire of reading and hearing about the same subject. And as much as the media wishes otherwise, news outlets cannot single-handedly determine the outcome of an issue, just through exhaustive coverage.
     But in this case, the story is too important to treat routinely as just another ho-hum, now you see it, now you don’t issue. If the people who run the media don’t see this story as urgent to their own survival, who will?
     Judging by this weekend’s performance, the media is off to a terrible start and needs to change course. Arresting Lemon and Fort was and is an outrage, period.
     If the government is allowed to lock up reporters, democracy loses its eyes, ears and voice.

NOTE: As the avalanche of terrible news keeps rolling  while Donald Trump remakes the planet, I keep thinking of Woody Guthrie's anthem to democracy. I'm sure I'm not the first to translate Guthrie's sacred lyrics. But it's hard to resist. BCJ

    DONALD TRUMP IS A RACIST, which makes him the most dangerous  president in our history.
     It also is one of the most promising aspects of the Trump catastrophe, because it’s up to us, individually and as a nation, whether we will act out his bigotry.
     Indeed, as a I look at the many terrible things Trump is doing to our country, racism is one of those instances where each one of us has personal control.
     We can’t, as individuals, restart the USAID programs that were saving thousands of lives throughout the world before Trump killed them. We can’t stop our armed forces from murdering people in South American speed boats. We can’t stop Trump pulling the rug out from under Ukraine’s inspired resistance to Russia’s invasion. We can’t halt the roundup of immigrants on our streets and their detention at inhumane centers. We can’t end Robert Kennedy’s war on vaccines and science-based medicine. Can’t walk into a Harvard boardroom and make the people who run the world’s greatest university stand up to  Trump’s bullying. We can’t restore the East Wing, take Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center. We can’t prevent the collapse of the world’s climate.
     Yes, we can want justice in all of those areas and in scores of others that define Trump’s sociopath’s campaign to destroy America. We can vote, persuade, protest, crusade, donate and try as hard as we can collectively to preserve American democracy.
     But racism and its antidote is personal, individual and doable.

AFTER ALL OF THESE YEARS, it’s hard, at least for me, to believe that Donald Trump is actually a bigot.
     For so long, Trump was a clown, a citizen of the New York City tabloids. Just a cheat, a business failure, a liar, a TV personality, who seemed to have no important beliefs, and therefore need not be taken seriously.
     His racism, however, periodically surfaces,  bursting his comic mask, and it’s as if he might as well be dressed in Klan robes and hood, on his way to a cross burning or a lynching.
     Still, it’s always starling. 
     After all, he is the president, and presidents are supposed to be better than the rest of us. It may be an American myth, but many of presidents have had character, or at least acted if they had character.
     But Trump is different.
     Take what he did at the end of his Dec. 2 cabinet meeting, where he again revealed his deeply racist self. He embarked on a bigoted rant, almost incoherent, this one about Somalians, using Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as his starting point.

     Omar, of course, is a congresswoman from Minnesota, who became a U.S. citizen 25 years ago after coming from Somalia as a refugee.
     Trump's cabinet fusillade featured his loathsome vice president, JD Vance, banging his fist on the table in approval, according to the New York Times.
     The Times, which is notoriously forgiving in it’s voluminous coverage of the president, in this instance called Trump’s tirade for what it was.
      “Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry,” the Times wrote.
     Garbage.
     Their country stinks.
     Their country is no good for a reason.
     There are other instances in which Trump’s racism has surfaced. Here are three:

• During his first term, in 2018, Trump wondered why the U.S. would allow people from “shithole” countries in Africa to immigrate. Instead, he suggested, the country should be encouraging people (white)  from countries like Norway.
• Trump followed up with the whites-are-favored idea this year, as the administration revamped its refugee programs. He has given preference to white Afrikaners from South Africa, claiming they have been persecuted by majority Blacks. (The historical irony is breathtaking, considering how brutally Whites in apartheid South Africa oppressed Blacks). 
  
• Earlier this month, the National Park Service eliminated two days in which entrance fees had been dropped at national parks: Martin Luther King Jr. day, the holiday honoring the Black civil rights icon, and Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery. But parks’ admission would be waived on a new date –  June 14, Donald Trump’s birthday, which also is national Flag Day. (There are nine other free entrance days in 2026).

     In general, Trump has savagely attacked diversity, equity and inclusion  (DEI) programs, attempting to outlaw them in both government and civil organizations, the idea being they discriminate against whites, and favor unqualified people of color, because how else could a person of color excel at anything....
     The message is as old as it is insidious. White good; black bad. White better; black worse. White smart; black stupid.

TERRIBLE THINGS happen when bigotry is ascendant. 
     In America, slavery is the country’s original sin. The Founding Fathers were slaveholders. The early American economy depended on slavery, and it touched every area, North and South.
     Slavery was at the heart of the Civil War, followed not by emancipation, but by legalized segregation in the South, an apartheid system to which the prejudiced North was indifferent, and lasted until the disruptions of World War II and the civil rights crusades of the 1960s.
     Every time the country seems to move forward on racial equality, a backlash follows. 
     The election of Barack Obama, a man of color, seemed to have lifted the country to a new level of tolerance, but it was followed by the retreat to prejudice with the election of Donald Trump.
     I believe the reason that bigotry is so resilient is that every one of us is born into prejudice. It is impossible to escape the suspicion, whether unconscious or overt,  that people who are different from you and me are dangerous and threatening.
     That ever-inherent bigotry is always available to leaders to attain and hold power, the most horrific example being the extermination of 6 million Jews by Hitler and his German contemporaries.
     Trump’s war on immigration, demonizing “illegal” entrants to the U.S., is the latest opportunity to turn people against one another. In just a year’s time, we are witnessing a huge, rogue police force chasing down immigrants in the streets, in their homes and at their businesses, with administration plans for a national system of “warehouse” detention centers, holding 80,000 souls to be expelled from our country.
     Is a re-segregation of America underway?
     It’s possible, but not inevitable.
     In 2026, will we stand passive or even join with a racist president as he denigrates Blacks and all people who seem different from us by a lot or a little, and as he, mocks the promise of the  Declaration of Independence?
     We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
     As individuals, we may not be able to escape the prejudices of our history and culture and even our genes. But we don’t have to follow Donald Trump into his decent into the cesspool.
     We can refuse to talk like racists, promote racism, tell racist jokes, laugh at racist jokes. We can stop pretending that  we don’t see it, hear it, feel it. We don’t have to accept it, promote it, advance it.
     We are in control.
 
      *  * *
Here are some of the sources used in this piece:

• https://www.rev.com/transcripts/presidential-cabinet-meeting-12-02-25
• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/politics/trump-somalia.html
• https://apnews.com/article/immigration-north-america-donald-trump-ap-top-news-international-news-fdda2ff0b877416c8ae1c1a77a3cc425
• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-refugee-white-people.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/10/21/trump-refugees-afrikaners-south-africa/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/travel/trump-birthday-mlk-juneteenth-free-national-park.html
• https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm#changes-in-2026
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/12/24/ice-immigrants-detention-warehouses-deportation-trump/

These news sources were used in preparing this post:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2C0pTh7x9o
  
• https://people.com/trump-snaps-at-cbs-nancy-cordes-are-you-stupid-person-11858607
• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/us/guard-shooting-suspect-profile.html
  
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/28/national-guard-dc-police/
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/national-guard-was-target/685089/
  
• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/us/guard-troops-officials-worried-safety.html?smid=url-share

 SELF-CENTERED, FOR SURE. But also, politically potent.
      My guess is that every American will have a personal grievance with Trump before his term is over – perhaps, before his first year in office is completed.
     It’s one thing to be opposed philosophically, politically, theoretically, to Donald Trump’s many attacks on democracy, civil society, science, racial justice, the environment and the Constitution.
     But it’s quite a different proposition when a Trump offense becomes personal to you as an individual, or your family, your clan, your profession, neighbor or friend – when it gets under your skin, when it hits home, when it becomes real.
     Already, millions of Americans have been touched directly by Trump’s abuses. Researchers whose life-changing experiments have been cut short. Black men and women feeling the invisible but real bite of Trump’s racism. Physicians and their patients when the administration makes vaccinations suspect. Parents shopping for groceries.
     It’s true I identify with how it feels to be belittled, mocked, insulted, slandered and intimidated by a news source simply because a journalist is doing his or her job.
     But our best hope for preserving American democracy is when every one of us understands that we have an actual stake in the outcome.
     That’s when we are likely to donate, participate and most importantly, remember to vote.
     Politics works best when they become personal.

 YESTERDAY’S SECOND NO KINGS DAY protest in Rhode Island was both civilized and practical, and, from what I’ve seen and read, the same could have been said for demonstrations throughout the country.
     The Providence protest had a serene, comfortable, at-home feel. Sure, anger and fear drove people to concoct colorful signs, dress up as inflatable creatures, write clever slogans. But they did all of this in a way that made you happy to be among friends, neighbors at a barn-raising, volunteers cleaning up after the flood.
     But numbers absolutely count. It was good that people turned out by the thousands in my state, and by the millions across the nation. The battle for democracy depends on numbers. It’s not enough for one or two of us to vote; what matters is how many millions vote and do so in enough numbers to win.
 
WHY WAS THIS PROTEST SO SUCCESSFUL? On a practical level, at least in our New England neck of the woods, the weather couldn’t have been nicer for mid-October. Temperatures in the 60s, just a whisper of wind, deliciously blue skies. It put you in a mood.
     Further, participants were determined to be peaceful, glad to show how that’s done. And none of this was an accident or unique.
      A relative lives outside Philadelphia, and he wrote me this in an email:

THE ORDER WAS PART of the Supreme Court’s “emergency docket,” in which the orders usually aren’t signed or explained.
     But Kavanaugh decided to give it a try, writing a “concurring” opinion. Whether his fellow conservatives – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – agreed with his reasoning isn't clear, since they wrote nothing. 
     Whether it was her need to counter Kavanaugh’s statement, or the weight of the issues themselves, Sotomayor wrote a dissent, which was signed by fellow liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
     After reading both statements Un-Judge Jones boils things down to two items:
     1. The terms of the Fourth Amendment, which says:

     The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

     2. The meaning of the word “reasonable,” as when it’s okay to “search” or “seize” people suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
     Un-Judge Jones was surprised by one element of the case: Federal law does allow immigration officers to stop and question an “alien’ or “suspected alien” about his or her legal status. But the catch is that an officer has to have a “reasonable suspicion,” based on specific facts, to do so.
     Which is where the troubling profiling questions come in.

PROFILING
     In their writings, the two justices largely agreed that that immigration agents had been using  four factors in their hunt for undocumented immigrants:

• What did immigrant suspects look like, based on their racial and ethnic appearances?
• Did they speak English and, if so, how well?
• What places where undocumented persons  were likely to gather, perhaps looking for work, like a big box store parking lot, a car wash or a bus stop?
  
• What kinds of jobs did  undocumented workers seek, such as landscaping, construction, agriculture and day labor. 

     Kavanaugh writes:

     To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion. Under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.

      So the racial appearance alone isn't sufficient, he said.  But heck, the way  you look, combined with the other factors,  and agents have got a suspicious character.
      Sotomayor  isn't buying that:

     The Government, and now the concurrence (Kavanaugh) has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.

WHATS THE BIG DEAL?
     Kavanaugh describes the stops by immigration agents as being no major problem for those involved,  even people who turned out to have legal status, because, at worst, the stops were momentary inconveniences. He puts it this way:

     If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go. If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiate the process for removal.

     But Sotomayor cites actual examples, including those involving U.S. citizens, that were more brutal and disruptive than Kavanaugh described.

•  Jason Gavidia, “a Latino U.S. citizen,” was working on his car in a tow yard, when a masked agent asked three times whether he was an American, to which he said yes. But when Gavidia couldn’t remember the name of the hospital in which he was born, agents “racked a rifle,” took his phone, pushed him against a fence, and twisted his arm. He was released only when Gavidia produced a REAL identification, (which was not returned to him).
  
• *Jorge Viramontes, a citizen, managed a car wash, which immigrant agents went to four times over nine days. One of those times, an agent refused to accept Viramontes' driver’s license as proof of citizenship and drove him to a “warehouse” for 30 minutes before verifying his status and driving him back to the car wash.

     She describes other incidents of rough treatment: masked agents with guns jumping out of a van and “violently” handling a tamale vendor; armed and masked agents chasing and tackling Latino day laborers at a Home Depot parking lot; agents getting out of a car at a Home Depot lot and tear-gassing a crowd.
     Such activities in “Operation At Large,” have caused “panic and fear” in the city and surrounding communities, she writes, with some people afraid to go to work or pick up their children from school.

BY THE NUMBERS
     Kavanaugh notes that illegal immigration is a huge problem in the U.S., especially in Los Angeles, where he says 10 percent of the population, or 2 million persons, are “illegal immigrants.”

     Not surprisingly, given those extraordinary numbers., U .S. immigration officers have prioritized immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area.

     So having lots of undocumented people around validates the use the four profiling factors to locate and question individuals.
     But it doesn’t take a math wizard to consider the “extraordinary numbers” from a different point of view: that if 10 percent of the LA population is believed to be undocumented, then 90 percent are authorized to be in the U.S. 
     So it’s logical that a good many of the people are being stopped for no good reason.
      Sotomayor says other LA numbers argue against using the profile factors as a way to zero in on illegal immigrants.

     Never mind that nearly 47 percent of the Central District's population identifies as Hispanic or Latino . . . Never mind that over 37 percent of the population of Los Angeles County speaks Spanish at home,and over 55 percent speak at language other than English.

WHAT’S “REASONABLE?”
     In order to stop someone for questioning, Kavanaugh writes, immigration officials must have “a reasonable suspicion” that a person is illegally in the U.S. 
     So, a combination of factors does that job, he says, including  the “high number” of undocumented persons in LA; the belief that undocumented folks “tend to gathering in certain locations;” that “they often work in certain kinds of jobs;” and that many “come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English.” Kavanaugh writes:

     Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal residents in the United States.

     Not so fast, Sotomayor counters.
     It’s not reasonable to suspect individual persons of wrong doing if the factors  “describes a very large category of presumably innocent people,” she writes, quoting previous cases.
     In one past case, Mexican ancestry “alone did not constitute reasonable suspicion to support stops by Border Patrol agents," because large numbers of authorized persons near the border look like people with Mexican backgrounds.
     She says:

     The Fourth Amendment thus prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individual based solely on a set of facts that ‘describes a very large category of presumably innocent’ people.

THE PROPER ROLE OF THE COURT
     Kavanaugh goes to some length to say that he isn’t trying to set immigration policy, just uphold the courts’ role as fair enforcers of the Constitution and the law, as the Supreme Court has done in the past.

 . . . We now likewise must decline to step outside our constitutionally assigned role to improperly restrict reasonable Executive Branch enforcement of the immigration laws.
     Consistency and neutrality are hallmarks of good judging and in my view, we abide by those enduring judicial values in this case by granting the stay.

     But Kavanaugh sure sounds like a policy maven, with strong views on immigration, and not positive ones, noting that "millions" of people are here illegally, and that the big numbers cause a "myriad" of social and economic problems, quoting a previous case.
     Kavanaugh does take a moment to show that he's a nice guy:

     To be sure, I recognize and fully appreciate that many (not all, but many) illegal immigrants come to the United States to escape poverty and the lack of freedom and opportunities in their home countries, and to make better lives for themselves and their families.

     But  he puts on his judicial face, noting sternly that illegal immigrants cause problems for immigrants who are doing things the right way:

     . . . they are not only violating the immigration laws, but also jumping in front of those non-citizens who follow the rules and wait in line to immigrate into the United States through the legal immigration process.

     Sotomayor, on  the other hand, isn't debating immigration policy, but concentrates on the court’s role in enforcing the Constitution and immigration laws.  The District Court’s order banning the profiling factors, she says:

     . . . does not preclude the Government from enforcing the immigration laws, so long as in doing so, it stops individual based on additional facts on top of the four factors listed.

     She writes that actual cases showed that legal as well as undocumented persons suffered, despite Kavanaugh’s assurances that stop were only mildly inconvenienced and that Kavanaugh’s reasoning:

     . . . improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to provide that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.

     She continues with this damning statement:

     Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.

CONCLUSION
      Un-Judge Jones, having read the two opinions, thinks Sotomayor out-classes Kavanaugh, certainly from a debating perspective.
      Kavanaugh trivializes the harm caused to legal citizens, in the frightening nature of the experience of being stopped, in time lost from work and in the sheer worry about being intercepted by immigration officials, with some people feeling the need to carry documents proving their citizenship.
      On the surface, at  Kavanaugh's arguments sound like "common sense," one of the phrases he uses in his opinion, but  actually they seem reckless, leaving citizens unprotected from overbearing government agents.
      If someone looks like an undocumented person, talks like one, shows up in places where undocumented people supposedly frequent and if they perform jobs that many undocumented persons work - well, what the heck, why not? Ignoring the majority of people who fit the profile, but are legal citizens.
       I find Kavanaugh's  sympathy for immigrants, and his professed commitment to judicial impartiality, to be superficial and hypocritical - but that may be unfair to him.
      Sotomayor, on the other hand, seems hard-headed and properly focused on the plain reading of the Fourth Amendment in protecting all of us from improper stops. I also like her emphasis on what happens in actual cases, as opposed to what's supposed to happen. She writes:

     Immigration agents are not conducting "brief stops for questions," as the concurrence would like to believe.   They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence and warehouse detentions.
     Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government's conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.
   
      What jumped out at me was that the ruling on profiling tactics is proably not  about  “illegal immigrants” but about people who are U.S. citizens.
     Sotomayor emphasizes that the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect everyone, and in this case,  thousands of people are being brutalized, many of them legal U.S. citizens.
      Think of profiling in a different context, let's say locating potential assassins.
     The criteria might include factors such as: *gun owners, *registered voters, *young males, *consumers of social media, *people with  valid drivers' licenses, *folks who wear baseball caps, *weirdos who lately have been acting even more strangely than usual,  *video gamers, *guys living in their parents' basements,  and * people who weren't popular in school.
     Rounding up thousands, even millions, of people meeting those criteria might land one or two possible assassins; or, maybe not. But, for sure you'd be bothering lots of innocent people.
        Sadly, though, I don't think words matter all that much in today's Supreme Court
        The ultimate decision, when the profiling case completes the appeals level and returns to the Supreme Court for a final opinion, what's "reasonable" and what's not will depend on the whims of the individual justices.
      And I'm betting the justices have already made up their minds, and they'll dress up their conclusions in courtly, legal language. 
      Then what will matter won't be  words, but numbers.
     Six to three; five to four.
     All of this, of course,is just Un-Judge Jones' opinion.
     He very much would like to be overruled - and surprised - by the nation's highest court.
* * *
NOTE: If you'd like to read the case, here's the PDF that includes the Kavanaugh and Sotomayor opinions.

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE QUIRKY ANIMAL STORIES meant to distract us from the despair and distress of the normal news. And, now, in today's harsh political moment, it's especially welcome.
     The border collie and the crow. The bird and the dog. Fast friends in the grassroots of the American Northwest.
     Maybe you saw the story in last week’s Washington Post.
     A young crow was injured this past June when its nest fell from an 80-foot-tall tree into the backyard of Autumn Buck and her husband, Tedd Simmons, in Portland, Oregon.
     Autumn and Tedd fashioned a homemade nest for the crow, raising it six feet from the ground, and then feeding their young patient typical hospital gruel: mashed bananas and soggy kibble.
     Enter Meeko, the couple’s 5-year-old border collie. With no sheep to superintend, Meeko took charge of recovery nest security, chasing away errant cats and standing guard. 
     The bird – now Christened “Russell” after the actor, Russell Crowe – healed, getting back use of his land legs, then learning fly.
     In the meantime, a bond between bird and dog evolved and matured.
     Russell took to sleeping on Meeko’s tail. 
     They played fetch: somebody would throw a tiny crocheted “cake;” Russell would grab it, then drop it for Meeko to retrieve. Toss Meeko a Frisbee, and Russell raced to get there first. They played “chase.” Together, they greeted the mail carrier. And in their spare time, they just hung out.
     In the morning, the crow, who slept in a chestnut tree, would come to a glass door of the house, persistently pecking at the glass  demanding that Meeko be let out to play.

REALLY? DID THIS HAPPEN? Is the story true? Sound too good?
     Reasonable questions, and mine, too. Autumn Buck, as you can see if you can access the Post  story, supplied the newspaper with bird-dog photo;  and there's even some video of the duo in action.
     But in today’s untamed and unreliable internet, now made even less reliable by fast-evolving artificial intelligence, who knows?
     I’m choosing to believe it. Border collies are protective; crows are among the world's smartest birds.
     But as far as seeing the tale as a cutesy, escapist story, I see it as a modern Aesop’s Fable, a parable about America’s long and continuing aspiration to become a nation for all of us.

GETTING ALONG IS ACTUALLY A BIBLICAL CONCEPT.
      It's that lion lying down with the lamb business. The actual wording is from the Book of Isaiah, 11-6:

     The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

OF COURSE, THERE ARE THE COUNTRY'S FOUNDING DOCUMENTS
     The Declaration of Independence put it this way in 1775:

     We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

THE MOST MOVING AND ENDURING STATEMENT of American unity comes from Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, which, on Aug. 28, 1963, defined the civil rights movement.

     I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
* * *
     I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day, right down in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and
brothers. 
     I have a dream today.

     A little more than four years later, King was assassinated, perhaps as much as punishment and rejection for his vision, as from the impact of his murder’s bullet.

ANOTHER MAN NAMED KING took up the theme more that two decades later.
     Rodney Glen King wondered why people from different backgrounds and viewpoints couldn’t see eye to eye.
     King had been stopped by Los Angeles police for drunk driving and was videotaped as he was savagely beaten. Officers were charged, never convicted, and that outcome produced six days of riots, in which 63 people were killed.
     On May 1, 1992, Rodney King made a TV appeal that the rioting stop:
     
     I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?
* * *
     It's just not right, because those people will never go home to their families again. And, I mean, please, we can, we can get along here. We all can get along. We just gotta. We gotta. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's, you know, let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it, you know. Let's try to work it out. 

     Rodney King, who had confronted substance abuse throughout his life, drowned in his swimming pool in 2012, his death ruled accidental,  with drugs and alcohol said to be contributing factors.

THE UNITY THEME WAS PICKED UP AGAIN, when Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston, July 27, 2004.
     In his version of a common community, Obama rejected political, racial and cultural divisions.

     . . .  there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America.
     There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America. 
     The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. 
     But I've got news for them, too: We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States, and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States. 

     The speech propelled Obama into the presidency, the first person of color to hold the nation’s highest office.     Obama served two terms, from 2009 to 2017. And it seemed as if Obama’s vision and those of the two Kings and of the Bible’s prophets, and  of  the Founders, finally had been realized.
     My opinion is the opposite – that America could not countenance a Black man in the White House, and savagely, that formed the basis for Donald Trump, a racist, to be elected president. Twice.
     Trump, a man of unbounded hatred, now is tearing the country to pieces by setting all of us apart – Black, White, girl, boy, liberal, conservative, red state, blue state, rich, poor, college graduate, high school graduate, urban, rural, Native American, immigrant American.
     Never have we been more divided since the Civil war, and maybe the divisions today are even deeper than during a period when our differences were so profound: slave versus free man/woman. 
     But I also think the prophecy, the dream, the vision, the plea for unity will live on until they become a fact, in practice as well as in principle. 
     We can get along. Our superficial differences do not define us. At a time of environmental collapse, in fact, we creatures have the same interest in our mutual survival, and more in common, than our remarkable differences.
     I mean, if the bird and the dog, the collie and the crow,  can do it, why can't the rest of us do the same?

     Trump eventually, maybe sooner than eventually, will try to militarize more Democratic cities.
     Trump will try to use that militarization to quell protests.
     Trump will try to use facilities created for deportable immigrants to lock up national security risk protesters.
     Trump will try use the Internet, AI and so forth to track what we write, what we read, what we say, and criminalize all three.
     Which is why it is so important to keep speaking out, to go to rallies and protests, to support the John Boltons, the Kilmar Garcias and  the Chris Christies, not because we like them, but because, like them, we are all at the same risk of a government under control of a criminal-at-the-top.
      The only way to bring an end to the Epoch of Misery is for people of good will to bring it to an end. I don’t know how, don’t know exactly what to do. I can’t tell you what will work and what won’t.
     It’s not an easy fight. But it’s ours. 

BECAUSE WHAT WAS I EVEN DOING HERE? I thought of Colin McEnroe, the Connecticut Public Radio host who on his Monday call-in show said he thinks there are “too many protests, frankly.” Asked by a caller to expand, he said he fears they’re becoming “background noise.” 
     “In West Hartford,” he noted, “there’s a bunch of people who protest every Saturday morning, every single Saturday morning. That’s fine, and good on them, and God bless all those guys in their gray ponytails. I think at a certain level that’s good.”
      (The “gray ponytails” crack struck me as a little mean, but there’s no denying that our Resistance movement does trend older. “I never thought at my age I’d be protesting again,” said a 74-year-old woman on the corner with me. But that’s an essay for another day.)
     McEnroe praised, by contrast, the “really effective” No Kings protest of a few weeks earlier, the wildly popular nationwide one that coincided with Trump’s bust of a birthday military parade.
     He shared an anecdote about a particularly heartbreaking situation, in which a woman declined to seek medical treatment for fear of bankrupting her family, and he mused that maybe protests can somehow be joined to educating the public -- “and then maybe when you’ve learned a few new things, you can think more about what your next protest would be…so it’ll be a sonic boom instead of a pop gun.”
     Like myself, and unlike my optimistic friend Phoebe, McEnroe despairs of MAGA types ever changing their minds, because “people’s existential identity is wrapped up in their hatred of the other side.” 
     That’s true. I barely recognize myself wearing this new existential identity.
And as with the most primitive forms of reptilian consciousness, McEnroe went on, it would “go against survival” to concede the merest point to the enemy.
     That’s true, too. And it is about survival.
     Survival of the country, survival of our personal happiness, our peace of mind, our ability, even willingness, to get along with one another, our hope in the future. That’s what’s so at risk.
     So. Will I drag my sorry-ass self and my sign back onto the sidewalk, where people will very likely annoy me, next week and the week after that for the next three and a half years? I guess I will. Because short of voting the bums out in the midterms, what else can I do?
     My friend Patty thinks I’m playing into MAGA’s hands by being ready to give up because of the unrelenting bad news out of Washington and two unpleasant encounters. My crankiness, she said, is blinding me to the loveliness of the protests, the new friends made, and the sense of solidarity, all of which does us good.
     Plus, “it’s exposure,” said another fellow protester over the encouraging honking of horns, “and any exposure we can provide – everything’s needed now.”

* * *
Maria Johnson lives with her husband in Middletown, Conn., where she paints, writes, and, okay, protests.

 

A COMMENTATOR to my previous post, D. Neale Adams, (See it below) noted that I overstated the case in asserting that Lee Pelton speaks for all  campus officials in rationalizing a devil's bargain with Trump. 
     Adams is right - the academic barrel is not completely rotten, and, in fact, I had planned today's Roth interview as a follow up and contrast to Pelton.
     What led to my exaggeration is the worry that unless enough campus institutions fight back as a group, Trump-the-bully will have a greater chance of success. I should be more careful as a writer - as should the campus quislings.
     In short, bullies can be beaten - but only if enough would-be victims stand up to them.
     As the cliche/ slogan goes ( not necessarily from Ben Franklin):
     'We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.'

The following links were used in preparation of this post:

• https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-columbias-settlement-with-the-trump-administration-means-for-higher-education
• https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/31/metro/shameful-students-alumni-say-brown-deal-with-trump-administration-disrespects-trans-students/