Wish My New Meme Would Go Viral

I was inspired by the Pedophile-In-Chief's demolition of the People's House for another of his fools-gold monuments to himself. 

 

CRITICAL SASS – Resistance and the 3.5% Engagement Rule

Here we are at a critical juncture in the history of our Democracy, where the dire threat to our cherished way of life cannot be denied. And we know exactly what and who we’re up against. 

It’s an aggressively insecure, temperament-of-a-two-year-old, wannabe dictator, enabled by an ignorant, vengeful constituency and a cadre of suck-ups in Congress. Together, they’re throwing a tantrum that’s brought our country to its knees. 

ILLUSTRATION: Violet de Torres

How do we stand up to such outrage? Stop this monster from cheating and intimidating his way to total fascist control.

By now we know very well the Crimbecile’s M.O. Among 
his tactics—drilled into him by his ruthless father and other mentors in megalomania—is, whenever challenged, you “double down.” Accuse others of the crime you’re about to commit. Counter criticism with twice the criticism; one lawsuit with two; threats of justice with promises of ruin.

It’s easy and, I guess, entirely human for rational people to 
respond to such aggressiveness defensively. It’s like someone’s broken into our home and is headed for our kids’ bedroom. Not the time for a measured response; not the time for reason. 

So, folks, we take the offensive. Fight fire with fire. And here’s how we do it: we launch our own doubling-down assault. 

        What does “engaging” that many 
        people look like?

THREE-POINT-FIVE TO TURN THE TIDE
For those of us not savvy to the workings of political influence, lacking the resources to purchase the ear of our Congressperson, and not comfortable with door knocking, the best way to go after a tyrant is to simply show up with our voices and placards in a good old-fashioned street protest.

PHOTO: Madison Badger Herald – Lizzy Larson

But protests don’t even start worrying corrupt politicians until they reach a critical mass. And what is that threshold? Research by the Carr Center's Erica Chenoweth posits that “No government can withstand a challenge of 3.5% of its population without either accommodating the movement or (in extreme cases) disintegrating.” *

So…three questions. First: what is 3.5% of the US population? A bit more than 12,000,000 of us.

Second: What does “engaging” that many people look like? I know of no better way than persuading them to take it to the streets.

Third: What will it take to reach that pivotal threshold? Every single one of us bearing witness to what our eyes and ears—and history—warn us is a full-on rush to fascism by the Trump regime. Each and every American who values freedom responding to the alarm. 

The good news is that we’re well on our way! 

  Imagine being part of the absolutely stupefying 
  crowds taking to the streets that day.

WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER VOTE
The nationwide No Kings protests on June 14, 2025 saw somewhere between 4,000,000 and 6,000,000 Americans taking to the streets in 2,100 cities and towns coast to coast.

As impressive as it was to be among the multitude of protesters in St. Paul that day, I recall my clear-as-day reaction when I turned around and got my first good look at the size of the crowd: We’re going to have to at least double this…and maybe double it again.

So that’s the vision I’m promoting. At least 8,000,000 Americans showing up Saturday, October 18 to defy the goose-stepping thugs gutting our democratic institutions. A loud, clear, unified rejection of Trump’s reckless push to consolidate power.

What can each of us do to make October 18, 2025 the date history will come to recognize as the turning point in America’s rejection of fascism? First of all, we must simply imagine it, imagine being part of the absolutely stupefying crowds taking to the streets that day.

The we must talk it up, promote it on social media, make signs, include appeals in our email signatures, bring friends and neighbors with us to the event…and anything else we can think of to make our vision real.

For my own part, I take inspiration from the courage of that iconic—yet still-unidentified—Chinese man who stood up to a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989. We can do this!

PHOTO: New York Times

* From a BBC.com article by David Robson – 13 May, 2019

GUNS – IN DEFENSE AGAINST OR OF TYRANNY

The main argument behind some Americans’ militant defense of their right to bear arms is that the Second Amendment of The Constitution guarantees it.

They insist that one intent of that amendment was to enable citizens to protect themselves in the event of a tyrannical government—a debatable interpretation.

At any rate, how ironic that these gun nuts' justification of this country's firearms glut (now easily outnumbering citizens, and including assault-style weapons designed for military use) has taken a U-turn.

The outrageous personal arsenal excused for so long by MAGA extremists and the NRA as a defense against a potential rogue government, has now become a military asset in their defense of a rogue government. 

We tolerate these zealots, this misguided crusade, at our great peril. Since appeals to their reason, emotion and even basic human decency fall on deaf ears, they must be beaten with our protests and at the polls.

Let’s get busy!

BACK TO THE FUTURE – Clear Signs of What's To Come

Can you imagine, given the 20/20 clarity of hindsight, the mindset of the fair-minded, charitable folks who comprised the tepid early opposition during the ascension to power of despots? Think the Soviet Union, Italy or Germany in the early 1920s, Spain in the early 30's, and later Russia, Egypt, Venezuela, Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria...the list goes on. 

PHOTO COMPOSITE: Metro

All these places ended up as electoral autocracies,* brutal dictatorships of which few Americans were even aware.

Do you think those kind people who let such outrages happen were saying, "Hey, we can't let our political differences over Chavez divide us," or "We need to have a civil dialog with those on Abacha's side," or "Everyone's opinion is valid, even that of our Landsleute who support Hitler."

Did those troubled by political winds of change really believe they had to consider—or at least tolerate—their poor, aggrieved compatriots' claims? "He may be obnoxious, but we like his policies," or "This guy's going to rid us of 'vermin'."

And, once it became clear what their compatriots' righteous indignation had wrought, how much worse than simply "obnoxious" things had become, could anyone have admitted just how badly they'd been duped? 

That, folks, is where we are in 2025 in the United States of America. Our country, this exemplar of Democracy, this beacon of hope to the oppressed, has elected as its leader (for the second time) an aggressively insecure con man without a single redeeming quality. A man easily played by the flattery of present day dictators—and of our own country's shrewdest oligarchs—who has promised exactly how he intends to dismantle democratic institutions.

PHOTO: Vanity Fair

       We know this man...and we know history. 

WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE
Since the Trump catastrophe started playing out in his first term I've imagined a tactic which, at least on its surface, seems it should work when trying to communicate with someone who believes such a charlatan deserves a chance. It goes like this: I start by acknowledging the person's beliefs—and if I'm having a good day I might even concede a couple of style points.

But then I ask them exactly what words, deeds and results from the man they support might cause them to start questioning that support. I suspect they might have trouble imagining such developments, but I press. What about if he disparaged veterans? Like shaming US soldiers who "allowed themselves" to be captured as prisoners of war.

What if he declared Jesus Christ a loser for having gotten caught and crucified? What about the Epstein files finally coming to light and showing he was a steady client of Sweet-16-Girls-R-Us? 

What about someone finally defeating the Ft. Knox-like impregnability around his academic transcripts? Or the "bone spurs" diagnosis that helped him dodge military service five times? Or his tax returns? 

Oh, hell, those are all softball questions. How about these: What if sound evidence emerged that Trump is actually working for Vladimir Putin? Or if someone caught him on a hot mic ridiculing folks stupid enough to vote for him?

AFRAID AROUND THE EDGES
Okay, you get where I'm going with this. Not one of these gaffes—screw-ups that would prove career-ending for any American in any profession—seems to matter in the slightest to Donald Trump's hard-core MAGA base. They, with considerable coaching from their esteemed leader, have made themselves immune to any ideas, any facts, any information but that spoon-fed them by Trump and his de facto state media. 

I know, I should know better than to imagine the perfect squelch to make these folks suddenly realize the error of their ways. At least the most ardent of them.

PHOTO: Shutterstock

But how about those few tentative supporters who might be starting to wonder, even just a little, about their Supreme Leader's qualifications and judgement? Is there any chance at all that some of these troubling realities—the kind so skillfully eclipsed by the banner of fear and grievance authoritarians have always raised—might see the light of day?  

The challenges to such doubts grow more formidable every day: the Crimbecile has relentlessly cast doubt on the democratic institutions—including free and fair elections—that have traditionally protected Democracy. He's purged career professionals who choose integrity over blind allegiance. 

He's ensured that any Congressperson who questions him is summarily "primaried" out of the job. He's coerced his base to abandon legitimate news media. He's bought and paid for the Supreme Court...I could go on.

        I must use the modest tools I have 
        to defy this loathsome little man.
 
SHOVEL VERSUS PEN
Alas, if only my right-leaning countrymen and women were not so afraid of history, if they could see the devastation the enabling of despots like theirs has always, always wrought. We cannot let that happen again.  

PHOTO: The White House

So...what to do? Do we, like those magnanimous citizens who accommodated other dictators, wring our liberal-elite hands and keep choosing the high road, while this egomaniacal charlatan's busy dig-
ging a tunnel under us and everything we believe in? Or do we heed the lessons of history, take the gloves off and fight to take away the shovel?

Since he's figured out how to Krazy-Glue that shovel to his tiny hands, maybe I can at least try to block his digging. I know I have only slightly more influence than the average Joe Sixpack Trump's counting on to love his worst failings. But I must use the modest tools I do have to 
defy this loathsome little man.

So I write. I submit opinion pieces to the media. I put defiant posts on Facebook. I talk to friends and family members. I make signs and placards. I stand in public protest with my like-minded compatriots.

I beg you: please don't be patient with the first American dictator. Don't think Let's give him a chance. Don't assume the system will somehow rein him in. We know this man and we know history.

Please don't believe the promises of a pathological liar. Don't hope a man who's selfishness is legendary will somehow have the slightest concern for you. Don't buy the patriot pose from a man who dodged the draft and who's repeatedly disparaged and dishonored our veterans. Don't buy the Bible bit from a deeply immoral convicted felon. Don't expect a shyster who's never once achieved legitimate success to suddenly succeed at leading a nation.

Join me in defying this aggressively insecure little fool. Find a way to speak out, and then do it. And keep doing it! 
And join me as we hit the streets in the next nationwide NoKings! protest on Saturday, October 18.

Roughly 5,000,000 of us showed up back in April. We must aim for nothing less than doubling that turnout! 

* “Popular Dictatorships: Crises, Mass Opinion, and the Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism,” by Aleksandar Matovski – assistant professor in the Naval Post-Graduate School's Department of National Security Affairs

LETHAL LUNACY – The Death Toll of Donald Trump’s Madness

There are many ways one might measure Donald J. Trump’s performance as President of the United States of America: Campaign promises kept versus broken. Percentage of documented truths versus lies told. Health and growth of the economy. Standard of living for average Americans. Number of indictments and convictions. Number of staffers and cabinet members facing criminal charges. Billions added to the national debt. I could go on…

But there is another measure, one not yet cited by the media, but which the judgement of history will surely employ, of this beastly little man. 

The death toll.

With the threat of full-blown fascism looming on our own soil, we simply cannot afford to wait for that reckoning. 

ILLUSTRATION – Stable Diffusion

Trump has already inflicted a malignancy on our country and the world. One which, for want of early, aggressive treatment, is strangling freedom and relegating this once-noble nation quite rapidly to third-world status. 

The urgency, the gravity, of the threat facing our precious Democracy—and our essential humanity— demands our immediate attention. One can only pray it’s not too late.

The gravity of the threat facing our precious Democracy—and our essential humanity— demands our immediate attention. 

COVID? WHAT COVID?
Death tolls can be difficult to determine. Just ask any public official trying to assess the impact of a natural disaster or epidemic. Seldom is there a simple stack of bodies to count. Not everyone succumbs at the same time. Some suspected victims may have died from unrelated causes. Some are collateral damage, dying months or years later from complications of the original horror. Some victims are never found.

So for Trump’s reckoning let’s start with one of the easier tallies, that of deaths attributed to his regime’s utter failure to manage the original COVID pandemic. In the U.S. alone the estimates vary from around 100,000 “unnecessary deaths” to 400,000 and more.* One thing’s certain: it’s a big number.

Then there’s the wider, global impact of the Crimbecile’s ham-fisted stabs at public health crisis management. His denials of COVID 19’s very existence. His ridiculing of vaccines. His withdrawal from the WHO and cessation of funding for USAID. His purging—just yesterday—of CDC Director, Susan Monarez, who dared stand up for the truth about vaccines. 

These blunders will eventually kill millions of human beings—starting, as all such affronts seem to, with the poorest.

THE KILLING FIELDS
So, that’s just the count for one front in this moron’s deadly assaults on Democracy and decency. The Trump death toll is already mounting in nearly every sphere of the human condition. 

There are just so many failings that tracking them is exhausting (part of the guy’s M.O., by the way). But here’s my—this non-statistician’s—bullet-point outline of the killing, both current and projected.

~ THE ENVIRONMENT
Trump wasted no time abdicating the US’s already-timid environmental-science leadership, dropping out, in his first term, of the Paris Climate Agreement, the world’s best hope for progress in combatting climate change.

Meanwhile, of more than 600 reported extreme weather events in 2024, 148 were classified as “unprecedented,” displacing 824,000 people and killing about 1,700.

PHOTO – Jesse Winter, Reuters

His long-asserted denials of human-caused climate change, his scuttling of institutions charged with monitoring and regulating environmental impacts, and his alignment with corporations and the billionaire buddies who finance him are already killing people—thousands and thousands of them—through natural disasters, polluted air and water, and unsafe working conditions. 

According to Google’s AI overview of vast amounts of data, global deaths attributable to extreme weather events average 40,000 to 50,000 people per year. So, a rough estimate for the years since 2017, when Trump decided climate change wasn’t sexy enough for him, totals roughly 315,000 deaths.

I’ll leave it to you to approximate how many of those lives could have been spared if Trump had exerted any leadership whatsoever. Whatever the tally, it will surely climb precipitously, as global climate change surges past the tipping point long forewarned by climate scientists.

       His deep-seated appetite for flattery represents 
       a green light to our enemies’ ambitions. 

~ FOREIGN POLICY

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Trump’s fawning support of Russian and Israeli warmonger tyrants is nothing short of evil. Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine War death toll is nearing half a million—some 13,500 of those innocent civilians. In Gaza, over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed to date. Countless more deaths from starvation and disease are on the horizon as Netanyahu, with Trump’s complicity, pursues his thinly-veiled genocidal goal.

What’s more, Trump’s defunding of the Agency for International Development (USAID) and disengagement from the World Health Organization (WHO) are invitations for further aggression around the world, amounting to a virtual death sentence for countless victims. 

~ NATIONAL SECURITY
Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, his politicization of intelligence and his purging of career officials he’s deemed disloyal have hobbled our national security endeavors. He’s methodically sabotaged time-honored alliances with even our closest friends and neighbors. 

His renouncement of America’s iconic generosity of spirit, his clumsy “America First” mantra, his embarrassing antics on the world stage, and his deep-seated appetite for flattery all represent green lights to our enemies’ ambitions. 

PHOTO: Getty Images

Debacles like this inevitably lead to wars…and countless more deaths.

~ DOMESTIC TERRORISM
Unconscionably, Trump has pardoned at least 1,500 members of his MAGA cult who'd been charged with deadly crimes during the January 6 insurrection. Projecting his persecution complex, the felon-in-chief has also pardoned at least five convicted murderers.**

PHOTO – Newsweek

He’s also granted clemency to many individual and corporate fraudsters, tax cheats, anti-abortion activists, corrupt politicians and elections officials—virtually anyone who’s committed crimes abetting his own personal and political crimes. 

By endorsing domestic terrorism perpetrated in his name, while at the same time clamping down on anyone—including peaceful demonstrators—who dare defy him, he sets the stage for more violence and death. 

     Trump’s assault on immigrants—many of them here 
     legally—has subjected families to unbelievable suffering.

~ AIRLINE SAFETY
Trump’s decimating of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) staffing and budgets, including DOGE’s dull-edge slashing of Air Traffic Control staffing, have already impacted the safety of flying, leading, some charge, to 67 fatalities in last January’s mid-air collision near Reagan National Airport. Many more deaths are inevitable.

~ IMMIGRATION

PHOTO - Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times

Trump’s outrageous assault on immigrants—many of them here legally—has subjected families to unbelievable suffering. And those arrested—often by unidentified ICE goons in unmarked vehicles with no probable cause nor legal recourse for suspects—face abhorrent conditions whose 2025 death toll (14 so far) has already surpassed that of 2024. ***

Internment of those arrested in a rapidly-growing number of ICE prisons (like the already infamous Alligator Alcatraz), and deportations to Gulags in countries like Uganda, where defendants have no family or cultural ties amount to virtual “disappearances.” 

The death toll from abuse, neglect, murder and, most certainly, suicide, will be, by design, obscure.

~ GUN VIOLENCE 

PHOTO - The Telegraph

Donald Trump staunchly rejects any limits on the possession and use of firearms. (Interesting, since because he’s a convicted felon, Trump currently cannot legally possess a gun.) Even though he claims to have been targeted in two assassination attempts, he boasts to his gun-toting, Billy-Bob groupies that he’s “done nothing” about the national glut of weapons. 

Every day, 125 people in the United States are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded. ****

That’s approximately 45,000 Americans shot to death annually, including hundreds who are victims of mass shootings (the latest just yesterday here in Minneapolis). Though hard to quantify, a significant percentage of these deaths must be called what they are: collateral damage from Trump’s acquiescence to the powerful gun lobby.

~ CIVIL RIGHTS
Donald Trump is expropriating state and local policing authority at an alarming pace. It’s all under the very thin guise of public safety, but what it really is is building his regime’s ability to quickly quell protest. He just recently declared the deployments—in Washington DC, Los Angeles and Chicago so far—are to quash “civil disturbances.” 

PHOTO – David Swanson - Reuters

No one doubts what that means. I and all freedom-loving Americans must now realize that, as we take to the streets, we’re putting our very lives on the line ! There will be casualties.

        His infantile, Monopoly-game take on war 
        and diplomacy puts our military at great risk.

~ CONSUMER PROTECTION
Trump’s removal of Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and other consumer protection regulations, staffing and budgets will subject Americans once again to the very abuses those entities were established to rein in. 

The halfwit’s consistent siding with corporate interests—including his own—over those of consumers will cost lives, from both the public health and product safety effects.

~ VETERANS AFFAIRS
Veterans of the U.S. military are committing suicide at an alarming rate of over 1,600 annually—that’s 17 deaths per day in the United States.***** 

Trump—the confirmed draft-dodger—has consistently disparaged our county’s esteemed military veterans and their families. 

PHOTO - @GovCox / X

Adding to the insult, he continues to trivialize our national honor—not to mention putting our military at great risk—with his infantile, Monopoly-game take on war and diplomacy. Not to mention his obvious admiration of despots who are our country’s sworn enemies. 

The cost of such contempt, such weakness? Still more lives.

~ HEALTH
Starting with Trump’s foolhardy cuts at CDC, NIH, NSF and other public health programs and agencies, his regime appears determined to address America’s public health crises as it has other challenges: if not by denial, then by voodoo medicine.

As elsewhere in his administration, Trump has jettisoned all public health experience, competence and reason in favor of rank hacks whose only qualification is loyalty—like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his Secretary of Health Human Services, an avowed anti-vaxer and conspiracy-theorist wacko.

Discrediting proven, life-saving vaccines; scuttling health and wellness initiatives; promoting unproven folk remedies; wholesale cuts to HIV/AIDS research and prevention funding; systematic dismantling of the nation’s capacity for dealing with the inevitable next pandemic… 

While such reckless incompetence in confronting COVID alone killed hundreds of thousands, it’s no stretch to say the toll for the whole health-care calamity wrought by the Crimbecile on this and future generations could number in the millions.

          A kind assessment would call him an amoral 
          hyper-capitalist; a less charitable one, a fascist. 

~ POLITICS
Donald Trump is an insurrectionist, a traitor. He’s a bigot. A sexual predator. A pathological liar, manipulator and con man of the first order.

A kind assessment would rate him an amoral hyper-capitalist; a less charitable one, a fascist. 

It’s not just his own values and behavior that are deadly. His entire political identity rests on validating his MAGA base’s worst instincts. While they elected him to be their hit man on immigrants, minorities, women, GLBTQ folks and the poor, they’re emboldened to be his assassins too.

The victims: the Capitol Police officers who died from injuries and later suicides stemming from the Trump-instigated Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection; the peaceful protesters mowed down in Charlottesville by a white-supremacist neo-Nazi; the 22 innocents shot and killed by an aggrieved anti-immigration terrorist in El Paso; Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota legislator, and her husband assassinated by a pro-Trump, anti-abortion political extremist.

PHOTO - Ryan M. Kelly, The Daily Progress

Make no mistake, there will be more carnage from Trump’s implied consent of racist, anti-Democracy, neo-Nazi and religious-fanatic violence.

TIME WILL TELL
I’ll say it again. Calculating death tolls is hard, even for statisticians. So my wild reckonings here serve merely to account for general categories of causes and the rough scale of their effects. 

What is not difficult to assess is the extent of the responsibility Donald J. Trump must bear for whatever those effects. His willful ignorance, his emotional retardation, his megalomania, are killing people…lots of people. And only future historians—if any are still allowed to tell the truth—will quantify the carnage.

*  Michael Riordan – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - September 30, 2020 
    Lancet Commission on Public Policy - February 11, 2021

** Full List of Donald Trump Pardons During His Second Term - Newsweek - May 28, 2025

*** U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website

**** “Gun Violence In America” - Everytown Research - November 7, 2024

***** Rand - May 22, 2025

OUCH! – Reaching Folks On the Fence About ConDon

On Memorial Day morning I joined a small—maybe 120 people—“NoKings” protest along the Ford Bridge here in Minneapolis/St. Paul. 

It felt good to be among like-hearted folks, and I was taken by the range of regime-change themes expressed on their mostly-hand-made signs: education, immigration, labor, Nature, veterans…

Most interesting, though, was the response of those driving by our little gathering. I’d say about 70 percent either honked their horns, gave thumbs up or at least waved cheerfully. Fewer than ten percent gave thumbs down or middle fingers up.

As encouraging as those numbers were, it’s the remaining 20 percent or so that really got me thinking. Those, I realized in a bolt of clarity, are the reason we’re out here. 

     The chances of them falling on our side of the knife 
     are looking better. We must make sure it's a soft landing.

IMAGE: FreePik

THE KNIFE’S EDGE
All those hand gestures, whether pro or con, were by 
people who already know where they stand. The crystal 
clarity of the Crimbecile’s depravity is a knife’s edge; 
you’re either on the side of competence and decency or 
you’re not. None these expressive types is going to 
change their mind.

Those passersby who remained mute, well, we don’t know what they were thinking. Some, I’d like to think, are kind, generous, patriotic Democrats; others, kind, generous, patriotic Republicans. Either way, perhaps they’re just shy. 

Maybe, just maybe, a few of them are right on that knife’s edge. And I daresay, given ConDon’s increasingly unhinged behavior, the indisputable failure of his wild stabs at economic reform, and his slipping poll numbers, the chances of them falling on our side of the knife are looking better and better. We must make sure it's a soft landing.

That’s why we must keep showing our colors, speaking truth. 

      

YEARNING FOR RELIEF
Let’s understand: Feeling aggrieved, blaming the bleeding-heart liberals, hating and fearing what they’re being told they should hate and fear, realizing they’ve bet on a pitiful little con man as their champion…it’s all exhausting. I believe that these folks—the ones on the edge—are hurting and actually yearn for relief from having to be against everything. They’d prefer, once again, to be for something.

Our challenge is to craft the message, paint the image, of what that relief looks and feels like. 

Contact your elected representatives; write an opinion piece for your newspaper; share your views on social media. And, please, show up for one of the nationwide No Kings* protests near you—coming up on Saturday, June 14. See you there!

* For more information about the No Kings marches and main sponsor Indivisible, visit: INDIVISIBLE.ORG