STARS, STRIPES AND BULLSHIT – Reclaiming Our Country’s Venerated Symbols

Fascist governments are about control, often brutal control. But one of their slightly subtler grabs is always that of their country’s venerated symbols. 

The wannabe dictator of the United States of America, Donald Trump, wasted no time in checking this theft off of his to-screw list.

BLEEDING COLORS
Our flag, the good ol’ Stars and Stripes, was already well on its way into the grubby hands of the folks on whose grievances Trump rode to the presidency. Think the Boogaloo Bois, the Christian Nationalist Crusade or just good ol’ Billy Bob freelancin’ in his flag-bedecked, gun-racked pickup. 

IMAGE: Eric Gay / AP

Everyone with a beef—or who feared others might steal their beef—wanted us all to think their hissy-fit “patriotism” was somehow sanctioned by their flag-waving.

Trump, their self-declared gift from God, has done nothing but solidify that hold on the flag. The image of Old Glory waving, alongside the Confederate flag, as a battle standard of the January 6 Insurrection will sicken truly patriotic Americans for generations.

IMAGE: Brent Stirton / Getty Images

        The draft-dodger president thinks he can suddenly grow 
        a pair by slapping his name all over U.S. military assets.

ROAR AND PEACE
Speaking of battle, this draft-dodger president thinks he can suddenly grow a pair by slapping his name all over U.S. military assets, many of them having long evincing our nation’s proud military supremacy.

In one of the most absurd ironies of Trump’s absurd reign, at the same time he’s been obsessed with begging, borrowing or stealing the Nobel Peace Prize, he’s also hijacked the Department of Defense and renamed it his very own “Department of War.” And now he's branded a whole class of U.S. Navy battleships as—you guessed it—the Trump Class.

HOLY CRAP
Then there’s the Bible—a book somewhere between ten and twenty percent of Americans truly abide by—and which holds no special place in our church/state-separated Democracy. Yet most of Trump’s MAGA base claim it as their license to hate. 

Trump has them believing he lives and breathes the Bible, that somewhere in those pages he’s actually discovered a mandate for his egomania, cruelty and rage. This even as he refuses to put his hand on the volume in his last inauguration; even as he hawks his own Trump-branded version of the Good Book at 60 bucks a pop.

PHOTO: Patrick Semansky / AP

             The Oval Office now sports an aesthetic better suited 
             to the tastes of the Real Housewives of Las Vegas.

A ROCOCO HELLSCAPE
Next, it was the White House—the People’s House—which this egomaniac has deemed less than representative of his grandeur. So he’s demolished the venerable East Wing to make room for his ghastly 90,000-square-foot, $400,000,000-plus ballroom, an eyesore that will dwarf what remains of the White House.

PHOTO: POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Trump has turned the Oval Office, long the epitome of elegance, exuding quiet confidence to visiting heads 
of state from every corner of the world, into a space better suited to the tastes of the Real Housewives of Las Vegas. As if afraid of blank wall space—or, God forbid, paintings of America’s true greats—Trump has slapped on gaudy gold flourishes some describe as “polyurethane onlays you could buy online” and a "gilded Rococo hellscape.”

And the Kenne…oops, did I almost mention that loser, John F. Kennedy?…Trump Center for the Performing Arts. He’s installed himself as board chair and foisted 
a multi-million-dollar re-make to his own insipid specs. It’s such a monumental affront to cultured Americans that the only acts likely to stoop that low will be Lee Greenwood and Kid Rock.

       We’re not just fighting against something; we’re fighting 
       for a vision of our country’s Post-Trump Renaissance.

A LUMINOUS VISION
As we witness the Trump shit show unraveling—and there are encouraging signs it’s happening—we must not let up on our defiance of this charlatan and his outlaw regime. Let’s be disciplined. Watch our language. Reject Dear Leader’s desperate distractions from his crimes—especially those whose exposure he fears most. Among them the ones laid bare in the unredacted Epstein files. 

We aim for nothing less than a blue tsunami come the midterm elections in November. 

As we work to turn the tide, we must also keep in mind that we’re not just fighting against something; we’re fighting for a vision of our country’s Post-Trump Renaissance. The return of decency, kindness, intelligence, honor, respect for truth, courageous leadership…and a renewed quest not for fools-gold illusions of greatness, but the true, gold-standard greatness that has defined the United States of America since our singular experiment in Democracy began 250 years ago.  

One vital aspect of that renewal must be to reclaim our once-revered national symbols from their debasement at the hands of this vulgar reality star. It will take at least a generation and billions of dollars—money that could have been invested in better lives for all Americans, not corporations and the filthy rich—to strip those icons’ of their spray-paint veneers and "Trump" epithets, and restore them to their accustomed roles representing both America’s celebrated history and our glorious, big-hearted, evolving future.

Let us all vow to nurture and to share that luminous vision.

PHOTO: Nigel Francis 

RISK, SCHMISK! – The Rote Recklessness of Donald Trump

A Jan. 5 page-one article in the Minnesota Star Tribune, “With (his sudden annexation of) Venezuela, Trump is diving into a new era of risk,” begs the question: what is this troubled little man’s grasp of risk?

The whole notion of risk hinges on the possibility that something might go wrong. But Trump, since childhood, has been taught—by his father, by Roy Cohn and other mentors of ruthlessness—that, if you employ certain techniques, mistakes are, if not impossible, never yours. 

    No consequences, no risk. It’s all pure rote.

A BLOODY WAKE
You do whatever you want. If you’re caught breaking the law, you vow it never happened. If that doesn’t work, you blame the thing that never happened on someone else. If they fight back, you double down. If threats fail, you sic your lawyers on them. 

IMAGE: Harvard Gazette

Should your legal thugs lose, you appeal. And you keep appealing until your case ends up before a judge you’ve bought and paid for. If 
it's a political lackey turning on you, you either fire, libel or “primary” them out of a job.

No consequences, no risk. It’s all pure rote. 

The scheme has worked for Trump his whole life. His business misadventures have left a bloody wake of folks holding the legal and financial bag for his mistakes. His personal life—think infidelity, sexual predation, slander, whatever—is also Teflon-coated. (Even his family members have all signed NDAs.)

PHOTO: France 24

A PERILOUS GAMBLE
Not even when he parlays his charade into the presidency of the United States has the man ever had to live with the results of his reckless, ego-driven actions. Why would his playbook for that role be any different from that which has guided his entire life?

One of the most powerful men in the world with no morals, no conscience, no accountability, no soul. Where’s the risk in that? I assure you, it is not on Donald Trump. And if this doesn’t compel you to take constructive political action, it should.

IMAGE: Shutterstock

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

WELL, YOU NEVER ASKED – Trump’s Shameful Failure of Expectation

One would be perfectly justified in blaming Donald Trump for the outrageous things he does—or the tremendous amount of good he could do but won’t. But these are, for Trump and his ilk, just the bright shiny objects they dangle to lure the attention of an undisciplined media and of gullible folks with lots of rage and short attention spans.

The least-appreciated failing of this near-total failure of a president is not his behavior, his policies—more like childish impulses—his corruption, his pathological lying, his lack of civility, nor even his outrageous immorality. Everyone knows these faults.

No, Donald Trump’s most under-condemned failure as a leader is how little he’s expected—of himself, of others, of us, the citizens of this great and good nation.

   

LIVING DOWN TO EXPECTATION
Healthy, functioning social entities, be they nations, communities, businesses or families, ask something of their constituents. Sometimes a lot.

They ask folks to balance their personal freedoms and wants with the welfare of the group. They needn’t see eye to eye on everything, but they do agree on a constructive, civil process for resolving those differences.

In a democracy it’s just assumed that citizens make small sacrifices for the common good. We pay taxes; we share our time, talents and resources; we abide by laws ensuring no one causes harm or takes more than their share of common resources; we look after our less-fortunate fellow citizens. 

          

And during periods of extreme challenge or crisis— like wars, natural disasters, economic collapse or a super-ambitious national initiative like our War on Poverty or the Space Race, great nations—the ones that come through the crisis stronger and wiser—are those which ask their citizens to rise to, and grow with, the challenge.

On the other hand, failed nations, from Angola to Russia to Venezuela, and their paranoid, iron-fisted dictators—for many of which Donald Trump can barely conceal his admiration— expect nothing approaching a higher order of thinking from their subjects. Just hard labor to feed the insatiable corruption. And, of course, often on pain of humiliation, ruin or death, their loyalty. Sound familiar?

    Go ahead and show your utter contempt for
    common decency by coughing and sneezing
    on anyone you damn well please.

INDULGING FOLKS’ WORST INSTINCTS
So here we are. It’s 2020 and the United States of America is facing an unprecedented “perfect storm” of catastrophe: a global pandemic; a firestorm of rage and grief over long-smoldering racial injustice; the looming cataclysm of global warming; and a chilling, brazen assault by oligarchs and disciples of chaos on the bedrock of our democracy.

And what of any virtue at all has Donald S. Trump asked of the American people? Absolutely nothing, especially from his base. Nothing more, that is, than what he sees as the status quo. Just keep doing your own thing. Don’t listen to—hell, just go ahead and beat the shit out of—those crying out for justice. 

    

Don’t give an inch on your, or your employer’s, “right” to continue fouling the air, water and soil. Don’t worry if people’s constitutional rights are the price we have to pay for "law and order." Don’t even pretend to stifle your meanest, basest instincts to demonize those you deem a threat to your perceived entitlement.

And, for God’s sake, don’t listen to the scientists or public health experts about this COVID-19 “hoax.” In fact, go right ahead and show your utter contempt for common decency by coughing and sneezing on anyone you damn well please. Those few (hundred thousand) frail old folks were dying soon anyway; small price to pay so Billy Bob can go party hearty in Sturgis.

Do whatever you want…oh, unless you disagree with me or refuse to kiss my ass, says Donald Trump. If you fail that, well then, you’re yesterday’s news. You’re fired.

    Instead of an expectation, Trump has given
    his base what Barak Obama wouldn’t give
    them: permission.

BORN TO BE BOORISH
It’s not simply failing to expect the best of Americans; it’s insisting on their worst. And, sure enough, hundreds of thousands of folks this charlatan has somehow managed to hypnotize dutifully line up, sporting their "Don't tread on me!" flags and MAGA caps, eager to comply. After all, this is what they love about the man.

Instead of an expectation, Trump’s given them something they’d been praying for during the entire unbearable eight-year “reign” of Barak Obama. Something that college-boy, holier-than-thou, liberal elite (oh, and uppity black man) with the impudence to expect Americans to act like adults wouldn’t give them: permission.

         

The reality-show president is playing to folks who are already so aggrieved, so afraid of evolving, that many literally see him as a gift from God. Trump's one rude, ignorant, corrupt, self-obsessed little man who’s finally given them his okay to be as shallow and hostile as they really are.

He’s legitimized their fantasy that it’s their God-given right not to grow intellectually, socially or spiritually. And to distrust anyone who does.

      I don’t know which came first, Trump’s
      inability to ask for anything resembling
      higher-order thinking from his followers,
      or their inability to give it.

LOYALTY TRUMPS ALL 
Say what you will about Donald Trump and his disastrous personal shortcomings. The man could have, despite those considerable handicaps, been a decent president—could, indeed, have helped make America at least not worse again.

He could have, as the nearly-as-dull-witted ex-pro wrestler Jesse Venture once did when he found himself governor of Minnesota, at least surrounded himself with smart, capable people. But for Trump, too threatened by anyone’s pretending to know anything he doesn’t, there’s simply no help.

Nope, he doesn’t dare expect intelligence, competence, aspiration, creativity, challenge, sacrifice. None of those positive, constructive qualities. Not from those who support him politically, and certainly not from anyone who works for him. He doesn’t even expect basic human decency.

All Donald expects is what every petty tyrant expects: blind allegiance— not even to the country, but to him. I don’t know which came first, his inability to ask for anything resembling higher-order thinking from his followers, or their inability to give it.

   

Their portrayal of their enemy as a bunch of pretentious, snot-nosed, holier-than-though little brats is ironic, for it’s exactly those traits that have been exposed in them during their little MAGA tantrum these past few years.

And, for folks who so vehemently reject expectation of any kind, it begs the question, “How’s that goin’ for ya?” With the economy? With our country’s standing in the world? With crime rates? With the condition of our air, water and land? With natural disasters? The list is long and the answers chillingly mass-delusional.

        

TO ASK OR TO ASK NOT
Throughout this whole moral, constitutional crisis—it feels like a street fight between the sordid underbelly of America and its noble soul—I keep hearing echoes of John F. Kennedy’s famous entreaty: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

And I’m wishing, praying, for a couple of great leaders who, come January, 2021, might articulate that kind of aspiration. Might rekindle the spark of kindness, generosity and hope I’m convinced still smolders deep inside every true American.