The tension in the air in this country, already crackling with fear and presidentially-provoked rage, skyrocketed with his unilateral decision to attack Iran and have us enter into an unprovoked war against another nation, duly protected (as are we) under the charter of the United Nations. Who knows where this act of aggression could lead? We live in a world primed like a tinderbox awaiting a single spark, and Trump\u2019s unilateral action could provide it.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump telegraphed what he was about, when he talked with journalist Bob Woodward, who had asked him in October 2016 for his thoughts on power<\/a>. Trump\u2019s response, said Woodward: <\/p>\n \u201cReal power is \u2026 I even don\u2019t like to use the word \u2026 but real power is fear.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then Trump and his team looked for the fear in the electorate that Cambridge Analytica<\/a> found in our Facebook data, which they mined on his behalf. Why? Trump\u2019s advisors wanted to discover a way to persuade people – subtly, using knowledge of voters\u2019 fears – to make an emotion-linked, favorable selection for their candidate. This, they proposed, would be an election centered on fears, not policy.<\/p>\n Now, six months after his Inauguration, fear is in the air, as President Trump has now unleashed<\/a> U.S. military might against a sovereign nation<\/a> – without provocation – further hinting that he may approve the assassination of that nation\u2019s leader. Meanwhile, he has sent that same U.S. military force onto city streets in the United States! Immigration enforcement officers troll car washes<\/a>, immigration courthouses, and raid businesses in search of the undocumented, using tactics akin to kidnapping.<\/p>\n In addition, with the unspoken blessing of the president via his angry rhetoric, a United States Senator was slammed<\/a> to the ground by federal police for daring to raise his voice at a cabinet secretary, and a congresswoman was pushed away<\/a>, as she tried to visit an immigrant holding facility. Meanwhile, local and state officeholders, attempting to assist powerless migrants, have been violently accosted<\/a> by unidentified federal agents. <\/p>\n Closer to home, a Jewish colleague said he\u2019d been planning a trip with his wife to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum<\/a> in Washington, but in light of the recent killings of Jews in Colorado and D.C,. and the burning of the mansion of Pennsylvania\u2019s Jewish governor, my colleague decided the rising antisemitic atmosphere suggested a cautious holdback would be more prudent.<\/p>\n With his Inauguration Day pardons<\/a> of all January 6 defendants convicted of crimes – even the most violent<\/a> of crimes – for their participation in the attack<\/a> on the United States Capitol, President Donald Trump sent a positive and unvarnished message to all planning political violence, against anyone with whom they disagree – Fight! <\/p>\n Judges, who had presided in trials and sentenced those now-pardoned January 6 defendants, expressed dismay at these acts of pardon by the man, who only hours before, on January 20, 2025, swore<\/a> \u201cto preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,\u201d so help him God.<\/p>\n U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who had sentenced dozens of rioters wrote<\/a>, “No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. It cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake.\u201d And U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote<\/a>, in her order to dispense the pardon of two rioters, who had previously pled guilty, \u201cNo \u2018national injustice\u2019 occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election.\u201d<\/p>\n In carrying out his role in the pardons, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, wrote<\/a>,<\/p>\n “I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved \u2018in an orderly fashion\u2019 like ordinary tourists, or martyrizing convicted January 6 defendants as \u2018political prisoners\u2019 or even, incredibly, \u2018hostages,\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n adding, <\/p>\n \u201cThat is all preposterous. But the Court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What has befallen us, America?<\/p>\n We were given a premonition of our government\u2019s current, chaotic condition in October 2024, by New Yorker journalist Susan Glasser, who said<\/a> on PBS Washington Week with The Atlantic<\/em>, \u201cI lived through Vladimir Putin’s rollback of Russian democracy 20 years ago \u2026 and the time to defend democratic institutions is before they’re taken away.\u201d Her final warning that evening, \u201cI don’t think that people have really processed how quickly this can happen and how dramatically the country’s set up can be changed in a very short amount of time, especially if Republicans win all three branches of government.\u201d<\/p>\n Clearly, it\u2019s too late now. But that doesn\u2019t mean we have to accept the extra-legal pronouncements and corrosive, norm-bending actions Mr. Trump has attempted to put into our democracy. Nor must we accept the hateful rhetoric emanating from his mouth and his smartphone fingers.<\/p>\n No. Now is the time for actions – by you and by me – that will resist and refuse to quietly acquiesce to this attack on all that had made us the envy of the world: freedom. The freedom of which Emma Lazarus wrote, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty<\/a>, <\/p>\n \u201cGive me your tired, your poor, That\u2019s what drove our ancestors, yours and mine (unless you are an Indigenous American Indian or an African American) to this country – Freedom.<\/p>\n Ask an immigrant what they are most thankful for, after arrival here, and the answer you\u2019ll hear most often, is one word, \u201cFreedom.\u201d I\u2019ve heard it from cab drivers, and other immigrant service workers. They had lived in countries where anyone – even a family member – could report something you said or did, that was negative toward the government, leaving you to wonder, in fear, whether you\u2019d hear a late night, punching knock on your door. <\/p>\n Today we\u2019ve watched something we could never have imagined here: a young woman walking along a street, is surrounded by masked people in dark clothes and captured<\/a>, then whisked away in an unmarked car. There are reports of local k-12 schools<\/a>, where ICE agents are seen near the grounds to pick up, after school, suspected illegal immigrant students or their parents. And immigrants have been taken in public, some with violence. So, how do we respond to this brutality, this air of fear and unease? Accept it? Or work to emasculate it?<\/p>\n David Brooks, a well-known conservative intellectual and columnist<\/a>, wrote in his April 17, 2025, New York Times column:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is happening now is not normal politics. We\u2019re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to \u2014 Democrat, independent or Republican.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Brooks continued, somewhat surprisingly, <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It\u2019s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he\u2019s going to be stopped is if he\u2019s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Brooks concluded, <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really not a movement guy. I don\u2019t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I\u2019m not covering as a journalist. But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Watch George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck<\/a>, and ask if someone can stand up to Trump as Edward R. Morrow did to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Republican fear-peddling, anti-communist demagogue and Trump counterpart of the 1950s?<\/p>\n Is there a non-partisan, moral figure – someone akin to Martin Luther King – willing to step forward, publicly, and lead this nonviolent, citizen uprising? Who will it be? Cory Booker<\/a>? Brooks? Clooney? Liz Cheney? Judge Luttig<\/a>? You? And would you follow her or him?<\/p>\n What say you, America? With the White House placing soldiers onto California streets, the time seems to be upon us, now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The tension in the air in this country, already crackling with fear and presidentially-provoked rage, skyrocketed with his unilateral decision to attack Iran and have us enter into an unprovoked war against another nation, duly protected (as are we) under the charter of the United Nations. Who knows where this act of aggression could lead? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nYour huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
\nThe wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
\nSend these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
\nI lift my lamp beside the golden door!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n<\/a>
\nMothers and fathers live in fear, because, under this administration, freedom from detention, without due process of the law, without a judge to review your case, is no longer guaranteed. It\u2019s the kind of fear one might have expected in Pinochet\u2019s Chile or Putin\u2019s Russia. But here? Imagine, with these actions, the United States of America is becoming just another autocracy, where the dictates of a strongman are what matter most; not the words enshrined in a two-century old founding document.<\/p>\n