Tag: democracy

We Will Not Have a King! America Says No to Donald Trump

I know I’m preaching to the choir for the most part, but silence is not an option given a White House ogre who would be king, trampling the bounds of our Constitution and violating every norm of moral decency

Not a single day passes without his intrusion. He is everywhere — America’s unprecedented micromanager — overriding the citizenry’s right to dissent and Congress’ constitutional sovereignty over the nation’s purse.

He persecutes critics with vitriol, weaponizes the Department of Justice for revenge and governs, not by law, but by impulse and ego.

It was not enough for him to pave over Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden. Now a $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom extravaganza is under construction — an East Wing expansion with bulletproof glass and ostentatious design that mocks the White House’s classical restraint.

Three days ago, during a dinner for corporate behemoths — Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Comcast among them — he unveiled plans for an American Arc de Triomphe to rise across the Potomac, opposite the Lincoln Memorial. Contributors, he promised, will have their names engraved.

Within the White House he’s installed a “Presidential Walk of Fame” lined with photos of his predecessors, except for former President Joe Biden, represented by an autopen image.

On his orders, massive flagpoles have been installed on the White House south grounds. It appears he wants to emulate France’s Louis XIV and facsimile Versailles.

Meanwhile, our nation suffers as his tariffs induce seismic consequence for world markets, a boomerang policy ensuring economic stress here at home. Consumers already feel the pinch.

Yesterday, the would be King informed visiting Ukrainian president Zelensky he’ll not be getting those coveted tomahawk missiles after all. Russia and Ukraine must stop their war, even if it means Ukraine must surrender much of its land. In coming weeks, he will meet a second time with despot Putin in Budapest to hammer out Ukraine’s fate. He deems himself a peacemaker even as he plots Venezuelan intervention and guns down boats at sea.

Today, media reports Ukraine’s defenses are rapidly buckling; more so, its morale. Trump’s misfire, propelled by egotism, promises to outweigh Russia’s nightly onslaught of missiles and drones, delivering a coup de grâce assuring Ukraine’s doom.

Yesterday, Trump pardoned the notorious George Santos, sentenced to seven years for multifarious deceit. Will Epstein’s collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell be next?

In this time of climate challenge posing a future earth transformed into a version of Mars, Trump has systematically, unhesitatingly, chosen to war on the environment, auctioning off public lands for fossil fuel development, sanctioned logging the nation’s remaining pristine wilderness, suspended curbs on air and water pollution, subsidies for renewable energy technology—electric vehicles, solar and wind—visionary endeavors prodigious with promise.

Ominously, yesterday he sent 80% of our nuclear arsenal guardians home, surely sheer madness in a time of mounting Russian, Chinese, and North Korean intimidation.

Implementing his autocratic reach for fascism are his incompetent lackeys and sycophantic Republican enablers, who conflate loyalty with virtue.

Let him build his Versailles of glass and steel. We choose otherwise, our priority a republic defined by courage and conscience.

March boldly, my fellow warriors for freedom. Let your voices fill every street and square: “We will not have a king!”

–RJ

Defending Democracy: What We Must Do

A year ago this month, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in a labor camp under circumstances that strongly suggest Kremlin involvement. His courageous fight against Russian despotism should have inspired a global recommitment to democracy. Instead, we see authoritarianism advancing—both abroad and at home.

Donald Trump, long an admirer of Vladimir Putin, has once again echoed Kremlin propaganda, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and blaming him for the war—simply because Zelensky rejected his negotiating Ukraine’s surrender on Putin’s terms.

Unsurprisingly, Russian state media has embraced Trump as a political rock star, amplifying his rhetoric to weaken Western resolve.

Meanwhile, here in the United States, our own democratic values are under siege, the rule of law undermined, institutions eroded, and authoritarianism on the rise.

The threats we face today, both at home and abroad, make the world more dangerous for all who believe in freedom.

But we will not stand idly by. We must resist—through the courts, in Congress, and in the streets through peaceful protest.

The fight for America’s soul is far from over. If we stay united, we will prevail. In two years, we have the opportunity to reclaim Congress, hold those who threaten democracy accountable, and ensure that America remains a beacon of freedom—not an ally to autocrats.

—R Joly

Early Voters Signal a New Day for America

According to the most recent polls, Harris and Trump are in a dead heat, the outcome uncertain. Sounds awful? Relax!

The polls are wrong.

Trump blew the Latino vote with the Madison Square Garden hate fest. Early voting returns show women voting in record numbers for Kamala. Same with seniors, concerned about healthcare under Trump.

Wednesday morning, a new day for America, a glass ceiling shattered, democracy prevails, and a watching world rejoices.

—rjoly

Democracy’s Failure

While democracy has been widely touted as the best form of government, it’s had many detractors in Britain and America, who fearing a working class majority of the uninformed, intellectually unprepared, politically manipulated by partisan interests, proposed education in the liberal arts as a safeguard for assuring an informed, discriminating electorate.

One thinks of Matthew Arnold’s classic Culture and Anarchy and John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University as examples. The truth is it hasn’t worked to salvage democracy. As Costica Bradatan comments in his insightful book, In Praise of Failure, “Populism and authoritarianism are flourishing today in places with remarkably high educational levels. For all the self-flattering talk about civic-mindedness and political engagement, the citizenry in the West is in no better shape than it was one hundred years ago. And we seem resigned to the situation.”

Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, comments in his Universities in the Marketplace that the arts and sciences faculties “display scant interest in preparing undergraduates to be democratic citizens, a task once regarded as the principal purpose of a liberal education.”

Viewing our current political milieu, I see only the debris of a once heralded idea to make government truly feasible in the best interests of our nation. Alas, not since the Civil War, has America been so fractured in its allegiances.

Alexander Hamilton, suspicious of public sovereignty, supported the idea of the Electoral College. That certainly hasn’t worked.

Back in England, John Stuart Mill proposed a plutocracy of the educated allowed multiple votes. Fortunately, it wasn’t well-received.

As for the prototype Athenian democracy, women couldn’t vote, nor foreigners and slaves.

I confess I don’t know the answer, except to offer that democracy, for all its liabilities, surpasses those protocols previously attempted.

—rj