This Is War


[Note: I wrote this in August of 2019, during the third year of the Trump administration (updated in 2021 to include the final count of Trump lies). Consider this a warning. Reference: Germany in the 1930s.]

You and your friends are now of voting age. I know that your lives are full, and there's a lot to absorb here and it's not a comfortable read, but I'm asking that you take your time and go through every word of this. It is, by far, the most important thing I’ve ever written to you or said to you. If you're not up on current affairs, consider this to be your short introductory course.

The most important word in this entire document: VOTE!

Make your vote and the votes of everyone around you count in every election. Heed what I say here: stay informed, get active, and convince all of your generation to vote smart! Your very lives, or at least your welfare, and that of all those you love, may well depend on it. This is not an exaggeration.

I began writing this on July 4th, Independence Day 2018. As you may know, it’s my personal tradition to re-read the Declaration of Independence on this day each year. This year these four passages stand out:

  • 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.

  • … when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [The Founders opposed strongman rule and in the Declaration they set the foundation for our democratic republic.]

  • (The king of England) has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither... [The Founders encouraged immigration, especially of the oppressed.]

  • A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

This Declaration of our nation's Independence led, at great risk, to a just war.

Whether you realize it or not, our nation is under sustained abusive attack once again, but this time the attack is from within—from our own corrupt, despotic, chaotic government. This is a war of many dimensions, all of them subtle and none of them inconsequential.

Understand this: my generation's future is pretty much done, and we've made a miserable mess of the present (for which I feel compelled to apologize to you all profusely). The future belongs to your generation, and really, only your generation can fix this mess. The Parkland students are making a good push toward that end. Join them.

After I detail just a few of the dimensions of this new and unconventional war (and there are so many more dimensions to it: Muslims, black males, campaign finance, gun safety, women's rights, tax cuts and future deficits, healthcare, health insurance, Social Security, the Russian KGB/FSB+GRU...), I end my message to you with a pair of warnings from history.

Personal Opinion: I have zero respect for Donald John Trump. Zero. And I regret not having worked harder to prevent him from becoming our president.

But the problem isn’t solely Trump. More broadly, this is about the abuse of our political system by those in power that has allowed Trump to progress as far as he has toward acquiring obscene, ill-gotten wealth for him and his family at taxpayer expense, and that now threatens all that has made this country exceptional.

The real problem is systemic—it's the threat to our core principles by the domestic and foreign power brokers behind Trump's throne, in collaboration with all his party-before-country Republican enablers. We all know how Trump won; we need to fix this before the voting public elects an even more ignorant, mendacious, narcissistic autocrat.

The solution must be "radical"; and as the base of that word implies, we must get to the root of our government's multi-dimensional corruption and kill it. And yes, I blame Republicans. There's a huge difference in philosophy between our country's two major parties. It's "I got mine, how much you got?" versus "We're all in this together." We each get to choose. You know where I stand. [Thus ends my personal opinion.]

Below I try to provide evidence for each statement I make. If you find yourself at odds with what I've written, check yourself to see which part of your brain is operating. You'll want to make sure that your prefrontal cortex, your thinking brain, is firing on all cylinders and that your limbic system, the emotional part, is merely minding the store. Is your counter-argument as fact-based as mine? Are you thinking critically? Are your emotions in check? If so, then let's talk.

Your government has declared war on its own Constitution's First Amendment.
Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

"Fake news", the "failing" New York Times, calling journalists "bad people", "the enemy of the people"... ongoing attacks like this on the press had never been tolerated in this country.

But they are now.

By constant repetition in various types of media, this anti-free press propaganda has become weaponized. This is nothing less than a concerted attack, by our own Chief Executive, on the citizenry's sources of news and information... YOUR sources of the truth.

In the days of the Founders the principal source of factual news involved the printing press, hence the term "Freedom of the Press". Now we get our trustworthy information from journalists in print news, network and cable news, the Internet and social media. And they are all under attack or are being used for unscrupulous purposes by the current administration.

Here's how deep the depravity goes.
  • On June 28th, 2018 five workers in the office of the Annapolis Capital Gazette newspaper were murdered by a lone gunman.
  • Later that day Trump was asked to comment on this horrendous act of violence against the press. His response: silence and a dismissive wave.
  • Six days later Trump refused to order that flags be lowered to half-staff, something he had done readily after other mass shootings. Finally, after considerable pressure, he relented.
  • But the very next day during a campaign-style rally in Montana, Trump pointed to the press area and called them "so damn dishonest". "They're fake. These are really bad people."

Your government has declared war on political reality.
It is exhausting trying to track the lies of this administration. In Trump's four years as president The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims (in other words, lies) by Trump alone; this doesn’t include all the lies told by his spokespeople, members of his cabinet, and the Republican senators and members of Congress who enable him.

Here are just a few of the "truths" that have been promoted by Donald Trump through the likes of Fox News and spread on social media (often by Russian bots):

I'm afraid that by ticking off these lies, I'm somehow spreading them. It's an incurable disease.

And then there's the whole state-run TV thing, which I won't go into here.

Your government has declared war on its Constitutional protections of voting rights.
Voting Rights. The most fundamental rights in any democratic society. One man, one vote. That's the way it is, right?

Nope, not in the ol' U-S-of-A. And it's getting worse. There's a whole lotta cheatin' goin' on, kids.

Demographics of voters in the U.S. have been trending away from Republicans for years. Yet Republicans maintain power in all three branches of government. How can that be?

Ever since Republicans adopted Nixon's Southern Strategy fifty years ago, the party has played to the fears and prejudices of white and rural voters primarily in the South and Midwest. But given the demographic trending, that isn't sufficient anymore. So what have they been working on to shore up their power? They've exercised two strategies (and maybe a third): gerrymandering and voter suppression (and possibly collusion with Russians).

Gerrymandering is all about diluting the value of certain people's votes and maximizing the value of others'. If you can't win honestly, tilt the table.

If gerrymandering alone can't do the trick, here are seven additional strategies Republicans are employing against the demographic trends by making it more difficult for certain classes to vote. You're in at least one of those classes.

And if all else fails, they'll just leave the door wide open for the Russians.

Your government has declared war on its own national security.
In his year and a half as president, Trump has managed to antagonize relations with the following long-standing United States allies...

At the same time he has built friendly relations with hard-line dictators; in the past the United States has taken strong stands against...

Trump has walked away from the following agreements which have benefited the United States immensely...
  • the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), a deal which would have governed the trade rules and practices of 12 countries and 40 percent of global GDP,
  • the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico,
  • KORUS, the free trade agreement between the U.S. and South Korea,
  • and he is threatening to walk away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) [and here's what his own Navy and the Pentagon have to say about that]. Here's an incisive Twitter thread arguing that this would be a colossal mistake.

... all while "Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors" has been on our national radar since March. "This alert provides information on Russian government actions targeting U.S. Government entities as well as organizations in the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors."

I can't imagine a more serious threat to life as we know it. What is the Administration doing to protect our energy, transportation, utility, industrial and defense infrastructures from the Russians? Not to mention the exposure of our voting system to hacking this year. Do we have our best people on it? What is Congress doing? If they're not doing all they can, then it's our responsibility as voters to replace them with representatives who will.

Your government has declared war on our natural environment.
We have an agency of the federal government, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose administrator reports directly to the president. Established by Richard Nixon, the Agency has been in existence for almost 50 years. Through legislative oversight it is chartered to create and enforce regulations that safeguard our air, water, land and endangered species, and that protect us from unsafe labor conditions (especially child labor), hazardous waste, toxic substances, pesticides, etc.

A word here about the concept of 'regulation'. Fiscal conservatives often say that regulations are a burden on the free market, which often is true. But who's being regulated are mostly producers of raw materials and manufacturers of dangerous products and by-products. Turn the 'regulation' leaf over to the consumer side, and you'll see that most regulations are actually safeguards for the health and well-being of the citizenry and of the earth as a whole. (Note that Protection is the EPA's middle name.)

The function of the EPA is a truly vital one and the EPA has been one of our most visible agencies. So who does Trump appoint to the post of administrator? The now-resigned Scott Pruitt, who sued the EPA 13 times. It's almost as if Trump and the Republicans wanted to kill the agency entirely. Pruitt's replacement, Andrew Wheeler, was previously a coal and oil lobbyist, two industries heavily regulated by the EPA. So, with the fox now ensconced in the hen house, from all indications the destruction of the EPA will be ongoing.

So far the Trump administration has rolled back the following protective regulations and programs (a partial list):

We only have one environment; there's no Plan B. Our species is perfectly capable of fouling its own nest, and in fact we have a 40-year history of political insanity toward the future of our own species. But we also possess the smarts to survive for hundreds of generations. Which path do you choose?

Your government has declared war on immigrants.
"Illegals" is a term often used when referring derogatorily to many non-citizens entering the U.S. However, by law anyone appearing at the border seeking asylum must be admitted to the country legally. In the words of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, "To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status."

So when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents refuse or detain asylum seekers at the border and separate their families, it is the ICE agents who are acting illegally. But they get their moral authority from the President.

The following 30 links are to court records of the testimony of immigrants being held by ICE and of US citizens assisting or observing them. Each testimony describes the treatment of detainees by our own law enforcement agencies—agents of our own government.

I challenge you to read any five at random, and if you have the stomach for it, to read all 30. Our own government, for which we as citizens are responsible, is systematically torturing fellow human beings. And if you've ever dealt with a child suffering from reactive attachment disorder, you know how difficult it is to find any kind of long-term relief. But it appears your government doesn't give a damn—from all indications they'll let this kidnapping go on indefinitely.

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Here's a reading of another testimony: teaming up with the ACLU, Maggie Gyllenhaal rounded up a group of actors to read the letter of Mirian, a Honduran woman who was separated from her 18-month-old son at the border.

And then there are the unaccompanied immigrant children who do not have the right to a court-appointed attorney, and thus have to go into removal proceedings in Immigration Court without a lawyer. Here's a four-minute dramatization of what that looks like. "When children appear alone, 9 out of 10 are ordered deported; when children are represented by a lawyer, immigration courts have allowed almost half to remain in the United States." The government always has a lawyer present, and therefore an overwhelming advantage over these children. This is present day American "justice" in action.

And if that isn't enough inhumanity for one superpower, check out how we recently muscled tiny Ecuador into removing its proposal advocating for breast-feeding, all for the sake of making a profit off third-world babies. "Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations."

And now the two warnings from history:
This is a passage from Benjamin Carter Hett’s recent book The Death of Democracy, subtitled Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (emphasis is mine):

Thinking about the end of Weimar democracy in this way--as the result of a large protest movement colliding with complex patterns of elite self-interest, in a culture increasingly prone to aggressive mythmaking and irrationality--strips away the exotic and foreign look of swastika banners and goose-stepping Stormtroopers. Suddenly, the whole thing looks close and familiar. Alongside the viciousness of much of German politics in the Weimar years was an incongruous innocence: few people could imagine the worst possibilities. A civilized nation could not possibly vote for Hitler, some had thought. When he became chancellor nonetheless, millions expected his time in office to be short and ineffectual. Germany was a notoriously law-abiding as well as cultured land. How could a German government systematically brutalize its own people? German Jews were highly assimilated and patriotic. Many refused to leave their homeland, even as things got worse and worse. "I am German and am waiting for the Germans to come back; they have gone to ground somewhere," Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary--he was the son of a rabbi and a veteran of the First World War who chose to stay, and miraculously survived.

Few Germans in 1933 could imagine Treblinka or Auschwitz, the mass shootings of Babi Yar or the death marches of the last months of the Second World War. It is hard to blame them for not foreseeing the unthinkable. Yet their innocence failed them, and they were catastrophically wrong about their future. We who come later have one advantage over them: we have their example before us.

If you think you’re protected because of your skin color or your job or where you live or your politics, consider the warning of Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran minister in Nazi Germany:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

(To make Niemöller's admonition a bit more current you can substitute in order (1) Muslims... (2) black and brown people... (3) the poor, old and vulnerable.)

I'm afraid we’re a lot closer to the end of our democracy than most people think. Be courageous. Stay healthy. Stay sane. Make a difference.

With love and hope,