Let us remember who we are
Trump’s cause is the antithesis of the American cause
249 years ago, the document below began a new epoch of human history.
Today, we celebrate the birth of a nation and the freedom for which it stands.
Today, we must mourn the state of our country, and the rise of an American tyrant who has turned the power of the state against the people.
During the last 80 years there have been four epic and transformative pieces of legislation that changed the United States in deep and profound ways. They were the GI Bill, the Interstate Highway Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
Trump’s despised "Big Beautiful Bill” can be appropriately added to the list. While the other pieces of legislation spread opportunity, established justice, connected the nation and built the American middle class, Trump’s bill will build a massive police and surveillance state.
The complexion of the country will be forever changed by the impact of this bill. It will be remembered above all things for the establishment of an unaccountable secret police in the United States, and the building of a concentration camp system where human rights abuses will accrue — until the whole rotten edifice of this monstrosity collapses under the weight of the American people’s shame and renewed thirst for decency and justice.
Donald Trump’s inaugural address was a repudiation of the American Revolution and the fulfillment of the founders’ deepest fears.
Trump is America’s Cleon.
He is the demagogue foreseen by Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Washington, and all the others who rose up to create the United States.
Trump has eviscerated the checks and balances, and declared himself as not only above the law, but as the law itself.
Faithless to the Constitution, the American people and American values, Trump is lawless, incoherent, aggrieved, spiteful, raging and determined to crush dissent, eradicate competence and abuse his office for self-enrichment that is as vulgar as it is staggering.
Benjamin Franklin, the oldest of the founding fathers, famously replied to Elizabeth Willing Powel when she asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” outside of Independence Hall about what had been achieved inside.
Franklin answered “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Willing Powel responded, “And why not keep it?”
“Because,” Franklin replied, “the people.”
Half of all Americans who have ever lived are alive right now. It would be strange indeed for this half to inform our ancestors that we have somehow allowed this to happen without much debate:
What has just passed in Congress will dramatically reorder and change American life in the next year.
Trump has fulfilled his agenda. Project 2025 is no longer a scheme. It is the law.
The American people have been betrayed by their representatives and president, who have taken things from all of us that were not theirs to take. They have spread fear, anxiety and worry as an instrument of their power and a tool of control. They have chilled dissent and threatened free speech, the free press, business leaders, academic leaders, artists, directors and everyday citizens.
July 4th is famous around the world for the birth of the most powerful idea in human history.
Today, the idea remains as powerful as it ever was, but it is under siege in Trump’s America.
A great national sickness has taken root in the United States. A deep anger, long thought buried, has arisen again. A divider has sundered the people and broken their faith in each other and their country, while conning too many to place it in him and his cause.
Trump’s cause is the antithesis of the American cause, which should be remembered today.
Regarding Trump, the worst is yet to come, but so is the best of an opposition that hasn’t fully rooted, but is growing, growling and pushing back against what we all know is intolerable.
Let us remember who we are.
We are Americans.
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But 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.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He 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 migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. 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.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
What thawed out from a hard winter at Valley Forge turned out to be men of steel filled with resolve. It was one bad winter. We are there again. We know what to do. Wear them down. Wear them out. Vote’m Out! Block the concentration camps. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/concentration-camping?r=3m1bs
"...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln