Break Glass in Emergency: Vote Yes by April 21 in Virginia’s Redistricting Referendum

If things were normal, which they are not, I would oppose returning the drawing of Virginia’s congressional district maps back to the state’s legislature, even temporarily.  America is in deep trouble, however. Democracy is in retreat; the country is ruled by decree out of the White House. Congress sits mute.  A President ruling from his gold encrusted throne threatens to “nationalize” the elections and seems indifferent to his paramilitary police brutalizing communities and shooting and killing citizens.

The Constitution – our written social contract as to how the government is organized and how power is shared – is shredded day-by-day by Trump.  Our representative in the 5th District, John McGuire just voted for the Save Act to make it harder for Americans to vote and agrees with Trump’s call for Republicans to nationalize the vote, or at the least, has not repudiated Trump’s demand.  He thinks he works for Trump and not we the people of his district.  It is time to fight back, it is time to b break the glass because there is a constitutional emergency.

The fastest and best way to check Trump’s unchecked power is by electing Democrats to the House of Representatives – the people’s house – and the senate.  Sensing a coming defeat this November and a loss of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, Trump demanded that red states redraw their congressional districts, immediately.  If you can’t win fair and square, cheat, lie, and steal is this administration’s mantra.

Texas obliged instantly, without consulting their people.  Another example of rule by dictate far too common in red states.  At least the people of California had a choice whether to redistrict (they voted ‘yes’ this past November).  We the people of Virginia will have our chance to give voice to whether we redistrict.  That vote is April 21.  Early voting starts March 3.   

Democrats did not ask for this redistricting fight, but Trump threw down the gauntlet.  We the people of Virginia must take drastic steps to reclaim sovereignty or lose our democracy to one-party rule and dictatorship. 

Vote YES to temporarily redistrict Virginia’s congressional seats.  

For those constitutional law geeks like me, below are some Frequently Asked Question:

How many other states are redistricting (or counter redistricting) based on Trump’s outrageous demand?

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, five states have already redistricted (Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, California); A number of states have introduced legislation to redistrict (Maryland, South Carolina, Washington, and Virginia):  Florida is in the process of adopting legislation with additional states contemplating redistricting, but awaiting state court decisions (Alabama, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Wisconsin).  Other states have already moved forward and many plan to do so.  Indiana rejected Trump’s redistricting demand.

Why does Virginia need a vote on whether to redistrict its congressional districts?

In November 2020, Virginians voted overwhelming (66 percent) to amend the state’s constitution to appoint a 16-member bipartisan commission to draw Virginia’s congressional districts.  Virginia is one of about a dozen states that have independent commissions to draw congressional maps.  A majority (29) still permit their state legislatures to draw congressional districts.  The referendum vote in April is the only constitutionally sanctioned method to temporarily amend our state constitution so that the Generally Assembly can redraw Virginia’s congressional districts.  

Why hasn’t the Supreme Court ruled that partisan redistricting is unconstitutional?

They did rule, by not ruling.  They took the easy way out and said it was out of their hands, that there were no ‘judicially discoverable’ or ‘manageable standards’ to adjudicate claims of unconstitutionally drawn districts, with one exception, drawing districts to favor white voters (e.g., diluting concentrations of black or brown voices into majority white districts).

A brief recent history:  In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts could hear challenges to how congressional districts were drawn, however, the court offered no standards.  Some years later in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled there were no “judicially discoverable or manageable standards.”  The conservative court inches it way toward legalizing partisan gerrymandering.

In 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme court ruled that federal courts could not hear claims of partisan gerrymandering because they – the court — could not articulate any standard by which to judge partisan gerrymandering.  Out of very thin air, they could invent the legal fiction that President Trump is immune from crimes committed for official acts, but these Harvard and Yale legal brains are damned clueless as to how to fix the scourge of gerrymandering.  This legal punt basically legalizes partisan gerrymandering no matter how egregious, at least at the federal court level.  State courts can still hear cases, nonetheless.

To make matters worse, the Rucho decision gave states a “partisan” get-out-of- constitutional jail card for race-based gerrymandering.  In 2024, South Carolina drew racially gerrymandered congressional districts.  The South Carolina NAACP sued.  South Carolian argued it was not racial gerrymandering, but ‘partisan’ gerrymandering.  In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court agreed with South Carolina and let the racially drawn maps stand.

After Texas redrew its congressional districts after Trump requested it do so, The League of United Latin American Citizens sued.  A federal district court, after 9 days of testimony and review of thousands of documents, concluded that Texas illegally redrew the congressional districts based on race.  In a shadow docket ruling, however, the Supreme Court, overturned the district court and said Texas could use the newly drawn maps.  

The reasons given by the Supreme Court’s were: 1) The District Court failed to “honor the presumption of legislative good faith;” 2) The District Court did not produce a viable alternative map; 3) It was too close to the election to redraw the redrawn congressional maps.   My only response:  What the fuck!  I did not know there was a ‘legislative good faith’ exemption to unconstitutional laws.

So, there you have it.  Go out and vote. And vote Yes.  

Something is Rotten in the County of Louisa?

Something truly is rotten in Louisa. Recently there have been two eyebrow raising land deals involving current or former board of supervisors or their family members. Below are two examples of intersection of local politics, land deals, and private profit.

The County Landfill:

The expansion of the county’s landfill involved the purchase of additional land adjacent to the current landfill. The land, valued from $2000 to $3000 per acre sold for $9000 an acre, according to local reporting.

One of the land owners who benefited from this purchase was a son of one of the county’s Board of Supervisors. The Central Virginian reported in May 2025 that Jackson District Supervisor Williams recused himself from landfill expansion votes because his son Torrey Williams owned some of the adjacent land.

AWS Datacenters and the Fisher Chewing Tract Sale:

A little background, a few years ago the county board of supervisors created a number of technical overlay districts. Basically, a preferred location for technology investment, such as datacenters. The Fisher Chewing tract is located in one of these TODs as folks colloquially call them. Like any gold rush, the board of supervisors had tax revenue gold dust in their eyes and were chasing a pot of gold that does not exist.

As you may recall, the Fisher Chewing tract was going to be the site of a third Amazon datacenter in Louisa. However, because of a local pushback movement and opposition from some board of supervisors, in particular the Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams, AWS withdrew its’ application for a conditional use permit to build the third datacenter.

I think most folks thought that, ‘well that is that’ a victory for the people. Not so fast. To many a startled resident of Louisa, Amazon Web Services recently purchased 9000 acres for an eye popping $72.45 million. Wait, wait… Part of the land AWS purchased was the 1400 acre Fisher Chewing property. And it gets better. According to the Central Virginian, The Fisher Chewing tract was owned by Fisher Chewing L.C. Now the kicker. Fishers Chewing L.C. is owned by Charles and Eric Purcell. Charles Purcell is a lawyer and developer in Louisa and Eric is a former Louisa District member of the county’s Board of Supervisors.

Now, a curious mind would be asking questions about these land deals. For the latter example, why would AWS buy the Chewing Fisher tract (and other adjacent tracts) for top dollar given that it would basically never be developed as a datacenter site? Doesn’t make sense to me.

The Planning Commission: Pulling back TODs

This week the Louisa Planning Commission meets Thursday at 7 PM at the Louisa Country Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Avenue. On the agenda is an amendment to amend ORD2023 in order to remove the technology overlay district designation encompassing the Fisher Chewing and Cooke Rail tracts of land.

The meeting is open to the public but I don’t know whether there will be a question and answer opportunity.

If you want to follow these developments and others in Louisa County Tammy Purcell’s great substack site called “Engage Louisa” is a super resource: https://tammypurcell.substack.com/

Bumpass Prose and Politics Cartoon Edition: ICE, ICE, Baby

Many times a cartoon has more impact than an essay. Thought I would try my hand at cartoons once again and add a monthly cartoon or two to my posts. If you like pass on to friends and family. TKH

“It’s Not If, but When”

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.

—Martin Niemöller

I try not to post more than one essay a week, but this week seems to warrant another.  After reading an article about a viral video of a 70-year-old bookstore owner who said he was “fucking angry’ before walking back into a haze of smoke and tear gas in Minneapolis, I wanted to research the back story of the quote he posted in his store. The one above.

The history of the person, and why he said or wrote these words, is just as important at the words.  

Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – which displays this quote on a wall as you exit the exhibits as a final thought — Niemöller originally ‘sympathized with Nazis ideas’ and supported the far right. However, when Hitler began to “interfere with the protestant church” he dared to criticize Hitler.  He spent seven years in prisons and concentration camps.  

For those who support the far right here in America that is your right. But when you stand by, and even cheer and gloat, when the government comes for migrants, liberal politicians, journalists, or late-night comedians, that quote should be a wakeup call.   Don’t think you are immune, you are not. It’s not if, but when they come for you.

‘Ordinary Americans:’  Kristi Noem and Her Police Battalions.

A lone English soldier in his red tunic stood post in front of Boston’s Custom’s House.  ‘Lobster back’ was yelled, words were exchanged, things heated up, a crowd gathered.  Tensions between colonists and soldiers was high.  The colonists thought of them as occupiers.  When all was said and done that March 5, 1770, three Bostonians were dead and another two would die of wounds in days to come.   

The captain, who summoned additional soldiers to face down the hostile and aggressive crowd, and eight other soldiers were later arrested and jailed after the acting governor of Massachusetts called for an inquiry after the shooting.  Seven months later Captain Preston stood trial for murder.  The question was whether he ordered his soldiers to fire.  Testimony by witnesses suggested he did not.  The jury acquitted him.  

A little over a month later, the eight soldiers were tried for murder.  After a record 9 days of testimony, six of the eight were found not guilty.  The remaining soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter verse murder.  That is they had been provoked.  They were offered the “benefit of clergy,” basically proving they could read a verse in the Bible, and were branded on their thumbs verse a jig at the end of a rope.

Bostonians were proud that they could provide a fair trial, that the accused were able to have defense lawyers, one of whom became president of the United States, John Adams, and that the jury of citizens were fair and impartial.

Four years later, however, the English Parliament removed the ability of colonial governments to conduct any judicial proceedings against crown officials who allegedly committed a capital offense while supposedly upholding the law or quelling protests.  It was one of several acts known as the Intolerable Acts enacted following the Boston Tea Party in 1774.  The Administration of justice Act as it was formally known, was nicknamed the ‘murder act’ by colonists.  In short time, America exploded in Revolt in 1775 and declared independence in 1776.  250 years ago, to be exact.

Now, during the 250th anniversary celebration of our independence from capricious rule, Trump and his administration officials have basically reimagined the Administration of Justice Act by repeatedly claiming that federal law enforcement officers have absolute immunity for acts committed to uphold the law or quell protests of ICE operations.  Rule by decree instead of representation has overtaken our government.  Congress has become a debating society of half-wits and imbeciles.

The feds have stifled local and state officials from investigating two homicides committed by ICE or Border Patrol agents.  Following the last homicide, Border Patrol and ICE agents who participated in the assault on, dog pile on, and shooting of Alex Pretti, fled the scene, leaving the crime scene unsecured.

Immediately, Trump advisor, and architect of these brutalist occupations of American cities, Stephen Miller, labeled Pretti an “assassin.” The director of the Border Patrol, defended his agents, saying that Pretti intended to shoot ICE and Border Patrol agents without any evidence other than Pretti was carrying.  He was. He had a concealed carry permit but did not draw his weapon or attempt to draw his weapon.  Video evidence suggests an agent had taken Pretti’s gun moments before a single gunshot rang out, followed by a barrage of gun shots directed at a prone, non-resisting Pretti.

Another heinous and unprovoked murder by Trump’s masked agents.  

As every day passes into tomorrow, ICE and Border Patrol Agents look and act more like the reserve police battalions that followed the advancing German army in to Poland at the start of the second world war than true law enforcement officers.  These reserve police officers, recruited from Germany’s working classes, slaughtered millions of Jews.  

These reserve police officers, who Daniel Goldhagen argued in Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust were conditioned to kill, and willingly did so.  Goldhagen wrote, “Simply put, the perpetrators having consulted their own convictions and morality and having judged the mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say “no.””

My point is not that ICE and Border Patrol Agents are Nazis, although, like the German death battalions, they are armed like soldiers, dress like soldiers, think like soldiers, and act like soldiers. The things they do lack, however, are martial discipline and apolitical ethos of real professional American soldiers and well-trained law enforcement. 

It is this militarized police mindset, paired with Trump and his administration’s psychologically conditioning, that has caused ICE and Border Patrol agents to act in similar ways that the reserve police battalions behaved: Occupy supposedly ‘enemy’ cities (Trump’s words not mine), execute orders without question, and if need be, kill for ideological reasons. They have turned ordinary men and women into real and potential killers.  Recall Trump’s speech to his assembled generals not so long ago.

Trump and rightwing conservatives have engaged in a pattern of excluding, stigmatizing, and humiliating migrants, especially migrants of color.  Dehumanizing them like the Nazis did Jews.  Trump’s claims of Haitians eating pets and his recent denigration of all Somalis as low-IQ are examples of this conditioning.  It does not help that the Supreme Court conditioned citizenship and legal presence in America with whiteness. 

It takes more than conditioning, however, to make ordinary people kill.   Neo-ICE and Border Patrol agents must be raised in a family and community environment that leads them to believe and tolerate what Trump and his acolytates openly spew every day. Racism and white supremacy are alive and well in many corners of America.  It is blasted from Fox News broadcasts every single day.  It takes a village to raise a kid, it also takes a village of racists to raise a kid to become a killer.

Americans must not only condemn the individual actions of ICE and Border Patrol agents but the men and women in leadership — from Trump, to Vance, to Miller, to Bondi to Noem, to Bovino and downward – who articulate, condone, and encourage gratuitous violence and protect the murderers in the name of white nationalism.  When ICE treats migrants and protestors like Noem treats her dogs, we must do what we can to stop the madness.

Get ICE and border patrol battalions out of our cities.  Retrain them, fire the zealots, and sack their leadership, including Bondi, Bovino, Noem, Miller, and Patel.  Most importantly, to diffuse the tension, let local and federal agencies jointly investigate the homicides of Good and Pettri, and if charges are warranted, let a local jury decide their guilt or innocence.  That is the American way.  

The alternative is revolution.

Butthurt: A Reason to Sacrifice Lives?

A Modest Proposal for The Norwegian Prime Minister’s Response to Trump’s Greenland letter:

Donnie,

I received your letter last, which complained that you did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and have thereby decided to punish Norway by seizing Greenland.  

First, you do know, and should know, that Greenland is not part of Norway.  It is an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Denmark.  

Second, the government of Norway does not award the prize.  It is awarded by the Nobel Foundation, a non-government organization, named after a dead Swede. And no, his last name is not foundation.

Third, Greenland is not for sale, according to our Danish neighbors.  Just because 90 percent of the inhabitants of Greenland are indigenous peoples does not mean you can force the sale of the land for a handful of beads and trinkets, like America’s forefathers did to indigenous people’s lands in North America. The age of colonialism is over.

Fourth, if you wish to oppress your own people, destroy your economy, and demolish the democratic social contract between you and your people, have at it.  Leave us out of your childish temper tantrums.

In closing, two questions:

I am curious, and must ask why are you willing to sacrifice the young lives of your soldiers, airmen, and sailors for your petite jealousies? Greenland will not come cheaply to America as Danes are fierce fighters as you know because they fought and died alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

How do you intend to explain to a grieving mother that their son or daughter died in a desolate ice field because you are butthurt because a woman of color won the Nobel Peace Prize?  That you think American lives are worth sacrificing to satisfy your unchecked lust for a piece of stamped metal.  

Sincerely,

//Signed//

“Guards of this Kind:” A Brief History of the Original Intent of Madison’s Second Amendment.

New York Times Reporter: “Do you see any checks on your power….”

Donald Trump:  “Yeah, there is one thing.  My own morality.  My own mind.  It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

No Mr. President, we the people can stop you.

What is happening in America is not normal.   When a president sitting in the White House, stewing in his own grievances and thirst for vengeance and proclivity to spectacle, says he is only bound by his “morality,” we as a nation are in deep trouble.  As is the world.

I know this essay’s title may make some folks uncomfortable, but please bear with me (yes, a pun). I am self-aware enough to understand that invoking the Second Amendment can be provocative. I struggled while writing this essay on a number of levels. First, is that it even had to be written. Given the words and actions of Trump, I feel it is necessary. On another level, I don’t want to be interpreted as calling for armed revolt. I do not want that. That would be insane.

My whole adult life was living, working, or traveling to conflict and war zones, failed and failing states, police states. I know that option to be unacceptable. On a third level, I feel too many Americans are indifferent or distracted or worn. down and just don’t give a shit, that only some people are impacted and they will never by touched. Inevitably, in a dictatorship, even it you agree with the dictator now, you will be touched and your soul will be crushed eventually as you tire of being told what to watch, what to read, and what to think. Because you are reading this, you know I hit the publish button.

I want to lay out my thoughts on the limits of power of the central government and what States can do once Trump and federal government blows past those limits.  The origin and intent of the Second Amendment figures prominently in any discourse about how to create “guards” to a tyrannical central government.

Blue states continue to get pounded by the Trump administration.  It routinely withholds funds from blue states as punishment for resisting his policies.  Incongruously, it is the blue states that provide most tax raised monies to the federal government, with red states getting more federal tax dollars in terms of spending than they actually put in. In essence, Trump is super charging the transfer of wealth from blue to red states.  Oh, the irony.

Trump targets blue states and cities with mass deployments of militarized immigration agents as punishment for deigning to treat migrants as human beings.  As the result of protests against these deployments, Trump federalized and deployed national guard units without traditional requests from state governors, and in all instances in blue states, against the wishes of the governor and the majority of the state’s peoples, to quell, he alleges, widespread violence, but we know it is to smother the people’s voices.  

Now he is deploying hundreds of additional Homeland Security agents to investigate alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social safety net programs, according to DHS’s secretary.  A calculated and chilling response to the protests over the killing of a woman by an ICE agent and the states demand to be included in the investigation of the homicide of Renee Good.  Incongruously, Trump condemns the death of protestors in Iran, but claims an American protestor shot and killed by an ICE agent was a domestic terrorist, and, intoned, deserved to die.  

Hey, Ayatollah in Iran.  News Flash:  Just rebrand Iranian protestors as deranged left wing domestic terrorists.  Then you are good to go.

This is what despots do.  They flood the streets with thugs and faceless paramilitaries and then sanction investigations to cover up murders. Nazis Germany’s Brown Shirts of the past are being reborn as combat fatigue wearing ICE agents.

This is what he will do to Virginia now that we will have a democratic governor and a state legislature controlled by democrats.  Expect payback with canceled programs, stopped federal grants, and deployments of Homeland Security agents to intimidate citizens.

The ability of a state to resist a tyrannical central government is how the Second Amendment was born.

What became the Second Amendment was not intended as an individual right to bear arms but a collective right of a state to bear arms to maintain its’ citizens inalienable rights.  Lord Dunmore, the English Governor of Virginia’s, attempt to seize the militias’ arms in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the outset of America’s first civil war was still fresh in the mind of the founding generation.  

It never crossed the minds of folks back then that the constitution needed to enumerate the right to own firearms for defense or hunting at the federal level.  Gun ownership – mostly muskets — was so ubiquitous and a traditional right in the colonies that enumerating the right would be ridiculous.  States had the right to regulate firearms and did so, most notably restricting possession primarily to whites.  

The Second Amendment was intended as a state’s right to maintain armed militias for their defense against a tyrannical central government.  It was a meant as bulwark of self defense against a large standing Army used by the central government to impose its will on a state or states. If you follow how the language of the amendment changed and unfolded, I think one can get a sense of what the intent was and how the amendment was seen and understood within a broader conception of constitutionalism, tradition, common law, and gun possession in the early republic.

On June 8, 1789, James Madison introduced nine propositions or resolutions for amending the Constitution. From these propositions the House of Representatives would derive 17 amendments, of which, ten would eventually become the Bill of Rights. Way down the list, buried in proposition four, after statements about religious freedom, freedom of speech and press, the right to peaceable assembly and petitioning for redressing of grievances, Madison, proposed what would become the second amendment.

The Annals of Congress contains the record of the running debates surrounding the amendments to the Constitution and reflect contemporaneous conceptions of the meanings of these amendments, and how they changed over the debates. Madison, borrowing from the other state constitutions and even the 1689 English Bill of Rights, proposed the following language regarding the right to bear arms (House Records, pp. 451-452):

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Madison’s propositions did not gain much traction in Congress. Members of Congress were more concerned with the mechanics of setting up a functioning government. The debates preceding and surrounding the discussions on the proposed amendments centered on funding mechanisms and structure of the various executive departments being contemplated. Madison nonetheless persisted, and on July 21 requested further consideration of the amendments. After “desultory” conversation on the amendments, they were referred to a committee of eleven, which included Madison.

Just short of a month later, the committee of eleven finished their work on the proposed amendments and presented them to the House of Representatives on August 17. Madison’s language on bearing arms was revised and read:

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms (House Records, p.778)

Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a veteran of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and who was one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution at the end of the convention, led the debate regarding the amendment to bear arms. His remarks are crucial, I think to understanding, the intent of this amendment. He states:

“This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed (p. 778).”

Not one person during the debate contradicted or challenged Gerry’s assertion, which seems to state that the ability to keep and bear arms referred to the people’s ability to form militias as a collective defense against a tyrannical central government. The remainder of the debate that day on this amendment surrounded primarily the question of religious scruples and service in the militia.

After more “desultory” (I love that word) conversation, 17 proposed amendments to the Constitution were sent to the Senate on August 24. The bearing arms amendment was number 5 and read after some minor tweaking (Senate record, pp. 63-64):

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

On September 4, the senate, whose records of debate are not as detailed as the House’s records of debate, showed that senators objected to a number of the amendments, but without comment as to why. “On the motion to adopt the fifth article of the amendments proposed by the House of Representatives, amended to read as followeth: ‘a well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed:’ It passed in the affirmative” (Senate Record, p. 71).

So, there you have it, a brief but spectacular history of the origin of the Second Amendment.

Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller’s call to abandon America’s social contract and resort to a ‘state of nature’ where brute force is the first and only response should scare the shit out Americans.  This new dogma of ‘power, strength, and violence’ will fundamentally rewrite the world order but also crush America’s social contract between the people and the government:  the annihilation of the separation of powers, the demise of a democratic central government, and the eradication of shared sovereignty between the states and the central government.  That, good reader, is why we have “guards of this kind,” the Second Amendment. 

Let me be clear, I am not calling for armed revolt or violence against our central government or secession, I still believe in the vote and the power of the American people to reign in Trump.  But as Congress and the Supreme Court not only fail to curtail Trump’s excesses, and in fact enable him, what are the people to do?  

States are the peoples last bulwark against Trump and a despotic central government.  A new pposition is rising, however.   Not from spineless democratic leaders like Schumer, but from Republicans.  Republican Senators that voted to restrain Trump’s war powers received threatening profanity laced phone calls by Trump.  A sign he is losing control and trying to bully folks back into line.

What I ask is that our new, incoming governor, think long and hard about how to deal with an increasingly authoritarian and despotic central government that continues to ratchet up the level of violence against the people in targeted states and cities – maladministration as Eldridge Gerry put it.  The governor needs to develop contingency plans on when and how to resist, to include using the National Guard to defend our natural and inalienable rights as a free people of Virginia.  

It seems to me America cannot long remain a nation if Trump puts his boot on the neck of blue states while red states happily bend the knee to the tyrant in the White House. Time to mobilize once again, stay engaged, and get family and friends to vote this November.

America’s New National Security Strategy:  Let the War Dogs Loose.

Welcome to the New Year, I guess . . . . .

During New Year’s Day lunch with family the topic of predictions for 2026 arose.  Predictions ranged from Democrats winning the mid-terms, to Trump being removed from office for health reasons, to Ukraine falling to Russia.  I posited it will be a year of war, pointing to our country’s new national security strategy, particularly the part about the Western Hemisphere.

Little did we know two days later the United States would attack Venezuela, seize its President and his wife and transport them to Brooklyn, New York, to face drug trafficking charges (juxtapose that with Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex- president for drug trafficking) and declaring that America would “run” Venezuela, with a focus on its oil resources.  

Expect more such military strikes and attacks in the months leading up to the mid-terms.  This attack was predictable and conforms to the new national security strategy published this past November.  It is a roadmap to war in the Western Hemisphere, even global war.

In a section of the strategy paper invoking the Monroe Doctrine, — which coined a new term “The Trump Corollary” —  two new strategic dogmas for dominating the Western Hemisphere, ‘Enlist’ and ‘Expand,’  were fleshed out.  Our national security policy strategy is clear in the Western Hemisphere:  America will use force to seize and control assets it deems vital and strategic to America’s national interest …… if countries don’t kindly ‘enlist’ in our cause.  

Pointedly, the new strategy targets the very things we, America, paradoxically created through our own past racist policies of empire and exploitation.  America’s new hemispheric strategy of domination and control contains a measure of stick and carrot, ostensibly calling for willing partners, but like most domestic abusers, ready with a big stick or worse.  

It says, in part, “After years of neglect the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.  We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.  The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”  This includes further down the paper, “establishing or expanding access in strategically important locations,” as one of four pillars of this new robust Monroe Doctrine version 2.0.  

The call to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, a relic of late 18th century and early 19th century empire, says much about the mindset of the Trump administration.  A strategy stuck in an anachronistic mentality of empire, great powers, and white supremacy.  It does not bode well for America.  

This ostensibly back to the future strategy fails to recognize the complexities of today’s world.  Much less acknowledge that the days of empire and colonialism died in the early to mid-20th century, first in the fields of Flanders and then in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.   It is a mindboggling strategy that will be ruinous.

Are we really going to return to the days of a Darwinian global nation-state race to empire and war?  

One can read “control strategically vital assets” as Venezuelan oil reserves, Panama’s canal, and the minerals in Greenland or the arctic.  I think Greenland and the Panama Canal are Trump’s next military objectives, followed by Cuba, and then eventually seizing parts of the Arctic under Canadian sovereignty.    

Seizing Greenland, an autonomous region under Danish sovereignty, would provoke a broader war. Denmark is a member of NATO, and an attack on Denmark would be an attack on all members of NATO.  No doubt Denmark would invoke Article 5 of the treaty, which would oblige all 31 members (really 32 if you include the US), to come to Denmark’s aid militarily. Ditto if Trump attempts to seize parts of Canada that he deems of strategic, vital interest.  The potential is a catastrophic war with Europe and Canada, global isolation, the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and devastating collapse of US exports to the world.

Strangely, for a purportedly modern, 21st century security strategy, the strategy paper reads, in part, like a white Christian nationalist cultural manifesto.  Akin to the “white man’s burden” of late 19th century empire.  In a section titled ‘What America Wants,’ it calls for the “restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age.” It laments Europe losing its whiteness and thereby, its culture.  The Right wing’s racist conspiracy ‘Replacement Theory’ has become a corner stone of our national security strategy.

This new security strategy is a dangerous call to return American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, as part of a broader division of the world into global ‘spheres of influence,’ presumably he big three being China, Russia, and the United States.  Yes, Russia because Russia is, for Trump, a fellow traveler, an archetype of white male Christian patriarchy and nationalism.  

The past age of empire ended with two world wars.  The historical impacts of these European colonial empires are the root causes of today’s wars, tensions, and conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia between Pakistan and India, Sudan’s civil war, and other places too numerous to list.  Mass migrations to Europe are a result of these colonial conditions that persist to this day. 

America’s empire building and meddling in the Americas contributes directly to mass migration to our southern border.  Decades of America’s heavy hand, coups, regime change, looting and expropriation of natural resources by American corporations, encouragement of assassinations and death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s resulted in weak, corrupt states, an absence of civil society, the strangling of the rule of law, oligarchy, endemic  poverty, and the rise of the Narco-state.  

Haiti was a particular country of scorn and hate by America (and France) over generations as the result of its successful slave revolt that the rid the country of French rule.  The South’s slave society feared the example set by black Haitians fight for freedom would spread to their slaves.  Haiti would be punished and looted for well over a century by both France and the United States.  Haiti’s failed state status is on us, yet Trump and the right vilify them as pet eaters, as savages.  Who’s the real ‘savage’ in this story?  

Pointedly, the new strategy targets the very things we, America, created through our racist policies of empire and exploitation.  America’s new hemispheric strategy of domination and control contains a measure of stick and carrot, ostensibly calling for willing partners, but like most domestic abusers, ready with a big stick or worse.  

Not only will this new national security strategy destabilize the Western Hemisphere, but it will also provoke land grabs by China and Russia, promote authoritarian rule, engender economic chaos, fracture long standing alliances beneficial to America, and reduce America to a pariah state.  Trump has unleashed war as his domestic policies flounder.

For a president that promised America first, an end to forever wars, an end to military adventures in regime change and nation building, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction.  He is letting loose the war dogs, not caging them. Americans will suffer and die along with those we murder in the name of Trump. Rise up America before it is too late.

Usufruct

No, not a misspelling, and no, it has nothing to do with high fructose corn syrup or inedible holiday Fruit Cake.  I came across this word almost three decades ago when reading Peter Onuff’s Jeffersonian Legacies, an edited compilation of essays following a scholarly conference celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s 250th birthday.  

Herbert Sloan’s essay “The Earth Belongs in Usufruct to the Living,” deconstructs Jefferson’s September 1789 letter to James Madison.  Usufruct, basically as Jefferson knew the word, was the right to use something during one’s lifetime, like land or other property, but not destroy the value of the property through misuse, or, in in some instances, generating debts that are worth more than the property.  

He expresses his concerns in the letter whether one generation can “bind” the next generation to its debts. He thinks this issue has not been thoroughly thought through as the new Constitution comes into effect, at least metaphysically. Jefferson wrote, “[T]he earth belongs in usufruct to the living, that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.  The portion occupied by an individual cease to be his when himself ceases to be. & reverts the society.”  That is, when a generation dies off, so too should its debts. Those debts are more than pecuniary, he implied.

He expands on this theme throughout the letter, thinking aloud, and through his own arithmetic of averages of life expectancies, argued to Madison that a constitution, and laws the emanate from it, should expire after 19 years.  An average, he surmised when one generation succeeds another.   Every generation, he argued should be able to make its own laws and government, and I would surmise, even remake the social contract.  Basically, new generations should not be bound or governed by outdated laws or drown in the debts contracted by a generation long dead.  He was particularly concerned with debt.  Yet ironically, he died a debtor.

He gave one example of how the new Constitution, ratified and placed into effect in 1789, addressed this issue of government debt.   The Constitution gave congress the enumerated right to wage war, vice the chief executive:  “We have already given in example one effectual check to the Dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay.”  

We, as a nation, squandered that gift of restricting a King — or a President — from declaring or making war.  Congress handed back the ability to wage war beyond our borders to the President with the War Powers Resolution Act of 1973 (ironically an act designed to limit executive powers).  This limited power to wage war by the Executive was dramatically expanded in 2001, after Congress gave the President power to wage war against terrorism, in the so-called global war on terrorism.  But I don’t want to write about Trump’s march to war against Venezuela using those 2001 powers, or his new Monroe Doctrine of imperialism to dominate the Western Hemisphere through force of arms, but to a real existential threat to our country: anthropogenic climate change.

For generations, fiscal conservatives have used a version of Jefferson’s usufruct principle to argue against a growing national debt.  They contended that future generations should not be burdened by huge debts, which sap economic growth and weight workers with heavy taxes.  At least that was their argument, until it wasn’t.  When it comes to saddling the next generations with huge climate debts that must be paid as mother nature demands it, conservatives are not only mute about this principle of usufruct, but chant along with Trump, “drill baby drill.’  

This Administration’s policy of increasing fossil fuel consumption, destroying renewable energy initiatives, undermining electric vehicles, and hobbling renewable energy manufacturing and infrastructure — so that Trump and wealthy elites can profit and live in splendor — at the expense of unborn generations, is astounding.  It is immoral and criminal to condemn unborn children to a dystopian world of climate disaster by a bunch of fat old white men who will be soon moldering in their own graves.   

Jefferson was right.  A generation — our’s in particular — has an obligation to be good stewards of America’s natural resources and bounty so that future generations are not bound by destructive practices that degrade and pollute our water, our air, our food, and our climate out of greed and ignorance. 

The baby boomers had a chance after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but like the war powers fiasco, we squandered our chances long ago to do right by Mother Nature and future generations.  Shame, shame on us.  The next generations have no obligation to forgive us, nor should they.  Sorry Gen Z and the Millennials, we royally screwed you by binding you to a no-win situation regarding climate change.  Mother Nature is not as forgiving as an accountant in the Congressional Budget Office.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Yes, even in these trying times one must have hope. I will be taking a break over the holidays so see you in the new year. Thanks.

   

AP News Release: Christmas Close to Cancellation

Yes, Virginia, Christmas could be cancelled this year.  

The AP, that is the Arctic Press News Service, is reporting that Santa Claus may have to cancel Christmas in America this year. According to elf sources within Santa’s North Pole secretive Headquarters, the office responsible for obtaining all of Santa’s travel visas to enter countries around the world has yet to obtain a U.S. entry Visa. 

Delays mount as Mr. Claus, according to one elfian source, must submit decades worth of social media posts. Santa’s repeated travels to such shit hole countries such as Somalia, Nigeria, and South Africa have also raised suspicions by terrorism experts Moe, Larry, and Curly at Homeland Security’s Office of North Pole Counter Terrorism (ONPCT) along with his use of multiple aliases, according to the same source.  

Although, the Department of State’s press office said if Santa was travelling to see Afrikaners in South Africa, that was acceptable.  They also denied Trump demanded Santa buy $10 million in Trump family bitcoin memes before being issued a visa.  

Those familiar with negotiations between Santa and the Department of State, report that the Secretary is demanding that only American children receive gifts, and children born to non-U.S. parents must not receive presents; that Santa must provide a list of the immigration status of all children that receive presents as proof. Santa continues to refuse these demands, it is said.

Moreover, The Secretary apparently ordered his staff to check Santa’s social media posts twice, and said, it is reported, that he won’t let a ‘woke’ Santa Claus travel to the United States or its territories.

Further mudding Santa’s travel plans to America; the Secretary of Homeland Security is reported to have formed an anti-Santa ICE task force group in what has been dubbed ‘Operation Clear and Present Danger,’ according to transcripts of a leaked cabinet meeting video.   The Secretary adding, that ‘if that red suited red baiting groomer of young children lands’ in America he’s going to end up being deported to an El Salvadoran prison.  “No Habeas Corpus for that woke Mother F*#@r.’

Additionally, the Secretary of War, per a leaked Signal Chat, declared during a situation room meeting after ordering new death squad strikes on more Venezuelans, that ‘if that Tre de Aragua terrorist Santa crossed into Venezuelan airspace he will be ‘swimming with the fishes’ and any surviving reindeer ‘would be hit with a second strike.’  A short video attached to the leaked Signal chat appeared to show a ‘Franklin the Turtle’ coloring book next to the Secretary, who doodled with crayons while an admiral briefed in the background.

Furthermore, in a deleted segment of a recent 60-minutes interview obtained by the AP, Trump is reported to have said that he isn’t on Santa’s List, and that he never knew Santa or travelled to the North Pole on his sleigh or engaged in inappropriate relationships with underage elf.  

Trump even indicated his desire to annex the North Pole, saying, ‘they love me there, they really do.’  ‘I am really popular among the Elves,’ adding, ‘I would have been elected Santa Clause but the election was stolen by dirty, sleepy, fatso Kris Kringle.’  ‘His wife’s nice,’ he continued, ‘but not my type.’ ‘Once she said I was a sore loser, it told her quiet, quiet piggy.’  He even teased renaming the North Pole, Trumplandia and changing Christmas to Trumpmas.

To complicate things even more, Trump secretly imposed a 2000 percent tariff on all presents brought into America manufactured in North Pole workshops, per a leaked confidential White House decision paper last spring.  Santa’s Office of Legal Counsel — the Office of Legal Clause — filed suit – in a rare writ of dies natalis Christi — challenging what it termed punitive and ‘illegal tariffs’ in June, but the Supreme Court, in a shadow docket ruling issued at three this morning sided with Trump, overturning an appeals court ruling to stay the tariffs until December 26.

Merry Christmas America.