In the late 18th century Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe completed a play loosely based on the late 16th century Italian poet Torquato Tasso. Part autobiographical, according to one scholar, Goethe explores Tasso’s real-life moments of inspired poems created in the throes of mental illness, perhaps during episodes of manic depression or schizophrenia.
At one point Tasso was confined to a ‘madhouse’ for pulling a knife on his patron, the Duke of Ferrara, Alfons. In the play, the protagonist also was placed under house arrest for threats and pulling a knife. Goethe uses the play to explore the ‘tensions between the rational and the irrational,’ according to one academic article. From this play comes the much-quoted saying, “the coward only threatens when he is safe.”
This is a cogent observation of the human condition, even if the quote has become something of a truism. It worries me because our President seems to be threatening everyone and everything as he too shuttles between the rational and the irrational. His knife is our military and domestic paramilitary police.
Things are not going well for Trump – mentally or politically — it seems.
His war with Iran is a military, strategic, and political disaster. Iran checkmated him. Meanwhile, as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and America’s main street economy tanks, Trump fiddles with childlike vanity projects.
Inflation is rising at a quick pace, all because of Trump’s disastrous tariff wars and his catastrophe of a war with Iran, a war of choice. Last week gas prices were at this country’s highest national average cost per gallon ….ever. Americans, according to a new report, are falling behind in debt payments “at the fastest pace since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.” Credit card delinquencies rose to 13 plus percent in the first quarter of 2026. Additionally, auto loan delinquencies are also at record numbers. His polls are lower than sleepy Joes ever were.
Internationally, the world is aghast at Trump’s pretenses of not only being King of America but seeking to rule the world. At every opportunity he channels the evil emperor Ming the Merciless of Flash Gordon fame. Trump’s daily mental ruptures are rattling global markets. The 10-year government bond yield is at record highs, meaning sureness in the U.S. government ability to pay off its debts is declining. Because mortgage rates are linked to the 10-year bond, not to the Fed’s rate that banks get, it means that mortgage rates remain stubbornly high, making it harder to buy a home. That’s Trump’s doing, not the Chairman of the Fed. In short, international confidence in America is in freefall.
Yet, Trump seems wholly unconcerned with the mid-terms or 2028. Just pleasing his MAGA base and ignoring the basic sensibilities of democracy and the democratic process. As if they no longer exist. He even posted an image of himself with a rifle and the carcass of a rhino. Threatening Republicans who don’t back him 100 percent.
Why? What does he have up his sleeve that makes him think he is safe from political disaster and reversal?
I can only guess he isn’t concerned about the Republicans losing the house and senate this November or the White House with a democratic incumbent in 2028. That the outcomes of the vote of 2026 and 2028 are irrelevant; that he intends, and believes, he can and will stay in power.
As Trump vacillates between the rational and irrational, he increasingly lives in the latter camp. I am deeply concerned that a mental health driven constitutional breakdown is becoming increasingly likely should neither his Cabinet or Congress intervene. Given the cowardice of his cabinet Secretaries, Vice President, Roberts, Johnson, and Thune, Trump has nothing to fear and continues his campaigns of threats.
“Good Morning Chief Justice Roberts, I see you put out the new signs”
We are, I think, in a supreme mess. A vindictive Chief Justice Roberts just settled a vendetta. As a Reagan Administration lawyer, Roberts opposed strengthening the Voting Rights Act. He penned memos arguing that letting someone sue a state for a ‘discriminatory effect’ was federal overreach, and interfered in states’ rights.
Despite his opposition to the amendment to the voting rights act, Congress in 1982 passed the bill in a bipartisan vote. Forty four years later he and five other conservative justices strike down that amendment as part of ten-year set of rulings undermining the law and Congresses’ intent. In effect stealing not only the Voting Rights Act, but the 15th Amendment, from the American people.
Congress clearly and resoundingly spoke on this major question in 1982. Now, the chief proponent of the Major Questions doctrine, says not good enough. If anything, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was, and is, an example of Congress clearly stating its will, the will of the people, on a major constitutional question. That is enforcing the 15th Amendment.
This ruling highlights why we are in trouble as a nation. To the conservative super majority, It’s not about the Constitution, it’s about settling personal and political vendettas. Dangerously, the Robert’s Court is a corrupt right wing political machine, rewriting the Constitution at will. The increasing use and misuse of the shadow docket, anonymous rulings, labored arguments that collapse under their own weight, the outright fabrication of history and data, all point to a debased and crooked Court. A Court where profiteering and acceptance of bribes by some justices is brazenly open.
I think the court will overturn birthright citizenship in part. It just opened the flood gate for gerrymandering districts to favor whites (sorry, I meant I Republicans) months before the mid-terms. I also believe when Trump seizes ballots this November the Court will permit it to do so. When Trump announces his intent to run for a third unconstitutional term the Court will invent a new doctrine to permit Trump to run again. Hopefully the gentleman with the scythe will come calling first.
This corrupt court and a dysfunctional Congress are all that stand before a tyrannical Trump and one party authoritarian rule. We are, therefore, in a heap of trouble, up a constitutional creek without a paddle. Now is the time to look to the future and decide how we, as a people, will respond.
Let’s begin with a very short quiz. True or false: Up to 1926 non-citizens in many States could vote in local, state, and national elections.
If you answered True, you are ………correct.
If you carefully read the original ratified constitution, you will note that it did not explicitly define who could vote. Or, for that matter even define citizen or citizenship. In fact, and practice, voting rights in the several states at our founding tended to be based on the big three: acquired wealth, gender, and race. These three qualifications defined who could and, consequently, who could not vote. While property qualifications pretty much disappeared in the early 19th century, gender and race defined who could vote, not citizenship, for many, many decades.
Some state constitutions merely asserted “white males” could vote with no mention of citizenship. As the country expanded westward voting by aliens was encouraged, for instance in the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 “freehold aliens” could vote. Some states required aliens to take an oath that they were upstanding inhabitants and intended to become citizens. Becoming a naturalized citizenship was linked to race, however, in our early Republic.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 stated that only “free white person of good character’ could become citizens after two years of residence, however, several following Acts raised the residency requirements first to five years, and then in 1798 the Alien and Sedition Act raised the residency requirement to 14 years. This last requirement did not last long and was in response to fears of dastardly French influences.
The Constitution of 1789, while never linking voting to citizenship, clearly stated, however, that the President, Representatives, and Senators must be citizens, and added an additional modifier for President, they must be a ‘natural born citizen.’ The absence of any express statement in the constitution linking citizenship to voting suggests that voting by non-citizens was such common practice that it was deemed a common law right, at least in the American colonies which, before the revolution, were generally governed by written charters.
Americans, it seems, before they were technically American, were better off than their fellow Englishmen in Great Britian in terms of suffrage. In Great Britian, voting in the 18th century was extremely restricted and it was not until a series of reforms in the 19th century did Great Britian enlarge the voting franchise.
For about 150 years then, many states permitted aliens, that is non-citizens, to vote. I think Scalia, were he alive, and other constitutional originalists would vomit at that thought.
Voting by non-citizens did ebb and flow over time, however. Wars resulted in contractions of voting rights by non-citizens, for instance the War of 1812 and the First World War saw pushback. The rise of nativist movements as waves of immigrants arrived provoked some pushback as well on non-citizen voting rights in the mid 19th century. This accelerated when immigrants from eastern or southern Europe — such as Greece or Italy — began arriving in huge numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[i]
Basically, folks from an earlier list of shithole countries or representing threatening religions, you know, the ever-dangerous Catholic or Jew. Claims of intellectual, genetic, and moral inferiority abounded. They couldn’t assimilate many claimed. Does that not sound familiar?
As we have seen, voting rights in America has a peculiar history and was (and is it seems) very much tied with gender and race, not citizenship. Citizenship was a variable state by state. Women gained the right to vote 105 years ago. African American men in 1870. Asian immigrants could not become U.S. citizens until 1952, and therefore ineligible to vote.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did much to enforce and federalize and nationalize the right to vote. It did much to ensure all citizens, regardless of race or origin, were given equal opportunity to vote. That is no longer the case. While the reversals of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have been articulated in terms of impacts on black and brown voters, the demise of the Act will have broader impacts on other communities: Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and other diaspora communities.
Trump’s new immigration policy is designed to impact the make-up of the next generation of voters. Afrikaners over Africans, whites over others. And, with the help of the Robert’s court, making it harder for everyday Americans of color to vote in states with long histories of denying black and brown people the right to vote. The attack on the Voting Rights Act is just one part of a broader, systemic attack on who is an American, who can become an American, and therefore, who has a voice in America’s present and future.
This November we are voting for more than just neutering Trump politically, we are fighting for whose America this is, and who will inherit America from us once we are gone. This is a generational vote, a vote for our kids, our grandkids, and our generations of unborn Americans.
Post Script: The Supreme Court recently invalidated Louisiana’s congressional district voting map because districts were gerrymandered by race. A normal grace period of a month was set aside by the Court to allow immediate action by Louisiana. Voting was already underway. The Louisiana governor is currently refusing to count over 30k mail-in votes already received.
[i] Texas permitted non-citizens to vote until 1921. Indiana as well. Kansas 1918. Oregon 1914. Virginia 1818. Pennsylvania 1838. See Ron Hayduk, Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States, 2006.
Gardens have been used as metaphor for ages and even has a starring role in many religions. Many early modern political commentators invoked gardens, for instance, that democracy was a garden that needed tending to thrive. And we know some gardens harbor snakes.
Tending my garden is a year’s long endeavor, but spring is my favorite time. It’s a time of renewal and growth, bumblebee queens seek the brilliant yellow dandelion flowers — a critical food source – while perennials begin to poke their heads up. Weeds start to reappear as well, like the dreaded bindweed. You must get them early, ripping them out root and all, before the flowers turn to seeds. However, as any gardener who has dealt with bindweed knows, it is a war of attrition.
A noxious bindweed has invaded our government, and Congress is an untended garden, overrun with weeds and invasive species of autocracy, blocking out America’s native species of the rule of law, equal rights, and the doctrine of coequal branches of government. It is time to weed Congress and relocate some of the slithering critters lurking in dark crevices. Voting YES to redistrict Virginia’s congressional districts is one way. Time is essential as the last day to vote is Tuesday, April 21.
I am imagining by now most registered voters in Virginian have voted in the referendum to draw new congressional district maps. Tuesday is your last day to vote, so, if you have not yet voted, do so. A YES vote is one for sanity and restoring our national social contract. Ensuring that Congress stands up to and reins in a corrupt and malevolent president. The current House of Representatives is a disaster. For those in Central Virginia’s 5thCongressional District, this November we will have the opportunity to vote out Rep. John McGuire, a Trump vassal.
If the disastrous war of choice against the Iranian people is not convincing enough, Trump’s self-appointment and deification as God’s prophet and latter-day Jesus, should get you across the finish line and vote YES.
Redistricting Virginia is not my preferred course of action, but if I am to ever have a voice in Congress again, I feel strongly, redistricting is my only option at this time. I acknowledge the paradox of gerrymandering Virginia to elect more Democrats while arguing that democracy is in trouble. I get it. Trump’s direct order to Republican governed states to redistrict crossed a line, however. Many states obeyed Trump. An eye for an eye, right? Virginia Republicans have only themselves and Trump to blame. You thought you “owned the libs.” But when you whack a hornets’ nest often enough…… You get my point. If you are angry at what the Democrats are doing in Virginia, write Trump at the White House and tell him he screwed you.
You can tell this referendum has got the MAGA folks up in arms, almost literally. Vote NO signs are more plentiful than dandelions in Louisa County. When I was up in Northern Virginia a few weeks ago, there was a small rally at the intersection of Routes 29 and 50 in Fairfax at 9 AM on a weekday. They were animated. We need to respond with similar commitment and get the YES vote out.
In addition, the Republicans on-line and streaming ad campaign is desperate. The latest version is a video that portrays Governor Spanberger as an arsonist burning down a barn; replete with sinister narration claiming the redistricting is a ruse to take away guns, impose higher taxes, and give welfare to illegal immigrants. That last claim about welfare is usually made by a “Virginia Farmer” in a dead pan pitch. That is rich, given the billions of tax dollars flowing into farmers’ pockets to offset rising costs to operate farms due to Trump’s tariffs and his war against Iran. They sense they are losing, I think.
Let’s work together and start tending the garden of democracy once again. If you have not voted yet, please do so, and vote YES.
In the year 1188 AD, both England and France imposed an income tax to help pay for the third Crusade. It was called the Saladin Tax. It was a first. It was 10 percent. Saladin was the general, the Sultan, who recaptured Jerusalem the year before, expelling Christan forces who ruled Jerusalem since the first crusade when a Christian army captured the holy city in 1099, butchering most inhabitants.
Saladin captured the imagination of the West. They even invented a European origin story for him; he was featured in western literature, to include in Dante’s inferno. In 1920 when the French General Henri-Joseph-Eugene entered Damascus after the victorious allies divided up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves – Mandates they called them – he visited Saladin’s tomb and allegedly said, “Mr. Sultan, we’ve returned to the Orient.”
They drew new maps and new countries. Syria and Lebanon came under French rule, Palestine and Transjordan went to the British empire. Europe certainly did return and managed through their imperial hubris, ignorance, and contempt for the peoples of the region, set the stage for over a century of regional and global conflicts and wars over this land. To include Trump’s war with Iran
God, it seems, gets the both the blame and the glory. Depending on who wins the day.
To listen to Secretary of Defense Hegseth, Trump’s war with Iran is a crusade. He uses Christian imagery to portray American forces as soldiers of Christ. His prayers ask that God and Christ guide American bombs, bullets, and missiles to kill evil enemies. Onward Christian soldiers wearing God as his armor. He stated that there would be no quarter. The crusaders in Jerusalem in 1099 offered no quarter. Man, woman, child, struck down by sword and axes guided by Jesus and God.
That notion of chivalry and God died on the fields of Flander, the Somme, and Ypres hundreds of years later.
Unfortunately, Hegseth is not an outlier in Trump’s world. The White House increasingly compares Trump to Jesus, betrayed, and arrested. At a recent private Easter event, Trump’s spiritual advisor Pastor Paula White-Cain compared the experiences of Christ’s crucifixion to Trump’s legal troubles, you know sexually assaulting a woman in a department store dressing room or paying off a porn star to keep silent about an affair. Although I think she must have forgotten about these secular trials. I too see Trump and Jesus in the same thought, every time he opens his mouth or posts on Truth Social, I say, “Jesus Christ, what the fuck did that idiot just say.”
It is not new in our history for American leaders to invoke God, especially after great tragedies or wars or other calamities. America’s sense of its exceptionalism is deeply rooted in God. That shiny city on a hill. It is new, however, for an American president to lay claim to divinity. The Beatles were crucified, pun intended, when they claimed they were more popular than Jesus during a radio interview.
Trump is deliberately, cynically I think, erasing the line between him and Jesus. Many of his adherents are in lock step with him, nonetheless. For Trump to claim divine rule requires not only breaking down, but utterly demolishing, the wall between state and church.
Our country has a long history of keeping religion out of state and keeping the state out of religion. For good reason as we can see by Trump’s insane comparison to Jesus. The Constitution does not mention “God.” Not even the oath of office for president mentions God. When asked why God did not appear in the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton famously quipped, “We forgot” or “We don’t need any foreign help.” Whether these were apocryphal response, I don’t know, but they have a ring of authenticity.
In 1777, while a Delegate to Virginia’s General Assembly, Thomas Jefferson submitted a statute for Religious Freedom. It was shelved given opposition from the still powerful Anglican Church members. That bill lay dormant of over a decade and was resurrected by James Madison in 1785 after Patrick Henry submitted a bill a year earlier calling for a tax to pay ministers of the Christian religion.
In response to Henry’s bill, Madison wrote a Memorial and Remonstrance against the assessment. In it he warned that the state should not support any religion. That belief in God was between a man and his creator, that the state had no business interfering with such relationship. He warned that once you support Christian ministers, what will stop a particular sect within Christianity from assuming dominance over the others. Henry’s bill did not pass.
Virginia’s Baptists supported Madison’s Remonstrance and the Religious Freedom bill. They had suffered heavily from Anglican Church violence in the 18th Century, especially during the Virginia’s Great Awakening in the 1740s. Itinerant Baptist ministers were whipped or jailed and driven out of counties. Sadly, many Baptists today who support destroying the barrier between church and state have forgotten that history.
He was right. In Texas, which provides tax dollars to both secular and religious charter schools, Islamic charter schools requesting public funding are being denied funding, claims leveled about terrorism. Bashing Muslims has become sport in Texas amongst those Republicans running for office. A proposed public school reading list contains the bible, but not the Koran.
In addition to the Remonstrance, Madison also resubmitted Jefferson’s decade old bill to Virginia’s General Assembly. It passed. Both Madison’s Remonstrance and Jefferson’s bill for Religious Freedom should be required reading. Both argue that God doesn’t need the State:
“That Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitation, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness….” Adding, “not to propagating it by coercion …but extend it by its influence on reason alone.”
What became the first amendment to the constitution, written by Madison, were born in Madison’s Remonstrance and Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom (1786). It clearly articulates that the government could not establish a state religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof. A careful balance.
In 1802, President Jefferson, in a famous letter to the ‘Danbury Baptists,’ wrote that the 1st Amendment built a “wall of separation between Church and State.” While Jefferson had no direct hand in the writing of the Constitution — he was the American Ambassador to France during the constitutional convention, and was not in Congress when the propositions were submitted by Madison which became the Bill of Rights — he and Madison regularly corresponded, explaining their thoughts and ideas of government and the constitution.
This separation of church and state, this wall, has informed the liberal American experiment that in a healthy democracy the role of religion and the role of government are better kept distant and respectful.
That arrangement worked spectacularly. Religion thrives in America because of this wall of separation. It is a paradox then that America aims to finish off a despotic theocratic state in Iran while planting the very seeds of a despotic right wing white nationalist Christian theocratic state in America.
MAGA voices like Gladden Pappin – who claims the Pope will appoint Melania as queen – and Rod Dreher want American to go back to the Middle Ages, where the church held power, where the Bible was the law of the land. They hate and despise the enlightenment and liberal ideals of democracy, human rights, and the freedom to enjoy a personal relationship with God, without government surveillance and dictate.
The conspicuous and dangerous allusions to Trump, God, and Christ in prosecuting Trump’s war against Iran are anathema to America’s founding ideals and over 250 years of history. God help us all.
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v. Barbara whether Trump’s Executive Order stripping birthright citizenship from children of non-citizens was constitutional. Every lower court hearing cases regarding the Order ruled that it was unquestionably unconstitutional. The arguments before the justices of our country’s highest court should have taken on the patina of well worn rituals and procedures. However, it was far from normal.
Last year, at an initial hearing before the Court, a majority of justices kept an injunction on the order in place, staying the implementation of Trump’s Order indefinitely. The vote was 6-3. Not shocking, given a radical core of conservative justices seem hell bent on overturning everything that smacks of small “l” liberal governance. The Court could have left the appeals court in ruling in place, basically saying that the lower court’s ruling was sound. They did not. Instead, a least four justices voted to hear the case.
Yesterday, in an unprecedented move, Trump attended the oral arguments. His attendance, for all intents and purposes, was a direct attack on the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution. Trump did not stay for all of the arguments, leaving after the first hour. His message sent, I think.
Most of the justices, it seemed, were skeptical of the government’s argument that birthright citizenship should be limited. The government’s argument hinged on the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and the word “domicile” in the seminal 1898 Supreme Court ruling United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Their arguments rehashes of earlier losing arguments. This should be a slam dunk case, but it isn’t.
In a previous post, I predicted with despair that Trump and the government would prevail. I thought perhaps I was wrong, and was heartened when the justices in a 6-3 vote kept the injunction in place. That signaled the government would most likely not prevail in court. Yet, I worried that at least four justices wanted to hear the case.
This case should not be a nail biter. It has been settled law for 128 years. But with today’s Court consisting of a super majority of conservatives with a hard-core troika of ultra radical conservative justices, anything is possible.
Enter Trump. No sitting president has ever attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court. It is unseemly, and I think, an assault on the doctrine of the separation of powers. His presence was like a dog pissing on a tree, marking its territory. Trump was marking his Order and signaling to everyone, ‘do not rule against me and my Order.’ It was designed, I argue, to intimidate the justices that are on the fence, so to speak. That is Barrett and Gorsuch. Like the Godfather movie, Trump was the decapitated horse’s head laying at the foot of the bed. A warning of bloody consequences.
I would not be surprised that folks acting on Trump’s orders engage in a campaign of intimidation, influence, and ever terror against Barrett and Gorsuch in the coming weeks. He will use similar tactics that he has already used on his other perceived enemies. His no holds barred attack on the Chair of the Federal Reserve is just one very recent example. DOJ investigations, insinuations of wrongdoing, grand juries, threats of impeachment against other federal judges. This will get nasty.
Even though many of the justices seemed skeptical in whole or in part of the government’s arguments; to include the Chief Justice Roberts, the majority opinion is far from settled. The final vote is in doubt in my mind. Congress abdicated to Trump. Will the Supreme Court do so as well? Surrendering the Judicial Branch to Trump, so that he can hang its stuffed head next to all the gold and gild bling in the Oval Office. That is to be seen.
Are we still a democracy? I think that is a good question and not one asked hyperbolically or in the ‘sky is falling’ moment of hysteria or panic. Serious people are asking that question and the answers may not be to your liking. I struggle that I even have to ask that question, but one must in today’s America. A demagogue rules America by fiat and edict. Two reports offer a snap shot of the health of America’s democracy. You be the judge.
This past November the Charles F. Kettering Foundation published a report on Americans attitudes towards democracy. This report was done in conjunction with Gallup, a respected polling organization.
Their conclusion was, that overall, Americans were committed to democracy, but with clearly defined differences in how one’s age defines how one perceives democracy as an ideal and how one’s economic circumstances impact perceptions of democracy’s effectiveness in solving problems.
If you are over 65 democracy is super. A robust 80 percent are strongly committed to democracy. If you are under 29 not so much. Only about 53 percent say that democracy is the best form of government. Economics also played a role in how one perceived democracy is performing. If you are ‘living comfortably’ about a third gave democracy a thumbs up. Those who say it is ‘very difficult to get by’ only 12 percent give democracy a thumbs up. For those that ‘feel disconnected from their communities’ or question their status in society are likely to question democracy’s ‘value and performance.’
In another report recently released, researchers at a Swedish University published a report on the global health of democracy. Their tenth annual report. According to the V-DEM Institute website, the report is an analysis of “….the largest global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories from 1789 to 2025. The report involves over four thousand scholars and other country experts and measures over 600 different attributes of democracy.” Go to the this link to read the report: https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf)
It does not look good for the world, much less the United States. Devoting an entire section of the annual report, the authors addressed democratic backsliding in the United States. They conclude that the United States is no longer a liberal (small l liberal) democracy, primarily because of the unprecedented and rapid concentration and accumulation of power in the presidency and the dismantling of our constitutional checks and balances. I think they are right. They also conclude that America’s fall from democracy to autocracy was done in record time. Faster than both Turkey’s and Hungary’s slip into the autocratic abyss. In a rank ordered list of 179 countries for strength of democratic values and norms, America has slipped to 51st. Yeah, make America great again.
So, it appears most Americans still believe in the great experiment called democracy, but, paradoxically, a majority do not believe democracy is working in America.
Given the K-shaped economy, where wealth inequality continues to grow rapidly in America, it is no surprise that Americans tend to be skeptical of democracy, but strangely unskeptical of unrestrained capitalism. Democracy doesn’t make one unequal, capitalism does. One should not conflate an economic system (capitalism) with a political system (democracy). That’s not to say, however, that they are mutually exclusive; one should try to understand them as interacting spheres of power. Our democratic decline is a reflection of America’s broken political economy.
The Kettering Foundation report does to some extent explain why many Americans, it seems, are indifferent to the collapse of American democracy. The V-DEM institute report shows the result of that indifference in hard numbers, at least at the federal level.
Where are we then as a country? And where do we go from here?
At a federal level, yes, I think we are no longer a democracy. Our system has collapsed. Trump’s war in Iran is an example of our spectacular fall from a constitutional system of checks and balances to complete and utter deference to Trump by Congress. Only an absolute monarch takes their country to war without consulting the people. That is exactly what Trump did, and Congress cowered like the spineless shits they are.
The courts are still functioning as defined but has no ability to enforce its decisions. These court decisions are theoretically enforced by the executive department, a department that in many instances has given the Court’s the middle finger. As such, Trump’s threat to take over the mid-term elections and challenge the results should be taken at full face value.
At the state level, at least in Virginia, we still are a democracy. Some states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida are authoritarian regimes, by my estimates. Wrecking the barriers that separate church and state, restricting women’s rights, demanding schools teach white heritage and not real history, imposing voting barriers such as a de facto poll taxes (getting a passport for instance, which costs a couple hundred dollars), restricting and banning books, to list a few.
The question then becomes not only about democracy, but whether our social contract as a united country can survive, or is it in terminal decline? Is it possible for America to remain a federation of united states, some liberal democracies while others theocratic autocracies? A king like president punishing states and rewarding others?
Fundamentally, and I acknowledge this, our perceived health of our democracy seems to be defined by where one is standing in the political spectrum. Some think Trump hasn’t gone far enough while others think he is gone way to far; many others just want to pay for gas and feed their family. It’s complex, it’s fluid, it’s uncertain. Our crisis of democracy, I think is a crisis of identity. It’s about whose America this is and whether democracy is the solution, or as some argue, the problem?
I remember the day they died. It was a cold day, partly cloudy. The engines roared as we rolled out of the scrub pine forests of Fort Benning, Georgia, and pulled into an assembly area to clean and turn in our armored tracks. Everything caked red, mud and sand. Our final two-week field exercise was over and spirits were high, however, only to be dashed. In the age before cell phones and the internet, rumors circulated in the assembly area that the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff. No survivors apparently. It was January 28, 1986.
The destruction of the Challenger and death of her crew dominated the news. It was a period of collective national mourning. American’s demanded answers. A commission was established. The weather and then the O-rings were fingered as the cause of the accident along with flawed decisions on launch day, poor communication between NASA and the maker of the O-rings, and a failure in NASA’s “safety culture.”
Ten years later the sociologist Diane Vaughn wrote The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Vaughn saw the disaster as a failure of a workplace culture; where ‘acceptable risk’ was incrementally expanded slowly over time, exacerbated by a ‘culture of production,’ and a senior leadership at NASA unaware of many problems plaguing programs they led. This culture, Vaughn posited, resulted in the “normalizing of deviance.” Vaugh didn’t believe that project managers and decision makers up the NASA hierarchy were amoral or made “amoral calculations” per se, it was that NASA’s cultural ethos had changed over time to where unacceptable risk had become normal, and therefore non-deviant. A disaster resulted.
This theory of ‘normalizing deviance’ captured my attention, and continues to do so to this day. Many disasters are rooted in the normalization of deviance in many organizations. Boeing’s MAX 737 air disasters which resulted in the deaths of over 300 souls comes to mind immediately. Although there, I think there were amoral decisions based on greed.
Vaughn saw the development of a culture where deviance is normalized over times as organic, a product of layered decisions by different folks over an expanse of years, driven by internal demands and too few resources, and unrealistic expectations by senior leaders. These eventually result in delayed disaster: The loss of life on both small and large scales.
Today I argue, the state of our union is in question, subjected to the unrelenting head winds of the deliberate normalization of deviance within our government. It is part of the disorder playbook Project 2025, a deliberate strategy by the Trump administration to affect those disruptions. Where amoral decisions are the point. Where disaster is the goal. We seem now to be in a continuous vortex, spiraling toward a national disaster, Captain Chaos at the helm.
Like most folks coping with a disaster in real time, I am trying to figure out just what the hell is going on, orient myself to understand where the danger lies, protect myself and my family and my community from harm. I ask myself what is animating the Trump movement’s wanton destruction of our constitutional system, a system fundamentally embedded in the Enlightenment.
It is clear, I think, that part of the process is to disassemble the constitutional order, to undermine the state, to break the system, induce chaos and disruption simultaneously, to make folks want to walk away from democratic norms. Democracy then becomes the agent of chaos, an ungovernable mess, with Trump and his minions as the cavalry coming to the rescue. But it is more like the pyromaniac volunteer fireman who sets your house a blaze and then arrives on the fire truck. That is part of the autocratic, dictator-in-waiting playbook.
The evidence is strong, and suggests it is very much at the heart of gutting the federal system, both within and without the executive branch of government. Below are four examples of this normalization of deviance:
Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s and President Trump’s speeches to an assemblage of admiral and general officers at Quantico, Virginia, this past year was a call to disregard centuries of our military’s ethos of remaining apolitical and not treating Americans, or certain Americans, as enemies. Calling American citizens enemies or suggesting that certain American cities be used for conducting war maneuvers is not normal and should never be normal. Hegseth and Trump are trying to change that ethos. It may be working. The extrajudicial killings of alleged drug smugglers — a criminal offense not an act of war – by American service members are one of those incremental changes that may lead to larger changes. We have seen this in Department of Homeland Security.
DHS operations are another example of this deliberate normalization of deviance. Homeland Security has become a paramilitary force designed to discipline and punish migrants, regardless of status, harass non-whites, criminalize foreign accents, and kill transgressors, such as Good and Pettri and others. The Recruitment and hiring of unqualified applicants, many of whom could not pass basic physical fitness standards, and more importantly, pass a required constitutional law test during training, does not bode well for law enforcement ethos within ICE of CBP. Hiring law enforcement officers whose primary qualifications are being a Trump loyalist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or ignorant brute, is not normal. Noem and Miller and Trump have already changed the ethos of DHS, for the worse.
Department of Justice attempts to indict political foes is another example of normalizing deviant behavior. The latest attempt to use a grand jury to indict six members of Congress for reminding uniformed members of the military that they can refuse to obey illegal orders (see 1 above) is astounding. The incompetence of the DOJ’s attorney that presented the case to the grand jury would be great fodder of late-night comedy shows – it was – but for the fact that DOJ was trying to indict Trump’s political foes. That is scary shit. Ever since Trump appointed the least qualified Attorney General in American history, along with his chilling speech at the Justice Department, he has worked hard to impart a culture of deviance at DOJ. That deviance led to attempts to indict political foes with specious probable cause and suspect interpretations of criminal laws.
Even childhood vaccines have become the object of Trumpian deviance. Childhood vaccines save lives. What once was an unacceptable risk to children’s lives – remaining unvaccinated — is now acceptable to too many parents on the mistaken and misguided belief that autism is caused by vaccinations. How many children must die or be scarred before sanity returns? The science does not support that claim of cause and effect. But that’s the point, I think. The attacks on reason and science and learned authorities — vice religious authority — are a clue as to a wider agenda against expertise. But more on that below.
Just as pernicious is the normalization of deviance in Congress. The Constitution specifically empowers Congress with the power to declare war, to levy taxes, to spend the people’s monies. When Trump claimed those powers from Congress, Speaker of the House Johnson and Senate leader Thune looked the other way. Johnson, like Sergeant Shultz in the old TV series Hogan’s Heroes, keeps repeating “I see nothing, I see nothing.”
It is not if, but when, we will have a national rupture if we continue to ignore the deviance creeping into our government. A normal President would accept a mid-term loss, Trump on the other hand, is already seeding deviance by claiming rigged elections if he loses, calling for Republicans to ‘nationalize’ elections in selected states or localities. If he tries to nullify the elections and seize ballots it will be a national disaster, with broad and serious consequences. If he succeeds, it may be the end of our great experiment, disunion, perhaps even war.
It is not just the normalization of deviance within government that is of concern. We must look at the larger context in which to understand where we are going as a nation. This Age of Normalizing Deviance is part of a wider movement to counter and undermine the Enlightenment not only in America, but globally.
The late 17th century to the start of the 19th century was a period that was marked by the innovation of new sciences and philosophies that questioned old assumptions and traditions and beliefs about the human condition. These new thinkers sought to better understanding the world through reason and science. What would come from these innovations were the intellectual foundations for representative government – democracy – and concepts inalienable rights of man. Starting with the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688/89 it was a period of intellectual and physical revolutions. Europe and North America were convulsed. Without this Enlightenment, our country would not, could not, exist.
The Enlightenment brought forth American style democracy: our written constitution; our enduring social compact; our concept of individual freedom. Adherents to radical enlightenment paved the way for the American Revolution, the concept of equality, the separation of church and state. The French Revolution gave birth to the modern notion of human rights. The Haitian revolution put a dagger in the heart of slavery, although it died a slow death. Betterment of the human condition through science not superstition, through democracy not monarchy.
Nevertheless, contrary to the belief that reason and science vanquished faith, there has in fact been a long détente between reason and religion, for well over a century. Moderate enlightenment adherents sought a middle ground between reason and religious traditions to answer the great questions about the meaning of life, the human condition. It is why our deist founders like Madison and Washington and Hamilton didn’t include God in the Constitution. It is why Jefferson and Madison introduced a bill in Virginia’s General Assembly to keep religion and state separate.
Harvard, Yale, and Columbia came out of this Enlightenment drama in North America. It is no coincidence then, why these and other historical institutions are targets of Trump and his Departments of Education and Justice. Unlike many newer land-grant universities and colleges, they are a direct bridge to the Enlightenment.
This dual secular public square and private religious space is precisely why America is one of the top countries in the world when measuring for religiosity. It was a bequeath from our founders to future generations of Americans. It’s our strength, not our weakness. Nonetheless, we do suck when it comes to maternal mortality rates.
I think degrading and undermining these enlightenment ideals and traditions is the goal of Project 2025. The Trump movement is a convenient vessel through which to achieve these goals. We are in a period of counter-revolution; abolishing the existing enlightenment order to replace it with one that fits more with their world view of a patriarchal society; divine rule through Christian religious hegemony and authority. Theocracy not democracy.
We must fight and resist. For those who adhere more to faith than reason, you have the most to lose in this battle, I argue.
Take the Lord’s Prayer, for example. It has two versions, one in Matthew the other in Luke. Additionally, some folks say ‘debt’ verse ‘trespasses’ or in another example of word choices, some say ‘lead us not into temptation’ while others say, ‘do not let us fall into temptation.’ Words matter. These variations permit congregations and churches to diverge in the meaning of prayers, their cosmology of the world, however slight, yet meaningful to them.
Without the separation of church and state, eventually government will corrupt religion and ultimately pick a particular sect as a winner. Do you want Trump, or any president for that matter, appointing your church’s minister or priest? Or telling you which version of the Lord’s Prayer to repeat? Or shutting down your Temple, Mosque, or Church? Or what religious text to read? Prayer in school takes on a different meaning when your version of a prayer is subordinated to another sect’s version. If nothing matters more to you than your faith, this is what is at stake.
If past is prelude, we must expect another disruptive and divisive State of the Union message by Trump. I refuse to participate by watching. We must as a nation come to together to derail the normalizing of deviance within our government. With so much in the balance, to sit back and let the dominoes fall where they may is reckless and a betrayal to all who died defending our country, and a betrayal of generations of Americans yet to be born. Autocrats have a way of eventually devouring their own young. If you wait too long, you, or your unborn descendants, will be on the dinner plate.
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.
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.
