^{Katmandu, Nepal, August, 2026. The Gen Z Anti-Corruption Uprising broke out in Nepal in September 2025 over high youth unemployment, government corruption and cronyism. Nepal’s prime minister later resigned. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons}

I ran across this quote recently. It struck me as a concise summary of our conditions here in the fading twilight of our democracy.

“The legislative power, as well as the judiciary are entirely subordinated to the executive; the division of powers, the sovereignty of the states, the liberty of the communes, the rights of citizens are affirmed only in our Constitution; in reality, however…it is martial law that prevails; justice, instead f protecting the weak, serves only to legitimize the improprieties forced upon the weak by the powerful; judges, instead of acting as representatives of justice, are agents of the executive branch, whose interests they serve faithfully; the houses of congress express only the wishes of the dictator; it is he who nominates the state governors, and they, in turn, outline and impose municipal authority with similar methods. The entire mechanism—administrative, judiciary, and legislative—responds to a single will—that of xxxxxxxx, who, during his long administration, has shown his fundamental guiding principle to be that of retaining power at all costs.”

But the words did not come from any of the yakking heads of cable news or from the op-ed scribblers in whatever resembles media these days. Instead, the words were penned in 1910 in Mexico on the eve of its revolution. This summary was part of the Plan of San Luis Potosi.

How apropos those words are to our current situation here in the Divided States of America. Thanks to the conservative John Roberts’ Supreme Court, and a feckless Congress, the executive branch of our supposedly three-legged equally-balanced government of checks and balances holds all the power. In wielding that unchecked power the Trump administration ignores its Constitutional oath and instead has trampled laws and norms while lining the pockets of its family members and donors. The graft and cons are so transparent and constant as to be a mockery of any guardrails—legally and morally—that existed.

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
—Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”

Meanwhile, as the millionaires, billionaires and the well-connected cash in, the other 99 percent of Americans cannot afford such necessities as gas, food, lodging, health care and education. These cost burdens fall most heavily on young adults who can no longer be assured of a decent quality of life, a life their parents and grandparents enjoyed. They can have three jobs and still cannot get ahead.

“Maybe I could earn my way to the American Dream if nothing else went wrong. That’s if I don’t get sick, if I don’t need a new heat pump, if my electric bill wasn’t $400 a month, if my ex-wife didn’t get hooked on drugs, if my parents weren’t alcoholics, if my disturbed brother didn’t move in with me and raid my refrigerator while I was at work. Sure, the American Dream is all yours if nothing goes wrong. But things go wrong.”
—Tommy Ratliff, quoted in “Stolen Pride,” by Arlie Russell Hochschild

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don't think about anybody.”
—President Donald Trump

Both statements are true.

This mounting frustration, despair and anger is not limited to our nation. One only has to look at recent protests in France, Albania, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Nepal and elsewhere. Citizens see the corruption, feel the economic disparity and hear the lies and gaslighting. They are rightly upset and, in some instances, they turn violent.

In France, the famed Yellow Vests, or gilets jaunes, have joined the protestors. Their movement began in 2018 in response to a fuel tax increase, that was later rescinded, in addition to a minimum wage increase, proving that mass protests can be effective. This past weekend close to a half million protesters took to the streets of France despite the presence of 70,000 heavily armed police with their water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.

^{Paris, 2018, at the height of the gilets jaunes protests. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons}

The Guardian quoted one demonstrator, Nadège: “We have to keep our rights alive. We’ve seen what happens in the US when a bad president is in power. In France, it’s our legal right to protest in the street and I’m here to defend that.”

Aside from those concerns I listed above, France and the U.S. share another worsening economic problem: debt. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week France is facing a three-pronged crisis. “It already operates close to the financial limit where new taxes hurt revenue rather than help. It appears to be at the political limit where voters won’t back either higher taxes or spending cuts. Put those together and its net debt, predicted by the International Monetary Fund to pass 111% of gross domestic product this year, is unsustainable.”

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/how-france-became-the-poster-child-for-debt-woes-08c64b3d?st=7Mikoz&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Its government needs to solve this with increased taxes and lower spending, but no politician in France (or the U.S.) would risk their position to take the necessary steps to reach solvency.

Here at home Trump has cut taxes for the rich thus depriving the treasury of tax revenue. According to the data from the treasury.gov, “In FY 2026, the federal government spent $7.40 trillion and collected $5.40 trillion in revenue, resulting in a deficit. The amount by which spending exceeds revenue, $1.99 trillion in 2026, is referred to as deficit spending.”

Rising healthcare costs, an aging population, another expensive and unnecessary forever war, obscene budgets for ICE, plus out-of-control spending on such frivolous vanity projects as the Reflecting Pool have bloated our deficit to the point that each day our government spends $2.8 billion on interest on our debt. And that interest is the faster growing part of our debt. In ten years that daily interest will double.

https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock/

So much for the DOGE cuts and the Republican mantra of reining in big government. The answer to cuts in government spending by two Trump administrations now are directed toward safety nets such as Medicaid, or critical environmental laws that have kept our water and air clean.

The midterms, as important as the outcome is to hobbling Trump’s most horrible instincts, will do little to assuage the concerns of young adults. If the past is any indication both political parties will be bogged down in contentious stalemates, investigations and scandals. Meanwhile, AI will continue its unchecked pace to replace future jobs. College will still be a debt bomb for students and their families. Rent, food, healthcare and gas will not significantly decrease beginning in January of 2027 if the predicted “blue wave” occurs. And Trump will remain in office profiting off the power of the presidency and directing the Department of InJustice to go after his enemies.

I believe we should look to the massive protests in Europe and elsewhere for inspiration. As we have seen in Nepal and France public pressure on the streets can lead to real change. Imagine if a million marchers peacefully occupied Washington D.C. for a year. Or if truckers and unions called for a prolonged nationwide strike. Demands could include raising the federal minimum hourly wage from its paltry $7.25 to a sustainable level.

Ah, but I’m dreaming. That will probably never happen as long as enough crumbs fall from the table of the rich to keep the populace from total starvation and collective rebellion. The last time 500,000 people took to the streets was to celebrate the Knicks’ championship. Heck, my neighbors won’t even put up political yard signs for fear of revealing their leanings.

Whatever happens, our current state of economic distress and political dysfunction is unsustainable. This Kakistocracy cannot continue.

We might find inspiration from recent elections in Hungary, Brazil and Serbia. (And hopefully, soon in Israel) People are increasingly fed up with right-wing autocrats, their police states and their corruption. One can sense that here in the U.S., too, although too many people believe that it will not affect them and they stay detached and they can just look away. That is wishful thinking.

“Although things happened very quickly…we got to know the consequences slowly, because they don’t affect you personally immediately. So you think: Well, I can live with this. Well, it can’t be that bad. So you are in denial for a long time, because you don’t want things to change so much. And then one day it hits you personally.”
—Isabel Allende

May 1, 1958, Cuban soldiers execute a Communist revolutionary by firing squad in early stages of the Cuban Revolution. Obviously, this deterrent failed. Wikimedia Commons.

Remember the saying “you are who you hang with”? This applies to countries, too. Take the devolving democracy also known as the United States. It shares commonalities with other human rights abusers such as Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

What do we share? Executions. Great company, eh?

In 2025, the U.S. executed 47 individuals, up from 25 the year before. Amnesty International was able to record 2,707 executions world-wide last year, a 78 percent increase over the previous year.

In Amnesty International’s report, “Death Sentences and Executions 2025,” it cautions that, “The known totals do not include the thousands of people believed to have been executed in China, which Amnesty International believes to have remained the world’s lead executioner. In addition, Amnesty International could not determine credible minimum figures for executions carried out in the Democratic [ha!] People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Viet Nam, countries believed to continue to punish people by death extensively.

“Because of this, the global total presented in this report constitutes a minimum figure that only partially describes the true extent of states’ resort to executions during the year.”

The increase in the United States’ judicial killings might be due to barbaric, so-called “warrior,” so-called Christian, white nationalist government now in place. We have an administration that stages cage fights on the White House lawn and a Department of (Endless Unnecessary) War(s) that emphasizes testosterone over peace, pushups over policy and hair gel over substance. A government that is using Ultimate Fighting Championship fighters to train its FBI agents in hand-to-hand combat.

(A quick side note about North Korea. It has dozens of nuclear bombs and is working on a ballistic missile with the range of reaching the West Coast of the U.S., a region that includes Los Angeles and San Diego. Iran, who we are currently in a forever war with, has zero nukes. President Trump continues to praise North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, whose choice of execution includes, among other things, anti-aircraft guns.)

Methods of execution around the world, according to the Amnesty International include beheading (Saudi Arabia); hanging (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore, South Sudan); (not always so) lethal injection (China, USA, Vietnam); nitrogen gas asphyxiation (USA); and good old-fashioned shooting (USA, Afghanistan, China, North Korea, also Saudi Arabia ((let’s add bone saws to its methods)), Somalia, Taiwan, UAE, Yemen).

Aside from those rogue bastions of brutality we should add ISIS, which would livestream its horrible beheadings and tortures. In 2015, ISIS killed Jordanian pilot Muath Safi Yousef al-Kasasbeh by placing him in a cage and then setting him on fire. The video was released on February 3 of that year.

That brings me to our nation, that “shining city upon the hill,” that so-called moral exemplar of freedom, justice and empathy.

What a bunch of rot.

The Islamic terrorist and former United States Army major Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 soldiers and wounded 30 others in a mass shooting at Ft. Hood in Texas. He is a cold-blooded radicalized piece of garbage that should never breathe one molecule of fresh air outside of a prison cell.

Hasan claims that he wants to be a martyr, and Secretary Pete Hegseth is obliging by killing him via a firing squad on December 3. Happy Holidays, y’all! It will be live streamed so that President Trump can have yet again another made-for-TV spectacle, and so that children watching—and believe me they will—can insert the images of a man being shot, writhing in agony and collapsing in a pool of blood in their young developing minds.

Oh, and it will probably lead to episodes of PTSD among the soldiers tasked with carrying out the shooting.

Hegseth foolishly believes that this prime time blood sport will act as a deterrent to future jihadists wanting to do us harm. As usual, he is wrong.

“He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers,” barked Hegseth. “As it should be. We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it’s public. Because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it. Sweet.

Which tech bro will curry favor with the Trump Administration to make sure that the maximum amount of people are able to watch the show? Will there also be merch for sale? Stay tuned.

The shooting of Hasan will likely have the opposite effect. Did the arrests of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and others in the 1993 foiled attempt to blow up the World Trade Center send a message to al Qaeda not to try this again? Did the US destroying Iran’s navy and air force, and our blockade in the Strait convince them to stop firing missile and drones?

But what message does this really send to our allies and the world writ large? The message is that we now act exactly like those nations and terrorist groups we previously condemned. When ISIS had its caliphate up and running in Raqqa, Syria, it would force its residents attend decapitations, stonings, hangings, shootings and mutilations as deterrents so the populace would adhere to ISIS’s brutal sharia law. We condemned them and thought it was savage to post what amounted to snuff films. (Yet what do we call the videos of ICE killing American citizens such as Renee Good and Alex Pretti, or any of the films of police shooting civilians?)

But that was then, and as our offensive Secretary of Defense boasts, we are now in a “holy war,” an “American crusade.” Hmm, sounds exactly like an Islamic terrorist yelling “Allahu akbar!” as he detonates his suicide belt.

So, who are we now? That “shining city on the hill” or another extremist nation high on its own supply of military testosterone and misinterpreted Christian beliefs? A nation that the world can look to for inspiration, or a country that has green-lighted the worst of human instincts for others to emulate?

I think we all know the answer and it is shameful.

END

Don’t worry dear readers. I will vote next month and I will proudly serve as an election judge again. You should vote, too, and consider being a judge.

Yet, let’s be realistic. The more critical vote was in November of 2024 when, after the January 6^th insurrection attempt and the multiple convictions, a majority of voters thought to themselves, you know, what we need right now is Trump back in office. Yeah, more Trump! Here is my prediction breakdown of the results in two categories.

IF I VOTE
Democrats might or might not take back the House and the Senate.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Democrats might or might not take back the House and the Senate.

IF I VOTE
Current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson might or might not seat newly elected Democrat House members in January 2027.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson might or might not seat newly elected Democrat House members in January 2027.

IF I VOTE
Donald Trump remains president for two more years.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Donald Trump remains president for two more years.

IF I VOTE
Todd Blanche remains Attorney General for two more years and blocks all subsequent investigations by the House.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Todd Blanche remains Attorney General for two more years and blocks all subsequent investigations by the House.

IF I VOTE
ICE continues to shoot innocent Americans without legal consequence and deport migrants awaiting asylum to countries not their own.

IF I DON’T VOTE
ICE continues to shoot innocent Americans without legal consequence and deport migrants awaiting asylum to countries not their own.

IF I VOTE
As they have done for several administrations now, political leaders from both parties will not commit to the drastic measures needed to curb climate change.

IF I DON’T VOTE
As they have done for several administrations now, political leaders from both parties will not commit to the drastic measures needed to curb climate change.

IF I VOTE
Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel and Robert Kennedy Jr. will remain in the administration for two more years.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel and Robert Kennedy Jr. will remain in the administration for two more years.

IF I VOTE
The United States will continue to issue the Israel Defense Forces a blank check and not hold them accountable for the slaughter in Gaza.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The United States will continue to issue the Israel Defense Forces a blank check and not hold them accountable for the slaughter in Gaza.

IF I VOTE
The US Department of War Mongers will hold no one accountable for the bombing deaths of Iranian school girls this past February.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The US Department of War Mongers will hold no one accountable for the bombing deaths of Iranian school girls this past February.

IF I VOTE
AI data centers and their rogue agents will continue to proliferate with scant oversight.

IF I DON’T VOTE
AI data centers and their rogue agents will continue to proliferate with scant oversight.

IF I VOTE
The Trump family cartel will get to keep and invest the billions trillions of dollars they have raked in during Big Daddy’s tenure.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The Trump family cartel will get to keep and invest the billions trillions of dollars they have raked in during Big Daddy’s tenure.

IF I VOTE
Roe v. Wade will still be overturned

IF I DON’T VOTE
Roe v. Wade will still be overturned

IF I VOTE
No one from either party will pass meaningful gun control legislation (search for any significant legislation post Sandy Hook).

IF I DON’T VOTE
No one from either party will pass meaningful gun control legislation (search for any significant legislation post Sandy Hook).

IF I VOTE
Americans can still buy as many assault weapons and ammo as they wish.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Americans can still buy as many assault weapons and ammo as they wish.

IF I VOTE
Brendan Carr remains Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission of the United States through 2029.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Brendan Carr remains Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission of the United States through 2029.

IF I VOTE
The costs of healthcare, energy, education and groceries will continue to rise.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The costs of healthcare, energy, education and groceries will continue to rise.

IF I VOTE
The convicted January 6 insurrectionists who assaulted police officers will still be pardoned.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The convicted January 6 insurrectionists who assaulted police officers will still be pardoned.

IF I VOTE
Thanks to the “Big Beautiful Bill” thousands if not millions will lose Medicaid coverage. However, members of Congress will continue their gold-plated health coverage.

IF I DON’T VOTE
Thanks to the “Big Beautiful Bill” thousands if not millions will lose Medicaid coverage. However, members of Congress will continue their gold-plated health coverage.

IF I VOTE
The six conservative Supreme Court justices will remain in their lifetime posts.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The six conservative Supreme Court justices will remain in their lifetime posts.

IF I VOTE
The federal deficit will rise above $40 trillion.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The federal deficit will rise above $40 trillion.

IF I VOTE
The East Wing’s destruction will stand and the ballroom’s construction will continue.

IF I DON’T VOTE
The East Wing’s destruction will stand and the ballroom’s construction will continue.

IF I VOTE
I am participating in this nation’s flagging democracy.

IF I DON’T VOTE
I have given up on participating in this nation’s flagging democracy.

Bhutan, August 2026. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

Recently we hosted my wife’s cousin and his spouse for lunch. We had chicken pot pie for supper, followed by ginger snaps and vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. We sat around our kitchen table for three hours and did something we rarely have done in this last dismal year of our shrinking democracy: we laughed, then we laughed some more.

Some of it was plain silliness, highlighting marital quirks and tendencies, and making fun of ourselves. We also talked about our families and friends, those loved ones still with us, and those who have passed but who we still hold dear in our hearts. What we did not talk about was a certain declining toxic occupant of the White House.

When we said our goodbyes with hugs and “we love yous,” we agreed that, “we really needed that.”

America’s seemingly forever sentence under Donald J. Trump’s reign has not only blown apart accepted standards of behavior in politics and hollowed out 250 years of democracy, it has also robbed us of our personal lives.

We cannot let him continue to steal our sorrow and thus our internal lives.

We can easily point to the media’s 24/7 obsession with every twitch and tweet of this president, but we also shoulder much of the blame. Does each morning have to be spoiled by Doomsday scrolling on our phones? What a horrible way to begin one of our remaining precious days above dirt.

A country whose populace is obsessed with politics is an ailing country that has lost its focus. Our lives are so much more than what cable news injects into our blood stream through its revolving door of well-paid “experts” and “thought leaders.” The redundancy of their hourly analyses is demeaning. By now, I think we know exactly what is happening.

What we have lost is what is most enduring and most universal. This includes our kitchen table conversations, our family updates, our local communities and the very constructions of our daily bonds to each other. We need to lean into whatever is necessary to refocus what we talk about with friends and family.

“Smile, Bro!” said the young monk taking the selfie. Bhutan, August 2026. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

The personal will always outlast the political, and will certainly outlive an 80-year-old wannabe autocrat whose health challenges and flagging mental cognition are (at least to me, but apparently not so much to the legacy media) visible with each passing day.

This is not to say that we should avert our eyes and minds to what is happening around us. Plato was correct when he wrote, “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

We should continue to be active, attend rallies, resist what is unlawful and immoral, and contribute to the common good in our communities. We should also broaden our perspective by studying history and past political movements. And we should always practice compassion.

Recently, the mental health center in the small Illinois town where I live had a critical grant denied by the state. The grant had funded a key program in our downstate county called Recovery Oriented Systems of Care (ROSC). The program’s focus is to “create an infrastructure—or system of care— with the resources to effectively address the full range of substance use issues within communities.” This includes placing Narcan boxes that could stop opioid deaths throughout our rural county.

With the realization that the program would be eliminated my wife and I decided to contribute the entire amount to keep it up and running. We had lost a grandson to addiction, so the issue was meaningful to us, as was our desire to strengthen our bonds locally and inspire others to step up.

Our gift opened us up to a world of mental health issues here in our hometown that we were not aware of. And we met the most amazing people in our own zip code working day and night to stem the tide of addiction.

It reminded me that all politics remain local, that we are not helpless and held hostage by our nation’s obsession with politics, and that by turning off the noise from Washington we can tune into what is most important and lasting: our families, our neighbors and our communities. Within that connection we might even discover a long, lost friend: laughter.

Paro, Bhutan, August 2026. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

I’m filling up my gas tank at my local Circle K while watching the per gallon price on the neon sign increase from $4.25 to $4.59 per gallon as I’m pumping. Ah, another stark reminder that we are living in the “Golden Age,” as our president boasts. Anyway, suddenly the pump morphs into a television screen and a loud voice assaults my fragile psyche. It announces a sale on some junk food and it continues through my entire $50+ fill-up.

How did this development come about? Was there a lobby that insisted American society should never be free from screaming obnoxious ads? I certainly did not ask for a nicotine pouch ad or a Polar Pop reminder while getting goosed and gouged at the gas pump. I only want to top off the tank before the price reaches $5 a gallon and occasionally clean the windshield with the smeary bucket of washer slime.

This little episode led me to contemplate the increasing number of changes in our daily activities that we plebeians never requested.

First up: self-driving semis. Did you ask for this dear reader? Who pined for this aside from billionaire Silicon bros and the anti-labor maggots, er magnates? Try negotiating Illinois’ I-294, where numerous highways connect and collide, while dodging pot-holed lanes of Indy 500-style traffic. The only reason you are not killed (yet) is that real humans with a stake in also not perishing in a fiery crash are also at the wheel. Sure, some of the truckers are hopped up on Kratom and other “gas station heroin” products, but at least they have eyes, reflexes and a desire to live. Robotic semis, now on the road in Texas and Arizona, care nothing for their own soulless well-being, let alone your family’s. And I guess all the future out-of-work truckers can always be retrained for similar high-paying jobs at, I don’t know, a data center?

Next on my list of lame crap we didn’t request is self-check-out registers. Now, I am as opposed to interacting with humans as much as any paranoid guy, but why should I do all the work that the checkers are paid to do? Again, those disembodied voices tell me what I should do and when I should do it. Scan your items. Insert or tap your card. Remove your card. Take your receipt. And please don’t complain about the ten percent increase on every item you purchased because, remember, you are living in America’s Golden Age.

OK, I made up that last prompt.

What also bugs me is when you buy that increasingly essential bottle (or two) of wine a red light flashes above the scanner and the system freezes until you can get the attention of a soon-to-be-laid off clerk who is busy on his phone applying for a job that will soon no longer exist. (See earlier reference to data centers.) A further annoyance is that the clerk never checks my ID. I mean, hello?, I did turn 21 three times already. A little respect please!

Phone trees are too easy targets of annoyance, but I will mention that I will never care to listen further as your “menu items have changed.” How would I have possibly remembered the original menu items when I have forgotten the password and/or the six-digit code to my same phone to access my account?

And a quick query to those sadists that install hotel televisions: Why in this Golden Age can I not decipher how to simply negotiate the Rubik’s Cube of channels? I have a journalism degree, not an engineering doctorate. What happened to clicking on the remote and presto! the day’s depressing news appears? Do I have to find a ten-year-old to show me how to locate MSNow?

Last on my lists are those pesky QR codes. At some restaurants instead of a printed menu we are told to “scan the QR code.” A simple question: Are we now so illiterate that we can only point and click?

Oh, to return to the good ole days when an overly tattooed inspiring actor or poet would announce that she would be our waiter tonight and the specials are fried walleye, baked chicken and a patty melt. Then, and this dates me, the wait person, without me begging, would set down a basket of warm bread with copious pads of butter. But, alas, gluten is dead along with any need for humans.

—30—

Robert on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

On the afternoon of the terrorist attacks, my wife Jan and I walk through the shaded streets of our small central-Illinois farming town to donate blood at the local Methodist church. The sky is bright blue and the humidity low. No dust in the air, nor debris, nor fire. The hot summer is ending, and we can feel the first stirrings of autumn. Acorns fall and shatter at our feet. Combines devour crops in the nearby fields like giant insects. Leaves in the upper reaches of maples and oaks blush.

This is the Heartland. “How will it play in Peoria?” — two hours from here — is the question often asked by major decision-makers in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The Heartland is viewed as normal, a Goldilocks region where the porridge is never too hot or too cold, but just right. Here, the streets are named for presidents. On Friday evenings, everyone attends the high-school football game. Doors stay unlocked. American flags fly even in peacetime. Lawns are kept trim. Charity is a way of life.

Not far from the church, we come upon a boy crouched near his fallen bicycle, holding a bleeding knee. He is no more than eight, an age at which a boy can still cry openly in front of adults. He shows us additional bloody scrapes on his elbow and above his narrow hip. In a day filled with so much blood and sorrow, I find the young boy’s tears almost reassuring.

He tells us where he lives. Jan puts her arm around him. I pick up his bike, and we begin to walk in the direction of his home. We haven’t gone far when his worried mother pulls up in a minivan. She thanks us and drives her son home to supper.

In a few minutes the boy will witness the day’s events endlessly repeated on television. He will see the jets disappearing into the upper floors of the World Trade Center; the rolling balls of fire; the cascading specks later revealed to be people jumping from windows. The networks will scramble to come up with a headline that sums up the unbelievable: “America under Attack”; “America under Siege”; “America’s New War.” Osama bin Laden’s image — his seemingly gentle, old-world face, with dark eyes, thick lips, and salt-and-pepper beard — will be on every network channel, every newspaper’s front page. We will see bin Laden reclining in a cave, firing an assault rifle, holding a walkie-talkie (“Look, he’s left-handed”), sitting in a lotus position like a poet or a yogi. This is our new enemy. Wanted: Dead or Alive. He hates us, and now we must hate him.

The boy will process this information overload, and eventually understand that September 11, 2001, two weeks into a new school year, when his spiral-bound notebook was barely creased, was not a normal day. “Where were you when the towers fell?” people will ask, twenty years later. And he will carry this day forever in a mental photo album, just as my generation carries black-and-white television images of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing our own napalm, the assassination of John F. Kennedy (followed by John Jr. saluting his father’s flag-draped casket), and the grainy slow-motion money shot of Jack Ruby dispatching Lee Harvey Oswald. (“Watch the man in the hat,” Walter Cronkite told us.)

In the long days of round-the-clock coverage to come, the President will say that we are at war — although it will be a “different war,” one fought secretly, off camera, in countries whose major cities most of us cannot name. A renewed sense of patriotism will surface. “Demand Soars for U.S. Flags,” the headlines will roar. “America Fights Back.” Our leaders will promise, “We will smoke the enemy out of his hole. We will drain the swamp.”

On the morning shows and evening newscasts, terrorism and crisis management experts will calculate the odds of a biological attack, the release of botulism, or anthrax, or smallpox: “It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when.” Anchorpersons will report that two-hundred-dollar gas masks are “flying off the shelves,” even though, ultimately, the masks cannot prevent damaging exposure to chemical and biological agents. We only have 7.5 million smallpox vaccinations currently on hand, but 40 million more have been ordered. Symptoms include a rash and general flu-like conditions. Death comes in seven days without treatment.

And, in the shaky weeks to come, we will hear stories of CEOs who, in seconds, lost hundreds of bright young employees, of spouses who did or did not get one last “I love you” over a cellphone from a hijacked plane, a smoke-filled stairwell, or an inferno on the hundredth floor. Over and over, we will be told of heroic firemen, of a chaplain killed while performing last rites at “Ground Zero,” of two office workers who carried a wheelchair-bound stranger down dozens of flights of stairs and out of harm’s way. People will weep and tell their stories on Larry King Live and Oprah and the Today show. Despite the tireless efforts of rescue crews and sniffing dogs, no one will be found alive after the initial attack: not in the World Trade Center, not in the Pentagon, not in the Pennsylvania woods, and not in the burned wreckage of the four jets. We will be left empty-handed, except for statistics: seven thousand dead from more than sixty countries, remembered in missing-persons photos hung like broadsides on telephone poles and placed tenderly beneath lighted candles in Union Square.

Everything is different now: life seems precious and fleeting and vulnerable. As if we didn’t know this already. As if we should have to be reminded.

Even with our broken hearts broadcast live twenty-four hours a day (with regular commercial breaks), and despite the empty airport concourses, the plunging Dow, the rising jobless claims, the chilling warnings of additional attacks carried out from crop dusters, the President will urge us to “get back to business,” to spend money, to go about our lives with some semblance of normalcy — to return to mythical Peoria.

The line to donate blood reaches almost out the door of the church. Upstairs in the sanctuary, a two-hour prayer vigil is about to begin. Red Cross personnel scurry about distributing questionnaires regarding sexual partners, drug use, and recent trips to sub-Saharan Africa. Women who experienced Pearl Harbor as girls are setting up folding chairs, taking down names, and placing calls to regional headquarters requesting more needles, more pint bags, more blood coolers — more of everything.

After Jan and I donate our blood, we are led to a buffet table. Piled on trays are several varieties of cookies, pimento- and Velveeta-cheese sandwiches on white bread, and chips. The snacks remind me of the boy with the skinned knee. By now he would be sitting down to supper. By now he would know everything.

Jan and I leave the church and enter a new world holding hands. The streets are empty of pedestrians, and it’s already dark, another sign of the changing season. Two smiling girls on bikes are delivering the newspaper with the headline “Planes Slam N.Y., Pentagon.” Although all professional sporting events will be canceled, the high-school football game will be played Friday as scheduled. Grain trucks pass us, heaped with corn and soybeans. Backyard windmills turn in the prairie breeze. A firefly flickers. At the end of yet another day in our beautiful, broken world, I imagine all our blood mixing together, pint by pint. Even in the midst of our collective mourning, I find this thought comforting.

— Stephen J. Lyons

March on Washington 1963. Trikosko, Marion S., photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I wonder what the tipping point is for the do-nothing Republican Congress. Will it be when their Dear Leader orders a “limited” nuclear strike on Tehran? Will it be when he cancels the midterms because of a “national emergency?” Or will it be when he infests our cities with armed, masked thugs who gun down American citizens without remorse or liability? Oops, sorry, that has already happened.

And what will be our response? More “No Kings!” rallies? Letters to those same members of Congress who cower, simper and sweat when confronted by the menacing shadow of an 80-year-old low-T crackpot and his band of knuckle-dragging incompetents? A sign in the front yard stating belief for science and Black Lives? Prayers? Bumper stickers? Yoga poses?

Really, friends, what is our tipping point? What will it take to compel us to risk our comfortable lives in the same way that thousands across the world have done recently and in the past when faced with repressive governments? I mean if the actions of this horrible administration have yet not awakened us to the utter demolition of our nation’s fragile democracy what will jostle us out of our collective stupor?

I have asked myself some hard questions. If I were in Alex Pretti’s situation and saw someone being abused by ICE’s itchy-fingered robo-cops would I run to their aid, knowing (as Pretti unfortunately did not), that I was risking my life? Or, if a Latino working across the street from me, perhaps in landscaping or roofing, were being harassed and physically abused by ICE, would I intervene and try to protect him? Or would I just stand idly by in fear of being arrested, or worse?

Hypotheticals such as these are stark realities for those courageous folks whose communities are being invaded by ICE. But they also could become a reality for all of us as our government militarizes its forces against us. Detention facilities are rapidly being built. And one only needs to look at the $70 billion approved by Congress in June for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an amount that exceeds the combined budgets of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service. Half of that amount will go to ICE. Remember that in June of 2025 in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Congress shelled out $170 billion to the DHS.

The threat that the government sees that spawned these budgets is certainly not coming from penniless migrants crossing the border seeking better lives. No, as Trump himself warns, there is a “threat from within.” And he does not mean his militia (now pardoned and roaming our streets) that stormed the Capitol on January 6. Recently he has labeled any opposition as Communists. (Sigh. Here we go again with the Red Scare.) Then there is Antifa!

Not much has changed since former Speaker of the House, Newt Gasbag Gingrich said, “The left in America is to blame for most of the current, major diseases which have struck this society. This war [against the Left] has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars.”

These current bloated budgets for a lock-and-loaded American police state are obscene, especially in the face of a mean-spirited Congress that has slashed funds for social services, Medicaid and so many other necessary safety net programs to make up the deficit caused by cutting taxes for the rich. Not to mention the doge-ing of USAID and domestic environmental protection measures.

So, what to do when the red warning lights are flashing, and when so many tipping points have been crossed, and when the abnormal becomes the norm?

In a recent book on the Syrian revolution, Days of Love and Rage, author Anand Gopal, mentions two paths regarding resistance. (Do note, I am not comparing our current situation with what occurred in Syria. After all, unlike deposed dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad, Trump is not raining barrel bombs on us or gassing us with sarin poison. Well, not yet at least. Still, there are some ideas worth contemplating.)

The first path is called the “stone cutter approach,” the idea that small continuous chips in the edifice of oppression will eventually collapse the entire autocratic structure. Gopal writes, “Every demonstration, no matter how fleeting, exposed fresh cracks in the façade. If the regime ever did collapse, it would not be solely because of the final blow but also because of the many blows that had come before…The lesson, therefore, was to stay the course and keep holding nighttime protests until the multitude of fractures could not be ignored.”

The second course of action might more accurately fit our current state of mind. Gopal calls it propaganda of the deed. In this instance, we are waiting for someone other than us to do something. We remain on the sidelines, weighed down by apathy and a sort of stupor. Gopal writes, “Neither tiny blows against the regime’s edifice nor brazen acts of sabotage truly reflected the real reason people were glued to their couches, keeping their mouths shut. Fear was the master here…people would not join the protests until it was safe to do so, but it would not be safe to do so unless everyone joined.”

That last sentence hit home, a perfect example of a catch-22 in which, according to the definition there is no escape from a conundrum “because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.”

What to do? How and when to act? Who goes first? Is it even possible to return to an America we once knew before the rise of Trump and his MAGA allies? What can we in this brawling and divided country possibly agree on?

Syria took over a decade to free itself of Assad and then ISIS. So many deaths, and too many of them caused by our own bombing as we obliterated the ISIS caliphate while not caring that women, children and entire families got in the way.

In the end, the price of an elusive western-style “freedom” was high in Syria, and then, according to author Gopal, devolved into the “tyranny of the market,” where the poor stayed poor and wealthy grew wealthier. Sound familiar?

Gopal writes that, “There is, in fact, a set of goods or values that all humans strive for, including fellowship, health, esteem, and material security. Each is as vital to human flourishing as the next, and only citizens living in a polity that recognizes this truth have any chance of thriving.”

As we witness our country being dismantled and desecrated from the top down by rapacious, greedy clowns, and as we watch tipping point after tipping point bested, can we at least agree that the time for sitting on the sidelines has passed if we want our own democracy to thrive?

END

The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For President Dozing Don Trump:
1. Which recently deceased Republican senator from South Carolina once called you a “demagogue” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” and urged voters to “tell Donald Trump to go to hell”?

2. Which current Republican vice president once called you “Hitler”?

3. So, I see you and your greedy brood have made some serious filthy lucre in the last year, and I don’t just mean your meme coin, whatever the heck that piece of Ponzi is. A profit of $2.2B for you in 12 months? Meanwhile the one million investors in your meme con lost a total of $3.18B. Explain the discrepancy.

4. Many people, including yours truly, and anyone not in a coma, believe that you are using our taxpayer money as your own personal ATM. I don’t remember you asking any of us if we wanted you to ruin the East Wing or desecrate the Deflecting Pool or hold blood sports at the White House. And your silver-spooned sons--Usay Jr. and Useless-- along with the Witless Boyz-- are using government connections to cash in on such sketchy crap as Tungsten mines and drones, and God knows what. Finally, my question, explain how any of this grift, fraud and outright plundering of our Treasury benefits us?

5. Why is it that you can’t stay awake during meetings? Additionally, are you able to stand for any period of time without holding on to a podium?

6. Why did you need 22 specialists during your last physical? Was one or more of them a mental health expert?

7. Did you know the Strait of Hormuz was open and toll-free before you began your dumb-ass illegal war against Iran that killed thousands of innocent citizens and 13 of our soldiers?

8. Can you open your mouth just one time without lying? Will you please stop writing your word salad posts in UPPER CASE? I feel like I’m READING RANSOM NOTES, when everyone knows that we, the American citizens, are the ones actually being held hostage.

9. When will you pay E. Jean Carroll all the money the courts have ordered you to pay for assaulting her?

10. Define “Communism.”

11. Before I forget, Happy 80^th Birthday!! Hey, did those 22 doctors tell you that the average lifespan of an American male is 76.5 years? I would love to buy you another cheeseburger or three.

For Acting Horribly Attorney General Todd “Carte” Blanche:
1. Why did you move Ghislaine Maxwell to a Club Med prison where she can have a puppy?

2. Speaking of canines, are you aware of what happened to the other Trump attack dog Michael Cohen? Think betrayal and then prison.

3. Do you think you can ever regain a reputation as a somewhat “reputable” attorney and/or a decent human being?

4. How do you live with yourself knowing that the world sees you as a permanent barnacle attached to Trump’s double-wides and not as someone who represents justice for the American people?

For Minister of Warfare Against Innocent Iranian School Girls Pete Hegseth:
1. Do you know that the Christianity you profess to practice preaches peace, tolerance and love?

2. Do you know that your faith mentor Doug Wilson is a hateful northern Idaho wing nut that is just one sermon away from handling venomous snakes and sipping strychnine?

3. Have you really stopped drinking or are you just better at hiding it? (Because, mate, you don’t look too good these days. Perhaps the stress of screaming lies to us and being the most despised man in the Pentagon is getting’ to ya?)

4. You have shown repeatedly that you hate anyone in the military who is not male and white. Why is that? Is it because you are insecure about your manhood and/or is it simply because you are a racist misogynistic Christian nationalist?

For Secretary of Making America Sicker Robert Kennedy Jr.:
1. What in the conspiracy-marinating, anti-science, swimming-in-toxic-waters, vein-popping, steroid-chewing, mucking is wrong with you!? (And what happened to you, Cheryl Hines?)

2. Can you disprove the rumor that your family’s intelligence and benevolence does indeed skip a generation, as in your obvious case?

3. Are you familiar with any proven scientific facts such as vaccines save lives? Do you know the Earth is round and that gravity is like a real thing?

4. Why does your bloated face look like a cherry bomb about to explode?

5. Are you in love with shirtless Kid Rock?

For Trump Mouthpiece and Fiction Practitioner, the Very White House Press Secretary Karoline Smilin’ Lyin’ Leavitt:
1. Are you a real human flesh and blood human being or an AI-generated avatar that dishes out slop? Please blink twice so we can tell.

2. Is there a string attached to your back that your mentor DJT pulls when you parrot his gas lights and lies? Are you, in fact, the real Chatty Kathy Doll?

3. Why do you wear a crucifix? Fashion or faith? And when you lie to us are your fingers crossed?

4. Have you read the Bible, specifically Proverbs 21:6? “A fortune made by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare.” Or, Psalm 101:7? “No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence.”

5. There is a 32-year difference between you and your husband. In other words when he was your age—28—well, gee golly, jumpin’ Jehovah!, you were not even born yet! Kinda weird in a Daddy-issue kind-of-ew way. Just sayin’. Together, you and hubby had a child before you were married. Oopsie. Is this how Christian MAGA trad wives act?

Somali children. jmbone on flickr.com, via Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday, June 16, The Guardian published a story that will probably never make it “above-the-fold” in America’s increasingly timid and understaffed mainstream media. The headline: “Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes?”
Subhead: “Six months ago, at least 12 people, including eight children, died during a US attack. The US has never admitted the civilian deaths.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/16/somalia-us-trump-war-alshabaab-islamists-drone-airstrikes-civilian-deaths-children

On November 15 of last year, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone launched from Camp Simba military base in Kenya dropped its horrific load of Hellfire missiles on Abdullahi Mohamed Abo Sheikh Ali’s home reducing it to rubble. His grandfather Mohamed, according to The Guardian, rushed to scene. Here is what he found: “Clothes and books were scattered on the ground, but I couldn’t focus on them. I was in shock, standing before the bodies of my grandchildren. They were ripped to pieces.”

The bodies included his pregnant daughter-in-law Safiyo Hassan Abukar, her ten-year-old son Abdifatah and seven-year-old Abdinasir. And Hussein and Abdurahman ages six and four respectively.

Names and ages are important when reporting these deaths. Juxtapose your family’s names and ages, your children, your parents and grandparents, and perhaps then these casualties might seem more tangible, the grief more intense.

Somali Orphans & Disable Children Center. AMISOM Public Information, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

On that fateful day there were 15 explosions in the town of Jamaame and 18 homes were destroyed. A school obliterated. Marian Haji Abdi Guled said, “All my children were lying on the ground covered in blood. When I tried to tend to them, shells began falling everywhere. Every direction you turned, there were shells and missiles raining everywhere.”

Guardian: “Despite the scale, no investigation appears to have been launched into the attack on Jamaame six months ago. No one has been held accountable for the deaths – the US refused to admit that a single civilian died in the town that day.”

The current United States foreign policy rule of thumb: never admit fault. Never take responsibility. Never admit it even happened. “No stupid rules of engagement,” famously boasted Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Indefensible.

Based on the hateful history toward people of color under President Donald Trump and his evil wingmen Pete Hegseth and Herr Steven Miller, I can easily answer the Guardian’s question, “Why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes?”

Answer: Because the Trump administration does not see children of color—especially Muslim children—as human beings. (Note: we also saw this same disregard in the recently failed illegal war with Iran when our Tomahawk missiles killed 120 school children last February at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran. An “investigation” is underway by the Pentagon. Cold comfort for the grieving families.)

If you need proof of this racism toward Muslims here are just a few quotes from the president of the “free” world:

•Trump, December 2, 2025: “We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. She’s [Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali] garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

•Trump, December 10, 2025: “’Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right. Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.”

•Trump, January 20, 2026: “Somalia is not even a country. They don’t have anything that resembles a country.”

•Trump, March 26, 2026: “These people come from a crooked country, disgusting country, one of the worst countries in the world…They come to our country – low IQs – and they rob us blind. Stupid people, and they rob us blind.”

The official reason for our mucking around in the Horn of Africa is to suppress the Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab that is based in Somalia. This extremist gang has wreaked havoc around Africa, including a horrific massacre and siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013. Sixty-seven people were killed and hundreds injured.

Horn of Africa. Creative Commons.

But why kill farmers, women and children in a poor farming community? Where is the evidence that al-Shabaab was even in Jamaame? Who gave the orders to attack this agrarian community? Here’s what one witness said:

“There was no al-Shabaab presence in our town, only women, children and elders. Before the airstrikes, the situation in Jamaame was calm and peaceful,” says Marian Haji Abdi Guled.

Buruji adds: “The only people [here] are livestock herders and farmers.” Guardian.

POSTSCRIPT
Who are these military men and women who direct this terror as if playing video games from some distant bunker such as their windowless hidey-hole in Djibouti? Are we supposed to fawn over them and “thank them for their service”? Hold a parade for them? Trot them out as heroes at halftime at football games?

And just what is this service? Killing, injuring and terrorizing innocent children in a poor, desperate country while gulping a Monster Drink? Possibly following illegal orders knowing there will never be legal repercussions? This service has nothing to do with protecting our interests in Somalia, a poor country with an unstable government that hardly poses a threat to our way of life. This service is not about ensuring our vanishing freedoms here in the United States. No, this service is simply My Lai-style butchery from the skies without warning and without consequence.

Guardian: “Testimony indicates that it is highly probable the US drone teams knew children were in the vicinity.”

I guess as a long-time Democrat I am required to pluck down the $30 admission fee, buy the over-priced merch, and pay cult-like homage to the new $850 million-dollar Obama Presidential Center, aka Barack’s Rock. To praise all the real (or imagined) benefits it will provide to Chicago’s South Side. And always to honor what in comparison to what we suffer at the present was a fairly successful presidency, albeit as low a bar as you can limbo under.

But I’m not there yet. Neither are the critics.

“A defensive bunker.” Guardian

“Cold and forbidding…Standing just below it in Jackson Park, the tower looms like a castle keep, its mass and height in tension with the park’s pastoral beauty and origins.” NYT

“Sightless shrine.” “A cerebral version of the Trump ballroom.” Tina Brown

The 225-foot granite monolith that obscenely towers over my beloved Jackson Park, on Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park, where I was raised, is an assault on my sense of aesthetics and a visible blot on my city’s landscape.

(Note: President Trump’s planned golden arch will be 250-feet in height, or 25 feet taller than Obama’s rock of ages. Hmm, is this one of those macho male ego throw-downs? My edifice wreck is bigger than your edifice wreck? Times like these I sure miss Jimmy Carter.)

Speaking of princely egos, remember Obama’s over-the-top 60th birthday at his $12 million, 30-acre oceanfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard. At least there were no tattooed bros hitting each other in the brain. But still.

I wrote about it here for the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/obama-birthday-party-covid-liberal-b1896934.html

My third grade class. Bret Harte Elementary School. 1963. I am the only one with his eyes closed.

I attended Bret Harte grade school, on 56^th Street, directly across from the northern-most reaches of Jackson Park. At lunch my buddies and I would play Civil War in the park, the North versus the South. We walked the bridle path in search of change that fell out of the riders’ pockets.

If I had any money for lunch (almost never), I would head kitty-corner from Bret Harte to Ed’s Lunch, a wooden fire-hazard of a shack on Stoney Island, for a hot dog, chips and maybe a Pay Day candy bar.

I was also a “patrol boy,” holding up traffic so my classmates could safely cross the small intersection at the historic Hotel Windermere Hotel’s parking garage. There was nothing valiant about my volunteer service. After all, I could leave school 15 minutes early to man my post. Additionally, the majestic Windermere was where some of my beloved White Sox lived. I met pitchers Gary Peters and Joe Horlen there, still a thrilling memory.

My pack of kids were once entertained by a nose-less man. He sat facing us at a picnic table in the park. Although he reeked of wine and his clothes were soiled, he seemed content and centered, not at all like our squirmy, odorous tribe of pre-teen boys.

He did appall us at first, but after the first lunch hour with him, we no longer felt there was anything odd about him. In a big city you see the complete range of human shapes, sizes and malformations. Leg-less people rolling around on carts, propelling their bodies down the sidewalks with their hands. Women with elephantiasis, their baggy skin cascading around their ankles like a second skin. Dwarfs waiting for the bus, dressed in three-piece suits, checking their watches, and carrying briefcases.

Our guy lived in our park and even smoked, an activity many of us were desperate to try. He blew the smoke out the two brown holes above his mouth, proving that his respiratory system still worked.

Jackson Park was our urban wilderness. We spend every free moment roaming among its overgrown shrubs and towering trees. Lake Michigan shimmered to the east, just beyond Promontory Point’s battery of Nike Hercules missiles. Much later I heard that it was possible that some of those missiles had live nuclear warheads on their tips, and that two hundred trees were cut down to make room for them. The Chicago American boasted of the missiles: “A ring of sword-like guided missiles called the Nike—revealed for the first time today—stands ready to send sudden death belting into the sky to meet any enemy head on.”

We related to Jackson Park at a kids’ ground level, a 550-acre playground. The most impressive structure was the Museum of Science and Industry, where we fantasized about sneaking in after hours and having all the exhibits to ourselves. I would have headed right to the working coal mine. Or the submarine. Or the model train set.

But this too-tall swaggering fortress of wealth poking up at the sky like an infected jagged tooth? What is it doing in my park? Why is it taller than the trees? Is this what Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had in mind when in 1871 they designed the park? In Robin Bachin’s book “Building the South Side,” the author quotes Olmstead regarding these public spaces that they contain “the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures and the still waters. What we want to gain is the tranquility and rest to the mind.”

But when I see the Obamalisk towering over the South Side like a Giza-like homage to a pharaoh, all I can I think about is that the target of our next No Kings rally might just warrant another addition.

END

whoismargot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Acting sort of like the worst version of an Attorney General Todd Blanche:

Just in case you resurrect the Anti-Weaponization Fund, and I know you will, I am writing you with two requests: First, I feel you owe me $1776M (at least) for damages incurred over the last ten years. These damages include immense pain and suffering at the hands of President Donald J. Trump for his many un-Constitutional acts, false statements, illegal wars, and late-night rage tweets that have upset for much too long not only my fragile psyche but also my understanding of what the United States is, or currently what it used to be.

For almost seventy years I had believed that a certain classy decorum was required for our presidents and their administrations. They would, in the main, conduct themselves within the framework of the oath of the office: solemnly swear (or affirm) that they will execute the office and protect the Constitution. This oath assumes that the president had actually read the Constitution. Your client, through his actions over two terms, and the one in between that he falsely claims was stolen, obviously has never read this august document. In fact, I doubt if he has ever read anything beyond the many revenge lawsuits he has filed against his perceived enemies. Lawsuits, if I can be so bold, that you have championed both as his personal attorney and now as his Department of Justice Number 1 lap dog.

(As an aside, everyone knows you are trying so hard to please the president so that you can be installed as the permanent AG, but I must say that with each public appearance you look increasingly conflicted, troubled, and frankly, like shit. Swarthy, too, like a mobster in the witness protection program. If your life’s mission is to be the president’s Roy Cohen, be warned that another Trump attorney with the same surname who for years did the legal and not-so-legal dirty work for your guy did not, in the end, fare so well. Beware of one-way loyalty. Just saying. And for God’s sake get some rest!)

I had also assumed that all presidents would faithfully adhere to the apparently weak Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8. In case you have forgotten the clause, here it is: “No Title of Nobility [read No Kings] shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Yet, much to my despair, your boss and his family, aka the Trump Family Cartel, have raked in billions during the first year and a half of his second term through various crypto schemes, “donations” to such projects as the White House ballroom, and defense contracts. Speaking of the latter, one of too many examples surfaced this past week in ProPublica. The headline: “The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.” The money was lent to “Vulcan Elements, [and] Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm took an undisclosed stake in the company…the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by [convicted criminal] Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.” (Last September the DoJ dropped its previous position on Navarro’s contempt charge that landed him in jail. The DoJ “has determined that it is no longer taking the same position as the prior administration in this case.”)

Ain’t that a kick in the pants? A legitimate DoJ would thoroughly investigate this and so many other sweetheart deals that benefit the Trump Family Cartel, but I’m betting that you will not. When you look at yourself in the mirror each morning what do you see?

All of this blatant corruption and disrespect of presidential standards and the Constitution has caused me to increase my morning dose of Zoloft from 50 mgs to 100 mgs. Wine intake has increased at night and I can no longer get through a conversation without mentioning the word Trump. and throwing up a little bit. I have even contemplated consulting a Peruvian shaman or a healer in Sedona. An infusion of taxpayer cash from the Anti-Weaponization Fund would compensate for treatment of my mental breakdown. But only partly.

That brings me to the second request. My tax bills. Under Trump’s two terms my tax bill has increased significantly, along with the cost of groceries, gas, wine, and that all-important Zoloft prescription. Therefore, I would like the same deal that you cleverly slipped in as an addendum to the Trump v. the Internal Revenue Service settlement. You know, the one that exempts the Trump Family Cartel from the IRS “prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, damages, examinations relief, requests for any relief, including injunctive relief, monetary or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney’s fees, expenses…including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, or which arise with affiliates, and subsidiaries…” Now that is some art of a deal!

In conclusion, I trust you will fulfill your promise to compensate those of us (well, me specifically) who have been victims of federal overreach, lawfare, and undue mental anguish. The check will help as I continue on my path toward healing.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Sending you all the respect you deserve,
Stephen J. Lyons

Creative Commons

Congratulations Class of 2026! You did it! That hefty contribution to your unsupportable debt load is now securely in the hands of predatory loan agencies and our cash strapped federal government! They urge thank you in advance for your immediate attention to this matter.

And congratulations to your sort-of-proud, yet anxious parents, who I would advise not to transform your childhood bedrooms into dens quite yet. Maybe in ten years if they are lucky.

The good news? McDonalds and Chipotle are hiring! OK, just kidding. They are actually laying off the graduates from the classes of 2025, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20 etc. You see, AI robots now have the ability to say, “Do you want fries with that?” and, “I’m sorry, but guacamole is an extra two dollars.”

I want to give a special tip-of-the-hat to all of you that graduated with philosophy degrees. But I have a question: Why?

To you morose English majors and future baristas: Did analyzing Bronte, Keats and Morrison offer literary solutions for paying back your six-figure student loans? Did your self-published alcoholic poetry professor teach you the difference in fat content between oat and skim milk? Did the unpublished, but pompous fiction (adjunct) professor that you (and others) slept with give advice on the polite way to beg your parents for a belated gap year trip to Thailand? Did anyone in the department teach you how to read cursive? And, no, you are not, in any way, what we would call military material.

Donation box, Kenya, 2025. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

To the journalism graduates I am sorry to report that the only jobs today in print media are with the ink-smudged Super Saver Coupon tabloids distributed for free at Circle K and 7/11. Or perhaps, later on, when you are evicted and shivering in a Chicago soup line you can be a correspondent with StreetWise, a paper written by the homeless. However, a career of making shit up and spreading conspiracy falsehoods on social media and in the Trump Administration is expanding, but I will warn you it is a very crowded field, filled with those sorry souls who have for some unknown reason toiled for graduate degrees in journalism. (Again, why?)

To those of you with computer science degrees the future used to be bright. But these days most pre-school kids can code just as well as all our foreign students from Taiwan, Korea and China. By the way my Asian grads, have you been contacted by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement? You will be. In fact, they are waiting just outside this auditorium. You will recognize them by their camo, their guns, their Nazi tattoos, their lack of empathy and their vein-popping rage.

Some good news for architecture graduates! The Trump administration is building all kinds of monuments, fountains and majestic arches to honor the man who they say is the greatest president ever, in fact, a legend in his own mind and in the “minds” of his simpering ass kissers. There is even a chance to live in South Dakota while chiseling in President Trump’s reimagined face on Mount Rushmore. I will warn you though: you might not get paid in a timely manner, or at all. But this is great resume filler for the next job you won’t get.

To those of you overachievers with degrees in biology or pre-med, I hate to break it to you, but lab-tested, time-honored, proven scientific facts, such as the efficacy of vaccines and the dangers of mercury in our drinking water, are things of the past. Today, as colleagues at the CDC and FDA empty out their desks to be replaced by snake-oil salesmen, TV doctors, a former heroin addict and some over-caffeinated dude named Oz, your education is out of touch and probably too woke for these times anyway. Might I suggest a career pitching Amway or Mary Kay products?

Was it all worth it? You know, the four years of late-night cramming, the gaseous roommates, the pompous profs, all that digested Ramen and undigested MSG, the AI-generated plagiarism and the muscled jock oozing NIL money, who almost ran you over in his Lamborghini on his way to the Rolex store?

Forget all that. On behalf of this great university, this stalwart institution of higher learning, where tuition and coaches’ salaries will increase two-fold again next year, I want to assure you that we know it was worth it, and that we think the world of you, our newest donors alumni.

Someone once said, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” But that was then and this is now. Given this economy and the growing wealth gap between the haves and never-will-ever haves, we really don’t expect a whole lot from you.

In conclusion, I want to let you in on a little secret: these past four years? They actually will be the best four years of your entire life. So good luck! See you next Homecoming!

END

1. I am the LORD, your one and only God, who brought you out of the Swamp, out of the houses of Clinton, Hussein Obama and Biden. YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE OR AFTER ME. And, for a limited time, my SIGNED Bible is now on sale for the reduced price of $59.99 plus postage.

2. My likeness and hair are copyright protected, here on Earth and in the heaven above and seas below, or is it the Earth beneath, or the water under the Earth? (HECK, I DON’T CARE, DO YOU!); you shall bow down to them and serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God (Got that Melania’s Secret Service detail!), visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third wife, of the first two of those who hate Me (even the dead one buried at my golf course) and our binding pre-nups and NDAs, and, but showing mercy only to those who love Me as does Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, the MY Pillow guy, Lady Lindsey Graham, and those other sycophants indicted, jailed, or not, who faithfully keep My commandments. PARDONS FOR ALL FOR A PRICE$$$!

3. You shall not take the name of Trump your God in vain, for I and my armed minions will not hold him guiltless who takes my name in vain or for profit.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it open like I do for 36 holes of golf at any one of my incredible courses of which exorbitant membership fees apply. The other six days you shall labor in cubicles and make barely enough to keep you afloat, and on the seventh day you must send me a check, cash, or money order to cover the East Wing Ballroom, ARCH de Trump, and the Reflecting Lake. For in six five four days I made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and many incredible luxury properties around the world of which you cannot afford to stay.

5. Honor your father (ME!) and all things Trumpian, and that your days may be just long enough upon the land that you shall BUY MY MERCH and then cast your vote for me and anyone I order you to!

6. You shall not harm or maim unless I order you to do so. Stand back and stand by. YOU WILL BE PAID HANDSOMELY AND WILL RECEIVE A GET-OUT-OF-JAIL CARD!

7. You shall not commit adultery, unless your loyal wife is heavy with child, or unless your mistress has appeared in various adult films. Send me photos of said mistress first and I shall decide your fate.

8. You shall not steal, but underestimating your properties and being too smart to pay your full tax bill is totally allowed. THE IRS CAN’T TOUCH ME!

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor unless that neighbor is of a darker illegal color and/or flies a flag/sign you do not like. Example: that wokish BLM yard sign and that disgusting rainbow flag. Then call me, and my people at MY DOJ LED BY THE INCREDIBLY LOYAL AS A HOUND DOG TODD B will take care of it for a substantial donation.

10.You shall not covet your neighbor’s house unless it is twice the size of yours and has an infinity pool; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife unless she is really HOT LIKE MY DAUGHTER IVANKA, nor his male servant (note: probably an illegal), nor his female servant unless she is equally or more ravishing than your neighbor’s wife or teenage daughter.

11.God (and Sleepy Joe) had a measly ten commandments, but His time has passed. So has DOPE LEO who wants Iran to have nukes! I have Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood, Vladimir Putin, the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, half of Congress, the IRS, and a host of attorneys on retainer that might or might not get paid. Aside from the incredibly gorgeous Mary Magdalene, GOD HAD NOTHING! No merchandise, no public relations machine, and no bankable achievements. NOR DID HE END eight NINE WARS! NOT to mention all the pestilence and floods during HIS FAILED TERM! Face it, God was a STONE-COLD LOSER!, a bearded, unkempt lefty who spouted all that liberal word salad about compassion, forgiveness (forgiveness, WTF?), and humility (again WTF?). WAY TOO WOKEY! So, for my 11^th Commandment: I implore you to buy my latest limited 2026 Donald Trump Assassination Attempt Trading Card, or my “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!” high-tops, my soon-to-be-released phone (any day now, ha, ha, ha) or my Victory 47 cologne. Trust me, you’ll smell better than anyone has ever smelled in the history of stink! MAKE ME RICH AS F**K AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

The White House

Recently, I read an advance copy of “Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran,” by journalists Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin. The book will be released on June 2. You should read it because afterwards you will know more than any of the dopes in the Trump administration about post-1979 revolutionary Iran.

Let us step back from Operation Total Epic Failure and return, prior to this illegal and costly war, to why Iranians were in the streets protesting their repressive government led by brutal, misogynist clerics.

Tens of thousands of brave and desperate Iranians have been killed or been disappeared since taking to the streets to protest an iron-fisted theocracy. Iran’s economy is in free-fall, basic freedoms do not exist and Tehran is running out of water. In one never-to-be fulfilled promise on January 13^th of this year, President Trump assured the protestors that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

Well, I guess what he meant by HELP was that a month later the United States and Israel would bomb the living hell out of Iran (and Lebanon) without regard for civilian casualties. This includes the first day of bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, where 168 girls were killed, ages 7-12.

“We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives…We are warriors, trained to kill the enemy and break their will.”
—Pistol Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Death and Horrible Human

The other brilliant “idea” that Trump and his confederacy of dunces had was that when the bombing commenced Iranian citizens (unarmed) would rise up and overthrow the government. But when you murder innocent girls and more civilians that we will ever hear about, a nation unites against a foreign invasion. The enemy is no longer your own government. (Headline from the NYT on May 14, 2026: “Top Commander Dismisses Reports of Civilian Deaths in Iran.” Dismisses is shorthand for “lies about.”)

Believe it or not, one can hold two ideas at once: to condemn the illegal war Trump started that has led to death and destruction abroad, and higher costs of living at home, and to support of the courageous Iranians who have suffered mightily under a brutal regime.

From “A Stolen Revolution”: “People cut their meat consumption. Women stopped going to the salon, or requested their stylists us cheaper…products. Trips abroad became a distant memory. The poor suffered far worse. It used to be that trash pickers waited for pedestrians to pass before they dove into the large steel buns at the side of the road in search of recyclables to sell. Now they did so with little concern as to who saw them…There were more child laborers, and they looked younger.”

But to expect this U.S. President to care about the suffering of citizens in other countries is a fantasy rooted in magical thinking. After all, he doesn’t even care about Americans’ financial woes. In his own words: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

Fact check: not true. Trump thinks a lot about himself.

A couple of years ago at The Globe Post I wrote an essay about the quest for freedom among Iranian women. I am posting it here. But first I want to quote another passage from “A Stolen Revolution.”

“After four decades of brain drain, the banishment of capable experts from the halls of power, and the promotion of insiders and loyalists…These were no evil geniuses or crafty statesmen. They were incompetent, insular ideologues and sycophants.”

Hmm, does that sound familiar?

Here is the essay:
Imagining a Free Iran

In the early 1980s, in the unlikely setting of a northern Idaho college town, I befriended two Iranian young women, A and M. (I have disguised their names because the reach and memory of repressive countries last forever.)

Before Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, A and M had escaped the Shah’s cruel tenure and his malicious secret police known as SAVAK to begin a new life in the United States. Their parents’ whereabouts were unknown.

Over a platter of fresh fruit and dates, the women, who were attending the University of Idaho, where I was also a student, were pointing at pictures of their friends in a Tehran high school yearbook.

A: “She is dead. She is missing. Her parents were tortured and killed.”

M: “I think she is still in Evin [Iranian’s infamous prison], but no one knows. She was my cousin.”

Fifteen years later, I befriended another Iranian student, T. She and her sister had also fled Iran, via Switzerland, not to elude the grasp of SAVAK and the Shah, but, instead, to escape the demeaning misogyny of Iran, specifically the Revolutionary Guard and the “morality police.”

Iranian Guidance Patrol. Farsnews.com

By then, the 1979 revolution’s dream of a more free and open society had been dashed when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran from his exile in France and became the country’s first Supreme Leader for life. Instead of a more secular government that the majority of Iranians had wanted, one with fair elections, just courts and more freedoms for women, Khomeini instituted an Islamic theocracy that lives on long past his death in 1989.

Currently that legacy is being fiercely challenged by young women seeking freedom not unlike A, M and T. And those widespread protests, the likes that have not been seen in since the 1979 revolution against the Shah, are being brutally put down by the clerics and their thugs.

The accelerant was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who the morality police detained for her “improper” wearing of the hijab. How she died in custody remains a mystery, but given the regime’s unchecked and Gestapo-like reputation for arbitrary viciousness, it appears obvious that she was likely tortured and killed.

Amjad Amini, Mahsa Amini's father. Tasnim News Agency

The burning of hijabs on the streets of Iran is just one means of resistance among the courageous protestors. Recently a government television was hacked for ten seconds with the words, “the blood of our youths is on your hands.” The pictures of four women killed by Iranian security forces were displayed along with the Supreme Leader’s face in crosshairs.

But demonstrators’ rocks and fires, cyber hacks and anti-government chants are no match for bullets. According to Amnesty International some 134 protestors were killed. As The New York Times reported, in Zahedan, in the ethnic Baluch region of Iran, on September 30 as Friday prayer was ending at the Great Mosalla mosque, government snipers, police officers and possibly members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (who have denied involvement) opened fire killing 66 to 96 worshipers.

Here is one eyewitness’ description of what residents now call “Bloody Friday” from the Times: “’It was a massacre I had only seen in movies,’ said Jamshid, 28, a worshiper, who was reached by phone and identified himself only by his first name to avoid reprisals. ‘They started shooting as people still had their heads bowed in prayer.’ Young men threw themselves in front of children and older people to shield them from the bullets, Jamshid said. ‘People had nowhere to go.’”

Then came the lies from the government that bad outside agitators had come into Zahedan “with the aim of turning the protests into violence, chaos and a massacre of innocent civilians and police forces.” This is the usual balderdash served up by repressive regimes.

The truth is that people not only in Iran, but around the world—from Hong Kong to Tibet to North Korea to Russia—long for the freedoms that we in the West enjoy (for now anyway) and take for granted. When citizens express that desire through Arab Spring-style sit-ins or through guerilla-style tactics, they are putting their lives on the line against more powerful autocratic and theocratic forces. Still, the seeds germinate.

Repression kills imagination and stunts creativity. Doors close on possibilities as your world shrinks to a geography of fear. But a government can never really kill ideas, or muzzle individual craving. The embers never die.

In Iran, one such craving is simply for a woman not to wear the hijab if she so wishes. Not to be married off at the age of nine. Not to be rounded up and take to clinics for humiliating virginity checks. Not to have the morality police wipe away makeup with razorblade embedded in a handkerchief.

Long ago I lost touch with my Iranian friends. But I remember them today, as I watch a younger generation of Iranian girls and women continue to fight to enjoy the simple pleasure of feeling the wind in their hair and sunlight on their skin without the threat of being detained and possibly murdered. And to finally imagine themselves as they truly wish to be: Free to dream of a future.

END

“No way Trump becomes president!” I replied with confidence. “Everyone knows he’s a clown. He has zero chance. Hillary will be our next president.”

Now, two horrible presidential terms later, I’ve been eating my words while scratching my head still searching for how the hell this happened to a country that I had always thought was so much more intelligent than to fall for a corrupt conman like Trump.

The search led me to a novel that is both prescient and instructive for these perilous times in the United States in 2026. The Oppermanns, by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger, was published in the fateful year of 1934 as Hitler and his cabal of Nazis rose to power.

Lion Feuchtwanger

The Oppermanns are Jewish furniture makers and salesmen who watch with increasing horror the rising waters of anti-Semitism slowly engulf their world. I use the word slowly intentionally because they believed, as I once did, that the irrational would never overtake the rational, and that the guardrails against hatred and violence would hold. Our current bloodless (so far) coup by the white nationalists led by Trump feels almost like it’s happening in slow motion, as if we are sleepwalking into autocracy.

As I read Feuchtwanger’s novel, I thought back on my conversation with the Toronto cabbie. I was both dismissive of Trump’s blatant racism and appalling divisive rhetoric, and insulting of the orange “clown.”

So were the rational Germans regarding Hitler, called the “Leader” in the novel. This could never happen to such an advanced country like Germany! His followers were referred to as “mercenaries” by author Feuchtwanger, whose complete works were burned in 1933 by the Nazis. The Oppermanns was published the following year in Amsterdam after he had moved to the France.

“The average citizen of the nation were men,” wrote Feuchtwanger in The Oppermanns. “The average citizen of the nation were men…who did not belong to the rabble that admired the mercenaries…They stuck to reason, they were not taken in by the hackneyed rhetoric of the Leader. Cheerfully, content, and confident of the future, they jested about the probably fate of the Leader, whether he would end up as a barker of a fair or as an insurance agent.”

As the majority of us—at least according the current polls—sorrowfully witness our government being dismantled by bellicose incompetents, our collective consciousness has fractured into silos of helplessness. For example, who will save us from the next pandemic? What will be taught in our universities? What will be purged? Feuchtwanger saw it clearly in Germany.

“In the hospitals, in the University, on all sides, medical men without ability were seeing signs of hope. An era was beginning in which the requisites were no longer talent and accomplishment but the ostensible consanguinity to a certain race.”

Ninety-two years later, we watch as the billionaire bro class and the snake oil salesmen pitching AI and high-tech surveillance cozy up to the president, not necessarily because they buy into his Project 2025 designs. No, for the Silicon elite the relationship with the Administration is all about jockeying for a piece of the unregulated business environment that Trump has created. Crumbs from the gilded table are for the rest of us.

This particular passage from the novel eerily captured what is now happening here. “For the time being, economists had taken the appointment of the Leader with a certain optimism. The Leader, repeating parrot-like whatever was suggested to him, was safe in the hands of the big capitalists…the gentlemen of Big Business…would not have much difficulty in dealing with the clumsy swastika men. They were well aware why they had come to power. Nothing to worry about. There would be a great outward show of melodrama, but behind the scenes business would go on as usual.”

Do those “clumsy swastika men” remind you of anybody?

Indeed, it is business as usual for the rich. In fact, profits have never been better for the one-percenters, the oil tycoons, the over-budgeted armed goons of ICE, the forever-war-minded military-industrial complex and the always-for-profit Jared Kushners of the country. And for the Trumps, of course, who are cashing in handsomely on their connections to unchecked power and our overdrawn treasury.

For the rest of us not so much.

As we try to survive this mournful period of lesser freedoms and increased brutality, we will also have to shake off our somnolent nature. What is destroying 250 years of freedom and exceptionalism is not a dream. It is a living nightmare.

In the March 18, 1934 The New York Times Book Review of The Oppermanns, reviewer Fred T. March wrote, “…this novel is addressed to the German people, who will not be allowed to read it, urging them to open their eyes. And it is addressed to the world outside bearing the message, ‘Wake up! The barbarians are upon us!’”

DHS

Photo by Phil Roeder

While the stylish coiffed and bejeweled insiders hid beneath tables at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this past Saturday during a gunman’s security breach, two veteran police officers were transporting a robbery suspect for medical observation to Chicago’s Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital, the suspected criminal killed one of the officers and seriously wounded his 57-year-old partner, not yet identified, who is according to the police department, “fighting for his life.”

From the Chicago Tribune: Chicago police officer fatally shot at Swedish Hospital remembered for kindness and public service. “A knack for public service was one of Chicago police Officer John Bartholomew’s defining qualities, friends and neighbors recalled Sunday. Bartholomew, 38, who had been with the police department for a decade, was identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office as the officer fatally shot Saturday morning at a North Side hospital.”

Earlier in the month, in Shreveport, Louisiana, eight children—3 to 11 years old—were gunned down by the father of seven of those children. He also wounded two women before he was shot dead by police.

A few days later at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, ten people were shot and one died in another yet mass shooting. Seventeen-year-old high school senior Martha Odom was simply an innocent bystander on Spring Break when she was fatally shot in the chest. The suspect was also 17-years old. His grandmother drove him away from the scene, but he was later arrested and charged.

Just a typical month of Second Amendment well-regulated gun violence in the United States where everyone is locked and loaded.

Thankfully, no one was killed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and the exclusive after-dinner parties and next day’s hangover brunches could resume without incident. Such stamina and courage among the Fourth Estate! Yet, while our endless shootings take place across the country from shopping malls to synagogues to schools, the WHCD story takes up all the oxygen in the media atmosphere. That’s what happens when you have a room full of rapacious reporters, the president and his entourage, and a bunch of cabinet members in the same room.

I watched the breaking news on cable. It was a reminder of why I don’t regularly watch cable news. The commentary of the panel on CNN was particularly annoying. I am not sure who the woman was who tearfully reminded us that those correspondents were human beings and had families. (BTW, high-paid talking head: so do we.) Then there was Van Jones who enlightened all of us with this comment: “Bullets are physical things…and they move past you faster than you can react.” Incredible analysis.

On and on it went until I went to sleep. In the morning I was confronted with the very predictable headlines such as “Washington Shooting: Suspect in Custody, Motive Unclear” (DW.com); “Investigation into WHCD shooting underway as authorities probe suspected gunman’s motive” (FoxNews); “Motive of gunman at White House Correspondents Dinner remains under investigation” (CBS News). A redundant load of redundancy on full display.

I am no Sherlock Holmes, but I have some theories about the gunman’s motives. Could it be the rising costs of healthcare, groceries and gas? Could it be that we have a president that has been accused of horrible collaborations with Jeffrey Epstein, and has ordered a feckless justice department to cover up those allegations? Could be that the same president and his family are corrupt and profiting from their positions of power? Could it be an illegal and economically disastrous war in Iran? Or, is it that the gap between the those that can survive and those tossed to the curb is widening?

The White House will simply say that the would-be assassin was “deranged” and “crazy.” (Oh, and the Democrats are at fault and this is why we need a new East Wing ballroom that absolutely no U.S. citizen asked for.) Perhaps he was. Trying to settle grievances with murder is a vile and horrible act and should never be condoned. He will probably spend the rest of his days in prison. Yet, his possible reasons for such an evil act remain.

The Baton Rouge police chief said that the motives for the mall gunman might be “social media beefs and maybe gang-related stuff.” The Shreveport killer was motivated by a domestic dispute. The Chicago cop killer’s motive could possibly be that he wanted to escape his robbery charges.

The search for motives is cold comfort for the victims and their families. Discovered motives do not stop the next guy with a grudge and a gun from walking into his neighborhood Rural King and legally purchasing, say, a Sig Sauer M400 TREAD. This human hunting weapon comes, according to Rural King’s website, “…standard with a 16” stainless steel barrel which provides incredible shot to shot consistency and tight groupings.” Built right here in the good ole USA.

(Incredible shot to shot consistency? What does that even mean? A better kill rate? More bang for your buck?)

The next mass shooting is coming, perhaps to your nearby Walmart, Starbucks, campus, nursing home, church…Then we will search for those elusive motives, send our thoughts and prayers, set out teddy bears and flowers by the yellow crime tape, while our legislators stick their heads deeper into the sand of apathy, forever beholden to their paymaster, the National Rifle Association. And that same Congressional Cartel will ignore any ideas for improving the lives of Americans who have easy access to an arsenal of guns and who keep falling deeper into debt and desperation.

India, 2016, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

“Too many people are suffering today, too many innocent people have been killed, and I believe someone must stand up and say that there is a better way.”
—Pope Leo XIV

Silly me, right? That kind of candy-ass, libtard thinking is much too woke for Secretary of the Killing of Innocents Pistol Pete “Last Call” Hegseth and his blood brother, Bibi “the Butcher of Beirut” Yahoo. Yet, if any of the men in charge of this so-called “warrior ethos” are even vaguely interested, or have a shred of decency left (spoiler alert: they don’t), the Geneva Convention has many provisions protecting women and children.

For example, Article 17: “The Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to conclude local agreements for the removal from besieged or encircled areas, of wounded, sick, infirm, and aged persons, children and maternity cases, and for the passage of ministers of all religions, medical personnel and medical equipment on their way to such areas.”

Morocco, 2017, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 came out after the United States obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nukes, killing an estimated 38,000 children. And, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), “countless more died years or even decades later from radiation-related cancers and other illnesses. Leukaemia – cancer of the blood – was especially prevalent among the young.” ICAN also said that the nuclear bombs dropped over Japan were “two relatively small nuclear weapons (by today’s standard).”

(Note: President Trump once said, “when crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen.” Wonder who he was referring to?)

President Trump began his war of choice possibly at the behest of pal Bibi at the end of February by bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan province in Iran. Out of the 168 killed 100 were children.

“Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” Pope Leo XIV

Mexico, 2022, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

Amazonia, Brazil, 2022, Phoro by Stephen J. Lyons.

“This harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict. Schools must be places of safety and learning for children. Instead, this school in Minab became a site of mass killing. The US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building. Targeting a protected civilian object, such as a school, is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/usa-iran-those-responsible-for-deadly-and-unlawful-us-strike-on-school-that-killed-over-100-children-must-be-held-accountable/

I don’t buy for a second that the U.S. is honestly investigating this horrific slaughter, or that there will ever be anyone held to account for these deaths. In any case, how do you compensate for the death of a child?

Honduras, 2024, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

Kenya, 2025, Photos by Stephen J. Lyons

But that bombing was only the opening salvo of the US and Israel’s war on children.

“Reports indicate more than 1,800 children have been killed or injured since Feb. 28, 2026; 214 children have been reported killed in Iran, 116 in Lebanon, 4 in Israel and 1 in Kuwait. The number of children injured includes more than 1,190 in Iran, 331 in Lebanon, 4 in Israel and 4 in Bahrain. These numbers will likely climb as the conflict intensifies and spreads.

“Beyond the death toll, the escalation is exposing children to traumatic events, causing widespread psychological distress among kids and caregivers. Repeated alerts, bombardments and uncertainty are disrupting daily routines, increasing the need for mental health and psychosocial support services.

“Civilian infrastructure including homes, hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or destroyed by parties to the conflict, disrupting services that children rely on for survival and well-being. In some areas, health facilities have been forced to suspend operations, while airspace closures and disrupted transport routes threaten access to essential medicines and routine immunization services. Millions of children are out of school, cut off from safe learning environments and support systems.”
—UNICEF USA

On March 25, at a “Christian” worship service, Secretary of the Slaughter of Innocents, Pete Hegseth asked Pentagon officials to pray for “overwhelming violence” against enemies in Iran in the “name of Jesus Christ” and to “break the teeth of the ungodly.”

“Now Jesus don’t like killing, no matter what the reason for,
And your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore.”
—John Prine

Our accomplice in this war-that-didn’t-need-to-happen-but-we-must-keep-the-defense-economy-robust, Little Man Bibi and his IDF are experienced killers of children in Gaza. Here is an excerpt from an October 7, 2024, UNICEF report titled, “A year of tears: 12 months of war on children.”

“In Gaza, at least 14,000 children have reportedly been killed, many more injured, while thousands are likely under the rubble, and an estimated 17,000 others are unaccompanied or separated from their caregivers.

“More than 55 displacement orders remain in effect, covering up to 86 per cent of the Gaza Strip. Children have lost access to quality healthcare, education, and other services. All children are now in need of mental health and psychosocial support. One year into the war, children’s most basic needs remain unmet.

“Persistent restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial commodities, and the inability of humanitarians to safely reach all children and families, have rendered the Gaza population acutely food insecure . All 335,000 children under five are at high risk of malnutrition.”

Currently? Save the Children reports: “As of September 2025, over 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza during nearly 23 months of conflict, with reports indicating more than one child is killed every hour. Over 1,000 children killed were under the age of one, and thousands more are missing, likely trapped under rubble. The violence has also resulted in over 21,000 children suffering from injuries leading to permanent disabilities.”

Cambodia, 2026, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

If you only think of children as merely faceless collateral damage, then you can be freed of imagining a child’s smile, or laughter, or innocence. As with Israel and the United States, you can even believe that God is on your side. No doubt Iran has the same belief about a God who picks sides.

“God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” Pope Leo XIV

I am fortunate to be a father and grandfather, and to also have traveled around the world meeting with children from Kenya to Morocco to Cuba and many other countries. I post their photos here so that you when hear about another mass killing of children in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, or any place where bullets and bombs fly, you can hold these images in your head and contemplate the losses not as numbers but as precious individuals whose lives needlessly ended because of decisions made by heartless, morally vacant elderly men.

Cuba, 2012, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

Cuba, 2012, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

Walter Gramatté, Funeral Procession, 1917

After a prolonged, ten-year illness, in which its declining mental and moral prowess were on life support, the United States of America passed away fitfully tonight surrounded by only a few friends and no allies. Its last words were, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Cause of death was a toxic combination of avarice, ego and fraud. Because of a lack of interest and collective fatigue there is no planned service at this time.

USA was preceded in death by Congress, the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, science, CBS News and the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The USA was born to great hope and fanfare in Boston 250 years ago in 1776 after gaining its independence from a hostile foreign power. The newborn presented itself as a beacon on the hill and over the years was known as a shining example to the world as a just and charitable nation that could be trusted most of the time, but not always, to do the right thing to advance democracy around the globe.

It survived a civil war and brought an end to slavery. Throughout two world wars the USA valiantly defeated Nazism, fascism and genocides. It was always relied on to aid people around the world suffering famines, natural disasters and pogroms through programs like USAID. Until a decade ago, the USA was also known worldwide as a safe landing space for refugees seeking a better way of life, for displaced souls to experience freedoms of religion, speech and the press that were denied to them in their native countries. The American Dream became a reality for millions and immigrants added to the cultural and economic vitality of the nation.

Today, thanks to the recently deceased and terminally deceased USA and its contagions, those same immigrants, asylum seekers, and even American citizens, are being systematically purged, beaten, killed and incarcerated in horrific conditions in detention centers. This will be a major part of the USA’s legacy and will be engraved forever on its tombstone.

Its life’s history wasn’t always perfect: abuses happened, it was cruel too often toward minorities and Native Americans. A case could be made that it still is, but up until recently it had made major strides in diversity, equality and inclusion. That appears to have suffered a long-term setback as a white (un)Christian nationalist stain has infiltrated our schools, our libraries, our schools and universities and our neighborhoods.

The USA has been known to overreach in its foreign policy and its intentions are too frequently conceived by blatantly selfish and dangerous shapeshifting dingbats who came to power based not on their qualifications, but on their unwavering loyalties and unquenchable greed. Unlike the USA their lifespan appears infinite.

Civil rights were hard fought, violently at times, but in the end our better angels prevailed. McCarthyism was another ugly stain on its history, but the Constitution and its laws held steady. Forever wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan were huge blunders of hubris that costs the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians and accomplished nothing but long-term misery and environmental devastation. History is known as a wise teacher, but as we see today in Iran, one can only learn from history if one actually opens up a book and reads its contents.

Survivors of the late USA are its 345 million divided and confused citizenry who continue to struggle with rising food, energy and healthcare costs; who are left wondering how this devolution happened, this great hollowing out of everything that was once moral and decent about their great nation. They ask themselves in the wake of this death, who are we, what is it that we stand for and what will our futures and our generations’ futures be like?

Contributions in memory of the United States of America can be made to your local food banks. the ACLU, migrant rights’ organizations, Indivisible, mental health centers, non profits and any organizations that promote diversity, equality and inclusion.

U.S. Department of the Treasury employee (per [1]), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
All the live-long day.
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And I bet no one gets paid

Can’t you just see the final product
Hobby Lobby kitsch
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And it’s going to look like shit

“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, it’s not your house!
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, you have no taste”

Meanwhile…
Someone’s in bed with Putin.
Someone’s in bed with Elon, too.
Someone’s in bed with MBS…
Pardoning all the old narcos

Trump’s been tearing down democracy
All the live-long day.
Trump’s been tearing down democracy
And he always gets his way

Oh can’t you see what he’s doing
Ripping our nation to shreds
His toadies carry out his orders
And they join him in his threats

“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, we’ll win this fight!
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, the people will prevail”

Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
All the live-long day.
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And I bet no one gets paid

Can’t you just see the final product
Hobby Lobby kitsch
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And it’s going to look like shit

I am the CEO of LEAP, a nonprofit in Goleta, California that serves low-income families with childcare and family support. Many of our families are immigrants, including K’s family who are here with asylum status. K is two years old.

K and Mom are bona fide asylum seekers. They have complied with all their immigration requirements, including all immigration check-in appointments. On March 19, K and his mom and Dad were abruptly arrested and detained after dutifully appearing at an immigration check-in appointment.

Our Community Engagement Specialist, Laura, received a call from the family in detention letting us know what happened. Sadly, there was nothing we could do.

On Monday, three things happened. First, Laura wrote to me about her call from K’s mom. She shared her sadness at not being able to do more, but also her recognition that our connection with the other families, the connections of trust enabled the family to call her and gave us the opportunity to support her emotionally. Laura wrote beautifully, and I want to share some of her words with you:

“I was approached by two other families who are part of our LEAP community. I showed up the only way I know how – with a smile, an open, heart and a willingness to listen…. I gave them my card. They told me that, at the very least, they felt peace knowing their children were safe at LEAP….

Somehow that connection traveled.

That small moment of showing up – of listening, of being present – carried my number across state lines, all the way to a detention center in Texas. That’s what connection does. Sometimes it’s not about having the answers or the power to fix everything. Sometimes it’s just about being there, meeting people where they are, and holding space for them. And, in this case, that was enough to build trust strong enough to travel thousands of miles.”

I was so touched by Laura’s words, that I decided to share that with my network. That was the second thing that happened. I wrote a personal email to many of the people who support LEAP, who care about us. And, I did something I don’t always do, I invited them to make a donation. I knew the people I shared this with would want to DO something. So, I suggested a donation to our emergency response fund.

Later that night, I got a call from another staff member. While she was eating dinner, she saw K’s face on the news in a story about the detention center in Dilley, TX. The story said he was sick, he hadn’t eaten in 12 days, and he wasn’t getting care. Understandably, she was terribly upset, broken hearted to see a child she worked so hard to enroll in our children’s center suffering. But, there was something hopeful in the news story. The San Antonio Texas Congressman, Joaquin Castro, was advocating for K’s release. I shared that news with the same group of donors. A handful of donations came in.

The next morning, Laura began receiving calls from the lawyer, Elora Mukherjee who had taken on the case, thanks to the news report from Lidia Terrazzas. The lawyer filed an appeal, and it was tentatively accepted. By 7:30 AM, we were told that if we could find a sponsor for the family, Mom and K might be released. I immediately found that sponsor.

Within an hour, immigration called me to confirm the sponsor. I was told that we needed to provide plane tickets for K and Mom at a specific time. Fortunately, because of the email that I just happened to send, we had enough in donations to cover last minute, refundable plane tickets from San Antonio to Santa Barbara. Evan, the master travel agent of our family booked the flights. I agreed to be the person that immigration would call, and I spoke several times to a bureaucrat facilitating the process. By noon, I had a text from immigration confirming that agents would drive K and Mom to the airport on Thursday. Things were beginning to look hopeful.

Now we needed to prepare for their arrival home. They no longer had a home because their landlord thought they had been deported and rented their room and got rid of most of their belongings. Housing in our area is so tight, the room was rented immediately. With the help Mom’s friend, we found a room for them and paid the first month’s rent. Thanks, again, to our emergency response fund.

On Wednesday, Laura went shopping to buy some clothes and basic food, imagining that they might not have had clothes with them. We made sure that K had a doctor’s appointment, on Thursday, since we knew he was sick. Meanwhile, we were tracking the flights. We celebrated when we learned that mom and K were at the airport. We cheered when the first plane took off. When Mom and K landed my team were there to greet them.

I’d like to end the story there, but that’s not the end.

K is only two years old. He suffered immensely in detention at Dilley. K was unable to eat solid food for the entirety of his detention at Dilley. For nearly two weeks, K vomited every time his mom tried to feed him solid food. He survived by drinking water and apple juice. K cried frequently and suffered mentally and physically. He developed a high fever. He was unable to sleep, awoken by the lights that were on 24/7 and the noises of patrolling guards at night. He desperately misses his father.

Both K and Mom are severely traumatized. He screamed hysterically getting into the car when Laura picked them up from the airport. He is now terrified of cars and car seats because of the way he was violently shoved into a car by ICE agents. K and Mom have nothing. We will make sure to get them on their feet. I’m hoping we can find a reputable lawyer to get K’s Dad released.

K will return to our school on Monday. I know we will be patient with his fears and create the space and safety the family needs to heal.

We know that positive experiences can help heal the wounds of trauma. Trusted relationships, equitable environments, and a sense of belonging – along with therapy – can counteract some of the harmful effects of what happened to this family.

This week is an example of what we can do because we are a community.

.This week, when I celebrated Passover, I had a very tangible sense of what it means to move toward freedom.

If you want to help, here are some things you can do:

To donate directly to the family, here is their go fund me https://gofund.me/81af1b43a

To donate to LEAP so that we can continue to support this family as well as others and do our work of providing high-quality, trauma-informed early childhood education and comprehensive family support, click here https://leapcentralcoast.org/donate/

To see an initial report from Lidia Terrazzas of K’s release, see here

And, share this with your networks. Community can be powerful.

Pic of K shared with permission.

P.S. - This morning mom said she needs evaporated milk, clothing for K, oil, eggs, a dresser to store her clothes. These are the kinds of things your donations will help with. (LEAP will purchase the food items today, until the Go Fund Me money is transferred into her account)