Imagine if those “We the People” of 1776 had not believed in their own resolve and courage as the solution to a tyrant’s abuse and greed. Imagine they’d not joined together and confronted the king, but instead shrunk before his spreading of fear and chaos — weak and divided like the mile-wide, inch-deep Platte River. Imagine that as the story they had to tell their grandchildren.
Instead they headed to the battlefield where the tyrant waged his war, pledging together their lives and sacred honor. They fought for free speech, a free press, religious freedom; the sacred right to vote and assemble. They passed on a democracy to all of us.
On June 14, just weeks before our nation’s 250th birthday, Donald Trump will convene a cage fight on the White House lawn within view of the Lincoln Memorial. His birthday is June 14, Flag Day, and he’s been waving his own personalized Trump flags advertising his view of a divided nation since well before he first took office.
The vision Donald Trump is fashioning for us, and the world, is revealed in the blood-sport circus he’s convening. Days from now at the behest of a U.S. president, two humans — artificially divided, will punch and tear at each other like animals. It’s a spectacle harkening back to the depraved appetites of brute Roman emperors. Trump will bathe in the pleasure he apparently derives watching from a sideline throne as brute pain is inflicted by men beating each other senseless, groveling for cash prizes on the nation’s front lawn. That rot-at-the top legacy is what he’s fashioning for us, a bedtime story about the end of democracy.
That sadistic celebration will be seen as America’s new calling card and flashed around the globe, convened by a rogue billionaire manufacturing war, chaos, election lies and spewing dehumanizing rhetoric counter to our Declaration’s aspirational “self-evident” truths that all men are created equal. That twisted vision, wholly uncoupled from human dignity and our civil rights, will be a stain on us all.
I recently questioned Congressman Jim McGovern about the American people marching in Washington by September to ensure and protect the integrity of our upcoming election. I cited the president’s continued roughshod run over the Constitution’s First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, noting that his openly scheming to subvert and game election results will not end before that one-day November contest, convened in fall’s darkening days.
McGovern noted in remarks at Greenfield High School that night that he’s buoyed by No Kings Days and rallies countering ICE activity. He cited new voter registration as one possible solution to Trump’s power grabs. But McGovern also shared personal fears that Trump will sabotage the fall elections, perhaps sending ICE or disrupting agents to polling sites. He’s also afraid Trump might not leave office when his term ends.
What McGovern didn’t do was follow up those concerns with a statement like “So here’s my plan,” or “And this is how we’re going to stop him.” At an event with few young people attending, it was obvious there is no plan in place to defend the nation’s civil rights. What is clear is that Trump will continue bullying the courts, glorifying violence and rewarding January 6th thugs and felons while manipulating voting rules and fashioning lightning-quick gerrymanders in hand-picked, red voting districts.
McGovern’s audience that night loudly vented their distaste for a president continually punching down. But his attacks: on minorities, women, voting rights, speech, the press, neighboring countries, the Post Office — on struggling immigrant laborers whose work underpins so many lives, clearly have a psychological toll. Abetted by billionaire friends, family and cabinet members in starting wars, overturning international partnerships and flaunting the rules in co-equal branches of government, Trump is finding success in draining off the focus and will respond to endless attacks on democracy.
On Dec. 24, 1776, Thomas Paine’s new pamphlet “The American Crisis” was shared with George Washington’s ragged, struggling troops. Its text famously began with “These are the times that try men’s souls.” But soon thereafter Paine candidly noted frustration that precious time had been squandered; that eight months of hesitation had been costly, “Whether the Independence of the Continent was declared too soon or delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argument; my own simple opinion is that had it been eight months earlier, it would have been much better. We did not make a proper use of last winter, neither could we, while we were in a dependent state.” But those troops crossed the Delaware that frigid night, finally notching a small but psychologically important victory in the Battle of Trenton.
I think the 1776 patriots would have immediately recognized the specter of tranny in our midst today. As “Minutemen” they’d be resolved in their will to defend the “unalienable” rights derived and fashioned “of the people, by the people, for the people,” they’d fought for and won so long ago. In good will and courage they’d likely by now have settled on a date and time to confront their tormentor to demand redress. They’d likely have understood too, that the place to assemble — defending their Constitution by right as a free people, is in the sacred public square of democracy — the hallowed ground before President Lincoln’s Memorial on the National Mall.
Karl Meyer lives in Greenfield.