Transparent Malice

Unprecedented Corruption

Donald John Trump is a corrupt businessman with a lucrative gig as the 47^th president of these barely United States. A pig mucking for a meal from decomposing animal and vegetable remains has more character and taste than does he at present.

Credit. The Mercury News.

On 18 Oct 25, at least 7 million persons took to the streets and byways of America to protest peacefully the abuses of Trump 2.0. The energy, joy, sarcasm, and strategic constraint of the crowds defied attempts to characterize participants unfairly or attack them indiscriminately.

Except for one flaming asshole. That old, obese, doddering, and delusional master of distraction desperate to escape release of full and unredacted Epstein files.

The one whose charm offensive in search of a Nobel Peace Prize has left:

1. Gaza an open killing field for Hamas; and,

2. Europe threatened by Putin’s refusal to relinquish territorial ambitions in and beyond Ukraine.

Credit. The Guardian

The one who somehow is so detached from history and so contemptuous of constraint that he let loose into the world a malicious image of himself as a crowned king driving a jet airplane from which he bombed unruly subjects with fecal matter. The country or person of origin of the ammunition was not disclosed.

The image was intended to shock. And it did. Some of We the People found the image and the timing both offensive and embarrassing. Others among us supported Donny Doubledown’s latest stunt.

Generally, it was just another sad and failing attempt to distract from the Epstein files. And an administration that for nine horrific months has improved the lives and fortunes of no one other than the Mad King, his family, his loyalists, and oligarchs of every stripe in every place.

And, just in case every other offense and distraction were not enough, he’s the guy who, in the next 48 hours:

1. Allowed Marines at sea to fire live ammunition over an inland highway (to augment the celebration at Fort Pendleton of their 250^th anniversary as graced by the presence of the vice president); and,

2. Let loose the bulldozers that are demolishing the East Wing of the White House. He claims America needs a 2-1/4 acre ballroom in the vicinity of the Oval Office. He offered to build one for Obama. And was denied the opportunity at that time.

Credit. The Washington Post

He claims he and his friends will finance the work. And that is how he could enter his second term in high office with the architect, contractor, and project manager on board, the design approved, and construction documents in progress. He is not constrained by law or custom.

1. As president in residence, he essentially can issue himself permission to design, construct, and occupy any changes he may desire to The People’s House.

2. We the People will have the duty and privilege of affording the cost of operating and maintaining the new space.

3. The Secret Service controls security on the White House grounds. During the process of additions and alterations to the White House, it must manage to keep enemies of our country from:

a. Incorporating their surveillance systems into new or existing building fabric; and/or,

b. Launching an immediate, or laying the groundwork for, an attack on the property and persons (generally or selectively) within it.

As a licensed architect with 50 years of active practice, I shudder at the odds of avoiding disaster. A guy or gal walking a tool belt into the Ballroom Project is as serious a threat to American security and self-confidence as any one of the planes flown into our icons of power on 9/11. Every tool, every material, every device, every record of the project as built is a potential or actual threat. In terms of immediate threat containment and assurance of eternal security, the pharaohs killed the architect, the supervisors, and the workers when their vanity project reached completion (and prior to occupancy.) Everything old is new again.

And I don’t admire the Mad King’s proposed Arch of Triumph project either. I will be miffed if he announces he will be funding it privately from the $230 million he awards himself for the “inconvenience” of suits brought against him for crimes and misconduct before, during, and after his first term in office—and excused under protections granted in the infamous 2024 Trump v. United States immunity ruling

Credit. Ann Telnaes

Call It by Its Name

1. Crowd Conditioning. In 1904, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work related to digestion. His long-term physiological studies included brutal surgical alternations to the esophagus of dogs conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell.

In 2016, America elected to high office a corrupt businessman who could cause crowds of discontented voters to cheer when he spewed racial and misogynistic slurs while demeaning and threatening any other candidate. The media characterized his vicious crowd control rantings as “dog whistles.” Ten years later, the conditioning holds regardless of abuse to the hearer.

2. Accommodation of Criminal Conduct. Wikipedia states that, “in 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on parole, took four employees (three women and one man) hostage during a failed bank robbery of Kreditbanken, one of the largest banks in Stockholm. He negotiated for his friend Clark Olofsson to be released from prison to assist him. They held the hostages captive for six days (23–28 August) in one of the bank’s vaults”. During the course of hostage negotiations, the employees and the thieves developed a bond of mutual accommodation and a common distrust of the legal authorities attempting to break the impasse. Once released, the employees defended the character and actions of their captors.

In 2024, the Supreme Court immunized the corrupt businessman from prosecution for criminal acts and misdemeanors committed before, during, and after his first term in high office. America returned him to the White House. Through the first nine months of his second term:

a. The 119^th Congress declined to check his lawless conduct;

b. John Roberts’ partisan Supreme Court used it shadow docket to allow his illegal and unsustainable damage to persons, property, and principles to continue, pending return of pleadings to it on a merit basis; and,

c. Powerful individuals and esteemed institutions abandoned any purpose other than survival when being shaken down for obedience and tribute to the Mad King.

His loyalists laud the Tyrant Trump as being “transparent.” And he is. His word salads announce his forthcoming abuses of power with a malicious glee.

His cruel, chaotic, illegal, and unsustainable implementation of the horrific Project 2025 playbook routinely is claimed to be “unprecedented.” And it often is. He is trampling, defacing, dishonoring, and disabling constitutional constraints and violating human rights heretofore never challenged. His corrupt conduct has a belligerent nature. It has no limits and is contagious.

Knock, Knock. We’re Here

Some of We the People are blessed with a set of standards for decent conduct and an encouraging amount of sustained success in maintaining them through a long lifetime. To our view, Donald John Trump is nothing more than a naughty, nasty, destructive, and disgusting little rich boy with friends of equally reprehensible character. Our neighborhood is unhappy with his conduct. A significant percentage of his peer group already voted twice to throw him off the island. And are not through trying to accomplish that worthy and necessary objective.

Credit.Daryl Cagle.

Our complaints are beginning to seek a sustainable remedy for the failure of the 119^th Congress or the Roberts Court to correct his predatory attitude and/or to contain his flagrant misconduct.

On 14 June 25, the Tyrant Trump gave himself a 79^th birthday military parade at taxpayer expense. It was not well attended. 5 million people celebrated their First Amendment rights elsewhere on his natal day. It was a strong reflexive assembling of public resistance to the implementation of the Project 2025 playbook.

Credit. X

Emboldened and encouraged by No Kings 1.0 and inflamed by interim abuses of human and constitutional rights, 7 million persons gathered on 18 Oct 25 in No Kings 2.0 gatherings that taunted Trump 2.0 with strength, resolve, and ridicule. Wendy A. Lawrence captured the moment well in her Substack posting of 19 Oct 25:

The modern enemies of self-rule…learned that corruption … could be achieved from within through the patient erosion of institutions. They infiltrated rather than attacked, replaced deliberation with performance and substance with spectacle, filled courts with partisans while emptying agencies of expertise….Yet…millions refused to surrender the habit of questioning and the duty of care.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic sent humans scurrying for the only protection available—quarantine. Vaccines became available, but terrible damage was done to supply chains, global health, and commercial customs until remedy arrived. The economic and social damage of the event has been slowly unwinding in the intervening six years. It is to be noted that, on both No Kings events of 2025 and the four months between, health fragile seniors took health vulnerable grandchildren to public assemblies.

Credit. Cagle Cartoons

America is back from the abyss of isolation. Community is reborn. Consensus is a worthy goal and active option.

The challenge is to turn discontent into determination. And to convert apathy into action.

Putting the Em-PHA-sis on the Right Syl-LA-ble

Here is the terrible beauty of the moment.

Left or right. North or South. East or West. Red or blue. City or country. Native or immigrant. White or any other skin color. Gender of choice.

America is our commonly-occupied home.

We love it and have been viewing it, and singing about it, from three different perspectives for the last 85 years.

1. Conservative. Whose heart does not thrill when Kate Smith sings:

“God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home?”

2. Independent. In 1940, Woody Guthrie took a left turn on Irvin Berlin’s smarmy nationalism.

“This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And I saw above me that endless skyway
……..

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
Sign was painted, said, “Private Property”
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothing
This land was made for you and me

3. Contemporary: In 1984, Lee Greenwood took patriotism on a hard right turn:

From the lakes of Minnesota
To the hills of Tennessee
Across the plains of Texas
From sea to shining sea

From Detroit down to Houston
And New York to L.A.
Where’s pride in every American heart
And it’s time we stand and say

I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.

Time to Come Together

Yup. We all love this lovely land we share.

We just need to try to grow past the notion that some people are more free than others.

Let us covenant to speak to each other across false dividing lines about clear and present abuses of our common constitutional and human rights. Let us covenant to be patient, wise, and strategic. Let us listen more than we speak. Let us seek common ground about:

1. WHAT we commonly treasure;

2. HOW the only person who cares about our freedom is us; and,

3. WHY it is necessary to band together NOW against the fear mongers and freedom eaters.

There is an urgency to the moment.

Ask our immigrants. Listen to history.

Not every person with a medical degree awarded in a foreign country has secured a place within our health delivery system. Some gratefully are waiting a table or providing janitorial services. Take the time to ask them why.

They come from a place where the penalty for free thought, speech, or action is a bullet or a blade. In the dead of night or before your family and neighbors in a sunlit public square. The horror and spectacle of losing sight, sound, digits, limbs, or your head comes after trading freedom for security.

Let us covenant to keep our land free. Let us be brave. Let us understand that:

1. Protection of our persons, property, and principles no longer can be trusted to a cowardly Congress or a traitorous Supreme Court; and,

2. A lawless tyrant’s call for “order” is code for suppression of lawful resistance. And surrender of freedom of opinion, speech, and action.

The Tyrant Trump largely has coopted and conditioned the media and information complex into a reflexive response to his most immediate notion or routinely irrational (but always self-serving) action. Both his attention span and reporting on its results of it are very short-lived and diminishing in duration along a painfully consistent curve. Callous cruelty is the mode of Trump 2.0 operation. Frequency and volume of contradictory information is the hammer numbing all will to absorb, comprehend, and reorder chaos.

Accordingly, Resistance 2.0 must take sanity, truth, and aspiration as its primary battlelines.

Politicians dissemble and distract by calling these times a contest between democracy and more repressive forms of government.

Meditation

The battle is more ancient, important, and inescapable than politics.

Call it what it is—a holy war for identity, agency, and decency. Human aspirations and rights always must resist the temptation to surrender themselves in whole or part to an urge to trade down or surrender vitality for security. Where and when faith is lost, redemption and renewal remain as true and recommended action options. Embrace them personally. Advocate for them to every faint heart, confused mind, and troubled soul.

The callous disregard of those in present power for the will of the governed is not acceptable or sustainable. We the People dissatisfied with the results and consequences of Election 2024 will not “get over” betrayals of trust. We may rightfully be a bit weary. We are not confused.

Hope ain’t so hard when it is the only viable option other than surrender to the unacceptable.

Integrity has a better flavor than remorse.

Good trouble has more power and better shelf life than oppression.

Humanity generally and America specifically have stared into the abyss of chaos more than once and even within live memory.

These days of betrayal and infamy are hard to stomach.

We the People unhappy with the results and consequences of Election 2024 are just going to have to continue to eat the vegetables of resolve and persistent peaceful protest to qualify for dessert--a favorable midterm election result.

1. Demand your elected representatives resume their Article One duties and exercise their constitutional powers immediately. Require them to:

a. Defund ICE.

b. Renew commitments to Ukraine and NATO. Cause immediate release of impounded funds intended to support Ukraine in its fight to reclaim ALL of its lands seized by Russia since 2014. Cause immediate release of military aid presently withheld. Cause immediate lifting on delays on delivery of material essential to Ukraine’s righteous attempt to reclaim and restore its 1994 boundaries.

c. Dump the SAVE Act.

d. Justify a vote against the most recently proposed articles of impeachment. Get on board with efforts to remove Mr. Big from public office now and forevermore.

e. Regain control of the purse.

f. Reverse the force and remedy the effect of each illegal executive order, memorandum, proclamation, and/or social media order issued by the sitting president.

g. Scare the rogue Supreme Court silly. Bring articles of impeachment against corrupt justices.

2. Continue to exercise your indivisible Power of One.

3. Band with like minds to:

a. Organize and hold new and larger peaceful public protests; as well as,

b. Be or find, fund, elect, and support persons of good character willing, ready, able, and eager to enter public service to preserve and promote the life, liberty, safety, welfare, and security of the governed.

Give the Mad King and his troops of terror no rest or comfort. Continue to punish Musk and harass DOGE.

4. Continue to use the power of your person and your purse everywhere all the time in every legal way to damage the brand and bottom line of organizations abandoning DEI commitments.

5. Dismantle and defeat Trump 2.0. Disavow and repair the damage done by the cruel, clumsy, and dangerous implementation of the Project 2025 playbook.

Manifesto

To be clear.

Our vote is our voice.

Our voice is our power.

Our power is to select those who represent our will and best interests. And to refuse to be governed by oath breakers.

This power is a right given to each of the governed under the rule of law in a political system powered by the principle of informed consent.

It is important that we be able to cast our vote at a reasonably accessible and safe place, without oversight or pressure. And that our vote is counted and reported accurately.

Every day, everywhere, in every peaceful way, all at once and unceasingly, let us covenant to protect that right with our persons and our purses.

Yes, continue to resist.

ALSO--Increasingly, relentlessly, and strategically--build solidarity for a demand that a majority in both houses of Congress become comprised of persons of good character dedicated to the proposition of the safety, welfare, and freedom of their constituents.

Anthem

Trump 2.0’s implementation of the Project 2025 playbook has been purposefully rushed and chaotic. Executive actions have a cruel and unusual nature. Administrative operations in support and furtherance of DOGE and ICE in many instances are illegal, unconstitutional, and unsustainable.

Our only immediate opportunity to constrain the Tyrant Trump and a partisan Supreme Court gone rogue is to find, elect, and seat a Congress composed in the majority of persons of sound character dedicated a term of public service in support of:

1. The plain word phasing of founding documents:

a. The Declaration of Independence;

b. The Constitution of the United States; and,

c. The Bill of Rights.

2. The laws and customs supporting a rule of law administered without fear or favor; and,

3. The will, well-being, and security of the governed.

Election 2026 is critical.Every vote counts. The Tyrant Trump fears fair and free ballot results.

Credit. OtherWords

He refuses to lose his power, prestige, and personal freedom. He is using his presently unfettered powers to create and support voter suppression measures in process and in law.

A Congress reclaiming and asserting its Article One powers would expose the Mad King to:

1. Impeachment

2. Removal from office

3. Loss of presidential immunity

4. Exposure to trial and punishment for abuses of power and human rights

5. Investigation of financial improprieties (See Al Capone)

6. Opening and publication of the whole and unredacted Epstein files

Be Strategic to Stay Free

In support of the necessary repair of damage wrought by implementation of the Project 2025 playbook to the principles, practices, and operation of Pax Americana, let us understand and accept:

1. The fact, intent, occurance, and results of Election 2026 require determined and sustained protection. The right to vote, the fair and full counting of ballots cast, and the peaceful transfer of power are at risk.

2. Our Dear Leader refuses to lose. Let us do likewise.

3. There is no room for despair or time for delay. Let us each continue to exercise our indivisible Power of One. Let us continue to use our persons and our purses every day everywhere in every legal way to deny, delay, disassemble, defeat, and destroy Trump 2.0.

Election 2026 is critical. Let us covenant with each other to remember ourselves well as we refuse to be discouraged or side tracked. Let us keep the pressure on DEI deniers and the breakers of private, public, and constitutional oaths. Let us demand respect for our presence and our power. Let us require faithless representatives to repent, reform, or retire.

Let us be innovative, strategic, loud, and persistent.

Let us continue to be deaf to malicious “dog whistles.” Let us continue to distinguish thieves from friends.

Let us continue to defend our rights and freedoms at every level of governance.

Let us require the seating of duly elected representatives and release of the Epstein files.

Let us:

Rise up.

Stay up.

Protest.

Persist.

Prevail.

Go, team, go.