I’ve been fairly quiet this year when it comes to politics in my blog posts. It’s not that I don’t care—when you see my BlueSky posts, it’s pretty obvious that I’m active in certain circles. But I didn’t want to say anything here until I’d had a chance to decide what I wanted to say.
I am deeply disappointed in our current president. I’ve never liked his attitudes about women, minorities, and the way he treats people he disagrees with. But what Trump is doing now goes way beyond that. He shows a blatant disregard for the law and the checks and balances of our three branches of government in the Constitution of the United States of America. He gives Elon Musk and DOGE complete control of agencies and data where they have no authority and no understanding, much less expertise. With his permission, they are dismantling departments that provide necessary government services.
Okay, so what? If you follow any progressives, you’ve probably heard much of this before. Why should you be interested in what a retired teacher and current fiction writer and history buff thinks about this? Yeah, you might say there’s no particular reason I should add my two cents to this topic—except one.
All my history reading has shown me many parallels between our current times and similar ones in the past. The obvious one is 1930s Germany and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. Further south, Italy had their Roman emperors, and much later Mussolini tried it again. There’s also Putin’s Russia in current times, and this is just a short list to give you an idea. These leaders, and other autocrats and dictators, have used techniques like promoting nationalism, scapegoating minorities, and repeating lies and propaganda to mislead their people into supporting them. Now Trump is using the same playbook.
If you think I’m being too dramatic in comparing Trump to dictators, let’s look at something closer to home. The president is encouraging Americans to discriminate against people in the minority, mostly immigrants and LGBTQIA+ people (especially transgender kids and adults) and sometimes other marginalized groups. Bull Connor used the same tactics against Black people in Alabama during the segregation period.
It took groups of civil rights protestors and many acts of nonviolence to end segregation. I support nonviolence, and activists like John Lewis are my heroes. They proved that love is stronger than hate. Now it’s our turn. I am asking people to think seriously about how they can oppose actions that infringe on our rights.
As someone said at a rally yesterday, “No one can do everything. But we all can do something.” I encourage you to take one issue, or maybe a few if you have the bandwidth, and work on that with like-minded people. We’re stronger together. If you want to preserve checks and balances in the three branches of government, then become active in the political system and contact your members of Congress. If you support intellectual freedom, join Unite Against Book Bans and speak up for your local librarians and teachers. If you support reproductive health, show up for Planned Parenthood and women’s rights. If you support LGBTQIA+ folks, find your local support group and stand up for queer folks’ rights. If you want to support freedom of the press, then buy subscriptions to newspapers and your local public media. If you want to help immigrants and refugees, look into the ACLU, UNHCF, and local aid groups. I could go on, but you get the idea….
If we say that this is just the way it is and there’s nothing we can do, then the bad guys win. If we stand up for the power of the people and our constitutional rights, then we can win. I’m not saying that it’s easy or that it will happen quickly. But it can be done. It’s time to stand up. I hope you’ll stand with us.
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