Mr. President, I’m writing as you speak tonight. I will be listening carefully to every word. Not because you will clear up all questions and provide logical reasons for your appalling decisions.
I understand you just find.
You are a terribly abused child, weathering away in an hateful old man’s body. Your parents raised you with the impossible expectation that you would be important. A successful gangster bullying your way through the world. Unfortunately no one trained you on how to be an effective leader or businessman. Instead, you were trained in lying, bullying, and being untrustworthy. You were trained to be hateful and hated. You are what the really wealthy hate, the crass nouveau riche, lacking class, education or culture. Unlike them, you can’t even be cruel with finesse.
These things may have worked in the 50’s to 2000’s but, our country has passed beyond that. Yes there many Americans who have fallen for your ancient racism and bigotry. Yes you’ve still got some of that tired razz-ma-tazz. But your magic is rapidly evaporating.
Tonight I listen to because it is my duty as an American to listen to your traitorous words. You were trained to be a looser and it is the only thing you have succeeded at.
In the future, you will end up being remembered as a dangerous hateful old man that broke everything you touched.
I have just watched the blackest day for United States credibility and honor in my life, in our history.
The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump showed us what I’ve known for some time. He is a treacherous coward who cares nothing for Americans or our sacred quest for Democracy. His behavior today, towards Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was shameful. It demonstrates how unfit Trump is to have any position of power. He has shown me, our nation and the rest of the World that he is an ignorant bullying, browbeating, blowhard.
No doubt there will be some Americans who celebrate Trump’s chest thumping tirade. This speaks very poorly for them.
But for the rest of us, Trump has opened his Kimono to reveal the rotting flesh of American history. The carcass of racism, slavery, wealth, and privilege.
President Zelenskyy is a genuine Hero. He is placing his life on the line for his people and nation. I have only the greatest respect and admiration for him. At the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022, the US and the West offered him refuge in another country. He responded, “I need bullets not tickets.” That’s a genuine Hero.
Today, even while Trump and V.P. Vance yelled at him, berating him for not being “thankful” enough. He maintained his dignity as they lost theirs. They also spouted Putin’s talking points. Zelenskyy respectfully and firmly attempted to answer their challenges with truth and factual history.
Trump and Vance became more pitiful as they hysterically responded with more anger and lies.
The American people have clearly witnessed that the President of the United States is not trustworthy and a traitor. He betrays time honored allies and tries to extort our closest neighbors.
Now is the time for Republicans to end their cowardly charade. They must stop saying privately that they are “concerned” by Trump’s behavior. They need to publicly hold Trump and the others that share his beliefs accountable. Regardless of their position, they must be shamed. They should be removed from their positions and office.
The GOP must stand up for the United States, Democracy, and Decency. If they don’t, Americans across the nation, regardless of party, must take action. We must wage recall campaigns to remove these unworthy people from all levels of government, federal to local.
Today, Trump, sided with Putin and Dictatorship. He, by his cowardice and grovelling, has set us on the path to World War 3. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran have seen what our leadership is made of; pitifully little. They have little to respect for the US. Trump as demonstrated how inept he is. Today our enemies saw how craven our leadership is.
If we weren’t alone in the world before now, we are now.
I’ve been thinking about our situation. How can I describe it? What condition are we familiar with, through personal experience or observation?
Emotional and physical abuse instantly come to mind. It’s on the news all the time, crime, exploitation, and political violence. It struck me that this trauma is very akin to family abuse. A parent takes charge of the family and coerces everyone else to yield to his/her whims. There is neither love nor respect for the family or its members. It is cruelty with the goal of breaking the wills of the victim and family.
But how is the United States a family? Our members come from around the world, representing a vast number of cultures, languages and beliefs. We don’t even look alike.
Yet, we are physically related, and we do look alike. Any differences are insignificant compared to the huge number of similarities. We humans are cousins. We can trace our heritage back1 to to a single woman and man that are the sources of our genes. It was a process that took hundreds of thousands of years. During which disasters nearly wiped out the existing humans several times, pruning the human tree. Each time the survivors carried a smaller gene pool, narrowing the diversity of our ancestors. There was no primal couple. Adam and Eve occurred at different times, tens of thousands of years apart. They were survivors of multiple environmental culling.
What about the United States? Physically, we are relatives, no matter where we come from. And we have formed a nation, a specific culture. Nations are families. In a democracy we structure our family by voting people into family positions. Idyllically, at the top is President and Vice President, who are our chosen parents. The Supreme Court are our wise selected grandparents who guide the entire family on what is appropriate. Our courts moderate family behavior. They look to guarantee fairness and harmony. Think of the House of Representatives and Senate as our agreed on aunts and uncles. All responsible for the well-being of the rest of us. Our Aunts and Uncles are the people we elect to represent us. They organize and evaluate our concerns and what we need and how to get it done. When functioning properly, each level of government feels an obligation to treat everyone else with respect and dignity.
Our national family is not hierarchical. No one is born into leadership. Ideally, we choose them because of their merit. How well have they served all of the members of our immense family? History has shown us that some of us claim special privileges to which they are not deserving. They act for their own good at the expense of the rest of our family.
Why should they show all of us respect and earnestly listen to our concerns?
Because they are us, elected from us to serve us. No one is special or above the rest. The elected representatives have been given an awesome responsibility to do what promotes harmony and success for the entire family. Their task is to make sure every member has the resources they need. They offer support for each person to achieve their best. No one is guaranteed success, but everyone is guaranteed the resources and support to try. Everyone knowing that they are equal to one another, treated fairly, and respected.
Today our family is being abused. Some of those we’ve elected have, because of emotional illness, become classic abusers.
When there is abuse, there is violence, psychological and physical. The goals of an abuser are to intimidate, isolate, and impoverish their victims.
I worked for about nine years in adult psychiatric hospitals and youth treatment centers. I grew to know many people who were child abusers, wife beaters, and murderers. I also knew broken folks who had been on the receiving end of the abuse. In fact, many of the abusers, beaters, and murderers also suffered terrible abuse. It was something both the attackers and victims share.
In the case of family abuse, the pattern of intimidation, isolation, and impoverishment is almost universal.
Today, Trump, Musk, and the GOP are enacting this pattern on our American Family. They act arbitrarily with frequent vague edicts that cause confusion and fear. They frequently call names and threaten people. They encourage people to behave aggressively. This is cruelty and intimidation.
Cruelty is a mental sickness that poisons everyone.
An abuser drives away friends and family, blocking emotional support and other perspectives of the situation. The trauma of emotional and physical abuse wears down the victim. They use their energy to endure rather than fight back. They become hopeless, seeing no way out. Trump, Musk, and the GOP have isolated us from our friends and allies. They have quit treaties and insulted our neighbors. The are trying to wall off the rest of the world. Russia and China are examples of what happens to people cut off from humanity. The bestial treatment of Russian troops by their officers and Putin results in their slaughter in the hundreds of thousands.
Trump, Musk, and some in the GOP echo the same lies. Putin tells these lies to his Russia and the rest of the world. Russia continues to feed masses of people, military and civilian, into the meat grinder. All because of lies, that our leadership is now telling us.
And Trump, Musk and the GOP are attacking the time-honored idea of American security, economic, health and military. The wife beater takes control of the family budget. This further isolates the victim by denying resources to act in their own defense. Without money we will end up on the street, reduced to invisibility and prone to cruelty.
What do we first think when we see someone living under a bridge? What do we think when they are in a tent encampment or walking the street with a cart full of their ragged belongings? Most often it is not compassion. We’ve been trained to be repelled by these lost souls. We’ve been trained to instantly think, what’s wrong with them? It is only after that, when our empathy kicks in. If it does at all. Only then we start to see what cruelty and neglect has done to our family members.
That’s where we are now. The United States is in the grip of some very sick people. Abused children who are now broken adults. Their aim is cruelty. They want ultimate life and death control. They are abusers who want to intimidate, isolate, and impoverish us. They want to shatter our precious family. They want to feed on our pain.
Background
I have been fascinated about who we are. I have also wondered where we came from since I was first exposed to the biblical story of Genesis. Once I began to discover Science the story of our origins and evolution became one of my life-long passions. Even as a child, I saw Genesis as a myth. It didn’t make sense. As I grew older and studied the Bible, I found the Old Testament increasingly insulting. Its simplistic implications were shocking. Its arbitrariness and cruelty were disturbing. In turn the New Testament was contaminated by the the ancient nonsense. It took years, but eventually I found the grains of truth. They were hidden in the sands of desert superstition.
02/25/2025 Edited for clarity.
Compiled and initially analyzed with Perplexity.AI, Deep Research
“Marie, as-tu entendu que quelqu’un s’appelle King ? Antoinette, Non. Qu’est-ce que la folie ? Il doit être un imbécile.”
“Marie, did you hear that someone is calling himself King? Antoinette! No! What Lunacy! He must be a fool!”
Un mème en mérite un autre. Celui qui rêve d’être roi est fou. One meme deserves another. Whoever dreams of being King is crazy.
A few days ago, the new president re-posted an image of a fictitious Time Magazine cover showing him in royal regalia and the title Long Live The King. This mock-up of the cover along with at least one other similar meme immediately got mocked. Typically, I avoid such visual cliches. I chortle once and I go on my way.
But this demanded a response, a broadside. So, In the spirit of the late 18th Century. This is it.
Saying things like, “Long Live Me” and “I’m Number One” displays a weak ego. We’ve been shown, repeatedly over the last eight years and particularly this previous month, the president is mentally ill and can not be trusted with any authority. His cruelty is an indication of how badly he was treated as a child. He is a broken man that can not be trusted.
To those that voted for him, please reconsider your decision and join the rest of us to stop the madness and cruelty. Our future can be much better than the one we’re plummeting into.
Every night before I go to sleep, I give my subconscious a suggestion. I’ll have a restful sleep and wake up in a positive mood. And I will dream and remember it. My fulminating subconscious is free to chose what it creates. Or, to create anything at all.
I had this dream a couple of days ago.
I drive to a a distant part of my city. It is an amalgam off many of the cities and towns I have lived in. Familiar but odd. I know my destination. But I hadn’t been there in decades. Time has transformed everything and nothing looks quite the same. Ghosts of the past hidden amongst the modern present and the construction detours of the future. I become frustrated, uneasy.
I find the street I am looking for. A stretch of two and three story businesses. built in the 1910s as the city had grown outwards. Once a vibrant suburb center for a suburb it transformed over time. In the 1970s the area had been revitalized with the old buildings given a good cleaning and fresh paint. But, now, this fondly remembered place is aging, wearing out.
Once, the side streets were lined by prosperous middle-class homes and manicured lawns. Now nondescript businesses have sprouted. Amongst the blank facades a checkerboard of threadbare yards with ragged bushes and sagging trees dot the neighborhood. The place is weary.
I leave Main Street looking for parking. There wasn’t any. Parked cars line the streets for blocks. Some houses have become asphalt lots with restricted parking. Detours resulting from construction and street repairs turn the once ordered streets into a maze. Directing me further and further from Main Street.
Time reflects the confusion I’m experiencing. Dream time is fluid and, like my subconscious, unruly, chaotic. At the start it was a mild summer mid-morning with an half-hour drive ahead. But when I’m parking, it is muggy late afternoon, an orange sun is setting behind urban silhouettes. I’m several blocks from my goal. As I start to walk, evening and then night rapidly set in, quickly, unnaturally. The forlorn streets became menacing. Street lamps came on, their sodium bulbs cast narrow cones of sulfurous light down into the dusty darkness.
I begin meeting people. First solitary walkers who avoid me as we approach. I become apprehensive and soon doing the same. I cross to the other side of the street. Main Street is lost but its glow above the shadows directs me.
As I head forward I become more disoriented. It seems that I am always just a couple blocks away but, it seems much further. More strangers appear, coming and going from shadowy houses and parking lots. Faint yellow light drifts from screened windows, open to let breezes remove the day’s stale air and heat. Here and there, figures sit on porches and steps, cooling off, talking quietly. They watch me walk by with slightly averted eyes. Not following me, but following me.
As I walk, people begin to approach me. Tentatively at first, then more directly as the street grows brighter. They appear disturbed, showing signs of emotional stress and, often, physical fragmentation. This frightens me. I feel threatened.
I try to avoid them but contact is inevitable. My first impression is being confronted by anxious, demanding people, creating bursts of emotional interference. They crowd my inner and outer space. I slowly become accustomed to this jarring reality I begin to hear what they are saying. I hear offers to help me find where I am go. I see awkward gestures to help.
These people are damaged. In their eyes I see vulnerable souls, desperate children reaching out from within a storm of doubt, fear, isolation, and loneliness. I attempt to treat them with respect and patience as I let them lead me through a shifting maze. Dark hallways, echoing chambers, and mind boggling collisions of architectures and decorations. Sometimes indoors and then out, under an ever changing night sky. Always the glow of the lights of my destination are just beyond the buildings that surround me.
When I look through windows or distant doorways and clearly see where I want to go. But I never get there. I begin to try to escape from my guides. They genuinely, desperately want to help. I realize they are desperate for company, for recognition and human warmth. They are saturated with a sadness distilled from years of abuse and neglect, of guilt and hopelessness. I feel my empathy growing and a sadness of my own.
But, I have a destination and purpose that I can no longer remember. I begin trying to escape their emotional clinging to me. I’m losings myself in their chaos.
My new plan is to call my wife and have her come and rescue me. She will return me to the orderly loving world I’d just come from. I had lost my phone in the mayhem and began to frantically look for another, public or cell. By my mind is crumbling, my memory evaporating. I am becoming unfocused, hopeless.
The rest of my dream is of dashing from one place to another. My plan to call my wife turns into fog, intangible. I realize that I have no way to tell her how to find me. I want to call her and tell her I love her. I didn’t think I’m going make it home.
I wake up, laying in my warm bed. Distinct memories rerun behind my eyelids. Understanding is building. As I fix my cat’s breakfast and my coffee I feel like I’ve experienced something what we all are going through.
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I believe that each of us lives in our own unique universe and that we together, inhabit a shared multiverse of experiences. Everything I know is filtered through my physical self and interpreted using my imperfect recollections of the past. All of us are like that. We have similar but not exactly alike human experiences.
My dream is about me. It is about how the world looks to me. Everyone in it is my projection of myself onto to figures I’ve created to represent the people I observe in our shared experiences. I can only imagine what others are going through using my experiences, my history.
Our world is transforming. We try to remember the past, look through the devastation of the present, towards an uncertain future. In the process we risk losing our humanity. We are isolated. We struggle to reach out to others, to connect and build a coherent existence. Yet, the destruction and cruelty we are involved drives us deeper within ourselves. We attempt to comprehend what is going on and protect ourselves. This can further weaken our human connections. We are less able to reach out to others that need our love and caring.
We hug ourselves more tightly and can not reach out a helping hand.
My wife died 0ver 12 years ago. In my dream, I sought her presence and her warmth. I looked for her comfort in the dead past. I felt its promise in the presence.
I seems to me that if we are to survive these cruel times and keep our humanity alive we need to come to terms with the fear and confusion in our minds. We need to embrace those shadow figures in our minds and embrace, comfort them. We can become stronger. We can become more self-directed. We can rebuild our Main Streets by reaching out to each other knowing that they too have shadows and need acknowledgement and comfort.
About The Photograph Homelessness was implied in my dream. When I was about 25, I took a photo of an older man sheltering from the cold winter rain. He was sitting in a covered alley. Lost in his thoughts. To me he seemed to be enduring. I wondered what was thinking. He changed my life. I thought of my life and what it would be to loose everything. It’s been a permanent shadow in my memory, homelessness and being adrift in a indifferent world. Today, I remember that cold wet day and that man lost in his thoughts.
I’ve been watching the new administration stifle free speech. They are censoring government websites by deleting concepts and information. They are also exposing personal information of most Americans. It begs the question, what purpose does any government serve?
It depends on the type of government. In it’s simplest form, governments are responsible for organizing the efforts of its population for self-defense. Basically, they make sure there is food to eat. They supply water to drink. They also offer shelter to keep people out of the weather. In essence, some healthcare. After all, how can a people defend themselves if they are weak and sick? Or if they are disorganized and don’t have the resources for trade and war? Even if the government’s only purpose is to expand its power over its people and those of other governments.
At one end of the spectrum are totalitarian and authoritarian organizations that isolate their people from the machinery of governance. The people are pawns, resources, for the leaders and their followers. The people are at the mercy of the intent and goodwill of the leaders. Their destiny and well being are not theirs to decide.
On the other end of governance are democracies. These try to integrate the people into the core of governing. The goal is to show the will of the people. It should be done in a way that is most beneficial to all members of the nation. It’s not simply organizing, feeding, and sheltering. Democracies have the aim of ensuring that all citizens have an opportunity to reach their full potential.
Democracies believe in their people and the best that we can be. What be more stabilizing and protective? Each person knows that they are engaged in creating the future for themselves. They also create futures for those they care for. Everyone has the opportunity to be involved in their collective good.
What makes us feel that you belong? What makes us feel a commitment to a group? Or, what makes us ardent opponents? What makes us feel threatened and under attack. What makes us ask if life is fair or unfair?
Democracies collect and distribute information. This allows each of us to analyze our situations. Then, we can take part in addressing our concerns. We have the tools to navigate our lives and futures.
The current administration is intent on limiting what we know. It is vigorously hiding information about themselves while burying the information that we need to make our futures. The new administration is stealing our lives and futures.
An example of this is the destruction of government support for climate change action. The administration claims that climate change is not real. They also assert that we must “drill baby drill.” We know that it isn’t true. We see it all around us. We pay for it more each day with increasing costs in food, insurance, building materials, and taxes.
Who are we to believe? Them or our own lying eyes? (Mel Brooks, Blazing Saddles).
Next post in about a week; Climate change and what the verifiable facts tell is.
