To: Enablers of this chaos Date: 1/29/25
Re: Tank Man & thx
That the White House website no longer has a copy of, or links to, the Constitution comes as no surprise to those of us who warned of the coming dictatorship. 1/9

We were taught that people should stand up to tyranny, like the unarmed dude called Tank Man, during 1989's protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. A shopping bag in each hand, he stepped in front of a line of tanks. The lead tank tried to go around him several times, but 2/9

Tank Man, each time, cut the tank off. Finally, the lead tank’s driver shut off his engine. Tank Man climbed onto the tank & conversed briefly w/its driver. After Tank Man jumped off the tank, he was whisked away & has not been heard of since. [FN3] 3/9

Mistrust of those in power is a theme of the Declaration of Independence. So many checks on power were built into the Articles of Confederation, our charter of nat’l government from 1777, that it was too cumbersome. Congress authorized changes be made. [FN4] 4/9

When delegates met in Philadelphia in May of 1787, they boarded up the windows of the State house [FN5] and agreed not to speak about proceedings outside their number. Mistrust was best expressed, perhaps, by Patrick Henry, who refused to attend because he “smelt a rat.” 5/9

trump exemplifies the type of person against whom the Framers created checks and balances. We are on our second week of a dictatorship. If you want to praise our country’s history, you cannot support this regime. You most emphatically are not a patriot. If you voted for trump 6/9

you got the total votes for trump close enough for Putin to steal it, again. And there’s this really sad thing. trump, if s/he ever heard about Tank Man, probably looks at Tank Man the same way trump views military veterans: sucker, loser. Those words actually describe trump. 7/9

Footnotes:
FN1. E.g., “Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam,” Wikipedia, accessed 1/28/25.
FN2. Frontline, “Timeline Tiananmen Square,” 6/5/19, accessed 1/28/25.
FN3. Id. 8/9

Footnotes:
FN4. A “convention of representatives from the said States respectively be held at on for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation” was passed by Congress on 02/17/1787.
FN5. It’s now called Independence Hall. 9/9