Our country is being destroyed. Since January our Federal government has been chopped up & pieces tossed aside. The qualifications to head an agency seem to require holding views antithetical to the reasons the agency was created. [FN1] And then there’s ICE. 1/12

ICE seems to be everywhere and its masked agents act like secret police the U.S. once trained in other countries. [FN2] Of course we have election interference in favor of GOP candidates, and it consists of more than the hacking of which trump and Musk have bragged. [FN3] 2/12

Election interference is real & includes gerrymandering that makes people believe their vote does not mean anything and the election for Pres being decided by electors means only a few “swing” States matter. That’s why this op-ed header encouraged me: 3/12

“1) There WILL be elections 2) Stop giving up before the fight.” [FN4]
People also have to deal w/fear. Violence has been a factor in elections as early as voting for delegates to State conventions to determine whether to ratify the Constitution. [FN5] 4/12

Threats of violence were consistent after the Civil War in racist efforts to stop former slaves & their descendants from voting. In Indiana in the early 1920s, the Klan’s enforcement arm, a/k/a thugs, was called the Horse Thief Detective Association. [FN6] 5/12

The fact that trump, his toadies & their maga base want the rest of us to give up & not vote is a big “tell.” This iteration of the GOP has grabbed power w/o any coherent programs. The longer they hold on, the more difficult it is to toss them out. 6/12

Isaac Asimov wrote that violence is the last resort of the incompetent. What we have to do is get them out. At times it’s frustrating being a pacifist, but then I don’t have to worry about attending NRA conventions. Make sure you’re registered to vote. 7/12

Footnotes:
FN1. E.g., we need a running total of people killed by RFK Jr’s idiocy as head of Health & Human Services; & Dir of Nat’l Intel Tulsi Gabbard’s accusations that Obama admin committed “seditious conspiracy” should have been read as Putin wrote them, in Russian. 8/12

FN2. CIA trained officers/secret police in Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Laos, Peru, Philippines, S. Korea, S.Vietnam, & Thailand. Tim Weiner, “Angleton’s Secret Police,” New York Times Blog, “Washington” 6/26/07, accessed 7/22/25. 9/12

FN3. A June post by Musk on X: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,”
FN4. Angela Marx, Daily Kos and Bluesky, 7/21/25, accessed 7/22/25. 10/12

FN5. See, “The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution,” Vol III, pp. 62-78, detailing fights during elections in counties of Delaware. 11/12

FN6. The association was the KKK’s “enforcement,” sought to intimidate voters who were hostile to the Klan & members drove through black neighborhoods & displayed their guns as a warning for blacks “to stay home.” Lutholtz, “Grand Dragon,” 1991, p. 213. 12/12