March on Washington 1963. Trikosko, Marion S., photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I wonder what the tipping point is for the do-nothing Republican Congress. Will it be when their Dear Leader orders a “limited” nuclear strike on Tehran? Will it be when he cancels the midterms because of a “national emergency?” Or will it be when he infests our cities with armed, masked thugs who gun down American citizens without remorse or liability? Oops, sorry, that has already happened.

And what will be our response? More “No Kings!” rallies? Letters to those same members of Congress who cower, simper and sweat when confronted by the menacing shadow of an 80-year-old low-T crackpot and his band of knuckle-dragging incompetents? A sign in the front yard stating belief for science and Black Lives? Prayers? Bumper stickers? Yoga poses?

Really, friends, what is our tipping point? What will it take to compel us to risk our comfortable lives in the same way that thousands across the world have done recently and in the past when faced with repressive governments? I mean if the actions of this horrible administration have yet not awakened us to the utter demolition of our nation’s fragile democracy what will jostle us out of our collective stupor?

I have asked myself some hard questions. If I were in Alex Pretti’s situation and saw someone being abused by ICE’s itchy-fingered robo-cops would I run to their aid, knowing (as Pretti unfortunately did not), that I was risking my life? Or, if a Latino working across the street from me, perhaps in landscaping or roofing, were being harassed and physically abused by ICE, would I intervene and try to protect him? Or would I just stand idly by in fear of being arrested, or worse?

Hypotheticals such as these are stark realities for those courageous folks whose communities are being invaded by ICE. But they also could become a reality for all of us as our government militarizes its forces against us. Detention facilities are rapidly being built. And one only needs to look at the $70 billion approved by Congress in June for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an amount that exceeds the combined budgets of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service. Half of that amount will go to ICE. Remember that in June of 2025 in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Congress shelled out $170 billion to the DHS.

The threat that the government sees that spawned these budgets is certainly not coming from penniless migrants crossing the border seeking better lives. No, as Trump himself warns, there is a “threat from within.” And he does not mean his militia (now pardoned and roaming our streets) that stormed the Capitol on January 6. Recently he has labeled any opposition as Communists. (Sigh. Here we go again with the Red Scare.) Then there is Antifa!

Not much has changed since former Speaker of the House, Newt Gasbag Gingrich said, “The left in America is to blame for most of the current, major diseases which have struck this society. This war [against the Left] has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars.”

These current bloated budgets for a lock-and-loaded American police state are obscene, especially in the face of a mean-spirited Congress that has slashed funds for social services, Medicaid and so many other necessary safety net programs to make up the deficit caused by cutting taxes for the rich. Not to mention the doge-ing of USAID and domestic environmental protection measures.

So, what to do when the red warning lights are flashing, and when so many tipping points have been crossed, and when the abnormal becomes the norm?

In a recent book on the Syrian revolution, Days of Love and Rage, author Anand Gopal, mentions two paths regarding resistance. (Do note, I am not comparing our current situation with what occurred in Syria. After all, unlike deposed dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad, Trump is not raining barrel bombs on us or gassing us with sarin poison. Well, not yet at least. Still, there are some ideas worth contemplating.)

The first path is called the “stone cutter approach,” the idea that small continuous chips in the edifice of oppression will eventually collapse the entire autocratic structure. Gopal writes, “Every demonstration, no matter how fleeting, exposed fresh cracks in the façade. If the regime ever did collapse, it would not be solely because of the final blow but also because of the many blows that had come before…The lesson, therefore, was to stay the course and keep holding nighttime protests until the multitude of fractures could not be ignored.”

The second course of action might more accurately fit our current state of mind. Gopal calls it propaganda of the deed. In this instance, we are waiting for someone other than us to do something. We remain on the sidelines, weighed down by apathy and a sort of stupor. Gopal writes, “Neither tiny blows against the regime’s edifice nor brazen acts of sabotage truly reflected the real reason people were glued to their couches, keeping their mouths shut. Fear was the master here…people would not join the protests until it was safe to do so, but it would not be safe to do so unless everyone joined.”

That last sentence hit home, a perfect example of a catch-22 in which, according to the definition there is no escape from a conundrum “because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.”

What to do? How and when to act? Who goes first? Is it even possible to return to an America we once knew before the rise of Trump and his MAGA allies? What can we in this brawling and divided country possibly agree on?

Syria took over a decade to free itself of Assad and then ISIS. So many deaths, and too many of them caused by our own bombing as we obliterated the ISIS caliphate while not caring that women, children and entire families got in the way.

In the end, the price of an elusive western-style “freedom” was high in Syria, and then, according to author Gopal, devolved into the “tyranny of the market,” where the poor stayed poor and wealthy grew wealthier. Sound familiar?

Gopal writes that, “There is, in fact, a set of goods or values that all humans strive for, including fellowship, health, esteem, and material security. Each is as vital to human flourishing as the next, and only citizens living in a polity that recognizes this truth have any chance of thriving.”

As we witness our country being dismantled and desecrated from the top down by rapacious, greedy clowns, and as we watch tipping point after tipping point bested, can we at least agree that the time for sitting on the sidelines has passed if we want our own democracy to thrive?

END

The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For President Dozing Don Trump:
1. Which recently deceased Republican senator from South Carolina once called you a “demagogue” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” and urged voters to “tell Donald Trump to go to hell”?

2. Which current Republican vice president once called you “Hitler”?

3. So, I see you and your greedy brood have made some serious filthy lucre in the last year, and I don’t just mean your meme coin, whatever the heck that piece of Ponzi is. A profit of $2.2B for you in 12 months? Meanwhile the one million investors in your meme con lost a total of $3.18B. Explain the discrepancy.

4. Many people, including yours truly, and anyone not in a coma, believe that you are using our taxpayer money as your own personal ATM. I don’t remember you asking any of us if we wanted you to ruin the East Wing or desecrate the Deflecting Pool or hold blood sports at the White House. And your silver-spooned sons--Usay Jr. and Useless-- along with the Witless Boyz-- are using government connections to cash in on such sketchy crap as Tungsten mines and drones, and God knows what. Finally, my question, explain how any of this grift, fraud and outright plundering of our Treasury benefits us?

5. Why is it that you can’t stay awake during meetings? Additionally, are you able to stand for any period of time without holding on to a podium?

6. Why did you need 22 specialists during your last physical? Was one or more of them a mental health expert?

7. Did you know the Strait of Hormuz was open and toll-free before you began your dumb-ass illegal war against Iran that killed thousands of innocent citizens and 13 of our soldiers?

8. Can you open your mouth just one time without lying? Will you please stop writing your word salad posts in UPPER CASE? I feel like I’m READING RANSOM NOTES, when everyone knows that we, the American citizens, are the ones actually being held hostage.

9. When will you pay E. Jean Carroll all the money the courts have ordered you to pay for assaulting her?

10. Define “Communism.”

11. Before I forget, Happy 80^th Birthday!! Hey, did those 22 doctors tell you that the average lifespan of an American male is 76.5 years? I would love to buy you another cheeseburger or three.

For Acting Horribly Attorney General Todd “Carte” Blanche:
1. Why did you move Ghislaine Maxwell to a Club Med prison where she can have a puppy?

2. Speaking of canines, are you aware of what happened to the other Trump attack dog Michael Cohen? Think betrayal and then prison.

3. Do you think you can ever regain a reputation as a somewhat “reputable” attorney and/or a decent human being?

4. How do you live with yourself knowing that the world sees you as a permanent barnacle attached to Trump’s double-wides and not as someone who represents justice for the American people?

For Minister of Warfare Against Innocent Iranian School Girls Pete Hegseth:
1. Do you know that the Christianity you profess to practice preaches peace, tolerance and love?

2. Do you know that your faith mentor Doug Wilson is a hateful northern Idaho wing nut that is just one sermon away from handling venomous snakes and sipping strychnine?

3. Have you really stopped drinking or are you just better at hiding it? (Because, mate, you don’t look too good these days. Perhaps the stress of screaming lies to us and being the most despised man in the Pentagon is getting’ to ya?)

4. You have shown repeatedly that you hate anyone in the military who is not male and white. Why is that? Is it because you are insecure about your manhood and/or is it simply because you are a racist misogynistic Christian nationalist?

For Secretary of Making America Sicker Robert Kennedy Jr.:
1. What in the conspiracy-marinating, anti-science, swimming-in-toxic-waters, vein-popping, steroid-chewing, mucking is wrong with you!? (And what happened to you, Cheryl Hines?)

2. Can you disprove the rumor that your family’s intelligence and benevolence does indeed skip a generation, as in your obvious case?

3. Are you familiar with any proven scientific facts such as vaccines save lives? Do you know the Earth is round and that gravity is like a real thing?

4. Why does your bloated face look like a cherry bomb about to explode?

5. Are you in love with shirtless Kid Rock?

For Trump Mouthpiece and Fiction Practitioner, the Very White House Press Secretary Karoline Smilin’ Lyin’ Leavitt:
1. Are you a real human flesh and blood human being or an AI-generated avatar that dishes out slop? Please blink twice so we can tell.

2. Is there a string attached to your back that your mentor DJT pulls when you parrot his gas lights and lies? Are you, in fact, the real Chatty Kathy Doll?

3. Why do you wear a crucifix? Fashion or faith? And when you lie to us are your fingers crossed?

4. Have you read the Bible, specifically Proverbs 21:6? “A fortune made by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare.” Or, Psalm 101:7? “No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence.”

5. There is a 32-year difference between you and your husband. In other words when he was your age—28—well, gee golly, jumpin’ Jehovah!, you were not even born yet! Kinda weird in a Daddy-issue kind-of-ew way. Just sayin’. Together, you and hubby had a child before you were married. Oopsie. Is this how Christian MAGA trad wives act?

Somali children. jmbone on flickr.com, via Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday, June 16, The Guardian published a story that will probably never make it “above-the-fold” in America’s increasingly timid and understaffed mainstream media. The headline: “Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes?”
Subhead: “Six months ago, at least 12 people, including eight children, died during a US attack. The US has never admitted the civilian deaths.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/16/somalia-us-trump-war-alshabaab-islamists-drone-airstrikes-civilian-deaths-children

On November 15 of last year, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone launched from Camp Simba military base in Kenya dropped its horrific load of Hellfire missiles on Abdullahi Mohamed Abo Sheikh Ali’s home reducing it to rubble. His grandfather Mohamed, according to The Guardian, rushed to scene. Here is what he found: “Clothes and books were scattered on the ground, but I couldn’t focus on them. I was in shock, standing before the bodies of my grandchildren. They were ripped to pieces.”

The bodies included his pregnant daughter-in-law Safiyo Hassan Abukar, her ten-year-old son Abdifatah and seven-year-old Abdinasir. And Hussein and Abdurahman ages six and four respectively.

Names and ages are important when reporting these deaths. Juxtapose your family’s names and ages, your children, your parents and grandparents, and perhaps then these casualties might seem more tangible, the grief more intense.

Somali Orphans & Disable Children Center. AMISOM Public Information, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

On that fateful day there were 15 explosions in the town of Jamaame and 18 homes were destroyed. A school obliterated. Marian Haji Abdi Guled said, “All my children were lying on the ground covered in blood. When I tried to tend to them, shells began falling everywhere. Every direction you turned, there were shells and missiles raining everywhere.”

Guardian: “Despite the scale, no investigation appears to have been launched into the attack on Jamaame six months ago. No one has been held accountable for the deaths – the US refused to admit that a single civilian died in the town that day.”

The current United States foreign policy rule of thumb: never admit fault. Never take responsibility. Never admit it even happened. “No stupid rules of engagement,” famously boasted Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Indefensible.

Based on the hateful history toward people of color under President Donald Trump and his evil wingmen Pete Hegseth and Herr Steven Miller, I can easily answer the Guardian’s question, “Why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes?”

Answer: Because the Trump administration does not see children of color—especially Muslim children—as human beings. (Note: we also saw this same disregard in the recently failed illegal war with Iran when our Tomahawk missiles killed 120 school children last February at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran. An “investigation” is underway by the Pentagon. Cold comfort for the grieving families.)

If you need proof of this racism toward Muslims here are just a few quotes from the president of the “free” world:

•Trump, December 2, 2025: “We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. She’s [Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali] garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

•Trump, December 10, 2025: “’Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right. Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.”

•Trump, January 20, 2026: “Somalia is not even a country. They don’t have anything that resembles a country.”

•Trump, March 26, 2026: “These people come from a crooked country, disgusting country, one of the worst countries in the world…They come to our country – low IQs – and they rob us blind. Stupid people, and they rob us blind.”

The official reason for our mucking around in the Horn of Africa is to suppress the Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab that is based in Somalia. This extremist gang has wreaked havoc around Africa, including a horrific massacre and siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013. Sixty-seven people were killed and hundreds injured.

Horn of Africa. Creative Commons.

But why kill farmers, women and children in a poor farming community? Where is the evidence that al-Shabaab was even in Jamaame? Who gave the orders to attack this agrarian community? Here’s what one witness said:

“There was no al-Shabaab presence in our town, only women, children and elders. Before the airstrikes, the situation in Jamaame was calm and peaceful,” says Marian Haji Abdi Guled.

Buruji adds: “The only people [here] are livestock herders and farmers.” Guardian.

POSTSCRIPT
Who are these military men and women who direct this terror as if playing video games from some distant bunker such as their windowless hidey-hole in Djibouti? Are we supposed to fawn over them and “thank them for their service”? Hold a parade for them? Trot them out as heroes at halftime at football games?

And just what is this service? Killing, injuring and terrorizing innocent children in a poor, desperate country while gulping a Monster Drink? Possibly following illegal orders knowing there will never be legal repercussions? This service has nothing to do with protecting our interests in Somalia, a poor country with an unstable government that hardly poses a threat to our way of life. This service is not about ensuring our vanishing freedoms here in the United States. No, this service is simply My Lai-style butchery from the skies without warning and without consequence.

Guardian: “Testimony indicates that it is highly probable the US drone teams knew children were in the vicinity.”

I guess as a long-time Democrat I am required to pluck down the $30 admission fee, buy the over-priced merch, and pay cult-like homage to the new $850 million-dollar Obama Presidential Center, aka Barack’s Rock. To praise all the real (or imagined) benefits it will provide to Chicago’s South Side. And always to honor what in comparison to what we suffer at the present was a fairly successful presidency, albeit as low a bar as you can limbo under.

But I’m not there yet. Neither are the critics.

“A defensive bunker.” Guardian

“Cold and forbidding…Standing just below it in Jackson Park, the tower looms like a castle keep, its mass and height in tension with the park’s pastoral beauty and origins.” NYT

“Sightless shrine.” “A cerebral version of the Trump ballroom.” Tina Brown

The 225-foot granite monolith that obscenely towers over my beloved Jackson Park, on Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park, where I was raised, is an assault on my sense of aesthetics and a visible blot on my city’s landscape.

(Note: President Trump’s planned golden arch will be 250-feet in height, or 25 feet taller than Obama’s rock of ages. Hmm, is this one of those macho male ego throw-downs? My edifice wreck is bigger than your edifice wreck? Times like these I sure miss Jimmy Carter.)

Speaking of princely egos, remember Obama’s over-the-top 60th birthday at his $12 million, 30-acre oceanfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard. At least there were no tattooed bros hitting each other in the brain. But still.

I wrote about it here for the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/obama-birthday-party-covid-liberal-b1896934.html

My third grade class. Bret Harte Elementary School. 1963. I am the only one with his eyes closed.

I attended Bret Harte grade school, on 56^th Street, directly across from the northern-most reaches of Jackson Park. At lunch my buddies and I would play Civil War in the park, the North versus the South. We walked the bridle path in search of change that fell out of the riders’ pockets.

If I had any money for lunch (almost never), I would head kitty-corner from Bret Harte to Ed’s Lunch, a wooden fire-hazard of a shack on Stoney Island, for a hot dog, chips and maybe a Pay Day candy bar.

I was also a “patrol boy,” holding up traffic so my classmates could safely cross the small intersection at the historic Hotel Windermere Hotel’s parking garage. There was nothing valiant about my volunteer service. After all, I could leave school 15 minutes early to man my post. Additionally, the majestic Windermere was where some of my beloved White Sox lived. I met pitchers Gary Peters and Joe Horlen there, still a thrilling memory.

My pack of kids were once entertained by a nose-less man. He sat facing us at a picnic table in the park. Although he reeked of wine and his clothes were soiled, he seemed content and centered, not at all like our squirmy, odorous tribe of pre-teen boys.

He did appall us at first, but after the first lunch hour with him, we no longer felt there was anything odd about him. In a big city you see the complete range of human shapes, sizes and malformations. Leg-less people rolling around on carts, propelling their bodies down the sidewalks with their hands. Women with elephantiasis, their baggy skin cascading around their ankles like a second skin. Dwarfs waiting for the bus, dressed in three-piece suits, checking their watches, and carrying briefcases.

Our guy lived in our park and even smoked, an activity many of us were desperate to try. He blew the smoke out the two brown holes above his mouth, proving that his respiratory system still worked.

Jackson Park was our urban wilderness. We spend every free moment roaming among its overgrown shrubs and towering trees. Lake Michigan shimmered to the east, just beyond Promontory Point’s battery of Nike Hercules missiles. Much later I heard that it was possible that some of those missiles had live nuclear warheads on their tips, and that two hundred trees were cut down to make room for them. The Chicago American boasted of the missiles: “A ring of sword-like guided missiles called the Nike—revealed for the first time today—stands ready to send sudden death belting into the sky to meet any enemy head on.”

We related to Jackson Park at a kids’ ground level, a 550-acre playground. The most impressive structure was the Museum of Science and Industry, where we fantasized about sneaking in after hours and having all the exhibits to ourselves. I would have headed right to the working coal mine. Or the submarine. Or the model train set.

But this too-tall swaggering fortress of wealth poking up at the sky like an infected jagged tooth? What is it doing in my park? Why is it taller than the trees? Is this what Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had in mind when in 1871 they designed the park? In Robin Bachin’s book “Building the South Side,” the author quotes Olmstead regarding these public spaces that they contain “the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures and the still waters. What we want to gain is the tranquility and rest to the mind.”

But when I see the Obamalisk towering over the South Side like a Giza-like homage to a pharaoh, all I can I think about is that the target of our next No Kings rally might just warrant another addition.

END

whoismargot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Acting sort of like the worst version of an Attorney General Todd Blanche:

Just in case you resurrect the Anti-Weaponization Fund, and I know you will, I am writing you with two requests: First, I feel you owe me $1776M (at least) for damages incurred over the last ten years. These damages include immense pain and suffering at the hands of President Donald J. Trump for his many un-Constitutional acts, false statements, illegal wars, and late-night rage tweets that have upset for much too long not only my fragile psyche but also my understanding of what the United States is, or currently what it used to be.

For almost seventy years I had believed that a certain classy decorum was required for our presidents and their administrations. They would, in the main, conduct themselves within the framework of the oath of the office: solemnly swear (or affirm) that they will execute the office and protect the Constitution. This oath assumes that the president had actually read the Constitution. Your client, through his actions over two terms, and the one in between that he falsely claims was stolen, obviously has never read this august document. In fact, I doubt if he has ever read anything beyond the many revenge lawsuits he has filed against his perceived enemies. Lawsuits, if I can be so bold, that you have championed both as his personal attorney and now as his Department of Justice Number 1 lap dog.

(As an aside, everyone knows you are trying so hard to please the president so that you can be installed as the permanent AG, but I must say that with each public appearance you look increasingly conflicted, troubled, and frankly, like shit. Swarthy, too, like a mobster in the witness protection program. If your life’s mission is to be the president’s Roy Cohen, be warned that another Trump attorney with the same surname who for years did the legal and not-so-legal dirty work for your guy did not, in the end, fare so well. Beware of one-way loyalty. Just saying. And for God’s sake get some rest!)

I had also assumed that all presidents would faithfully adhere to the apparently weak Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8. In case you have forgotten the clause, here it is: “No Title of Nobility [read No Kings] shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Yet, much to my despair, your boss and his family, aka the Trump Family Cartel, have raked in billions during the first year and a half of his second term through various crypto schemes, “donations” to such projects as the White House ballroom, and defense contracts. Speaking of the latter, one of too many examples surfaced this past week in ProPublica. The headline: “The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.” The money was lent to “Vulcan Elements, [and] Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm took an undisclosed stake in the company…the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by [convicted criminal] Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.” (Last September the DoJ dropped its previous position on Navarro’s contempt charge that landed him in jail. The DoJ “has determined that it is no longer taking the same position as the prior administration in this case.”)

Ain’t that a kick in the pants? A legitimate DoJ would thoroughly investigate this and so many other sweetheart deals that benefit the Trump Family Cartel, but I’m betting that you will not. When you look at yourself in the mirror each morning what do you see?

All of this blatant corruption and disrespect of presidential standards and the Constitution has caused me to increase my morning dose of Zoloft from 50 mgs to 100 mgs. Wine intake has increased at night and I can no longer get through a conversation without mentioning the word Trump. and throwing up a little bit. I have even contemplated consulting a Peruvian shaman or a healer in Sedona. An infusion of taxpayer cash from the Anti-Weaponization Fund would compensate for treatment of my mental breakdown. But only partly.

That brings me to the second request. My tax bills. Under Trump’s two terms my tax bill has increased significantly, along with the cost of groceries, gas, wine, and that all-important Zoloft prescription. Therefore, I would like the same deal that you cleverly slipped in as an addendum to the Trump v. the Internal Revenue Service settlement. You know, the one that exempts the Trump Family Cartel from the IRS “prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, damages, examinations relief, requests for any relief, including injunctive relief, monetary or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney’s fees, expenses…including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, or which arise with affiliates, and subsidiaries…” Now that is some art of a deal!

In conclusion, I trust you will fulfill your promise to compensate those of us (well, me specifically) who have been victims of federal overreach, lawfare, and undue mental anguish. The check will help as I continue on my path toward healing.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Sending you all the respect you deserve,
Stephen J. Lyons

Creative Commons

Congratulations Class of 2026! You did it! That hefty contribution to your unsupportable debt load is now securely in the hands of predatory loan agencies and our cash strapped federal government! They urge thank you in advance for your immediate attention to this matter.

And congratulations to your sort-of-proud, yet anxious parents, who I would advise not to transform your childhood bedrooms into dens quite yet. Maybe in ten years if they are lucky.

The good news? McDonalds and Chipotle are hiring! OK, just kidding. They are actually laying off the graduates from the classes of 2025, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20 etc. You see, AI robots now have the ability to say, “Do you want fries with that?” and, “I’m sorry, but guacamole is an extra two dollars.”

I want to give a special tip-of-the-hat to all of you that graduated with philosophy degrees. But I have a question: Why?

To you morose English majors and future baristas: Did analyzing Bronte, Keats and Morrison offer literary solutions for paying back your six-figure student loans? Did your self-published alcoholic poetry professor teach you the difference in fat content between oat and skim milk? Did the unpublished, but pompous fiction (adjunct) professor that you (and others) slept with give advice on the polite way to beg your parents for a belated gap year trip to Thailand? Did anyone in the department teach you how to read cursive? And, no, you are not, in any way, what we would call military material.

Donation box, Kenya, 2025. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

To the journalism graduates I am sorry to report that the only jobs today in print media are with the ink-smudged Super Saver Coupon tabloids distributed for free at Circle K and 7/11. Or perhaps, later on, when you are evicted and shivering in a Chicago soup line you can be a correspondent with StreetWise, a paper written by the homeless. However, a career of making shit up and spreading conspiracy falsehoods on social media and in the Trump Administration is expanding, but I will warn you it is a very crowded field, filled with those sorry souls who have for some unknown reason toiled for graduate degrees in journalism. (Again, why?)

To those of you with computer science degrees the future used to be bright. But these days most pre-school kids can code just as well as all our foreign students from Taiwan, Korea and China. By the way my Asian grads, have you been contacted by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement? You will be. In fact, they are waiting just outside this auditorium. You will recognize them by their camo, their guns, their Nazi tattoos, their lack of empathy and their vein-popping rage.

Some good news for architecture graduates! The Trump administration is building all kinds of monuments, fountains and majestic arches to honor the man who they say is the greatest president ever, in fact, a legend in his own mind and in the “minds” of his simpering ass kissers. There is even a chance to live in South Dakota while chiseling in President Trump’s reimagined face on Mount Rushmore. I will warn you though: you might not get paid in a timely manner, or at all. But this is great resume filler for the next job you won’t get.

To those of you overachievers with degrees in biology or pre-med, I hate to break it to you, but lab-tested, time-honored, proven scientific facts, such as the efficacy of vaccines and the dangers of mercury in our drinking water, are things of the past. Today, as colleagues at the CDC and FDA empty out their desks to be replaced by snake-oil salesmen, TV doctors, a former heroin addict and some over-caffeinated dude named Oz, your education is out of touch and probably too woke for these times anyway. Might I suggest a career pitching Amway or Mary Kay products?

Was it all worth it? You know, the four years of late-night cramming, the gaseous roommates, the pompous profs, all that digested Ramen and undigested MSG, the AI-generated plagiarism and the muscled jock oozing NIL money, who almost ran you over in his Lamborghini on his way to the Rolex store?

Forget all that. On behalf of this great university, this stalwart institution of higher learning, where tuition and coaches’ salaries will increase two-fold again next year, I want to assure you that we know it was worth it, and that we think the world of you, our newest donors alumni.

Someone once said, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” But that was then and this is now. Given this economy and the growing wealth gap between the haves and never-will-ever haves, we really don’t expect a whole lot from you.

In conclusion, I want to let you in on a little secret: these past four years? They actually will be the best four years of your entire life. So good luck! See you next Homecoming!

END

1. I am the LORD, your one and only God, who brought you out of the Swamp, out of the houses of Clinton, Hussein Obama and Biden. YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE OR AFTER ME. And, for a limited time, my SIGNED Bible is now on sale for the reduced price of $59.99 plus postage.

2. My likeness and hair are copyright protected, here on Earth and in the heaven above and seas below, or is it the Earth beneath, or the water under the Earth? (HECK, I DON’T CARE, DO YOU!); you shall bow down to them and serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God (Got that Melania’s Secret Service detail!), visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third wife, of the first two of those who hate Me (even the dead one buried at my golf course) and our binding pre-nups and NDAs, and, but showing mercy only to those who love Me as does Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, the MY Pillow guy, Lady Lindsey Graham, and those other sycophants indicted, jailed, or not, who faithfully keep My commandments. PARDONS FOR ALL FOR A PRICE$$$!

3. You shall not take the name of Trump your God in vain, for I and my armed minions will not hold him guiltless who takes my name in vain or for profit.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it open like I do for 36 holes of golf at any one of my incredible courses of which exorbitant membership fees apply. The other six days you shall labor in cubicles and make barely enough to keep you afloat, and on the seventh day you must send me a check, cash, or money order to cover the East Wing Ballroom, ARCH de Trump, and the Reflecting Lake. For in six five four days I made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and many incredible luxury properties around the world of which you cannot afford to stay.

5. Honor your father (ME!) and all things Trumpian, and that your days may be just long enough upon the land that you shall BUY MY MERCH and then cast your vote for me and anyone I order you to!

6. You shall not harm or maim unless I order you to do so. Stand back and stand by. YOU WILL BE PAID HANDSOMELY AND WILL RECEIVE A GET-OUT-OF-JAIL CARD!

7. You shall not commit adultery, unless your loyal wife is heavy with child, or unless your mistress has appeared in various adult films. Send me photos of said mistress first and I shall decide your fate.

8. You shall not steal, but underestimating your properties and being too smart to pay your full tax bill is totally allowed. THE IRS CAN’T TOUCH ME!

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor unless that neighbor is of a darker illegal color and/or flies a flag/sign you do not like. Example: that wokish BLM yard sign and that disgusting rainbow flag. Then call me, and my people at MY DOJ LED BY THE INCREDIBLY LOYAL AS A HOUND DOG TODD B will take care of it for a substantial donation.

10.You shall not covet your neighbor’s house unless it is twice the size of yours and has an infinity pool; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife unless she is really HOT LIKE MY DAUGHTER IVANKA, nor his male servant (note: probably an illegal), nor his female servant unless she is equally or more ravishing than your neighbor’s wife or teenage daughter.

11.God (and Sleepy Joe) had a measly ten commandments, but His time has passed. So has DOPE LEO who wants Iran to have nukes! I have Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood, Vladimir Putin, the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, half of Congress, the IRS, and a host of attorneys on retainer that might or might not get paid. Aside from the incredibly gorgeous Mary Magdalene, GOD HAD NOTHING! No merchandise, no public relations machine, and no bankable achievements. NOR DID HE END eight NINE WARS! NOT to mention all the pestilence and floods during HIS FAILED TERM! Face it, God was a STONE-COLD LOSER!, a bearded, unkempt lefty who spouted all that liberal word salad about compassion, forgiveness (forgiveness, WTF?), and humility (again WTF?). WAY TOO WOKEY! So, for my 11^th Commandment: I implore you to buy my latest limited 2026 Donald Trump Assassination Attempt Trading Card, or my “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!” high-tops, my soon-to-be-released phone (any day now, ha, ha, ha) or my Victory 47 cologne. Trust me, you’ll smell better than anyone has ever smelled in the history of stink! MAKE ME RICH AS F**K AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

The White House

Recently, I read an advance copy of “Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran,” by journalists Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin. The book will be released on June 2. You should read it because afterwards you will know more than any of the dopes in the Trump administration about post-1979 revolutionary Iran.

Let us step back from Operation Total Epic Failure and return, prior to this illegal and costly war, to why Iranians were in the streets protesting their repressive government led by brutal, misogynist clerics.

Tens of thousands of brave and desperate Iranians have been killed or been disappeared since taking to the streets to protest an iron-fisted theocracy. Iran’s economy is in free-fall, basic freedoms do not exist and Tehran is running out of water. In one never-to-be fulfilled promise on January 13^th of this year, President Trump assured the protestors that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

Well, I guess what he meant by HELP was that a month later the United States and Israel would bomb the living hell out of Iran (and Lebanon) without regard for civilian casualties. This includes the first day of bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, where 168 girls were killed, ages 7-12.

“We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives…We are warriors, trained to kill the enemy and break their will.”
—Pistol Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Death and Horrible Human

The other brilliant “idea” that Trump and his confederacy of dunces had was that when the bombing commenced Iranian citizens (unarmed) would rise up and overthrow the government. But when you murder innocent girls and more civilians that we will ever hear about, a nation unites against a foreign invasion. The enemy is no longer your own government. (Headline from the NYT on May 14, 2026: “Top Commander Dismisses Reports of Civilian Deaths in Iran.” Dismisses is shorthand for “lies about.”)

Believe it or not, one can hold two ideas at once: to condemn the illegal war Trump started that has led to death and destruction abroad, and higher costs of living at home, and to support of the courageous Iranians who have suffered mightily under a brutal regime.

From “A Stolen Revolution”: “People cut their meat consumption. Women stopped going to the salon, or requested their stylists us cheaper…products. Trips abroad became a distant memory. The poor suffered far worse. It used to be that trash pickers waited for pedestrians to pass before they dove into the large steel buns at the side of the road in search of recyclables to sell. Now they did so with little concern as to who saw them…There were more child laborers, and they looked younger.”

But to expect this U.S. President to care about the suffering of citizens in other countries is a fantasy rooted in magical thinking. After all, he doesn’t even care about Americans’ financial woes. In his own words: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

Fact check: not true. Trump thinks a lot about himself.

A couple of years ago at The Globe Post I wrote an essay about the quest for freedom among Iranian women. I am posting it here. But first I want to quote another passage from “A Stolen Revolution.”

“After four decades of brain drain, the banishment of capable experts from the halls of power, and the promotion of insiders and loyalists…These were no evil geniuses or crafty statesmen. They were incompetent, insular ideologues and sycophants.”

Hmm, does that sound familiar?

Here is the essay:
Imagining a Free Iran

In the early 1980s, in the unlikely setting of a northern Idaho college town, I befriended two Iranian young women, A and M. (I have disguised their names because the reach and memory of repressive countries last forever.)

Before Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, A and M had escaped the Shah’s cruel tenure and his malicious secret police known as SAVAK to begin a new life in the United States. Their parents’ whereabouts were unknown.

Over a platter of fresh fruit and dates, the women, who were attending the University of Idaho, where I was also a student, were pointing at pictures of their friends in a Tehran high school yearbook.

A: “She is dead. She is missing. Her parents were tortured and killed.”

M: “I think she is still in Evin [Iranian’s infamous prison], but no one knows. She was my cousin.”

Fifteen years later, I befriended another Iranian student, T. She and her sister had also fled Iran, via Switzerland, not to elude the grasp of SAVAK and the Shah, but, instead, to escape the demeaning misogyny of Iran, specifically the Revolutionary Guard and the “morality police.”

Iranian Guidance Patrol. Farsnews.com

By then, the 1979 revolution’s dream of a more free and open society had been dashed when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran from his exile in France and became the country’s first Supreme Leader for life. Instead of a more secular government that the majority of Iranians had wanted, one with fair elections, just courts and more freedoms for women, Khomeini instituted an Islamic theocracy that lives on long past his death in 1989.

Currently that legacy is being fiercely challenged by young women seeking freedom not unlike A, M and T. And those widespread protests, the likes that have not been seen in since the 1979 revolution against the Shah, are being brutally put down by the clerics and their thugs.

The accelerant was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who the morality police detained for her “improper” wearing of the hijab. How she died in custody remains a mystery, but given the regime’s unchecked and Gestapo-like reputation for arbitrary viciousness, it appears obvious that she was likely tortured and killed.

Amjad Amini, Mahsa Amini's father. Tasnim News Agency

The burning of hijabs on the streets of Iran is just one means of resistance among the courageous protestors. Recently a government television was hacked for ten seconds with the words, “the blood of our youths is on your hands.” The pictures of four women killed by Iranian security forces were displayed along with the Supreme Leader’s face in crosshairs.

But demonstrators’ rocks and fires, cyber hacks and anti-government chants are no match for bullets. According to Amnesty International some 134 protestors were killed. As The New York Times reported, in Zahedan, in the ethnic Baluch region of Iran, on September 30 as Friday prayer was ending at the Great Mosalla mosque, government snipers, police officers and possibly members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (who have denied involvement) opened fire killing 66 to 96 worshipers.

Here is one eyewitness’ description of what residents now call “Bloody Friday” from the Times: “’It was a massacre I had only seen in movies,’ said Jamshid, 28, a worshiper, who was reached by phone and identified himself only by his first name to avoid reprisals. ‘They started shooting as people still had their heads bowed in prayer.’ Young men threw themselves in front of children and older people to shield them from the bullets, Jamshid said. ‘People had nowhere to go.’”

Then came the lies from the government that bad outside agitators had come into Zahedan “with the aim of turning the protests into violence, chaos and a massacre of innocent civilians and police forces.” This is the usual balderdash served up by repressive regimes.

The truth is that people not only in Iran, but around the world—from Hong Kong to Tibet to North Korea to Russia—long for the freedoms that we in the West enjoy (for now anyway) and take for granted. When citizens express that desire through Arab Spring-style sit-ins or through guerilla-style tactics, they are putting their lives on the line against more powerful autocratic and theocratic forces. Still, the seeds germinate.

Repression kills imagination and stunts creativity. Doors close on possibilities as your world shrinks to a geography of fear. But a government can never really kill ideas, or muzzle individual craving. The embers never die.

In Iran, one such craving is simply for a woman not to wear the hijab if she so wishes. Not to be married off at the age of nine. Not to be rounded up and take to clinics for humiliating virginity checks. Not to have the morality police wipe away makeup with razorblade embedded in a handkerchief.

Long ago I lost touch with my Iranian friends. But I remember them today, as I watch a younger generation of Iranian girls and women continue to fight to enjoy the simple pleasure of feeling the wind in their hair and sunlight on their skin without the threat of being detained and possibly murdered. And to finally imagine themselves as they truly wish to be: Free to dream of a future.

END

“No way Trump becomes president!” I replied with confidence. “Everyone knows he’s a clown. He has zero chance. Hillary will be our next president.”

Now, two horrible presidential terms later, I’ve been eating my words while scratching my head still searching for how the hell this happened to a country that I had always thought was so much more intelligent than to fall for a corrupt conman like Trump.

The search led me to a novel that is both prescient and instructive for these perilous times in the United States in 2026. The Oppermanns, by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger, was published in the fateful year of 1934 as Hitler and his cabal of Nazis rose to power.

Lion Feuchtwanger

The Oppermanns are Jewish furniture makers and salesmen who watch with increasing horror the rising waters of anti-Semitism slowly engulf their world. I use the word slowly intentionally because they believed, as I once did, that the irrational would never overtake the rational, and that the guardrails against hatred and violence would hold. Our current bloodless (so far) coup by the white nationalists led by Trump feels almost like it’s happening in slow motion, as if we are sleepwalking into autocracy.

As I read Feuchtwanger’s novel, I thought back on my conversation with the Toronto cabbie. I was both dismissive of Trump’s blatant racism and appalling divisive rhetoric, and insulting of the orange “clown.”

So were the rational Germans regarding Hitler, called the “Leader” in the novel. This could never happen to such an advanced country like Germany! His followers were referred to as “mercenaries” by author Feuchtwanger, whose complete works were burned in 1933 by the Nazis. The Oppermanns was published the following year in Amsterdam after he had moved to the France.

“The average citizen of the nation were men,” wrote Feuchtwanger in The Oppermanns. “The average citizen of the nation were men…who did not belong to the rabble that admired the mercenaries…They stuck to reason, they were not taken in by the hackneyed rhetoric of the Leader. Cheerfully, content, and confident of the future, they jested about the probably fate of the Leader, whether he would end up as a barker of a fair or as an insurance agent.”

As the majority of us—at least according the current polls—sorrowfully witness our government being dismantled by bellicose incompetents, our collective consciousness has fractured into silos of helplessness. For example, who will save us from the next pandemic? What will be taught in our universities? What will be purged? Feuchtwanger saw it clearly in Germany.

“In the hospitals, in the University, on all sides, medical men without ability were seeing signs of hope. An era was beginning in which the requisites were no longer talent and accomplishment but the ostensible consanguinity to a certain race.”

Ninety-two years later, we watch as the billionaire bro class and the snake oil salesmen pitching AI and high-tech surveillance cozy up to the president, not necessarily because they buy into his Project 2025 designs. No, for the Silicon elite the relationship with the Administration is all about jockeying for a piece of the unregulated business environment that Trump has created. Crumbs from the gilded table are for the rest of us.

This particular passage from the novel eerily captured what is now happening here. “For the time being, economists had taken the appointment of the Leader with a certain optimism. The Leader, repeating parrot-like whatever was suggested to him, was safe in the hands of the big capitalists…the gentlemen of Big Business…would not have much difficulty in dealing with the clumsy swastika men. They were well aware why they had come to power. Nothing to worry about. There would be a great outward show of melodrama, but behind the scenes business would go on as usual.”

Do those “clumsy swastika men” remind you of anybody?

Indeed, it is business as usual for the rich. In fact, profits have never been better for the one-percenters, the oil tycoons, the over-budgeted armed goons of ICE, the forever-war-minded military-industrial complex and the always-for-profit Jared Kushners of the country. And for the Trumps, of course, who are cashing in handsomely on their connections to unchecked power and our overdrawn treasury.

For the rest of us not so much.

As we try to survive this mournful period of lesser freedoms and increased brutality, we will also have to shake off our somnolent nature. What is destroying 250 years of freedom and exceptionalism is not a dream. It is a living nightmare.

In the March 18, 1934 The New York Times Book Review of The Oppermanns, reviewer Fred T. March wrote, “…this novel is addressed to the German people, who will not be allowed to read it, urging them to open their eyes. And it is addressed to the world outside bearing the message, ‘Wake up! The barbarians are upon us!’”

DHS

Photo by Phil Roeder

While the stylish coiffed and bejeweled insiders hid beneath tables at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this past Saturday during a gunman’s security breach, two veteran police officers were transporting a robbery suspect for medical observation to Chicago’s Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital, the suspected criminal killed one of the officers and seriously wounded his 57-year-old partner, not yet identified, who is according to the police department, “fighting for his life.”

From the Chicago Tribune: Chicago police officer fatally shot at Swedish Hospital remembered for kindness and public service. “A knack for public service was one of Chicago police Officer John Bartholomew’s defining qualities, friends and neighbors recalled Sunday. Bartholomew, 38, who had been with the police department for a decade, was identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office as the officer fatally shot Saturday morning at a North Side hospital.”

Earlier in the month, in Shreveport, Louisiana, eight children—3 to 11 years old—were gunned down by the father of seven of those children. He also wounded two women before he was shot dead by police.

A few days later at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, ten people were shot and one died in another yet mass shooting. Seventeen-year-old high school senior Martha Odom was simply an innocent bystander on Spring Break when she was fatally shot in the chest. The suspect was also 17-years old. His grandmother drove him away from the scene, but he was later arrested and charged.

Just a typical month of Second Amendment well-regulated gun violence in the United States where everyone is locked and loaded.

Thankfully, no one was killed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and the exclusive after-dinner parties and next day’s hangover brunches could resume without incident. Such stamina and courage among the Fourth Estate! Yet, while our endless shootings take place across the country from shopping malls to synagogues to schools, the WHCD story takes up all the oxygen in the media atmosphere. That’s what happens when you have a room full of rapacious reporters, the president and his entourage, and a bunch of cabinet members in the same room.

I watched the breaking news on cable. It was a reminder of why I don’t regularly watch cable news. The commentary of the panel on CNN was particularly annoying. I am not sure who the woman was who tearfully reminded us that those correspondents were human beings and had families. (BTW, high-paid talking head: so do we.) Then there was Van Jones who enlightened all of us with this comment: “Bullets are physical things…and they move past you faster than you can react.” Incredible analysis.

On and on it went until I went to sleep. In the morning I was confronted with the very predictable headlines such as “Washington Shooting: Suspect in Custody, Motive Unclear” (DW.com); “Investigation into WHCD shooting underway as authorities probe suspected gunman’s motive” (FoxNews); “Motive of gunman at White House Correspondents Dinner remains under investigation” (CBS News). A redundant load of redundancy on full display.

I am no Sherlock Holmes, but I have some theories about the gunman’s motives. Could it be the rising costs of healthcare, groceries and gas? Could it be that we have a president that has been accused of horrible collaborations with Jeffrey Epstein, and has ordered a feckless justice department to cover up those allegations? Could be that the same president and his family are corrupt and profiting from their positions of power? Could it be an illegal and economically disastrous war in Iran? Or, is it that the gap between the those that can survive and those tossed to the curb is widening?

The White House will simply say that the would-be assassin was “deranged” and “crazy.” (Oh, and the Democrats are at fault and this is why we need a new East Wing ballroom that absolutely no U.S. citizen asked for.) Perhaps he was. Trying to settle grievances with murder is a vile and horrible act and should never be condoned. He will probably spend the rest of his days in prison. Yet, his possible reasons for such an evil act remain.

The Baton Rouge police chief said that the motives for the mall gunman might be “social media beefs and maybe gang-related stuff.” The Shreveport killer was motivated by a domestic dispute. The Chicago cop killer’s motive could possibly be that he wanted to escape his robbery charges.

The search for motives is cold comfort for the victims and their families. Discovered motives do not stop the next guy with a grudge and a gun from walking into his neighborhood Rural King and legally purchasing, say, a Sig Sauer M400 TREAD. This human hunting weapon comes, according to Rural King’s website, “…standard with a 16” stainless steel barrel which provides incredible shot to shot consistency and tight groupings.” Built right here in the good ole USA.

(Incredible shot to shot consistency? What does that even mean? A better kill rate? More bang for your buck?)

The next mass shooting is coming, perhaps to your nearby Walmart, Starbucks, campus, nursing home, church…Then we will search for those elusive motives, send our thoughts and prayers, set out teddy bears and flowers by the yellow crime tape, while our legislators stick their heads deeper into the sand of apathy, forever beholden to their paymaster, the National Rifle Association. And that same Congressional Cartel will ignore any ideas for improving the lives of Americans who have easy access to an arsenal of guns and who keep falling deeper into debt and desperation.

India, 2016, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

“Too many people are suffering today, too many innocent people have been killed, and I believe someone must stand up and say that there is a better way.”
—Pope Leo XIV

Silly me, right? That kind of candy-ass, libtard thinking is much too woke for Secretary of the Killing of Innocents Pistol Pete “Last Call” Hegseth and his blood brother, Bibi “the Butcher of Beirut” Yahoo. Yet, if any of the men in charge of this so-called “warrior ethos” are even vaguely interested, or have a shred of decency left (spoiler alert: they don’t), the Geneva Convention has many provisions protecting women and children.

For example, Article 17: “The Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to conclude local agreements for the removal from besieged or encircled areas, of wounded, sick, infirm, and aged persons, children and maternity cases, and for the passage of ministers of all religions, medical personnel and medical equipment on their way to such areas.”

Morocco, 2017, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 came out after the United States obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nukes, killing an estimated 38,000 children. And, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), “countless more died years or even decades later from radiation-related cancers and other illnesses. Leukaemia – cancer of the blood – was especially prevalent among the young.” ICAN also said that the nuclear bombs dropped over Japan were “two relatively small nuclear weapons (by today’s standard).”

(Note: President Trump once said, “when crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen.” Wonder who he was referring to?)

President Trump began his war of choice possibly at the behest of pal Bibi at the end of February by bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan province in Iran. Out of the 168 killed 100 were children.

“Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” Pope Leo XIV

Mexico, 2022, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

Amazonia, Brazil, 2022, Phoro by Stephen J. Lyons.

“This harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict. Schools must be places of safety and learning for children. Instead, this school in Minab became a site of mass killing. The US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building. Targeting a protected civilian object, such as a school, is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/usa-iran-those-responsible-for-deadly-and-unlawful-us-strike-on-school-that-killed-over-100-children-must-be-held-accountable/

I don’t buy for a second that the U.S. is honestly investigating this horrific slaughter, or that there will ever be anyone held to account for these deaths. In any case, how do you compensate for the death of a child?

Honduras, 2024, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

Kenya, 2025, Photos by Stephen J. Lyons

But that bombing was only the opening salvo of the US and Israel’s war on children.

“Reports indicate more than 1,800 children have been killed or injured since Feb. 28, 2026; 214 children have been reported killed in Iran, 116 in Lebanon, 4 in Israel and 1 in Kuwait. The number of children injured includes more than 1,190 in Iran, 331 in Lebanon, 4 in Israel and 4 in Bahrain. These numbers will likely climb as the conflict intensifies and spreads.

“Beyond the death toll, the escalation is exposing children to traumatic events, causing widespread psychological distress among kids and caregivers. Repeated alerts, bombardments and uncertainty are disrupting daily routines, increasing the need for mental health and psychosocial support services.

“Civilian infrastructure including homes, hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or destroyed by parties to the conflict, disrupting services that children rely on for survival and well-being. In some areas, health facilities have been forced to suspend operations, while airspace closures and disrupted transport routes threaten access to essential medicines and routine immunization services. Millions of children are out of school, cut off from safe learning environments and support systems.”
—UNICEF USA

On March 25, at a “Christian” worship service, Secretary of the Slaughter of Innocents, Pete Hegseth asked Pentagon officials to pray for “overwhelming violence” against enemies in Iran in the “name of Jesus Christ” and to “break the teeth of the ungodly.”

“Now Jesus don’t like killing, no matter what the reason for,
And your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore.”
—John Prine

Our accomplice in this war-that-didn’t-need-to-happen-but-we-must-keep-the-defense-economy-robust, Little Man Bibi and his IDF are experienced killers of children in Gaza. Here is an excerpt from an October 7, 2024, UNICEF report titled, “A year of tears: 12 months of war on children.”

“In Gaza, at least 14,000 children have reportedly been killed, many more injured, while thousands are likely under the rubble, and an estimated 17,000 others are unaccompanied or separated from their caregivers.

“More than 55 displacement orders remain in effect, covering up to 86 per cent of the Gaza Strip. Children have lost access to quality healthcare, education, and other services. All children are now in need of mental health and psychosocial support. One year into the war, children’s most basic needs remain unmet.

“Persistent restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial commodities, and the inability of humanitarians to safely reach all children and families, have rendered the Gaza population acutely food insecure . All 335,000 children under five are at high risk of malnutrition.”

Currently? Save the Children reports: “As of September 2025, over 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza during nearly 23 months of conflict, with reports indicating more than one child is killed every hour. Over 1,000 children killed were under the age of one, and thousands more are missing, likely trapped under rubble. The violence has also resulted in over 21,000 children suffering from injuries leading to permanent disabilities.”

Cambodia, 2026, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

If you only think of children as merely faceless collateral damage, then you can be freed of imagining a child’s smile, or laughter, or innocence. As with Israel and the United States, you can even believe that God is on your side. No doubt Iran has the same belief about a God who picks sides.

“God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” Pope Leo XIV

I am fortunate to be a father and grandfather, and to also have traveled around the world meeting with children from Kenya to Morocco to Cuba and many other countries. I post their photos here so that you when hear about another mass killing of children in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, or any place where bullets and bombs fly, you can hold these images in your head and contemplate the losses not as numbers but as precious individuals whose lives needlessly ended because of decisions made by heartless, morally vacant elderly men.

Cuba, 2012, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

Cuba, 2012, Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

Walter Gramatté, Funeral Procession, 1917

After a prolonged, ten-year illness, in which its declining mental and moral prowess were on life support, the United States of America passed away fitfully tonight surrounded by only a few friends and no allies. Its last words were, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Cause of death was a toxic combination of avarice, ego and fraud. Because of a lack of interest and collective fatigue there is no planned service at this time.

USA was preceded in death by Congress, the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, science, CBS News and the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The USA was born to great hope and fanfare in Boston 250 years ago in 1776 after gaining its independence from a hostile foreign power. The newborn presented itself as a beacon on the hill and over the years was known as a shining example to the world as a just and charitable nation that could be trusted most of the time, but not always, to do the right thing to advance democracy around the globe.

It survived a civil war and brought an end to slavery. Throughout two world wars the USA valiantly defeated Nazism, fascism and genocides. It was always relied on to aid people around the world suffering famines, natural disasters and pogroms through programs like USAID. Until a decade ago, the USA was also known worldwide as a safe landing space for refugees seeking a better way of life, for displaced souls to experience freedoms of religion, speech and the press that were denied to them in their native countries. The American Dream became a reality for millions and immigrants added to the cultural and economic vitality of the nation.

Today, thanks to the recently deceased and terminally deceased USA and its contagions, those same immigrants, asylum seekers, and even American citizens, are being systematically purged, beaten, killed and incarcerated in horrific conditions in detention centers. This will be a major part of the USA’s legacy and will be engraved forever on its tombstone.

Its life’s history wasn’t always perfect: abuses happened, it was cruel too often toward minorities and Native Americans. A case could be made that it still is, but up until recently it had made major strides in diversity, equality and inclusion. That appears to have suffered a long-term setback as a white (un)Christian nationalist stain has infiltrated our schools, our libraries, our schools and universities and our neighborhoods.

The USA has been known to overreach in its foreign policy and its intentions are too frequently conceived by blatantly selfish and dangerous shapeshifting dingbats who came to power based not on their qualifications, but on their unwavering loyalties and unquenchable greed. Unlike the USA their lifespan appears infinite.

Civil rights were hard fought, violently at times, but in the end our better angels prevailed. McCarthyism was another ugly stain on its history, but the Constitution and its laws held steady. Forever wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan were huge blunders of hubris that costs the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians and accomplished nothing but long-term misery and environmental devastation. History is known as a wise teacher, but as we see today in Iran, one can only learn from history if one actually opens up a book and reads its contents.

Survivors of the late USA are its 345 million divided and confused citizenry who continue to struggle with rising food, energy and healthcare costs; who are left wondering how this devolution happened, this great hollowing out of everything that was once moral and decent about their great nation. They ask themselves in the wake of this death, who are we, what is it that we stand for and what will our futures and our generations’ futures be like?

Contributions in memory of the United States of America can be made to your local food banks. the ACLU, migrant rights’ organizations, Indivisible, mental health centers, non profits and any organizations that promote diversity, equality and inclusion.

U.S. Department of the Treasury employee (per [1]), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
All the live-long day.
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And I bet no one gets paid

Can’t you just see the final product
Hobby Lobby kitsch
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And it’s going to look like shit

“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, it’s not your house!
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, you have no taste”

Meanwhile…
Someone’s in bed with Putin.
Someone’s in bed with Elon, too.
Someone’s in bed with MBS…
Pardoning all the old narcos

Trump’s been tearing down democracy
All the live-long day.
Trump’s been tearing down democracy
And he always gets his way

Oh can’t you see what he’s doing
Ripping our nation to shreds
His toadies carry out his orders
And they join him in his threats

“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, we’ll win this fight!
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know!”
“Donald don’t you know, the people will prevail”

Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
All the live-long day.
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And I bet no one gets paid

Can’t you just see the final product
Hobby Lobby kitsch
Trump’s been tearing down the East Wing
And it’s going to look like shit

I am the CEO of LEAP, a nonprofit in Goleta, California that serves low-income families with childcare and family support. Many of our families are immigrants, including K’s family who are here with asylum status. K is two years old.

K and Mom are bona fide asylum seekers. They have complied with all their immigration requirements, including all immigration check-in appointments. On March 19, K and his mom and Dad were abruptly arrested and detained after dutifully appearing at an immigration check-in appointment.

Our Community Engagement Specialist, Laura, received a call from the family in detention letting us know what happened. Sadly, there was nothing we could do.

On Monday, three things happened. First, Laura wrote to me about her call from K’s mom. She shared her sadness at not being able to do more, but also her recognition that our connection with the other families, the connections of trust enabled the family to call her and gave us the opportunity to support her emotionally. Laura wrote beautifully, and I want to share some of her words with you:

“I was approached by two other families who are part of our LEAP community. I showed up the only way I know how – with a smile, an open, heart and a willingness to listen…. I gave them my card. They told me that, at the very least, they felt peace knowing their children were safe at LEAP….

Somehow that connection traveled.

That small moment of showing up – of listening, of being present – carried my number across state lines, all the way to a detention center in Texas. That’s what connection does. Sometimes it’s not about having the answers or the power to fix everything. Sometimes it’s just about being there, meeting people where they are, and holding space for them. And, in this case, that was enough to build trust strong enough to travel thousands of miles.”

I was so touched by Laura’s words, that I decided to share that with my network. That was the second thing that happened. I wrote a personal email to many of the people who support LEAP, who care about us. And, I did something I don’t always do, I invited them to make a donation. I knew the people I shared this with would want to DO something. So, I suggested a donation to our emergency response fund.

Later that night, I got a call from another staff member. While she was eating dinner, she saw K’s face on the news in a story about the detention center in Dilley, TX. The story said he was sick, he hadn’t eaten in 12 days, and he wasn’t getting care. Understandably, she was terribly upset, broken hearted to see a child she worked so hard to enroll in our children’s center suffering. But, there was something hopeful in the news story. The San Antonio Texas Congressman, Joaquin Castro, was advocating for K’s release. I shared that news with the same group of donors. A handful of donations came in.

The next morning, Laura began receiving calls from the lawyer, Elora Mukherjee who had taken on the case, thanks to the news report from Lidia Terrazzas. The lawyer filed an appeal, and it was tentatively accepted. By 7:30 AM, we were told that if we could find a sponsor for the family, Mom and K might be released. I immediately found that sponsor.

Within an hour, immigration called me to confirm the sponsor. I was told that we needed to provide plane tickets for K and Mom at a specific time. Fortunately, because of the email that I just happened to send, we had enough in donations to cover last minute, refundable plane tickets from San Antonio to Santa Barbara. Evan, the master travel agent of our family booked the flights. I agreed to be the person that immigration would call, and I spoke several times to a bureaucrat facilitating the process. By noon, I had a text from immigration confirming that agents would drive K and Mom to the airport on Thursday. Things were beginning to look hopeful.

Now we needed to prepare for their arrival home. They no longer had a home because their landlord thought they had been deported and rented their room and got rid of most of their belongings. Housing in our area is so tight, the room was rented immediately. With the help Mom’s friend, we found a room for them and paid the first month’s rent. Thanks, again, to our emergency response fund.

On Wednesday, Laura went shopping to buy some clothes and basic food, imagining that they might not have had clothes with them. We made sure that K had a doctor’s appointment, on Thursday, since we knew he was sick. Meanwhile, we were tracking the flights. We celebrated when we learned that mom and K were at the airport. We cheered when the first plane took off. When Mom and K landed my team were there to greet them.

I’d like to end the story there, but that’s not the end.

K is only two years old. He suffered immensely in detention at Dilley. K was unable to eat solid food for the entirety of his detention at Dilley. For nearly two weeks, K vomited every time his mom tried to feed him solid food. He survived by drinking water and apple juice. K cried frequently and suffered mentally and physically. He developed a high fever. He was unable to sleep, awoken by the lights that were on 24/7 and the noises of patrolling guards at night. He desperately misses his father.

Both K and Mom are severely traumatized. He screamed hysterically getting into the car when Laura picked them up from the airport. He is now terrified of cars and car seats because of the way he was violently shoved into a car by ICE agents. K and Mom have nothing. We will make sure to get them on their feet. I’m hoping we can find a reputable lawyer to get K’s Dad released.

K will return to our school on Monday. I know we will be patient with his fears and create the space and safety the family needs to heal.

We know that positive experiences can help heal the wounds of trauma. Trusted relationships, equitable environments, and a sense of belonging – along with therapy – can counteract some of the harmful effects of what happened to this family.

This week is an example of what we can do because we are a community.

.This week, when I celebrated Passover, I had a very tangible sense of what it means to move toward freedom.

If you want to help, here are some things you can do:

To donate directly to the family, here is their go fund me https://gofund.me/81af1b43a

To donate to LEAP so that we can continue to support this family as well as others and do our work of providing high-quality, trauma-informed early childhood education and comprehensive family support, click here https://leapcentralcoast.org/donate/

To see an initial report from Lidia Terrazzas of K’s release, see here

And, share this with your networks. Community can be powerful.

Pic of K shared with permission.

P.S. - This morning mom said she needs evaporated milk, clothing for K, oil, eggs, a dresser to store her clothes. These are the kinds of things your donations will help with. (LEAP will purchase the food items today, until the Go Fund Me money is transferred into her account)

Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

I. An amorphous hootenanny of shallow platitudes

I was one of the eight million protestors in the country that turned out last Saturday for the third No Kings March. Surprisingly, the crowd in this central Illinois college town of Urbana was only slightly larger than the march held last fall.

The usual theatrics were on full display: The over-the-top costumes, the panting dogs wearing kerchiefs, the cute kids, the gray beards—some in their walkers—, the younger set holding Palestinian flags, and a multitude of signs—some familiar, some obscene, some totally off subject and some simply out-of-place: “Trump 2028.”

But what I did not witness was the anger I expected from a citizenry living through the demise of 250 years of American democracy. A citizenry increasingly confronted with the president’s armed militia on our streets, at our airports and soon to appear in November at a polling precinct near you.

Additionally, is anyone bothered that we are destroying millions of lives in Iran and Lebanon, forcing four million people into refugee camps, where there is a good chance that the Israeli Defense Force will bomb them there, too, as they have in Gaza? Last night our deranged president boasted, “We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

Aftermath of Israeli airstrikes on the Beirut neighbourhood of Bachoura on 18 March 2026. Wikimedia Commons, Megaphone.

Them means women, children, the elderly. The usual innocents. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that, “In a letter to the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF, Ali Akbari Sari, head of the Iranian Scientific Association of Public Health, claimed: “In the first 30 days of these ruthless attacks, 93,300 civilian units, including 600 schools, 300 healthcare service centers, and 17 Red Crescent centers across the country, have been destroyed or seriously damaged.”

So much for just hitting military targets.

Remember this quote from Secretary of Defense Pete “War Crimes” Hegseth: “No stupid rules of engagement.” The IDF approves this message. Hospitals, schools, mosques and journalists beware. You are all targets. See what’s left of Gaza for a hint of what’s to come.

More from the HRANA: Aggregated data since the beginning of the conflict on February 28, 2026, based on incidents recorded in the incident tab and using minimum values for figures marked “more than”:

• Civilian fatalities: 1,606 people (including at least 244 children)
• Military fatalities: 1,212 people
• Unclassified fatalities (civilian/military): 709 people

https://www.en-hrana.org/day-33-of-u-s-and-israeli-attacks-on-iran-from-the-former-u-s-embassy-to-the-russian-orthodox-church/

Our tax dollars hard at work wrecking the world again. How is this not terrorism? And for what? One deranged man’s ego? So Israel can annex more land in Lebanon? So Jared Kushner can invest in a rebuild?

Yet, we have the audacity to whine about higher gas prices.

“Nowadays we're feelin' stressed
It's all for us and damn the rest
Tellin' each other have a blessed day
All camoed up and standin' tall
Buildin' bombs and border walls
As all collective conscience falls away
And they wave those stars and bars
Is that really who we are?”
—Sons of the Second Sons, James McMurtry

At the No Kings rally I attended I heard no concrete calls to action. How about a march on Washington? How about urging our former presidents to stand in front of the White House and point out what we all know, that Trump is increasingly demented and unfit for office. But the ex-presidents are way too deferential and too busy writing revisionist memoirs for fat cash advances. (Maybe they will say something when Trump conducts a “limited” nuclear strike on Iran.)

Hello? What are we doing people?!

I don’t know about you, but I am spitting mad at how our country has devolved over the last 16 months, led by inexperienced white Christian nationalists kooks that lack any semblance of compassion and empathy. I was hoping at this No Kings rally that others would share these emotions and then harness our anger into action. But we still have it too good to risk our comfortable lives as so many courageous people did in places like China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, Egypt’s Tahir Square in 2011 or more recently on the streets of Tehran.

Admit it: we are pampered cowards. I often ask, for what cause would I risk my life? Democracy? Justice? Oil? How about you? What is worth dying for?

Instead of a plan, I had to endure such banalities as announcements for the best costumes. Shout out to the hard-working organizers here and around the country, they did more than I did, but did I really need to hear the preamble to the Constitution being sung a cappella? This particular crowd brought to mind the Chicago song “Saturday in the Park.”

“People dancing, really smiling
A man playing guitar
And singing for us all.”

Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

Concurrent to the No Kings March in Urbana was the Saturday Market. One can imagine making a day of it, buying vegan oatmeal soap, perhaps a loaf of overpriced sourdough and then moseying over to check in at the protest, fair-trade lattes in hand. A friend of mine described the event as “an amorphous hootenanny of shallow platitudes.”

II. Octogenarians please step aside, the Sixties are so over.

In many of the rallies across the country I did see much of the emotional outrage lacking in Urbana, especially in larger cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and, of course, Minneapolis, all locales where the administration’s brutal immigration tactic have been deployed, where Americans have died.

In Minneapolis I saw that organizers dusted off and rolled out Sixties’ relic Jane Fonda, bless her 88-year-old activist heart. But really? Can young people even relate to her? In turn, can Fonda relate to what young people face today? At the age of 70 I must admit I can’t.

The last time I was even aware of Fonda she was dozing at an Atlanta Braves games next to her then husband Ted Turner. And I remember when she was christened “Hanoi Jane” for her perceived betrayal of U.S. troops during the Vietnam War.

Jane Fonda $ Michael Alaimo in the FTA (Fuck the Army) Show 1971. Wikimedia Commons.

Boy, am I dating myself. And that’s the point. Aside from us creaky Boomers, who even knows who Fonda is or why she is suddenly popping up at all these events and sucking up all the oxygen? Sixties protest and music are sweet nostalgic tickles for us grey beards, but those lessons do not necessarily apply in today’s reality.

Theatrical protests will not sway any of Trump and his bootlickers’ anti-democratic actions. It will not puncture his bubble. He will still do terrible things that will impact the lives of millions, and this latest illegal war of terrorism will continue until he gets bored or his billionaire tech bros whine that they can no longer afford to stock $500 bottles of imported Bordeaux on their yachts.

However, the protests just might push Americans off their Lazy Boy butts to get out and vote this November. At the same time, the Democrats have to give voters a reason to show up at the polls. Less Schumer and more AOC please. Less Fetterman and more anybody.

So, note to the organizers of the next No King’s rally: Let the more-in-touch younger generation(s) take center stage. Let them lead. We will support them. Octogenarians stay in the wings. You did yeoman work when the times called for it. These perilous times call for new leaders with new ideas and their own unique style of civil protest.

END

No Kings Rally III. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

On the third “No Kings Day” here in central Illinois, while prizes were handed out for the best costumes, the Washington Post reported that the United States dropped land mines from airplanes “across a residential area in southern Iran, in what appears to be the first instance in more than two decades of American forces using the weapons.”

Recovered land mines. Cambodia Landmine Museum. March, 2026. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

‘Human rights groups have long called for a global ban on antipersonnel land mines because of their propensity to kill, maim or blind civilians, often years after conflicts have ended. Last year, the Trump administration reversed a Biden-era policy that prohibited the use of antipersonnel land mines except on the Korean Peninsula.”

Cambodia. March, 2026. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

While we chanted to nobody, “Whose streets? Our streets!” four million people in Lebanon and Iran were now displaced, and the streets of Tehran and Beirut were beginning to resemble the bombed out skeletal streets of Gaza.

Whose streets are these? Answer: The Israeli Defense Force and the United States Air Force.

“We negotiate with bombs,” boasted the Secretary of Defense Pistol Pete Hegseth.

On February 28, a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile struck a school in the city of Minab killing 175 girls.

“No nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars,” bellowed Hegseth. “We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives…We are warriors, trained to kill the enemy and break their will.”

No Kings Rally III. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons

While someone sang “This Land is Your Land” at the rally, and organizers in Minneapolis dusted off Sixties’ relic Jane Fonda (really?), the Human Rights Activists News Agency, according to The New York Times, reported that “1,492 civilians have been killed in Iran, out of more than 3,300 total deaths. More than 1,110 people in Lebanon have been killed, the health ministry there said on Thursday. More than 50 people have been killed in Gulf countries and at least 16 in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials said. The American death toll stands at 13 service members.” Around 300 U.S. service personnel have been injured with 225 of that total suffering traumatic brain injuries. The most excellent medical services at our esteemed veterans’ hospitals await their return—after the hometown parade.

“And don’t they look just like on “SEAL Team”?
Lord, don’t they look the best?
When we trot them out at halftime
Or the seventh inning stretch
They stand up in their uniforms
And they help us sell the show
Dying by their own hands
For reasons we don’t know”
—”Operation Never Mind” James McMurtry

As the rally crowd milled about and sashayed, leading dogs with red kerchiefs collars and making cute kids hold signs with sayings they could not possibly understand, the Washington Post reported that the “Human Rights Watch has accused Israeli forces of using white phosphorus incendiary shells in strikes on residential areas in a Lebanese village in violation of international law.”

(Note dear readers, if you want to learn more about the IDF’s past use of white phosphorus incendiary shells in Gaza and Dheira, Lebanon, you can find my article here:

https://thedefensepost.com/2024/01/02/israel-white-phosphorus/)

To no one’s surprise, except perhaps the geniuses that concocted this illegal war of bad choices, the Houthis have now entered the fray along with Hezbollah. As the kids say, it’s on! All the arsenals are being emptied.

Oh, and Russia is supplying Iran with drones that will kill American soldiers while Trump lifted the ban on Russian oil.

Between tee times, naps and calling for a pardon for Tiger Woods, President Trump has threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants if Iran does not open up the Strait of Hormuz. This would be a war crime if anyone is paying attention (spoiler alert: no one is), and by the way, Iran does not control the Strait. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps does. This threat came after or before Trump said we didn’t need the Strait. (Make it make sense somebody.)

As the No Kings rallies were winding up around the nation with selfies and pats-on-the-back all around (Boy, did we show Trump!), 2,500 U.S. Marines and 2,500 sailors put boots on the ground in the Mideast, bringing the total of U.S. service personnel to 50,000 in that region. Mission creep. Still no address to the nation by the president as to what the hell we are doing mucking around once again in the brier patch known as the Mideast. All of this in one scorched earth month.

“The century of the great conflict has just begun. It will be a century of destruction. The final generations of the white race will attack each other without mercy. The thunder will mate with the ocean, and fire with the earth. Man will have to develop brains with horns to cope with this struggle. Such will be the character as I see it, of the future national state. A military power beyond conception, a judiciary power with severe, restrictive laws, and a school system to educate senseless brutes in the ecstasy of self-sacrifice; such is the outlook.”
—The Oppermanns, by Lion Feuchtwanger, 1934

No date set for the next No Kings event. Plenty of time to plan our costume and clever sign. By then I can assure you that things will be different, so very different. Stay tuned and work on that chant “This is what democracy looks like!” Hell yeah.

https://theglobepost.com/2026/03/10/cuba-shadow-of-revolution/

U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Juan E. Diaz, via Wikimedia Commons

“A great satisfaction of growing old—one of many—is assuming the role of witness to the wobbling of the world and seeing irreversible changes. The downside…is hearing the same hackneyed opinions over and over…the discoveries that are not new, the proposed solutions that will solve nothing.”

—Paul Theroux

I’m old enough to remember when, after years of diplomacy, our country had a solid deal with Iran to halt its nuclear proliferation program that included international inspectors on the ground. That was 2015 when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was enacted.

Enter the Art of the Illegal Deal conman and draft dodger Donald Trump who tore up the deal because, well, it did not have a trace of his oily little hands on it.

I am also old enough to remember the first Gulf War in 1990 and the falsehoods that led to that U.S. incursion into Iraq. Were Iraqi soldiers really pulling babies off incubators as they invaded Kuwait or was that just a slick PR campaign to get us to enter the first Gulf War and become mercenaries for an oil-rich country? The baby incubator story turned out to be a hoax. The Washington Post wrote, ‘We could find no credible evidence to support this allegation, notwithstanding the tremendous efforts on behalf of the Kuwait government undertaken by Hill and Knowlton….’ Hill and Knowlton is the world’s largest public relations firm.

I am also old enough to remember the lies that led to forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Weapons of mass destruction? Still looking? How did that work out? Not well for civilians.

Let us review those failed regime changes: “An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.”
—Brown University’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs.

American service members deaths in Iraq: 4,500; wounded: 31,194. American service members deaths in Afghanistan: 2,456; wounded 20,719. And for what?

“And don’t they look just like on “SEAL Team”?
Lord, don’t they look the best?
When we trot them out at halftime
Or the seventh inning stretch
They stand up in their uniforms
And they help us sell the show
Dying by their own hands
For reasons we don’t know”
“Operation Never Mind,” by James McMurtry

And I am certainly old enough to remember the failed Vietnam War. Do you remember?

“American service members are bravely risking their lives to protect their country from nuclear dangers—and to restore freedom to the Iranian people who have sacrificed so much to reclaim that freedom for themselves. The instinct to rally around the flag is, and should be, strong. It’s also urgent to rally around the principles and ideals for which the flag stands.”
—David Frum, The Atlantic, February 28, 2026

Huh? No thanks. I will not be rallying around the flag as we bomb Iran into the Stone Age and pry open even wider the Pandora’s Box that is the Middle East. I pray our service men and women will not be killed or maimed at the behest of a president who knows nothing of the sacrifice of our troops and their families.

“Operation Epic Fury” is an illegal war that no one asked for except for the profiteers and Israel’s Prime Minister and America’s biggest welfare recipient Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

Colorado Representative and military veteran Jason Crow: “You know, Americans are sick of this. I’m sick of this. I went to war three times for this country, and I saw the working-class people that I grew up with, that I fought with, bearing the burden of deployment after deployment, conflict after conflict. Meanwhile, the elites in Washington continue to bang their war drums and talk tough, and it’s always the working-class people who pay the price.”

Congress was not consulted as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; . . .”

The American public, at least the non-billionaires and Trump insiders that send those men and women to their deaths or to the prosthetic store while profiting from arms sales and oil thefts, were not told why we are again mucking around in the Middle East.

Cost to U.S. taxpayers? Not important. Besides, the American Industrial Military Complex has unlimited funds thanks to cutting Medicaid, USAID, firing tens of thousands of public servants, withholding needed monies to blue states, etc.

Instead of exporting soft power through successful programs such as USAID, we now only export death from the skies, led by an unstable leader who has not told us why we are sacrificing troops and treasure in this latest escapade at this time.

So here we go again, again. Results? I think by now we know. Here is one from today’s New York Times:

“Dozens of people, probably most of them children, were killed in a strike that hit a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, according to Iranian health officials and state media. It was one of two strikes that appear to have hit schools since U.S. and Israeli warplanes launched their attack on Iran around 10 a.m. local time. Saturday is the start of the workweek in the country, and many Iranians had already dropped off their children and headed into their offices as explosions began to shake the capital and many cities across Iran. Iran’s Red Crescent and several state news outlets said more than 60 people were killed in the strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the southern town of Minab. By Saturday evening, Iran’s state news broadcaster, IRIB, raised the toll to 85 dead and 93 injured. Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesman for Iran’s health ministry, said mostly “young martyrs” were killed at the school. Minab is in Hormozgan Province, which sits along the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic international shipping lane.

“God knows how many more children will be pulled out of the rubble,” he wrote in a post on social media. “May God give their families strength and patience.”

God help us all in another godless era.

•Drunk call your exes late at night and ask if they miss you.
•Perform a self-colonoscopy.
•Enter the Publishers Sweepstakes Contest with multiple entries.
•Invite Jehovah’s Witnesses in for coffee and conversation.
• Listen to “Hey Jude” on an endless loop.
• Write an essay that definitively answers the question, “Why Am I Here?”
•Sort your socks.
•Count the rubber bands and paperclips in your junk drawer.
•Find Jimmy Hoffa and DB Cooper.
•Search for loose change in your couch cushions.
•Calculate the cost to taxpayers of Kash (Cash) Patel’s boys’ weekend at the Winter Olympics.
•Hunt for Red October.
•Honestly answer if the time has come for you to buy shoes with Velcro clasps instead of shoe laces.
•Pick a scab, any scab.
•Google “I have an odd sensation in my forehead. What can it possibly mean?”
•Define “martinizing.”
•Call your dentist and insist on an emergency root canal.
•Translate in a dozen languages the following phrase, “Our president is a deranged demented dope that you couldn’t pay me to listen to one minute of his lies and disjointed blather.”

Alongside this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy are the 2026 Alternative Global Olympics, awarded every four years to nations that exhibit the worst tendencies of governance or, as at least one failing leader would bellow, the very best tendencies of governance.

Anti-environment

Gold: United States—For destroying all mention of climate change in its websites and other materials while promoting the oxymoronic energy source labeled as clean coal. This proves that there is no problem big enough that you cannot run away from.

Silver: United States—For its renegade Environmental Protection Agency rejecting long-proven scientific research that greenhouse gases threaten all forms of life on Earth. In its favor, for now at least, the agency has not challenged the fact that the earth is round not flat.

Bronze: United States—For its president claiming that climate change is a “hoax” while hollowing out FEMA, the agency that used to help communities ravaged by floods and fires caused by, well, climate change. Well done!

Stupidity

Gold: United States—For installing a weirdo vaccine denier and former heroin addict Robert Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health of Human Services. As a result, there are now measles epidemics in the United States. And, with the advice of this clown to not immunize children against polio, when will we see the first cases of polio surfacing in the U.S.?

Silver: United States voters—For electing Donald Trump as president despite his two impeachments, conviction of sexual abuse, his long relationship with Jeffery Epstein and the insurrection he led on January 6, 2021. You do you stooges.

Bronze: United States Senator from Alabama Tommy Tuberville—For every moment he opens his blow hole, such as the time he referred to government

employees as “inner city rats” who “live off American taxpayers.” Labeled “the Dumbest Senator of the Year in 2023” by The New Republic, a colleague of his said, “I do not believe that Tommy Tuberville is a racist at all. I really believe that maybe he doesn’t have an understanding of the English language.” Note to voters: do not ever elect former football coaches.

Biggest Snowflakes

Gold: United States’ MAGA knuckle draggers—For getting their panties in a bunch because Bad Bunny had perhaps the greatest Super Bowl halftime performance ever. God forbid they should hear lyrics sung in Spanish. I guess they do not realize (or care) that 40 million U.S. citizens speak that same language and that Puerto Rico is part of our country. Hey MAGA, translate this: Chinga La Migra!

Silver: United States’ Secretary of Defensiveness Pete “another cocktail dammit!” Hegseth—For unsuccessfully trying to demote and court-marshal Arizona Senator, astronaut, combat veteran and hero Mark Kelly for making a video with five other lawmakers reminding the military that they do not have to obey illegal orders. Hey Pete, hit me up on Signal or at the corner tavern!

Bronze: United States’ Donald Trump and his MAGAverse—for condemning members of the USA Olympic Team for expressing opinions such as this: “I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens as well as anybody, with love and respect,” said freestyle skier Chris Lillis said. “I hope that when people look at athletes competing in the Olympics, they realize that that’s the America that we’re trying to represent.” Apparently, Trump and his rabid followers hate the idea of love, respect and the First Amendment.

Singles Grift

Gold: A runaway victory for perennial champion Donald “Ask not what your country can do for you loser–ask what your country can do for ME!” Trump. In his first year in office he has pocketed $4 billion in various crypto schemes, shakedowns of universities, media companies, pardon bribes and frightened law firms. All while bankrupting Medicaid, federal watchdog agencies, USAID, FEMA, EPA and anything that benefits anyone who cannot benefit Trump.

Silver: Trump’s billionaire cabinet members—For more conflicts of interests than a sane person can get her head around. Example: Trump’s Secretary of Commerce and Epstein Island frequent flyer, Howard Lyin’ Lutnick. According to Decent Patriots’ “Trump’s Cabinet of Grift,” “Lutnick’s past stewardship of Cantor Gaming, a sports betting company, has a history of regulatory violations, including money laundering and facilitating illegal gambling; leading to large fines and a top executive pleading guilty to conspiracy.” BTW, who has multiple nannies for four kids? Howie does.

https://decentpatriots.com/trumps-cabinet-of-grift/#cab6

Bronze: A distant third to the Domestic Emoluments Clause—For finishing so far back that it was disqualified for not even trying to compete.

Doubles Grift

Gold: United States’ Secretary of Homeland Brutality Kristi “bad hair day every day” Noem and her bestie Corey “I’m still here!” Lewandowski, charter members of the Mile High Club—For cavorting around in a $70 million private jet with a very private cabin in the rear (of the plane). Hmm. BTW, both Noem and Lewandowski are married (but not to each other) with children. This love jet is used despite taxpayers shelling out $172 million for two Gulfstream G700 jets to be used by Noem. Meanwhile, try getting an upgrade or an extra bag of pretzels on an American airliner.

Silver: United States’ Amazon CEO Jeff “I’m so freakin’ rich and you ain’t, suckers” Bezos and wifey Lauren “those can’t possibly be real” Sánchez Bezos—For spending $75 million on the unwatchable Melania documentary and an estimated $50 million on his lavish wedding in Venice, while laying off a third of the reporters at the Washington Post to allegedly curry favor with Trump. His $500 million yacht cost more than half of what the Post lost over the last two years. Democracy dies Prime profits.

Bronze: United States’ Attorney General and head of the Department of Injustice for Victims of Child Rape, Pam “don’t tell me to shut up!” B(l)ondi and her binder of insults—For being a raging gaslighting disrespectful incompetent spitting serpent of verbal venom, who would jail the Dali Lama if it pleased her lord and master DJ Trump. (And we thought Bill Barr was an ass.) Hey Pam, would if you don’t get pardoned by Dear Leader?

“Medal Count for the 2022 Alternative Global Olympics” can be found here:

https://theglobepost.com/2022/02/17/alternative-global-olympics/