Someone pushed out a post today on Medium that reproduced the Declaration of Independence, and it was remarkable how similar the "complaints" towards the king were in those days to our current issues with Herr ICEnFuhrer. Things like this:
"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers."
And
"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries." (I couldn't help but think of Federalist Society bribes.)
There's more. Check out the full text of the Declaration. The similarities are pretty astonishing.
I posted this yesterday on the substack of John Margolis, The Old Curmudgeon:
Tomorrow marks the 249th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress. It's words are quite pertinent today. Here are a few that struck me:
"…”The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
…He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.
He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
…He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us…"
This is why we pull ourselves up and march to the barricade again and again and again. May courage and Providence again be with us. Into the breach, my friends.
And who is responsible for allowing this? A congress who decided they did not want to do their job. Just show up to work, sit in a chair, say “sure, boss, whatever you want” and draw a paycheck.
I have thought the same thing. I used to read through the parts of the Declaration with my 7th grade students. I keep hearing the tyrannical acts of the king in my head as I read the news each day. It truly is astonishing. Glad others at least see the same.
Terry, this is where the male, white gaze of America keeps getting what must be done wrong. Democracy, the incomplete kind we had did die.
The type of democracy we were sold as kids, and believed our lineage landed here to get, never made it out of labor and delivery.
We are either now building what we thought we had, for the first time or we are still doing CPR on a dead body. It is okay. We still do have the scraps but they are clearly for an entirely new scaffolding. No bandaids will work here ever again.
That America is on a 100% DNR.
Please start using a different gaze. Step into the eyes and ears and stories of the women around you who I bet did lots of undocumented labor helping you get that part of the dream you entertained a while.
If you can, write from the energetic connections you establish with the people that always did much more with much less and always had no food and healthcare so far.
You are doing great in keeping hope alive but we need to be leaders in grieving and building another country.
I agree with you. In that perspective, is this quote from a letter Lincoln wrote in 1855.
“As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” ― Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Letters, in 1855 to Joshua Speed. Lincoln was expressing his frustration with the anti-immigrant sentiments of the nativist "Know-Nothing Party".
Of course, what is missing here and not mentioned by Lincoln is that the land formed into the United States by Europeans was already home to its indigenous people. The founding of American democracy is rooted in the wholesale taking of land, unspeakable mistreatment, and a yet to be acknowledged genocide of those people--along with chattel slavery. The descendants of these same people still struggle to be seen or fully acknowledged, respected. and fairly treated, indigenous people have treaties that are not fulfilled, and they continue to have the land they have retained encroached upon by the U.S. government.
I just can't be a mindless flag waving patriot. I can be a hopeful kind of patriot who feels that a critical look at America is as patriotic as the other type, maybe even more so.
Wow, your note reminds me of why substack is such an important platform. As I was reading Mr. Moran‘s message of hopeI I felt uneasy, and vaguely annoyed.
You have articulated exactly all the reasons I responded to his message in this manner
We are a nation of ideas, we honor them, and most love them, as this piece expresses, but they are not yet realized. This is a moment to push further. What the founders wrote was merely a vision.
Thank you. Patriarchy is the problem. Second wave feminism was supposed to try to dismantle it, but it was so systematically entrenched that many women and people of color who gained positions of power simply wound up conforming instead due to the stringent perpetuation of gender stereotypes, male control of resources and institutions and their continued use of violence and coercion over anyone not white and male. The damage done by this power system is now painfully obvious to see. Yes -we do indeed need to be seeing with a "different gaze". It's NOW or NEVER.
I would say that it was specifically the religious take on Patriarchy, one that was minus a respect and reverence for the feminine is the root issue. That lack of care and sacred hold of one’s mother is a deep mother wounding baked into religions that is not in most Spiritual Patriarchy social orders that still honor mother earth and Ma Universe as the womb of cosmic law. Sadly, I agree with your take on second wave feminists. They missed including the mothers who wanted to make being present and focused on family as their contribution to society. So the patriarchy focused on the forever maiden is a problem more than placing loving and healthy men in a social authority in one’s family or community structure.
That is still the challenge which is held up as much by women as anyone seeking never to look their age or follow the religious order of authority.
The 2016 demise of the Trump Taj Mahal was referenced yesterday on a podcast. An Atlantic City resident was telling the sad story of shortchanged contractors and employees to one Terry Moran. On the moral side of the story, then and now.
The part of America I love most is rural northern New Mexico, with her huge skies, melting pot of races and cultures, coyotes, and just immense beauty. The Spanish word is QUERENCIA, and I feel it. Blessed to live here and deeply committed to ALL the ideals. Thank you for your perspective, Terry.
This day brings clarity and dissolves all the gray. Two choices. Stand and engage… and make the sun shine again. Or passively sink into fascism and the gloom of hate.
Today is the day. Decide. Declare our resolve. Make a plan. Fight. Fight. Fight.
It is a tough moment. One of my great grandfathers was 1/2, by blood, if you can call it that, Native American.
He was “granted” US citizenship in 1924. I did not know him, because he died before I was born, but I know his stories.
As a friend of mine said, the world is made of stories, and we all have our own.
It is said that this great grandfather chuckled and laughed about what he regarded as a grand charade on the part of the government of the United States towards our people .
You see, he had studied law, because he said the only way we could survive would be to know the government’s laws, so we could take them to court when, and as often, as needs dictated.
So he was called an educated Native American, as certain of us were known, once upon a time.
Our story is perfectly flawed, and I wish this moment had not come upon us.
The test.
My grandfather and his Native American family, to include those of us who are his descendants, were tested from the day of his birth. From the births of long lineages, going back hundreds of years on this continent before there was a government of the United States, or a colony of Virginia, or a colony of New Amsterdam/New York.
Before General Washington dispatched an expedition under General John Sullivan into Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) country to destroy Indian villages and crops.
The Seneca called Washington Conotocaurius (Town Destroyer, Seneca: Hanödaga꞉nyas).
I revere Washington’s story and heritage — mostly.
Here we are, locked arm in arm with those of you here, and seeing you shoulder to shoulder, people of good will all.
I love the American aspiration, because that is what America has always been, more aspiration than anything else. And that aspiration is grand, and true.
And I love Canada. I have distant cousins to this day, who are descendants of Loyalists, who fled northward across the Great Lakes and New York after the Revolutionary War.
All of us together are called to fight for our freedom again, and now.
Yes, I myself have deep roots in Ontario when my family fled because they were loyalists.
My family has deep roots in Native American California. 3rd great grandfather was a principal chief that signed the 1864 treaty and was lied to by the American government of the time.
Another side of my roots are in military service every generation since the American Indian war.
We will overcome this. We are Americans. We only have to find our GRIT. We can to this!
Thanks Terry for your article, the America i grew up in over the past 70+ years is no longer the America we now know. However, my pride in what I learned as a child is still within my heart. I still believe in justice for all, freedoms to worship, speak, work, and build relationships with my neighbors-domestic and foreign. These freedoms have become mired in hatred and loathing of those that are not like us. Everyone is not rich, white, and male, We are diverse in skin color, beliefs, and culture, but that is what made America! We were the “melting pot” of the world by welcoming those looking for a better life and opportunity for all! And escaping oppression and tyranny. Now we find it here on our very shores-east to west, north to south. It has seeped in slowly over the past 50 years or more, slowly destroying the beliefs we held dear for our families and future generations. And now we have a tyrannical regime that is striving to make us cower, silence our voices, deprive us of basic needs of food, housing, healthcare, education, and the freedoms found in our Constitution!
We The People will not accept this tyranny, we fought against it once and succeeded in defeating it and We will do so again by standing together as One Nation, casting out our oppressors and reclaiming and rebuilding America to the great nation it was and will be again.
It's my country. That's all I can say. My forebears were part of the land even before it was a nation. Nobody ever got rich--maybe it's something in the genes but we don't seem to have the knack for riches. But they worked hard and--in my grandfather's phrase--did the best they could with what God gave them. Sometimes God didn't give them much, but they made the most of it.
I was born here. My kids and grandkids were born here. It is my home, and theirs.
I've lived other places: some of them truly beautiful: rooted deep in history, with lovely sights and wonderful food and remarkable people.
But in the end I always wanted to come back home. I wasn't built to be an expatriate or an exile. This is where I belong, for better or for worse.
Thank you, willoughby. I, too, have lived elsewhere. And I, too, want to live here, in what we have known as the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Only love for this country would keep me working on the mission I took on. Since 1995, when I was a fourth grade teacher who discovered fascists had taken over our schools and everyone else around me was acting exactly like these representatives and senators are now acting - loyal to the administrators rather than concerned we were stealing education from society, it’s been my mission to expose this.
I organized other teachers like me all over this country so we could stop it. Since 2002 we’ve been crying out at WhiteChalkCrime.com and EndTeacherAbuse.org and only a handful pay attention - not the media and not the politicians from either party.
Fascists know human nature. They know fear is more powerful than love. So all they had to do was get people to disrespect teachers so they won’t listen to them and then build power that steamrolls anyone in their way. They figured out a way to get most people to lose faith in both parties that allowed education, our great leveler, to be stolen from us. That’s what paved the way for Trump.
You’re so correct about what’s happening. The problem is people like you don’t listen to people like me once power builds in a direction against us. Despite warning we were going to lose democracy for thirty years, I’ve been voiceless. That’s what fascists do. The secret for keeping fadcists powerless is education. That’s why they started there.
However, their secret could become our power if we spread the word since we still can take back the schools by running for school boards in groups of four on a save democracy platform. I wrote a memoir of my teaching days, A Graver Danger, so people can understand education enough to take it back. I priced it low so it will get read; its price does not reflect its worth! And even though Trump lovers give it lousy reviews because I’m against him, Project 2025, and everything that’s destroying democracy, most people find it a must read.
It includes a plan to fix our schools once the good people get back into power. Reform hasn’t worked since the power-mongers who’ve hijacked them haven’t wanted our schools to work!
The proof that it all started in our schools is this: only morons would fall for Trump. We’ve become a nation of morons thanks to our corrupt schools.
You don’t have to just take it from me, a passionate educator. Abraham Lincoln had warned, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."
It absolutely is! It’s all about who has the power. If you help the whistleblowing teachers gain power, we the people will gain power.
We’ve just watched our Congress capitulate. That’s what scared people do. That’s what our teachers did decades ago without you knowing. That’s what our teachers’ unions did while pretending they’re for democracy. It’s time to fix what we can fix by getting on school boards no matter your age, no matter if you have children since this destruction of our democracy all started in our schools, the foundation of our democracy.
I’m not watching parades or fireworks today. I’m spending the day figuring out how I can get more people to read my book and learn how we can get citizenship back and end violent competition when we live in a time in which only celebrities have a voice.
We love her enough to fight for her again.
Fired up! Ready to go!
Absolutely. REVOLUTION 2025 NOW‼️‼️‼️✊🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Someone pushed out a post today on Medium that reproduced the Declaration of Independence, and it was remarkable how similar the "complaints" towards the king were in those days to our current issues with Herr ICEnFuhrer. Things like this:
"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers."
And
"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries." (I couldn't help but think of Federalist Society bribes.)
There's more. Check out the full text of the Declaration. The similarities are pretty astonishing.
I posted this yesterday on the substack of John Margolis, The Old Curmudgeon:
Tomorrow marks the 249th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress. It's words are quite pertinent today. Here are a few that struck me:
"…”The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
…He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.
He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
…He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us…"
This is why we pull ourselves up and march to the barricade again and again and again. May courage and Providence again be with us. Into the breach, my friends.
And who is responsible for allowing this? A congress who decided they did not want to do their job. Just show up to work, sit in a chair, say “sure, boss, whatever you want” and draw a paycheck.
The brilliant Heather Cox Richardson, also on Substack, explains it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkFxD-CMlZM
It’s spooky, right? If Trump could read, I’d think he read it and decided to see if he could trigger the same reaction.
I have thought the same thing. I used to read through the parts of the Declaration with my 7th grade students. I keep hearing the tyrannical acts of the king in my head as I read the news each day. It truly is astonishing. Glad others at least see the same.
I had read the Declaration just a few days ago as well. I also had the same thoughts about the similarities!
Yes we will and I'm still behind you all the way!
Terry, this is where the male, white gaze of America keeps getting what must be done wrong. Democracy, the incomplete kind we had did die.
The type of democracy we were sold as kids, and believed our lineage landed here to get, never made it out of labor and delivery.
We are either now building what we thought we had, for the first time or we are still doing CPR on a dead body. It is okay. We still do have the scraps but they are clearly for an entirely new scaffolding. No bandaids will work here ever again.
That America is on a 100% DNR.
Please start using a different gaze. Step into the eyes and ears and stories of the women around you who I bet did lots of undocumented labor helping you get that part of the dream you entertained a while.
If you can, write from the energetic connections you establish with the people that always did much more with much less and always had no food and healthcare so far.
You are doing great in keeping hope alive but we need to be leaders in grieving and building another country.
I agree with you. In that perspective, is this quote from a letter Lincoln wrote in 1855.
“As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” ― Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Letters, in 1855 to Joshua Speed. Lincoln was expressing his frustration with the anti-immigrant sentiments of the nativist "Know-Nothing Party".
Of course, what is missing here and not mentioned by Lincoln is that the land formed into the United States by Europeans was already home to its indigenous people. The founding of American democracy is rooted in the wholesale taking of land, unspeakable mistreatment, and a yet to be acknowledged genocide of those people--along with chattel slavery. The descendants of these same people still struggle to be seen or fully acknowledged, respected. and fairly treated, indigenous people have treaties that are not fulfilled, and they continue to have the land they have retained encroached upon by the U.S. government.
I just can't be a mindless flag waving patriot. I can be a hopeful kind of patriot who feels that a critical look at America is as patriotic as the other type, maybe even more so.
Thank you for your reply back. That gives me hope.
Wow, your note reminds me of why substack is such an important platform. As I was reading Mr. Moran‘s message of hopeI I felt uneasy, and vaguely annoyed.
You have articulated exactly all the reasons I responded to his message in this manner
Thank you.
Thank you for replying to my comment. That uneasiness was the rage we need to funnel into building something we never got.
Now you can put it into some clean and clear networks in your town while leaders that focus on the reframe make a national plan.
It is okay to feel it. The Rage is real. If we are of sound minds and bodies then it will be funneled constructively.
You Don’t have to keep it vague and at a distance. 🙏
We are a nation of ideas, we honor them, and most love them, as this piece expresses, but they are not yet realized. This is a moment to push further. What the founders wrote was merely a vision.
+1K, Lissette. https://rickgeissal.substack.com/p/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-July?
Thank you. Patriarchy is the problem. Second wave feminism was supposed to try to dismantle it, but it was so systematically entrenched that many women and people of color who gained positions of power simply wound up conforming instead due to the stringent perpetuation of gender stereotypes, male control of resources and institutions and their continued use of violence and coercion over anyone not white and male. The damage done by this power system is now painfully obvious to see. Yes -we do indeed need to be seeing with a "different gaze". It's NOW or NEVER.
Thank you Jodie for that wisdom add.
I would say that it was specifically the religious take on Patriarchy, one that was minus a respect and reverence for the feminine is the root issue. That lack of care and sacred hold of one’s mother is a deep mother wounding baked into religions that is not in most Spiritual Patriarchy social orders that still honor mother earth and Ma Universe as the womb of cosmic law. Sadly, I agree with your take on second wave feminists. They missed including the mothers who wanted to make being present and focused on family as their contribution to society. So the patriarchy focused on the forever maiden is a problem more than placing loving and healthy men in a social authority in one’s family or community structure.
That is still the challenge which is held up as much by women as anyone seeking never to look their age or follow the religious order of authority.
"Respect and Reverence for the feminine" - precisely!
"...but we need to be leaders in grieving and building another country." Amen, Dr. Alvarez-Holland.
Amen. Thank you for taking the time to read and confirm the intention. 🙏
The 2016 demise of the Trump Taj Mahal was referenced yesterday on a podcast. An Atlantic City resident was telling the sad story of shortchanged contractors and employees to one Terry Moran. On the moral side of the story, then and now.
The part of America I love most is rural northern New Mexico, with her huge skies, melting pot of races and cultures, coyotes, and just immense beauty. The Spanish word is QUERENCIA, and I feel it. Blessed to live here and deeply committed to ALL the ideals. Thank you for your perspective, Terry.
This day brings clarity and dissolves all the gray. Two choices. Stand and engage… and make the sun shine again. Or passively sink into fascism and the gloom of hate.
Today is the day. Decide. Declare our resolve. Make a plan. Fight. Fight. Fight.
This year we are expressing our discontent by displaying the flag upside down in front of our DC home.
As you know Terry, through your interview with him, Trump could not even explain what the Declaration of Independence is all about.
Yes, and it is a beautiful moment.
It is a tough moment. One of my great grandfathers was 1/2, by blood, if you can call it that, Native American.
He was “granted” US citizenship in 1924. I did not know him, because he died before I was born, but I know his stories.
As a friend of mine said, the world is made of stories, and we all have our own.
It is said that this great grandfather chuckled and laughed about what he regarded as a grand charade on the part of the government of the United States towards our people .
You see, he had studied law, because he said the only way we could survive would be to know the government’s laws, so we could take them to court when, and as often, as needs dictated.
So he was called an educated Native American, as certain of us were known, once upon a time.
Our story is perfectly flawed, and I wish this moment had not come upon us.
The test.
My grandfather and his Native American family, to include those of us who are his descendants, were tested from the day of his birth. From the births of long lineages, going back hundreds of years on this continent before there was a government of the United States, or a colony of Virginia, or a colony of New Amsterdam/New York.
Before General Washington dispatched an expedition under General John Sullivan into Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) country to destroy Indian villages and crops.
The Seneca called Washington Conotocaurius (Town Destroyer, Seneca: Hanödaga꞉nyas).
I revere Washington’s story and heritage — mostly.
Here we are, locked arm in arm with those of you here, and seeing you shoulder to shoulder, people of good will all.
I love the American aspiration, because that is what America has always been, more aspiration than anything else. And that aspiration is grand, and true.
And I love Canada. I have distant cousins to this day, who are descendants of Loyalists, who fled northward across the Great Lakes and New York after the Revolutionary War.
All of us together are called to fight for our freedom again, and now.
Fight for it we will.
Fight for it we must.
Thank you for your love.
I can feel it.
Yes, I myself have deep roots in Ontario when my family fled because they were loyalists.
My family has deep roots in Native American California. 3rd great grandfather was a principal chief that signed the 1864 treaty and was lied to by the American government of the time.
Another side of my roots are in military service every generation since the American Indian war.
We will overcome this. We are Americans. We only have to find our GRIT. We can to this!
Ah, thank you for this connection, Sheila!
Yes, my self-reflection is grounded in love.
It must be so, for grace to flower.
The grit is in our souls — individually, and collectively.
Lol! Thank youl Lewis
At least. We great divide. Of this crazy frankly… divide.
What the heck is happening
..
Thanks Terry for your article, the America i grew up in over the past 70+ years is no longer the America we now know. However, my pride in what I learned as a child is still within my heart. I still believe in justice for all, freedoms to worship, speak, work, and build relationships with my neighbors-domestic and foreign. These freedoms have become mired in hatred and loathing of those that are not like us. Everyone is not rich, white, and male, We are diverse in skin color, beliefs, and culture, but that is what made America! We were the “melting pot” of the world by welcoming those looking for a better life and opportunity for all! And escaping oppression and tyranny. Now we find it here on our very shores-east to west, north to south. It has seeped in slowly over the past 50 years or more, slowly destroying the beliefs we held dear for our families and future generations. And now we have a tyrannical regime that is striving to make us cower, silence our voices, deprive us of basic needs of food, housing, healthcare, education, and the freedoms found in our Constitution!
We The People will not accept this tyranny, we fought against it once and succeeded in defeating it and We will do so again by standing together as One Nation, casting out our oppressors and reclaiming and rebuilding America to the great nation it was and will be again.
This is AMERICANS INDEPENDENCE DAY 🇺🇸
I’m very pleased that you chose you and the truth .
Keep up the good fight, Terry! Happy 4th of July!
It's my country. That's all I can say. My forebears were part of the land even before it was a nation. Nobody ever got rich--maybe it's something in the genes but we don't seem to have the knack for riches. But they worked hard and--in my grandfather's phrase--did the best they could with what God gave them. Sometimes God didn't give them much, but they made the most of it.
I was born here. My kids and grandkids were born here. It is my home, and theirs.
I've lived other places: some of them truly beautiful: rooted deep in history, with lovely sights and wonderful food and remarkable people.
But in the end I always wanted to come back home. I wasn't built to be an expatriate or an exile. This is where I belong, for better or for worse.
Thank you, willoughby. I, too, have lived elsewhere. And I, too, want to live here, in what we have known as the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Thank you for your positive note on this very special day for our county. Sometimes I say “And this too shall pass”. I wish it would hurry up!
Happy 4th. God Bless America, land that I love.
Beautifully written and so true. Happy birthday America!
Only love for this country would keep me working on the mission I took on. Since 1995, when I was a fourth grade teacher who discovered fascists had taken over our schools and everyone else around me was acting exactly like these representatives and senators are now acting - loyal to the administrators rather than concerned we were stealing education from society, it’s been my mission to expose this.
I organized other teachers like me all over this country so we could stop it. Since 2002 we’ve been crying out at WhiteChalkCrime.com and EndTeacherAbuse.org and only a handful pay attention - not the media and not the politicians from either party.
Fascists know human nature. They know fear is more powerful than love. So all they had to do was get people to disrespect teachers so they won’t listen to them and then build power that steamrolls anyone in their way. They figured out a way to get most people to lose faith in both parties that allowed education, our great leveler, to be stolen from us. That’s what paved the way for Trump.
You’re so correct about what’s happening. The problem is people like you don’t listen to people like me once power builds in a direction against us. Despite warning we were going to lose democracy for thirty years, I’ve been voiceless. That’s what fascists do. The secret for keeping fadcists powerless is education. That’s why they started there.
However, their secret could become our power if we spread the word since we still can take back the schools by running for school boards in groups of four on a save democracy platform. I wrote a memoir of my teaching days, A Graver Danger, so people can understand education enough to take it back. I priced it low so it will get read; its price does not reflect its worth! And even though Trump lovers give it lousy reviews because I’m against him, Project 2025, and everything that’s destroying democracy, most people find it a must read.
It includes a plan to fix our schools once the good people get back into power. Reform hasn’t worked since the power-mongers who’ve hijacked them haven’t wanted our schools to work!
The proof that it all started in our schools is this: only morons would fall for Trump. We’ve become a nation of morons thanks to our corrupt schools.
You don’t have to just take it from me, a passionate educator. Abraham Lincoln had warned, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."
It absolutely is! It’s all about who has the power. If you help the whistleblowing teachers gain power, we the people will gain power.
We’ve just watched our Congress capitulate. That’s what scared people do. That’s what our teachers did decades ago without you knowing. That’s what our teachers’ unions did while pretending they’re for democracy. It’s time to fix what we can fix by getting on school boards no matter your age, no matter if you have children since this destruction of our democracy all started in our schools, the foundation of our democracy.
I’m not watching parades or fireworks today. I’m spending the day figuring out how I can get more people to read my book and learn how we can get citizenship back and end violent competition when we live in a time in which only celebrities have a voice.