Courtesy of Facebook.com
I cut my conversation with a friend short, telling her I was on my way to demonstrate against Donald Trump with some of my retirement cohorts. “Be careful,” she responded. “Federal troops are about to arrive.”
I had considered this new wrinkle, and as a precaution, stuffed my driver’s license into my coat pocket. Oregon licenses indicate citizenship status. Nonetheless, I was nervous about demonstrating. A federal agent could toss me to the ground, breaking my brittle hips like a twig and ending my life.
Even so, I joined my fellow demonstrators because our democratic freedoms are under threat, the result of too many new “leaders” who are promulgating laughable laws. Alabama statesmen, for example, attempted to criminalize poverty. (“Court Rules of Human Dignity,” SPLCC Report, Fall 2025, pg. 5.)
Thinking through the legislation, they realized they had proposed an expensive form of welfare—housing, feeding, and providing medical care to the homeless. Fortunately, having recognized their mistake, they did not adopt Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s suggestion. He thought lethal injections would be a cost-effective solution.
The idea of extermination isn’t unthinkable. In 1932, government health agencies began the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Without their knowledge, black sharecroppers who had contracted syphilis were given placebos rather than antibiotics to allow doctors to study the progress of the disease to the point of death.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, updates this strategy when he proposes that law enforcement agents be permitted to fire upon political demonstrators at will.
Madness is the temper of our times. Normally, we’d laugh to see misfits cavorting on center stage. Today, unfortunately, too many voters have given these midgets an ear so that time and time again, buffoonery leads to tragedy.
These so-called leaders aren’t patriots. Eric Hoffer recognized them in The True Believer. They are the inordinately selfish. Having lost faith in themselves, they attach to a cause and corrupt it with their weakness. (The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, pg.48, Harper Collins Classics 1951, pg. 48.)
Rational minds may refuse to take these buskers seriously, but how does one resist?
Frankly, the options are many. And none requires us to man the barricades or bare our chests to a fusillade of bullets.
Instead, we can sign petitions; write members of Congress; call a Senator. Or, standing on the pavement in fair or foul weather, we can wave a protest sign.
And here’s another untried idea. We could boycott the oligarchs who turn our money against us. Imagine what a bloodless coup we could achieve if we refused to patronize Apple and Amazon?
Armed troops patrol our streets because they have powerful enablers. I can tell who they are, but you won’t like it. They are us.
Each time we choose convenience over democracy… each time we assume buying an Apple smartphone won’t shift the balance of power, we’d do well to check our reflections in a mirror. What we are likely to see is the face of a clown or a fool.
The joke is on us if we continue to give money to billionaires who turn our dollars against us.
Boycott: Tesla. Amazon, Apple
