Anyone focusing on the past few weeks in the Middle East will—like me—have a head full of dark thoughts. Then, while trying to transpose thoughts to paper the past few days, a slim ray of sunshine peeked through the clouds. The newsfeed I was reading had several article links along the left side—each about a different current judicial defeat suffered by Trump & Company. And, in bold type above them, was the report of the Supreme Court’s dubious reception and likely rejection of the arguments by Trump’s Solicitor General to end birthright citizenship.

True, in the time it takes one unconstitutional policy or action to be rejected by the courts, many additional assaults on our democracy occur. But at least we have one branch of government standing up to Trump some of the time.

Not so on the international stage, where the office of the President is granted great latitude and discretion, and the courts have no say. Such unfettered prerogative residing in one individual has always been accompanied by the assumption that the electoral process would reveal and reward some combination of desirable qualities and character in the individual. Furthermore, once elected, the president would be bolstered by a small army of advisers and Cabinet officers, selected for their experience and expertise. They would be leading a vast organization, rich with institutional knowledge and inexhaustible resources.

So much for assumptions.

Last Wednesday’s Iran speech by the president achieved nothing — other than announcing the abdication of U.S. leadership and dissolution of the Rules-Based International Order we championed for nearly seven decades. We find ourselves now living in a different world where assumptions are obsolete and dangerous. How did we get here and what comes next?

It took just one year for the president’s hostile words and actions toward the international community to cascade from incident to incident, and culminate in the reckless decision to start a war with Iran:

· January 2025-January 2026 — On day one of his second term, Trump signed executive orders withdrawing again from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. By January 2026, he had announced withdrawal from 66 international organizations.

· January-February 2025 — The dismantling of USAID. Agency creation and elimination requires congressional approval; nothing was ever brought to the legislative branch requesting USAID’s dissolution. Trump dismantled it anyway. The needless death and suffering already, and the projected 14 million deaths by 2030 are compounded by the loss of dozens of humanitarian programs and thousands of career specialists working here and abroad who were, along with their experience and expertise, simply discarded.

· March 2025 to the present — Trump signed an executive order to shutter the Voice of America and related outlets overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. He appointed Kari Lake to run — make that ruin — the agency and about 1300 agency employees were put on administrative leave while Lake and the government continue to appeal multiple court orders to restore them. The agency that once reached 360 million people weekly in 49 languages remains dark after more than a year.

o The combined effect of the closures of USAID and Global Media has also undermined American influence around the world. Friends of Europe, a prominent Brussels-based foreign policy organization, has called it “soft power suicide” — the voluntarily relinquishing of what was built up over 70 years leading the free world: “the special US capacity to achieve its foreign policy objectives not by military force or economic coercion, but by attracting others to voluntarily side with it and seek to intensify interaction with it.”

· January 2025-January 2026 — The recurring threat to conquer and annex Greenland began in the weeks even before the inauguration and continued into 2026, when Trump made the astonishing admission that “I don’t need international law.” He could only be constrained by “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

· February 2025 — The Oval Office ambush of Zelensky, where the Ukrainian president was berated as “ungrateful” and called a “dictator.” In the following days, Trump echoed Putin’s talking points and claimed that Ukraine had started the war.

· June 2025 — Strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities without congressional approval. This followed a March 2025 U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon” and that Khamenei “has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

· September-December 2025 — U.S. military began striking vessels in the Caribbean it alleged were carrying drugs. There were 35 known strikes, killing at least 115 people, including one in which two people were killed by a second strike after the boat was hit and capsized. Experts, human rights groups, and several international bodies said the killings were illegal under U.S. and international law.

· January 2026 — Invasion of Venezuela and capture of Maduro. Congress received no prior notification of the operation. Numerous countries condemned the raid as setting a dangerous precedent for international relations. U.S. intelligence agencies disputed Trump’s claim that Maduro was working with a cartel to orchestrate drug trafficking.

· January – March 2026 — NATO under existential strain. Trump has vowed (again) to reassess U.S. membership in NATO after the Iran war is over. He is upset by the allies’ refusal to join in, even lead, the fight to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. We should pause a moment here to reflect on a couple of ironies. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that the signers will assist in the self-defense of one another. It does not say anything about assisting fellow treaty-signers in attacking another country. The second irony here involves the threat by the United States — the architect of the alliance — to invade and annex Greenland, the territory of fellow member state, Denmark.

The year leading up to the Iran war also saw the systematic elimination of expertise and institutional memory in favor of loyalty as the primary qualification for keeping one’s job at most Federal agencies, including the State Department, CIA, NSA, and the Department of Defense. At the Pentagon, Secretary Hegseth let 60,000 civilian employees go, but that’s only part of the story. He pledged in September to get rid of 20% of the entire military’s officer corps. He and Trump fired six of the nation’s most senior officers, with more than 200 years of combined military experience, an unprecedented shakeup of senior military leadership. Fired not for misconduct, but for insufficient loyalty. If your goal is to make important decisions without consultation, you first remove the people whose job it is to push back, ask hard questions, and give independent analysis. What’s left is a rubber-stamping echo chamber led by a Defense Secretary whose only apparent qualification for the job is his passion for blowing things up.

By February this year, then, there remained few members of the administration with the inclination or temerity to give honest, independent opinions to the president. Time.com reported just a few days ago two White House sources saying that chief of staff Susie Wiles was “concerned that aides were giving the President a rose-colored view” regarding Iran.

In addition to basking in the rosy haze of sycophancy, Trump was primed for a war on Iran by the series of cheap early military wins listed earlier. In the NY Times podcast The Opinions, in the episode “Everything After This Will Be Harder” on March 23, retired four-star general Stanley McChrystal described how Trump had been “seduced” by the relative ease of the earlier attacks on the Iranian nuclear facilities and the night-time raid and abduction of Maduro in Venezuela — and the myth of winning through dominant air power. General McChrystal compared today’s intense bombing in Iran with the “shock and awe” that opened the Iraq War, which was followed by ten years of our ground troops in a quagmire.

On February 23, according to Axios, Netanyahu called Trump to inform him of a confirmed date and location when the Ayatollah Khamenei and top advisors would be together. That was the first of several calls from both the Israeli prime minister and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, lobbying Trump to join Israel in an attack. According to the Wall Street Journal, Senator Lindsey Graham was also urging the president to attack Iran in multiple conversations. Besides them, the only people we know of whom Trump was consulting was a small group of advisers at Mar-a-Lago that included Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine. The General, the only military adviser, was alone in raising cautions.

The people who were notified — Congress, NATO, the public — were told either minutes before or after the fact, via social media. The institutional architecture that exists to deliberate before going to war — the intelligence community, the cabinet, Congress, the alliance — was bypassed.

Consequently, we are in a war conceived by the secret machinations of a president consulting with foreign leaders and a former television personality but not his intelligence community. Secure in the tactical superiority of the U.S. military, but eschewing any strategic planning, the administration has responded to questions about why we went to war by playing a mystifying game of Whack-a-Goal.

As of April 7, most of the world is holding its breath to learn if Trump’s ultimatum (for now) is going to end in another TACO moment (Trump Always Chickens Out) or any of dozens of other unpredictable outcomes — up to and including the unthinkable but whispered possibility of a tactical nuclear strike.

It has begun to look like Trump’s idea of America First is actually “I’m going to impose my will on America first. Then I’m going to impose it on the rest of the world.” For an autocrat who is a morally bankrupt narcissist, that is probably the truest answer to “Why did we go to war?”

Foreign policy analysts and international relations specialists have begun to speak of the United States as a rogue nation. That was a tough sentence to write. But consider the resonance of merely the title and subtitle of a March 30 article in The Atlantic, by lifelong conservative hawk and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Robert Kagan:

AMERICA IS NOW A ROGUE SUPERPOWER

Washington’s conduct in the Iran war is accelerating global chaos and deepening America’s dangerous isolation.

And, in the March 26 Foreign Policy Magazine, Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, Stephen M. Walt wrote an article titled, “The United States Has Become a Rogue State.” He states:

Every country in the world is having to figure out how to deal with an increasingly rogue United States. Here’s why this is a hard problem. The United States is still very powerful, even if it is now pursuing policies that will weaken it over time. For the moment, however, other states still have to worry that U.S. power could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.

Kagan explains that the post-World War II world thrived under U.S. dominance because, rather than regarding global superpower America as a danger to be contained, other nations mostly saw it as a partner to be enlisted. However:

Those days are now over and will not soon return. Nations that once allied with the United States will now remain aloof or align against it—not because they want to, but because the United States leaves them no choice, because it will neither protect them nor refrain from exploiting them. Welcome to the era of the rogue American superpower. It will be lonely and dangerous.

With Claude AI’s research assistance, I surveyed the international relations literature on rogue states and found some of it to be unnervingly relevant. I felt these were the most relevant:

— Rogue states reject international norms and destabilize treaties and other collective efforts.

— When a dominant state stops being an enforcer of international rules, itself becoming a norm-violator, the international order is destabilized.

— This defection from norms by the dominant state can trigger a cascade of defection among other nations since norms derive much of their force from the modeling of the dominant one(s).

— When a democratic state backslides from democratic norms domestically, their foreign behavior tends to become more erratic and norm-defying.

If you are still reading, thanks for hanging in there. I’m sure this wasn’t any easier for you to read than for me to write, though I certainly hope it took you much less time. This is where the concluding paragraph should go, but there’s a problem. It’s currently 3:30pm PDT on Tuesday April 7 and I’m monitoring news sites prior to the 5:00pm PDT deadline Trump gave Iran to agree to a cease fire. It is difficult to imagine there won’t be an agreement, or more likely a postponement of the deadline. But, Trump’s rhetoric in the past 72 hours has crossed a dangerous line, even for him. Consider:

Sunday April 5 (Happy Easter!) — Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants by Tuesday night, demanding Tehran “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” CNBC He also told ABC News that “we’re blowing up the entire country” ABC News if no agreement was reached.

Monday April 6 — Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room that “the entire country could be taken out in one night.” ABC News He set a specific deadline: 8 p.m. ET Tuesday — tonight — for Iran to make a deal including reopening the Strait of Hormuz, or face bombardment of critical civilian infrastructure including all bridges, power plants, and desalination facilities.

Tuesday April 7 — Trump posted on Truth Social: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” NBC News He added: “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” Time He called the moment “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.”

As I was watching the news this afternoon and learning that Iran, Israel, and the U.S. had agreed to an admittedly vague 2-week cease fire, I also happened to see retired General Barry McCaffrey being interviewed. He agreed with the whispers I mentioned earlier that some form of nuclear attack on Iran was being implied when the president threatened the sudden death of a whole civilization. Even if he was bluffing, it was no less terrible.

So, is this who we are now? No, not most of us. But as far as our president is concerned, he and his party and base are comfortable with “L’Etat, c’est moi.” I am the state. And the state of our state is rogue.

So much is troubling about the lawless war in Iran it’s small wonder when related news flies under the radar. For example, in the first days of the war, more than 200 service members submitted complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) of their superior officers asserting that U.S. operations in Iran are fulfilling biblical prophecy.

The complaints span more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, involving commanders in every branch of the U.S. military, according to several sources, including The Guardian:

One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed “at any moment to join” operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.’”

Upon reading this report, I was instantly transported back to a small meeting room in the UCLA Student Union Building in 1968. A friend in our dorm invited me to hear a talk on biblical prophecy. About thirty of us found seats among the folding chairs as a stocky dark-haired man walked to the podium. While the local director for Campus Crusade for Christ introduced him, he opened his notebook and perused the room. His easy smile belied the dark intensity of his gaze. For the next hour, his voice filled the hushed meeting space, holding in thrall believer and nonbeliever alike.

This was 39-year-old Hal Lindsey, one year before his blockbuster book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was published. And one year after the 1967 Israel-Arab Six-Day War, won by Israel and resulting in the displacement of about 400,000 Palestinians and Syrians, laying the foundation for decades of simmering hatred and the recent war in Gaza. A Coast Guard veteran and a minister ordained in 1962 by Dallas Theological Seminary, Lindsey was now a key staffer in Campus Crusade. His profile was quickly rising as he spoke at colleges and universities around the country. He mesmerized with his coming-soon previews of Armageddon, drawing current events from the pages of the Old Testament and Revelation. The war between Israel and Arab countries was not a human tragedy but one of the pre-conditions for the return of Jesus Christ. Lindsey’s theology was based on uncovering prophesies that he could weave into a story of how true believers would be “raptured” and escape the destruction and suffering that God and the Anti-Christ would visit upon the Earth.

Lindsey’s topic was right for the zeitgeist of the late 60s: the Vietnam War and anti-War protests, war and permanent tensions in the Middle East, Cold War geo-politics, Civil Rights battles, Kent State, and the assassinations of Dr. King, JFK, and RFK. Credulous college students from a counterculture generation—like me—were an ideal test audience for the material of his book in progress.

For me the evening was a turning point. The stale religion of pulpit and pew paled next to the technicolor imagery depicted by Hal and others whose spiritual gravity would soon draw me into an orbit that, to this day, I find difficult to describe or explain. By the end of the 1970s, that pull had diminished. At 19 I couldn’t distinguish the messenger from the message. By 30, I had enough personal experience with the messengers of “God’s word” to recognize the dissonance—and the danger.

Which is why, when I read that the same prophetic promises I first heard from Hal Lindsey nearly six decades ago were now being used as motivational fodder within the most powerful military on earth, I was startled and alarmed.

The Late Great Planet Earth sold an estimated 28 million copies and was the best-selling nonfiction book of the entire decade of the 1970s. It was followed by five successful sequels. But their influence was never primarily about book sales. Lindsey had cracked a code: he made dense, archaic scripture feel like tomorrow’s newspaper. His genius was translation—taking the specialized language of dispensationalist prophecy, developed by 19th-century Irish theologian John Nelson Darby and espoused by his seminary and rendering it as a geopolitical thriller accessible to anyone who had ever glanced at a headline.

The architecture of that theology was specific. History was not random. It was scripted, moving through distinct divine epochs toward an inevitable climax. Israel’s rebirth as a nation in 1948 was the master signal, the “super-sign” that the final chapter had begun. Persia—modern Iran—was named in the ancient prophecies of Ezekiel as one of the nations that would march against Israel in the end times, triggering the final battle at the Plain of Megiddo, which the Book of Revelation calls Armageddon. Most critically, Armageddon was not a catastrophe to be prevented. It was a promise to be welcomed. The blood and fire were not a failure of human diplomacy—they were a prerequisite for the return of Jesus Christ. The more graphic the battle, Lindsey taught, the more certain the fulfillment.

This is the framework now audible in the MRFF complaints. When a combat commander tells his troops that the Iran war is “all part of God’s divine plan” and cites “numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon,” he is not improvising a personal theology. He is reciting, with remarkable fidelity, the eschatological script that Lindsey spent years preaching on college campuses and then embedded in a series of books that shaped the religious imagination of tens of millions of American evangelicals—many of whom grew up, entered the military, rose through the ranks, and are now in positions of command authority. When another commander declares that President Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran,” the phrase “signal fire” is not casual metaphor. In Lindsey’s framework, and in the broader dispensationalist tradition he popularized, the events in Iran are precisely that—signals, fulfillments, checkmarks against a prophetic timeline that ends with the physical return of Christ to Earth.

What makes this moment constitutionally alarming, beyond the individual complaints, is the institutional context in which it is occurring. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sponsors a weekly Pentagon Bible study whose leader teaches that God still blesses Israel’s allies and curses Israel’s enemies. The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton lowered the wall between government and religious expression that had stood for 75 years. And the Trump administration has, in the words of MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein, given commanders who share these views the sense that they are “fully supported and justified by the entire chain of command.” Twenty-seven members of Congress have now asked the DoD Inspector General to investigate. But the question they are really asking is one that Hal Lindsey’s audiences never had to consider: what happens when the story becomes the directive?

When I wrote How Can Christians Support Donald Trump? just before the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, I hadn’t realized that Hal Lindsey’s form of eschatology had survived the decades ready to resurface and be weaponized in our time. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Lindsey, who retired at 89 and died at 95 just over a year ago, built a lucrative 6-decade career as an author and a television personality entirely on a single sustained argument: current events are fulfilling prophecy, Armageddon is near, here’s the timeline.

Writing this, I’m reminded that the timeline was what first penetrated my credulity, planting some healthy skepticism. Lindsey based his narrative on the infallibility and divine inspiration of the Bible. Yet, it was all human interpretation. He would give both implicit and explicit evidence that certain events would occur at or within a particular timeframe. When those times would come and go, there would be repeated reinterpretations of scripture to re-validate the prophecies to keep his theology—and the income stream—going.

This theology, made menacing by its proximity to political power and military might, further strengthens the unholy bond between Christian nationalists and Trump. Anyone in its sway has greater reason to see the president as a vessel of God who will usher in the long-awaited end times. Their misfortune—and our best hope—is that Trump is lacking the perseverance of a Hal Lindsey but possesses the attention span of a gnat.

I came back today to an Atlantic article I had skimmed recently and bookmarked for later. Occasioned by the annual National Prayer Breakfast, the title — “The Evangelicals Who See Trump’s Viciousness as a Virtue,” by Peter Wehner, Republican, Christian, and former speechwriter for Reagan and both Bushes — might catch anyone’s eye. But it struck an added chord for me because I have followed and admired Wehner’s writing since early in Trump 1.0. And it provoked the familiar emotional mix of anger and sadness at the incongruous support of Trump by people professing a Christian faith. How can Christians condone the president and their own complicity in his rise to power?

I first need to point out what most people know but too often fail to take into account: no religion, no political party, no nationality is homogeneous. Good luck finding widespread agreement even on what it means to be a Christian. For now, let’s accept the premise that Christianity is composed of all those who consider themselves Christians.

Sojourns during my first 40 years within various flavors of Christianity—mainstream Protestantism, the Jesus Movement, and an earlier form of Evangelicalism—taught me that the most salient distinction among Christians is how central Christ himself is to their lives, even more than denominational or doctrinal differences.

There are Christians who believe Jesus alone is the foundation of their lives. They may believe they have the spirit of God living in them. They may believe Jesus speaks to them through the Bible. Their faith is very personal and it may or may not include being a member of a church. If it does, it will ideally be a church where the role of the pastor is to help guide people into a closer spiritual relationship with Jesus, not to be a purveyor of God’s will.

These Christians are unlikely to be politically active. They may pray for our leaders but are more likely to consider themselves part of the kingdom of God— “in the world, not of the world.”

Then there are the Christians who believe Christ to be important, but not all-important in their faith. I’ve heard that called Jesus Plus. They might have worn the WWJD? (what would Jesus do?) bracelets when they were a thing. They depend upon the Bible, but also religious leaders to interpret it. If they are part of a congregation, the specific doctrines and traditions of their church or denomination are important factors in what they believe and how they conduct their lives.

They might or might not feel they have a personal relationship with Jesus. They certainly believe the Bible provides a rich source of his teachings and that those teachings are relevant to their lives. They may or may not have strong political views, as might their specific church. They may elevate certain causes and cultural stances as their central purpose, at least for a time.

Finally, there are the Christians for whom Christ in their lives and their churches is incidental, possibly even irrelevant. They may be drawn to a particular congregation for any number of reasons—a non-specific desire for religious ritual, social or business ties, family history, or political persuasion. Their pastors or priests may or may not give Biblically-based sermons and may or may not let partisan political views into the pulpit. These Christians may consider their church as a means to some end—getting into heaven, social status, business advantage. They may see their church as part of a national movement to accomplish societal and political change.

Some of these Christians might be totally untethered to any church or religious organization, but they find themselves on the same side of the cultural and political issues that Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists tend to embrace.

Now, before you jump to my conclusion, let’s get back to the teachings of Jesus. I’m hoping you’ll see why for many Christians it is intrinsically impossible to support Donald Trump, even if they are longtime Republicans.

According the book of Matthew, Jesus began his teaching ministry at the Mount of Olives, when he saw a crowd gathered there. We know this as the Sermon on the Mount. He led off with a series of blessings, which we call the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven
—Matthew 5:3-12

Later in the Sermon is what we refer to as “The Golden Rule”:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
—Matthew 7:12

At a later date, he spoke of the scene on Judgement Day:

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

—Matthew 25:41-45

These are just a few examples of the revolutionary nature of Jesus’s message. The religious leaders of his time viewed him as a threat to their position and power.

There are “red letter” versions of the Gospels in which everything Jesus says is in red print. Anyone today reading just those words would be confronted with clear precepts that align with today’s left-leaning concerns with social justice, income inequality, the common good, and so on. Christians who find themselves on the other side of the partisan divide must either reject the precepts or live with the dissonance.

One of the most effective weapons Trump has in his arsenal is the ability to stoke grievances in his supporters—and there is a natural spring of grievance to be found in Christianity. From the crucifixion of Jesus and the persecution of the early church through centuries of countless shades of religious persecution and warfare, Christians have it in their DNA that someone is out to get them.

More often than not, that someone has been the state. As the Roman Catholic Church grew in power and wealth, it would at first compete and then coalesce with kings and emperors. After the Reformation these unholy alliances would continue in Protestant nations as well.

The result was the state church.

For example, in 1534, England’s Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, declaring King Henry VIII “Supreme Head of the Church of England,” canceling the Pope’s franchise and clearing the way for the king to divorce Catherine of Aragon. He was the first head of state given the unofficial title of “Defender of the Faith.” The faith he was defending was effectively the religious branch of the state. This really wasn’t a good time to be Catholic in England. There were executions, confiscation of property, and other punishments for those who denied fealty to the new church.

Much of the early emigration from Europe to America was to escape the religious persecution that resulted from refusing to abide by the dictates of state churches, or at least the churches favored by the state. It was therefore important to our founding fathers to preserve religious freedom, which they did with the First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” In 1802, Thomas Jefferson introduced the phrase we now associate with the Amendment, that it builds “a wall of separation between Church & State.” And in 1947, the Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education cites Jefferson’s phrase, thus strengthening the principle.

Until 2022 that is, when the current Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District changed the interpretation to lower the wall. For nearly 250 years, the First Amendment has guaranteed free expression to all religious faiths without governmental favoritism. Now the door has been cracked open to the possibility of government joining forces with a radical religious minority.

Should we worry about this?

Consider that the term “Defender of the Faith” is being ascribed to Trump in various ways. You can order a 2025 book from Amazon with Trump’s prayerfully bowed visage on the cover with the title, “Defender of the Faith: A Call to Action: Protecting America’s Legacy of Faith and Freedom.”

In 2024 the Washington Post published an article titled, “Pro-Trump Christian extremists use scripture to justify violent goals.”

To his most zealous Christian supporters, Donald Trump’s campaign is a crusade against “evil” liberal forces that must be vanquished by any means necessary to save the republic. Democrats aren’t opponents, but enemies to be “smited.”

Despite never being particularly religious, Trump in recent years has played to the hard-right Christian view of him as a beleaguered defender of the faith, including comparing his legal troubles to the trials of Jesus.

And at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, Trump recounted comments made about him by Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas and a stalwart Trump ally for a decade. The case Jeffress made on his behalf went like this:

“He may not have ever read the Bible, but he will be a much stronger messenger for us…I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation.”

As reported by Wehner, the “prayer” breakfast was dominated by the president’s rambling, 75-minute speech in which the room saw the quintessential Trump. His comments were grievance-filled, narcissistic, conspiratorial, factually false, divisive, and insulting. This was the same Christian hero who said at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service last September, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” The same one who has presided over the most inhumane treatment of immigrants in decades.

As he finally wrapped up, the audience of about 3,500 Christians gave Trump a standing ovation.

I have heard and read about those who claim to love and admire Donald Trump. Some of those are probably Christians. I have nothing to say about them as understanding eludes me. But all other Christian Trump supporters see in him a means to their ends. Whether believing he will come through as a defender of their faith or seeing an alignment between his agenda and their religious and cultural issues, they have decided such a man is worth the price of their allegiance.

That price is simply too great for those who put more faith in one whose precepts are, in almost every way, diametrically opposed to the words and example of Donald J. Trump.

Today’s administration is engaged in the tragicomedy of scurrying to fulfill the directives of last March’s Executive Order 14253, creatively titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” This order demands the removal of references to slavery and other historical, racial, or social injustices, replacing them with “patriotic” narratives. Yet, a damning artifact remains in the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3—the so-called Three-Fifths Clause:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States … according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons … three fifths of all other Persons.”

“All other Persons,” of course, was the euphemism for enslaved people.

At the risk of violating EO 14253, here’s a bit more history on the subject of slav—sorry, “all other Persons.” The first enslaved Africans in what became America are usually tied to Jamestown in 1619, but European slave traders were landing along the coasts of what’s now South Carolina, Florida, and the Caribbean as early as 1526. In other words, Black human beings were kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in the Americas for more than 160 years before our “enlightened” founders enshrined their sub-humanity in the Constitution. And it would be another 78 years before slavery was abolished. Is it any wonder that racism remains so deeply rooted?

For a society to tolerate such cruelty, it first had to excuse itself from the legal and moral obligations that protected the “whole Number of free Persons.” Thus, the Three-Fifths Clause. They weren’t human like us. They couldn’t think or learn the way we could. They were no different than monkeys or apes. Once we—white Americans—saw them as less than human, we felt justified in treating them as animals and property.

That kind of thinking isn’t just back—it’s spreading.

It started with language. From the moment he launched his campaign in 2015, Trump laced his rhetoric with slurs, insults, dogwhistles, and outright profanity. Opponents got demeaning nicknames. Journalists were “filth,” “dishonest,” “parasites,” and “enemies of the people.” Immigrants were “illegals,” “aliens,” “terrorists,” “rapists,” “drug dealers.” People whose hate speech had long been shoved to society’s margins suddenly became “good people.” In a decade, they’ve gained acceptance, even prominence and power.

Under the banner of championing the MAGA base, Trump and his allies have trained millions to see “the Left”—and anyone who stands against Trump—as vermin, scum, evil. Less than human. Who cares if he’s crude? The other side is worse. He’s on our side.

Steven Miller and Russell Vought spent the 2021–2025 interregnum plotting to eliminate foreign aid, destroy the “administrative state” (what most of us know as the Civil Service), and engage in radical deportations. “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people” is anathema to their purpose for the power they sought. In their concept of government, the population were incidental statistics, not individual people.

Now, consider the effects of closing USAID and halting humanitarian, medical, and food aid abroad:

A model tracking the impact of USAID funding cuts estimates that more than 762,000 people have died in the first year of suspension, including over 500,000 children. These deaths are from pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and other causes linked to lost prevention and treatment programs.
—Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota

Peer-reviewed modeling in The Lancet forecasts that continued cuts could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths worldwide by 2030, including about 4.5 million children under five, if sharp funding shortfalls persist.
—Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA

Here at home, letting Affordable Care Act subsidies lapse will guarantee worse health outcomes for the poorest Americans. Medicaid cuts in the Big Billionaires’ Bill will shutter rural hospitals and clinics. The hollowing out of the CDC and other health agencies can only be explained by ideology overriding science, and by a callousness to human suffering. It’s personal, too: see Elizabeth Bruenig’s “This is How a Child Dies of Measles: When your family becomes a data point in an outbreak” (The Atlantic, February 12, 2026).

When it comes to dehumanization, it’s hard to top what’s happening— and what’s coming— with the ICE immigration crackdowns. Anonymous, armed, and acting like thugs, agents are terrorizing cities across the country. They claim to make “targeted” arrests, but “targeted” now means indiscriminate. In the chilling testimony of a U.S. citizen who was assaulted, arrested, and briefly imprisoned with no reason apparent on video, agents repeatedly referred to her and others being brought in as “bodies.”

As for what’s coming, it’s recently emerged that ICE has spent the past year quietly searching for large warehouses to convert into concentration cam—sorry, detention centers. Most local governments are pushing back, but some are welcoming ICE. The plan: two dozen facilities, total capacity of up to 100,000 “bodies.” Budgeted cost: over $38 billion.

A modest proposal for an antidote

Citizens in Minnesota and across the country are quietly pushing back against dehumanization in the most radical way possible: by refusing to see their immigrant neighbors as anything less than fully human. Shopkeepers, nurses, teachers, students—these are our communities, woven together in ways that no executive order can erase. Facts bear it out: immigrants are less likely to have criminal records than their U.S.-born neighbors. But that argument, true as it is, misses the point. The real resistance is in everyday kindness—in meeting fear with welcome, in showing up for each other, in refusing to let cruelty define us.

Peaceful protest and public resistance matter. But so do small, daily acts: sharing a meal, offering a ride, standing up when someone is harassed. These are not just gestures of goodwill; they are a form of defiance. Each one shines a light on the regime’s violence, making what is monstrous unmistakable.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans—many who feel abandoned, heartbroken, or powerless—are left asking what comes next. It’s easy to go numb with sadness, to retreat into isolation, to feel like nothing we do matters. But that surrender may be the greatest danger of all.

Psychologists and public health researchers have spent decades studying what happens when people reach out to help each other. The results are striking: acts of kindness don’t just benefit the recipient. They lift up the giver, too. They lower rates of depression. They extend life expectancy. They make people feel less alone, more connected. Generosity and cooperation spread through entire social networks, turning isolation into community, distrust into trust, fear into hope.

This is not naïveté, and it’s not about “being nice.” Dehumanization shrinks us into caricatures and categories; kindness does the opposite. It restores our humanity. It tells each person, “I see you. You matter.” Dehumanization humiliates and degrades. Kindness uplifts and inspires. In an era when cruelty is policy, kindness is a radical act.

If we want an antidote, maybe this is it: not grand gestures, but the daily, stubborn refusal to let anyone—especially those in power—decide who counts as human. Every time we choose connection over contempt, we reclaim a little piece of our country, and ourselves.

A brief and bland obituary was posted on the CIA’s website. Embedded was the probable explanation for the death. Oh, for the, um, sunset:

One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. The World Factbook served the Intelligence Community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries and communities around the globe.

At least, that’s the only explanation I could find since no explicit explanation accompanied the post, nor has anyone from the CIA answered queries from various news outlets. We are left to infer that the need for facts about “countries and communities around the globe” has also sunset in the priorities of America First. The AP article also pointed out that the announcement followed “a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions.”

The World Factbook is was a library staple. Like most librarians, it was often where I directed students for a starting place on their research. It was simply organized, efficient, and inexpensive enough to always have the current edition on hand. Plus it became available online, freely accessible to everyone.

David Graham, of The Atlantic, calls this part of the administration’s broad war on information:

This is different from the administration’s assault on truth, in which the president and the White House lie prolifically or deny reality. This is something more fundamental: It’s a series of steps that by design or in effect block access to data, and in doing so erode the concept of a shared frame for all Americans.

This campaign to remove the sources of facts and information is overt and shameless. We see it in the instructions to all Federal agencies and departments to remove from their websites and publications all information considered undesirable to the administration. Less overt, but equally shameless, is the loss of data and information that is no longer generated because the civil servants who worked to provide them are no longer there. I guess they’ve been sunsetted, too.

Since darkness usually follows the sunset, I suppose I shouldn’t torture this metaphor further. There are, after all, other sources of light. Identifying and supporting them is becoming a vital civic duty. We are already losing sources we’ve long taken for granted (see: The Washington Post.) Some may be irreplaceable. At least for a long time. And, it may be a VERY long time before we regain the democratic strength that comes from a shared confidence in commonly shared facts.

In the meantime, we are seeing efforts everywhere to step in and shore up. The West Coast Health Alliance was formed this past September “to provide independent, science-based, and unified public health recommendations.” Substack, just to name one platform, is filled with publications from refugee reporters and medical experts who have sought an independent platform for disseminating factual information. And there are many surviving publications with unwavering journalistic integrity.

We mourn the loss of depositories of facts like The CIA World Factbook and the dependable reportage of facts like The Washington Post once was. But the Post’s epitaph—“Democracy dies in darkness”—can serve to honor their memories. And oddly, I’m hearing Tom Bodett’s voice in my head from the old Motel 6 ad, playing like a promise to those who come after: “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

This may seem like just another of the ubiquitous jeremiads being written to bemoan the sorry state of our politics and public life. I assure you it’s not. I hope you will read all the way to the end.

Not that there isn’t much to bemoan, of course. For example, the way our nation and its people are being hollowed out, both physically and morally.

Take U.S. population growth. You probably read this past week that our growth rate slowed sharply in 2025—50% lower than 2024, about 519,000 more births than deaths. Fertility rates have dropped below the 2.1 births per woman that are necessary to maintain a stable population, absent migration:

· 2004 ~2.0

· 2014 ~1.86

· 2024 ~1.60

Consider polling that reflects attitudes toward having children. Recent data from Pew Research Center suggest that Americans are rethinking whether they want to become parents. The percentage of nonparents who don’t want children rose from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023. During the same period, the percent of nonparents who plan to have children in the future fell from 79% to 59%. Rising concern over the cost of raising children was cited, along with the fear of bringing children into a world with an increasingly hostile climate and uncertain environmental future.

Immigration has been an even greater driver of population growth. But, net migration (number moving into the country minus number moving out) dropped in 2025 to 1.3 million from 2.7 million in 2024. Shocker! I can’t find any projections that show immigration doing anything but decreasing in the foreseeable future.

Slowing population growth seems inevitable and there are even some credible projections of net population loss in the coming decades. This is a disastrous formula for the economy. With an already widening wealth gap, staying that course can only hollow out the middle class even more.

Last February, Elon Musk waved the chainsaw overhead at CPAC, boasting that he and DOGE were feeding government programs “into the wood chipper.” It was emblematic of the Project 2025 goal to hollow out government institutions, programs, staffing, and so on. Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget has been in charge of restructuring, reducing the scope of, and occasionally eliminating federal agencies, with little apparent concern for the impacts on people.

Away from Washington D.C. there’s equal cause for concern for troubling negative trends in important intangibles—community, isolation, trust, kindness, hostility, social cohesion, honesty, democratic ideals, and constitutional norms. I was in the midst of enumerating some of the key findings of a few respected nonpartisan studies (Pew Research Center, Gallup, American Enterprise Institute, and the General Social Survey.) But after filling a page with them, I realized there was little to be gained by bludgeoning you with statistics on observations you’ve no doubt already made yourselves.

I don’t know how many people in the past year I’ve heard say that they just can’t take reading/watching/listening to the news. I agree that doing so can make you feel as exposed and vulnerable as taking a walk in acid rain. Indecency and cruelty masquerading as policy. Indifference to the process and rule of law. The relentless destruction of institutions whose purpose is the common good. The assault on the free press. One can only take so much at a time. But make no mistake, whether we are tuned in or not, it still affects all of us and its corrosive effect is hollowing out the moral infrastructure of democracy itself.

Which is partly why the citizens of Minneapolis and other occupied cities have struck such a powerful chord and awakened a desperately needed modicum of spirit and hope across the country. Firstly, the sacrificial deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have produced an exemplar for what can happen when a population stands by the evidence of their eyes and ears and rejects the lies of an authoritarian regime.

Secondly, the conspicuous brutality of ICE and the Border Patrol has cast the spotlight on the good people of Minneapolis. Armed with their whistles and compassion, they have daily demonstrated the revolutionary spirit of the colonists who responded to Paul Revere’s alert that the British were coming. Stated more mundanely, they have proven the worth of community, of caring for your neighbors, of refusing to be hollowed out.

One day, sooner rather than later if cities all over America emulate Minneapolis, the threat to the regime from backlashes like that of the past 10 days will eventually become its death knell. What comes next will depend on the extent to which Americans have been busy replenishing the qualities required for a healthy democracy.

So, it’s understandable if you need an occasional break from engaging. But understand we have work to do. Work we CAN do. We can be tending to the moral infrastructure of democracy in our own communities, one neighborhood at a time.

Unreliable narrators don’t fail because they lie once. They fail when the lies pile up so high that no one—neither they nor their audience—can keep them straight.

Those were the concluding sentences of my previous post, written shortly before news broke of the murder of Alex Pretti by the federal brute squad in Minnesota. In the three days since, we have fast-forwarded to the brink of a world envisioned by George Orwell.

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him…

And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists; its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

—1984, by George Orwell

Later in the weekend, Governor Walz said that we are at an inflection point. I would ratchet up that assessment by saying we may have reached THE inflection point—what Orwell called the final, most essential command. Consider the following examples of “the Party” telling us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears:

• Just hours after the murder of Alex Pretti, Kristi Noem held a news conference in which she claimed:

  • The individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers “brandishing” a firearm.

  • “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.”

  • “The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently.”

  • “Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”

• Stephen Miller (White House Deputy Chief of Staff / Homeland Security Advisor) called Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and said he “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”

• Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino asserted that Pretti planned to “massacre” federal agents.

• Donald Trump referred to Pretti as “the gunman.”

Nothing out of character there. Run-of-the-mill deflection, denial, and deception from this administration. It’s been routine for the last twelve months.

What’s not routine this time is that nearly every sentient adult whose head isn’t neck-deep in sand has seen one or more of the videos documenting the crime. We’ve seen the whole thing, starting with Pretti as an observer, recording on his phone as Border Patrol officers pushed two protesters to the curb, one of them to the ground. We’ve seen Pretti, holding his phone and moving between one thug and the woman on the ground, getting pepper-sprayed for his trouble. We’ve seen—through stop motion, freeze-frame, and close-up detail—and heard as Pretti was taken to the ground, held down by several officers, beaten with the butt end of a chemical spray weapon, relieved of the gun in his waistband while his hands were pinned by his head, immediately shot in the back once, and then nine times more.

The backlash has been as stunning as the murder itself. Inspired by citizens in Minneapolis, large public protests have erupted spontaneously across the country, drawing comparisons to the national unrest around the January 6, 2021 insurrection—not because this is a violent uprising, but because, like then, a moment of political violence has broken the usual partisan defenses that once protected leaders from accountability. This time, however, Team Trump has been unable to weather the storm with its usual counteroffensive. Instead of unified Republican support, a remarkable number of GOP lawmakers have openly called for an independent, transparent investigation into the shooting and the broader immigration operation, with prominent senators publicly criticizing Homeland Security leadership and demanding answers. Moreover, Senate Homeland Security Committee chair Rand Paul has sought testimony from the heads of Customs and Border Patrol, ICE, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services before his panel, signaling serious scrutiny rather than automatic deference.

Several GOP governors have also spoken out against the kind of “enforcement” Homeland Security has imposed on Minnesota. Texas governor Greg Abbott (yes, I double-checked) said, “The White House has to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that respect is going to be re-instilled in law enforcement.”

The most powerful message came from Chris Madel, a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota. Announcing his decision to drop out of the race, he called the immigration enforcement operation in his state an “unmitigated disaster” and said, “I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state. Nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

Though Trump is retrenching, he will keep trying to impose his will on the country. But, the past few days have exposed the chink in his armor. Lies and intimidation work only as long as people believe or stay silent and intimidated. Our weapons are our voices and our publicly standing up. We will be met with more lies and probably greater oppression and violence. History teaches that regimes thus gradually lose legitimacy. Should increasing numbers of previously silent Republican lawmakers find their voices, that time will arrive sooner. However long that takes, take heart in Winston Smith’s axiom in 1984:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Consider the current President. Admired by his supporters as a master communicator, he commands the world’s largest stage. The stories he spins—or should I say “weaves”—are unfailingly self-aggrandizing and used in the service of accruing ever more power to himself. Donald Trump has never been a reliable narrator. This drives much of the country to distraction, but his base has become true believers by suspending disbelief.

Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy and columnist for The Atlantic, has compared Trumpism to 20^th-century totalitarian movements:

“Most people did not believe the propaganda. But they repeated it anyway, because repeating it was the price of belonging.”

“When loyalty matters more than truth, then truth disappears. The distinction between truth and lies becomes blurred, and eventually irrelevant.”

“Ideology is often just a flag. The real attraction is the movement itself, and the sense of purpose and superiority it offers.”

Trump’s propaganda-fueled movement propelled him to a second term. This time, the constraints are gone. With the Supreme Court and Congress firmly in his corner, he faces fewer checks than ever.

There is so much about the past 12 months that is unbearably bleak. Political observers warn that damage to our democracy may last for decades. The question isn’t if we can rebuild, but when. Or even whether.

And yet, I take some small hope in the fact that the head of this regime is Donald Trump. Age and health are catching up to him, and his effectiveness is waning. His performance this term is less the work of a clever storyteller and more like that of an author who’s lost the plot.

A good author builds a world with rules and logic that hold together, chapter after chapter. When that logic breaks—when characters behave or speak in ways that don’t fit, or events seem to happen without cause—the whole story begins to collapse. Readers stop trusting the storyteller.

Trump’s second term looks like that kind of story. Not just dishonest, but incoherent. Americans are asked to suspend disbelief again and again, and offered nothing in return. His approval ratings steadily decline; inflation remains stubborn; polls show more Americans feel worse off financially than a year ago. The southern border is largely closed, but the images of masked marauding ICE agents roaming cities, smashing down doors, terrorizing children, shooting and murdering citizens have shocked even some of his supporters. Order was promised. Fear and chaos arrived instead.

Even true believers are getting whiplash. It’s one thing to go along with a familiar narrative, even when you know it’s not strictly true. But this year, Trump’s “gut” decisions have contradicted each other from week to week, even hour to hour. He keeps revising the MAGA script, transforming loyalists into outsiders.

Is this the natural endpoint of unchecked narcissism? Mental decline precipitating megalomania? The freedom of never facing another election? Maybe all of it. We’re in uncharted territory, and no one can say where this ends.

One thing is clear: this president and his administration, stacked with B-list sycophants, offer neither vision nor reassurance—only dread, at home and abroad. Their story can’t end well. We just have to hope it ends soon.

Unreliable narrators don’t fail because because of an occasional inconsistency. They fail when the lies pile up so high that no one, neither they nor their audience, can keep them straight.

It has been a year, close enough, since the billionaire populist gave his rousing Inaugural “American Carnage” speech to the mostly invisible millions on the Capitol Mall. Anticipating his first State of the Union address in just two weeks, I thought Martin Luther King Day seemed a fitting occasion to offer a contrasting perspective.

In that year we have had constant tweets, pronouncements, and actions from the White House, any of which taken individually would have constituted a show-stopping crisis or scandal for any previous administration. Yet, while the majority of Americans have responded or watched in horror, fully one-third of the electorate has been unwavering in its support of the president, even as he has repeatedly betrayed his economic promises to his white working class base. Why? That may be the most frequently repeated question of 2017.

The first explanation that has made solid sense to me was in a recent column by Charles Blow in the NY Times.

Trumpism is a religion founded on patriarchy and white supremacy.

It is the belief that even the least qualified man is a better choice than the most qualified woman and a belief that the most vile, anti-intellectual, scandal-plagued simpleton of a white man is sufficient to follow in the presidential footsteps of the best educated, most eloquent, most affable black man.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in the 1960s to a young Bill Moyers: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Trump’s supporters are saying to us, screaming to us, that although he may be the “lowest white man,” he is still better than Barack Obama, the “best colored man.”

In a way, Donald Trump represents white people’s right to be wrong and still be right. He is the embodiment of the unassailability of white power and white privilege.

I don’t know about you, but this was a hard assessment for me to read. In 2008, didn’t most of us believe the U.S. had turned the corner on race with the election of Barack Obama? And yet, Blow’s argument rings true. It explains the obsession by Trump and many on the right to obliterate any trace of the Obama legacy. It explains how Trump and the GOP Congress could so brazenly enact massive tax cuts for big corporations and the uber wealthy, confident in their ability to sell it to their base as a boon to the middle class.

And now, like an exclamation point on the year that started with the Muslim travel ban, Trump has grown comfortable enough in the Oval to make clear his world view: America First should be open to countries like Norway, i.e. white, and not to shithole countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and those in Africa, i.e. black and brown.

Naturally, this opinion has caused a negative sensation throughout the country and the rest of the world. That was to be expected. But, don’t be fooled. Pay attention to the sizable fraction of the country that was not repulsed and offended. Those who say that Trump is merely using colorful language to express what is obvious. Those who excuse his racism as telling it like it is. Those who are silent in the face of hate and ignorance emanating from the White House.

Consider the possibility that a large portion of American adults– one-fourth? one-third?– share Donald Trump’s racism. He did not create it in them, but he has exposed, exploited, and liberated it. He will, possibly, hold office for 3 more years. (I’m ignoring the spectrum of alternate possibilities from early impeachment/resignation to, godhelpus, a second term.) Then, he will be gone. But racial divisions and resentments will remain, even more intractable than political ones I expect.

Here’s the thing. In the spirit of Dr. King, this is a challenge we can begin to address now. Instead of railing at every outrageous utterance from Trump’s mouth or Twitter finger, our energies should be going into finding ways to counter the damage being done and the conditions that made Trump possible in the first place.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. -MLK, “I Have a Dream” speech, 1963