Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published O, it is excellentTo have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannousTo use it like a giant. -- Shakespeare

More and more these days Americans wake to wars we don’t want, didn’t expect, and can’t explain. War in Venezuela, war in Minneapolis, war against Cuba, now war in Iran. On the face of it, these wars have different foreign policy objectives – but don’t be fooled. All these wars – with more to come – are part of a single battle plan: to scare the bejeezus out of Americans, so we surrender our democracy to a dictator who means to steal it.

War is scary when your enemy has weapons and you don’t and you can be executed without a hearing or cause. We may feel like pulling the covers over our heads till the jackboots past. But there can be no safety in submission, only subjugation. If not today, tomorrow it will be our turn. For a tyrant truth is treason, dissent disloyalty. Obey or die.

The shock of the last fourteen shocking months has been the imperturbable impotence of our institutions. Only dummies and ideologues can’t see what’s going on. But do the courts act? The Congress? They delay, kowtow, lie, temporize, blather excuses. The Nameless One uses a wrecking ball while our institutions huddle over a crystal ball: “Wait and see.”

We are waking. Angry voices are speaking up. Fear of unemployment, if not patriotism, is stiffening politicians’ spines. We the people are alarmed. But so far we’ve been supine. Wait till the midterms, we say. Only, the Nameless One intends no midterms, knowing he and his will be shellacked. He and his will have to count the votes, thank you very much, in this dire national emergency, just as he and his will edit out evidence of a predator’s predations “in the interests of justice.”

Our President feels no need to convince us because he has guns. Ballots versus bullets – an old playbook. And we the people empower him with our permission. Wait for the midterms, we keep saying, as if their occurrence were assured. (Wrecking ball versus crystal ball.)

What can we do, we groan.

Individually, not much. Collectively, a lot. Disable America before America disables us. Insist our institutions do something more than talk. Quit buying (corporations find their impoverishment persuasive). Swarm the Capitol – peacefully. Scare the bejeezus out of the Nameless One’s collaborators, as he and his mean to scare us. Force our officials to do more – and more – until their panic turns them patriots. Act as if your house was afire – because it is.

It had to come to this. The Nameless One promised this without blushing: a dictator on day one. He would grab America by the pussy as he grabbed any female he fancied, for America (who could doubt) yearned to be grabbed by him.

If we lose America, friends, it will be our fault, for we could and should have done more. Be glad the hour of decision is at hand – the suspense has been intolerable. We must rise up as one and roar No. No Iran, no ICE, no Greenland, no Venezuela, no Cuba, no self-dealing, no evading justice, no more mocking Congress and the courts. No, no, no. And yes, some of us will die for our defiance. Some already have. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,” said Jefferson.

Sadly true.