The Life in My Years

On Constitution Day 2025, the Trump Regime tore off yet another piece of the Constitution of the United States of America and tossed it into the dumpster. There, in that dank bin, that poor metaphorical slip became part of a growing pile of bits, pieces, scraps and chunks of a document that was ratified 238 years ago.

On Constitution Day, Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC Chairman, put ABC into a hammerlock and demanded that Jimmy Kimmel be punished for remarks, largely benign, regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Carr’s demand was made in language that’s characterized the regime’s tone since January 20, Inauguration Day. Using language that could’ve come from the mouth of an enraged Tony Soprano, Carr threatened, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Meanwhile, Jesse Watters, a celebrity (I won’t deign to call him a newsman), on state television, AKA Fox News, raged, “We’re gonna avenge Charlie’s death in the way Charlie would want it to be avenged. They are at war with us, whether we wanna accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we gonna tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves.” Brendan Carr was cool with Watters’ call to “take to the mattresses,” and Jesse is still on the air, happily churning out myths and legends with a few threats sprinkled in.

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Two days before Constitution Day, Pam Bondi, the sitting Attorney General, tore off her own shred of the Constitution, by declaring that the Federal Government will “go after” Americans for hate speech. Said Bondi, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech.” Bondi, who will never be confused with Edmund Randolph (America’s first A.G.), should possibly take some time to read the Constitution as it makes no exception for “hate speech.” One has to wonder who, in this ideologically infected administration, would determine what is “hate speech,” and what is not. Fortunately, Bondi was challenged from both the right and the left and was forced to walk back her remark.

All of this was part of the fury following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Happy Constitution Day.

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I barely knew anything about Charlie Kirk beyond what I gleaned through social media, podcasts (his own and others) and the news. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to know that his rhetoric was hateful, racist, misogynist, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and in large measure, anti-constitutional. I don’t have to list examples, his statements are all over the internet. All of that said, Kirk was an advocate for free speech, something that the regime has overlooked in its zeal for retribution.

In May of 2024, Charlie Kirk posted on X, “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.” Whatever anyone, myself included, thinks about anything else Charlie Kirk had to say, in that instance, Charlie Kirk was spot on.

I wonder how Mr. Kirk would feel about the regime’s current scorched earth campaign against anything it considers to be “hate speech.”

However distasteful Kirk’s rhetoric was, he did not deserve a summary execution.

I detested Charlie Kirk’s bombast, but he had a constitutional right to say it, and the fact that he was gunned down for it, makes America’s democracy, already in deep trouble, so much worse for the wear it’s been enduring. This is a sentiment that puts me at odds with some of my left leaning friends, the ones who are metaphorically spiking the ball in celebration. Those people couldn’t be more wrong, more un-American, and more short sighted. They are, in fact, one of America’s biggest problems.

Free speech does not have an ideology.

I’m reminded of an ACLU lawyer who, in 1977, defended, in court, the rights of neo-Nazis to stage a march in Skokie, Illinois. At the time, Skokie was home to a number of Holocaust survivors. The lawyer was a staunch civil liberties activist. Daniel Goldberger was also Jewish.

Goldberger looked beyond a bunch of paunchy racists who wanted to dress up and play storm trooper and ruin a peaceful Skokie afternoon. He undoubtedly knew Martin Niemöller’s famous poem by heart. You know, the one about the ubiquitous “they” coming for society’s various scapegoats du jour. Well, “they” can be an interchangeable thing. At any given time, “they” can swing right or, yes my liberal friends, “they” can swing left.

Those who are high fiving each other on social media and raising a celebratory glass in the bar because they think Kirk’s murder struck a blow for anti-fascism might want to reconsider their glee. Charlie Kirk has been made a martyr. His words have more power in death than they did in life. If some people – women, the trans and LGBTQ communities for example – were unsafe because of Kirk’s words when he was alive, they are, after Kirk’s slaying, even less safe. And celebrations are only increasing the danger.

Charlie Kirk was gunned down and the response has been staggering. J.D. Vance blew off a 9/11 memorial ceremony to hop on Air Force Two, fly to Utah, pick up Kirk’s casket and take it to Arizona. At a NASCAR race at Bristol Motor Speedway there was a flyover in Kirk’s honor. Race cars were decorated with tributes to Kirk. Another flyover took place at the Louisiana State University football game. Trump has ordered flags at federal buildings to be lowered to half-staff and businesses and towns that aren’t following suit are being canceled by the party that not so long ago was raging over cancel culture.

Over the weekend, the chairman of the Republican Party in Michigan’s Oakland County, cruised past businesses and photographed those that had not lowered their flags. Vance Patrick outed a garden center, a carwash, a tire store, and a bank.

The mention of these tributes is not to make a judgment one way or the other, it is simply to amplify the point that the left and the anti-fascist movement are in no way better off today than they were on September 9th.

If you posted clinking Champagne emojis on September 10th, you fucked up.

There is an unsettling inferno of anger that is blazing within the administration. Trump, Miller, Vance, Bondi, Patel and the gang are looking for scapegoats. They are looking to mete out some discipline, and they are looking at the media, and progressive organizations. Trump has been hard at work to cow the media. Progressive organizations that they consider to be the enemy can expect to have their tax exempt status reviewed.

I’ve little doubt that Trump, Miller, and Vance have been waiting for their own version of the Reichstag fire. Tyler Robinson lit the match.

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A nation at war with itself
America is in the midst of an internecine war. It is raging in family dining rooms, offices, barrooms, on Main Street and all the way up to the halls of government.

Kirk’s assassination rained a deluge of gasoline on the fire. And while some are responsibly calling for calm, there seem to be more of the others. Or maybe the voices of the others are just amplified by their very recklessness.

Those others?

Take the aforementioned Jesse Watters.

Or howabout, Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who laid the blame for the shooting on the media, Democrats and the left, and warned that, “the gloves are off.”

Or Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who, following a prayer for Kirk in the House, shouted at Democrats, “Y’all caused this!” and “You fucking own this.”

And who in their right mind would consider for one fanciful moment that calls for tamping down the flames would come from the White House. We’re talking about Donald Trump, the man who once ominously promised during a speech at CPAC,“I am your retribution. Word from inside the palace gates is that there’s a planned crackdown on what he calls, ‘the radical left,’ which could be taken to mean any single person or organization that has chosen to exercise the right to challenge dear leader.

America’s history is one that, from the beginning, has been challenged by political rancor. But there was always a private, personal detente. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were involved in one of the more acrimonious presidential campaigns. And yet, privately, they had great respect for each other.

The times when political differences took a backseat to friendships have become quaint nostalgia.

Years ago Rick Smith and I were close friends. We shared season football tickets. He moonlighted as a deck hand on a salmon fishing boat and on any given Monday he would bring me a fresh caught salmon.

But when it came to politics, we were polar opposites. I recall one afternoon when I told Rick that I thought that the Pledge of Allegiance was useless nonsense – a hollow loyalty oath. Rick was apoplectic. “Paulie! You! A man with a degree in history. I can’t believe I’m hearing this from your mouth.”

The argument raged.

And then it didn’t.

Off to the bar for a couple shots and a beer and some blues from the jukebox.

Peace in the valley.

Years ago, Rick and I went our separate ways but it was just the events of life during a time before the internet maintained relationships, that put distance between us.

It was about the time that Rick and I were clinking shot glasses that the first salvo in the American political war was fired. On June 24, 1978 at a Holiday Inn near the Atlanta airport, a 35 year old college professor named Newton Leroy Gingrich gave a speech before a group of Republicans, young impressionable and primed for political combat. In his speech, Gingrich described politics, not as the art of negotiation and bipartisanship, but as war. Democrats and the left were to be seen not as partners in governance but as an enemy, and any namby-pamby notions of compromise should be dismissed and replaced by scorched earth, take no prisoners warfare. Gingrich struck a chord and American politics would be profoundly changed.

From June 1978, the march to division and acrimony, and away from democracy, has only become more purposeful.

I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so despondent about America’s future. The bitterness, a bellicose, lawless administration, and a new epidemic of political violence, added to all of the other ills that have plagued the democracy have left me in desolation.

How can democracy exist in a toxic atmosphere in which free speech becomes, if not a death defying act, then one in which a person puts his very liberty and pursuit of happiness at risk?

I don’t know if Kirk’s assassin openly carried his rifle to the rooftop from where he fired the shot. He could’ve. In theory, he could’ve carried it right up to the podium where the victim sat (though Kirk’s security team would likely have intervened). On May 7, of this year, Utah made that scenario perfectly legal. According to Utah state law, “an individual 18 years old or older but younger than 21 years old without a provisional carry permit issued under Section 53-5a-305 may only carry in an open manner:
(iii) an unloaded firearm that the individual may otherwise lawfully carry, on a public street.”

One has to take the leap of faith that the openly carried firearm is unloaded and that the person carrying the firearm doesn’t have mayhem in mind (which begs the question, why in the fuck do you need to pack your rifle to the local Burger King?).

Forty-five states have open carry laws on the books.

After the Kirk assassination, and all of the other recent political attacks, who would blame a politician, media personality, show business personality, comedian, musician or any person who has a healthy value for his/her own life for skipping public presentations?

Can a democracy, either a healthy one or one on life support (hmm, which one comes to mind?), survive when public speech becomes a death defying act?

I was helping at a protest three days after the shooting when the breath of retribution was hot and threatening, and I must say I had some second thoughts about going forward, and I very nearly asked my wife to sit it out and stay home with the dog.

After the events of the past week, I hold out only an angel’s hair of hope for the survival of American democracy. The Trump regime has waged a scorched earth campaign against norms, the Constitution, and the rule of law. The corruption in the White House is historic. America has been turned into Trump Inc. Congress and the Supreme Court have become a MAGA rubber stamp. The institutions that should stand firm are towers of sand. And the Democratic Party can’t find its own ass with both hands.

And the public? Mostly asleep it seems. Some of them are awake but they’d rather lounge around in bed.

I confront apathy every day, but especially at a protest, or at table trying to recruit people into the movement.

“Thank you for what you’re doing,” they say.

Fuck “thank you.” You don’t like what’s going on , get up and get in the fucking game.

In his book, A Nation of Sheep, William J. Lederer called out the apathy of the American people. While Lederer was mostly concerned with American apathy as regards foreign policy, he could have been talking about Americans’ engagement in general. When someone comes to me and says “thank you for what you’re doing,” all I see is another lamb walking quietly and obediently to the slaughterhouse gate.

Sometimes the work I put in seems to be hopeless. Quite honestly I see no redemption during my lifetime and more and more I see an America with all of the promise of East Germany in 1960.

So why continue with the movement? Because not doing so isn’t an option. I can’t give a firm reason beyond, “fuck if I know.” I’m just doing it. Anger – maybe. The notion that the shit that’s going on; hell it just ain’t right.

Here’s hoping for a better Constitution Day, 2026.

Banner image courtesy of Google Gemini