People Without A Country

The line in the sand seems to have been crossed. The military has been deployed in Los Angeles. It’s time.

They crossed the line.

When something happens that is so apocalyptic every cell in our beings is on fire, we simply cannot go on without putting up a fight. 

Sometimes the answer to the question: would you die on this hill? — comes as a surprise. Maybe I could die on this hill. This is that bad.

American Abomination

On June 9, the line was crossed, and we entered the era of the American Abomination.

Let’s go back a bit.

In late February, the White House ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky was a sad spectacle. Ukraine had been under siege by a ruthless aggressor for years, and here Donald Trump and JD Vance took turns potshotting Zelinsky, berating him, shouting over him, ‘Did you say thank you?’ — like it was one of those hillbilly arguments from JD’s overrated memoir. 

Our CIA has gone rogue on some occasions; we are not without sins to answer for. Our Middle East policy lacks coherence as Gaza disintegrates before the world’s eyes. 

But none of this crossed the line. Then came June 9.

Loyal Opposition

I had been trying to be fair since January 20. This team won the election, and it was important to be the vocal, but not vindictive, opposition —  critical but constructive, contributing to a just America. 

Police chiefs in 2025 say: the people have a right to peacefully protest. It’s a point of pride: I’m protecting the Constitution. They do a good job of it, and most American protests are peaceful.

Our constitution is 250 years old and still functional — battered and wounded, perhaps, but alive and relevant, the seed that became The American Dream: el sueño americano in Colombia; le rêve américain in Cameroon; la usona revo in Esperanto, the international language: our gift to the world. 

A man fucks with this dream at his own peril.

130 Days

Time has slowed to a snail’s pace. We said goodbye to Elon Musk. He was at first a source of confusion, then profoundly troubling, in the end an unmitigated disaster. He pouted and picked fights and didn’t save us a dime ($165 billion in cuts but more in legal fees).

News reports surfaced that Mr. Musk may have been under the influence of the dreamy narcotic ketamine — an oft-abused painkiller, also a mood elevator with a psychedelic edge — during his 130 days as a government employee. Musk then dropped his own bombshell on the way out the door: the President’s name may be in the unreleased Jeffrey Epstein file. 

What a White House! Drugs, sex and high-level intrigue. Could be fun, in a movie maybe, but scary to think about whose finger is on the nuclear button, and where his companion is in the ebb and flow of a drug high.

I had a bad feeling early on when birthright citizenship was on the chopping block. That violated a spirit central to American identity: however you arrived, however harrowing and brutal the backstory, if you were born within these borders, you were an American. To challenge that, to not understand who we have been and what this meant to the world, is to negate the message cast in bronze inside the base of the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry masses yearning to be free
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 — the golden door has welcomed 300 million American stories, one for each American; each family has their immigration story, their own American creation myth.

We know the long trek from there to here. The journey lives in our marrow: on foot, by cart, in the cold of night, by boat, on horseback, the clever escape, the labor traded for passage, we succeed or die: across the eons of the brutal steppes, or the ocean as massive and tumultuous as eternity, the fires always just behind us, the hot winds of epochs, of solar flares from time immemorial, flame-tongues licking at the back door as we escape through the front. 

Millions of stories — who escaped for you? Perhaps your grandfather used his wits and sinew and somehow made his way to a ship of desperadoes, shoveling coal and guarding his identity papers as if they were his last chance on Earth. 

Perhaps your grandmother, or great-grandmother, followed the gold to California, faced hardship and hatred, fires in their villages, God it seemed was on nobody’s side ………..

Each of us was once the “wretched refuse;” today none would find a “lamp beside the golden door” in Donald Trump’s America. The arrivals who had escaped pogroms, or famine, or who lost family by design or disease or disaster, were our ancestors, and our presence here is due to their tenacity and the compassion and humanity that had characterized America. Take that away and America is fundamentally altered. Take that away and you’re telling me I don’t belong here.

The Road to June 9

Donald Trump, Kristi Noem and Tom Homan have created the “shock and awe” immigration war they promised and more. They bypassed Congress in setting up the framework for deportations. The prison arrangement with El Salvador went from rumor to reality in days. Colombia saw a military plane trying to land and sent it back. ICE has defied court orders about shipping immigrants to a country not their own and deporting immigrants without a hearing. 

When has a country ever warehoused prisoners for another country? Every step of the way, unauthorized action bulldozes procedural protections.  Nothing stops the mindless MAGA juggernaut— not law, not precedent, not common sense, not basic humanity. 

In their four years out of power during the Biden term, Republicans played a very smart game. 

The Heritage Foundation crafted Project 2025 — part political manifesto, part DIY instructions for how to turn democracy into tyranny, part strategic framework for dismantling a checks-and-balances system. It is also an analysis of how to force a governmental system to bend to the will of unrelenting zealots, using familiar tools in ways and with a frequency never imagined — Executive Orders replacing Congressional legislation; Presidential edict centering power outside of traditional frameworks — a border czar accountable to no established process and honoring no borders (Homan), a special temporary employee leading a rogue Black Ops-type Department sprung full blown out of thin air (Musk and DOGE); IRS agent reduction (fewer audits of presidential action); dismantling traditional Departments (Education), institutions (Kennedy Center), programs (US Aid); entire employee classifications (18 Inspectors General, Civil Service) left to wither and die in the parched desert of MAGA ‘s killing fields — a targeted systemicide never before seen. 

As ICE raids intensified, with Los Angeles as a focal point, protests emerged. In response, Donald Trump unilaterally called on the National Guard and active duty U.S. Marines to “maintain law and order.” 

This is where the line has been crossed. 

We now have the military in our streets. Kristi Noem explained they were taking back the country from the socialists, as if we had been invaded by Sweden.

Trump has been laying in wait for this, seething with contempt for California and Governor Gavin Newsom. Now we can see that nothing is off-limits. The Illinois congresswoman who objected to a Sikh prayer opening a government session was factually wrong (she called it a Muslim prayer), revealed her racist core (“we were founded as a Christian nation and that’s what should be heard”) and reinforced that white Christians expect to set the norms, and well-behaved people of color are invited pnly to apply for a visa to become second-class citizens. 

Before the deployment, the sins of the Donald Trump era were very, very close, but had not yet crossed the line.

Bad judgment, politicized symbols, vengeful probes and audits, idle gossip resulting in personnel action, military security breaches, misunderstood terminology skewing an entire policy area — 

Immigrants applying for political “asylum” are confused with false claims of governments emptying their insane “asylums” at our borders.

White South Africans are now a persecuted minority, based on reports from their home country, and may apply for political asylum here.

 — whatever idiocy had been percolating, when it led to troops in the streets, the line had been crossed. There is only one option left.

Project Reclaiming America’s Dignity (RAD)

In a discussion about the diabolical effectiveness of Project 2025, someone asked angrily, ‘Where’s our Project 2025?’

Good question.

In 17 months we will have midterm elections. There are chances to win some seats, maybe gain a majority in the House. Is there a Master Strategy? Not just to get the seats but what we will do with them. Is anyone working on this? What will our Election 2026 or Project Reclaim American Dignity (RAD) look like?

What do progressives believe? In this context I don’t have a ready answer. 

Project 2025 believed that civil service employees should be politicized in order to execute the President’s agenda. They believe the Executive Branch is the ultimate power; Congress and the Courts are second tier and ineffective; the President has blanket immunity. They believe in retaliation, and that the January 6 mob was at a peaceful rally and deserved pardons. They believe their adversaries are evil and can be ignored, degraded, targeted. Drilling, extracting more oil, backing off EV subsidies, dismantling DEI, reducing after-school funding, requiring a greater burden of proof for sexual harassment or assault allegations — they don’t miss a trick.

I’m asking again, what do progressives believe, other than we have a president who doesn’t believe in America?

We should believe in impeachment.

The data base for January 19, 2025 is still intact, and we should activate it: “Restore the Jan. 19, 2025 historical version of the United States.” The horrors of the last 150 days would be wiped out.

Red Ops

The Republicans have proven themselves adept at manipulating the mechanisms of government to achieve their ends. They have a crack Red Ops team always at the ready. Whether it was the 1968 New Nixon resurrection, orchestrated by UCLA’s Young Conservatives; the Bohemian Grove crowd plotting the 1980 ascension of Ronald Reagan; the 2000 coup that kept Florida’s electoral votes in George W. Bush’s column; or the recent Project 2025 insurgence that finds us under the thumb of an erratic authoritarian, progressives have been unable to match the Republicans’ procedural smarts and strategic planning.

Perhaps we thought backroom plotting was unseemly, somehow beneath us. Maybe the devious gene was missing, or we were too busy getting Donald Trump convicted of 34 felonies that didn’t keep him out of the White House anyway. We don’t get unlimited shots, so the ones we take should count. 

I’ve been guilty of preaching compromise and collaboration. The other side wasn’t interested. Compromise isn’t a core value at the OK Corral or in Kristi Noem’s circles; collaboration is seem as treason by both sides. Remember that Noem’s decision-making ability was illustrated by her execution of a dog and a goat. California Senator Alex Padilla asked Kristi Noem a question at a press conference, didn’t identify himself, was taken down and handcuffed. They didn’t know him? 

House Speaker Mike Johnson replied ‘I don’t want to re-litigate Trump vs Newsom’ when asked about arresting Newsom for interfering with ICE operations — a promising sign of sanity, but he added, ‘Gavin Newsom should be tarred and feathered.’

Mike Johnson, third in the presidential line of succession, wasn’t bombastic or visibly angry, just a bit annoyed. The Speaker offhandedly encouraged mob rule and the disfigurement of an elected leader, the suggested method steeped in racism and vigilante justice. 

Trump has a lock-step group of leaders to ensure that next time the mob gets into the Capitol, his orders will be fulfilled. Mike Pence barely escaped with the less obedient leadership team; the current roster will be unified and decisive. JD Vance should keep his MAGA credentials up-to-date.

Blue Ops

So it comes down to this: Do we have the stomach for impeachment? Do we have the skill for it? Do we know how to do this? Is there someone who can stay in the background and orchestrate election strategy, stop Texas redistricting, investigate impeachable offenses? Make sure that the Presidency of JD Vance is short and that he’s gone in 2028 to write Hillbilly Epitaph?

And Project RAD needs to have a policy document ready, a direct, clear assessment of the current political and social climate and who we are in the midst of that, supported by specified values, core questions, smart projections, and keen awareness of dangers, and then the document moves into to the RAD Action Plan — what we will do, how we do it.

The 2028 Presidential winner is someone not yet on the radar in 2025; nor is the backroom architect of Project RAD. The tedious work needs to be done by people who love results and remain anonymous.

First order of business: the impeachment coordinator. There’s this congresswoman, a lawyer from Dallas, Texas who is bright, thinks on her feet, and is fearless. Somewhere in this blitzkrieg of reckless presidential action, there are impeachable offenses. Jasmine Crockett, I hope you are empowered to find them.

Simultaneously we need a Project RAD team to examine Project 2025 for its strengths, insights and methodology, and craft a plan as in-depth and insightful as the original, but with better values. P25’s attempts to build an authoritarian empire, its disdain for other cultures and even other viewpoints, its blatant disregard for individual rights and the separation of powers — are evidence of America’s desperate undercarriage, the obsolete desperately clinging to the last vestiges of power.

But in their desperation, they conjured a whole-system concept that is taxing every section of American government and worthy of study. The longer it goes on, the more entrenched their processes and values will become. Desperation is part of the MAGA character, but there is also tenacity, and we have been beaten in that domain in many key battles through the years. Now, we should use their own tenacious action against them. We need to write the plan.

In E.E. Hale’s propagandistic 1863 short-story, Man Without A Country, a lieutenant convicted of treason is sentenced to drift in international waters for life, passed from ship to ship, never again to touch American soil. He has a change of heart in the ensuing years, however, and has made his room a patriotic shrine of symbols, slogans and tributes to his lost homeland. Found dead one morning, he had written his own epitaph: Philip Nolan, no man loved his country more.

The group that currently holds the reins of power are the reverse image of Philip Nolan. They passed themselves off as the ultimate patriots: America-first isolationists, law-and-order protectors of borders and profits, fierce promoters of others in politics who held their values and shared their associations, and no mercy for those who didn’t. But somewhere in this rush to Make America Great Again, it wasn’t America any more. They were tryin to make something else great, a country of their own design. We saw it in Project 2025, watched it play out and grow more sinister with Salvadoreño outsourcing and the real and threatened arrests of judges, senators and governors. Now we have the marines deployed in Los Angeles. With the definition of America scrambled hourly, we are all at risk of becoming men without a country.

For years Russia’s Putin showed signs of invading Ukraine, then did that very thing. Israel’s Netanyahu defied peace overtures as far back as the Obama years, is obliterating Gaza without concern for the world’s reaction, and just launched a strike against Iran’s nuclear capability. 

Waging warfare on multiple fronts has been shown to result in catastrophic defeat. Napoleon and Hitler are cautionary real-life examples of this hubris and delusion, but we continue to produce men who believe that these lessons don’t apply to them. They eventually fall, but they bring millions with them. Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be the latest. He’s chasing his destiny, and we’ve been on the ride all along, and signed on to this latest aggression. Iran will not sever Israel from the United States in their wrath and retaliation. With Donald Trump in power, it is no mystery where this will lead. His promises to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine have not gained any traction, and now a third war has been declared. We’ve seen enough already. It’s time to act.