THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

Many years ago, when I was more interested in Tonka trucks than in this new piece of furniture my parents purchased; an Admiral TV set with a record turntable in the top of the cabinet, as well as containing an AM FM radio. There was a weekly television drama that I suspect was watched by WWII veterans like my dad. It was called, The Man Without a Country. The historical and biographical information comes from Google and Wikipedia. Two places rightwingers avoid, lest their minds be poisoned  by George Soros. The short story was written for Altlantic magazine in 1863 by Edward Everett Hale, a greatnephew of Revolutionary War hero, Nathan Hale. The subject of the story was a young Army Lieutenant, Phillip Nolan, who  befriends Aaron Burr  on a visit. When Burr is charge with treason, after a duel where he proved the better shot than Alexander Hamilton, Nolan is charged as well. I do not know if Nolan was an active participant, or an innocent bystander, but he is convicted by the court of being a traitor to his country. Nolan replys to the court, "Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!" The judge, wishing to comply with Army Lieutenant Nolans wish, sentences him to be permanently a prisoner on a Naval ship to never hear about the United States again. His shipmates are charged never to reveal to Nolan any information on the country from which he was exiled. 

I have often opposed my country in its foreign policies.  Sometimes I have opposed its domestic policy. But, until recently there was always a reason to give me hope in the direction we were moving. That comfortable feeling of patriotism no longer remains when I think of my country, a nation my father fought fascists in Europe, to protect against a further spread of their caustic ideology. A country where my relatives are buried. A nation which the world relied on to maintain stability, in a world of tyrants. As bad as we were, we aspired to better and we had a Constitution to protect us from the tyranny of others. 

The year 2025 will be remembered as the year when all of that promise crumbled as one party, and the monsters within, began systematically tearing apart, brick by crumbled brick, within minutes of Trump's swearing in for a second time. While running for a second term, Trump often repeated a line spoken by Tech-Bros surrounding Vice President designee Vance and Elon Musk, "I want to be President in a post-constitutional United States." Words never spoken by a president of the United States in its 249 year history. In the three months since Trumps inauguration as 47th President of the United States, Trump and his team of incompetants have laid off tens of thousands of government employees in Important government offices, sometimes closing those government agencies for good. Not once was the legislature that funded those offices consulted. Trump has filed hundreds of court challenges to laws we have become comfortable with. He has lost most of them, but refuses to comply. He has had somewhat better success in the Supreme Court, indicating the 50 year plan to create a bribeable Supreme Court was successful. It turns out that the biggest threat to a popular democracy is large quantities of cash to use as bribes, and other ways to influence groups of people, short of armed threat. 

Is this reversible? We don't  know yet. Some of us are striving to have 3.5% of the population involved with continual non-compliance. Sources indicate this is helpful to overthrow autocracies. At this point we can not not protest. These last three months, the first quarter of Trumps second term, have see every decent humanistic thing America's elected legislatures have read into law over the last 80 years, placed under a cloud of suspicion. All of this is in service to TaxCuts for maybe 15 billionaires. The same billionaires to have used their wealth to destroy democracy.

I am Phillip Nolan. My country is no longer my country. I'm not rich enough to participate. "Damned the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again". These are dangerous words in autocratic times. Times when the rule of law has been replaced by the law of rule; rule of the very wealthy.  I can not conceive how we escape this fate looming  over us. Perhaps the diminished public good that Republicans have put into effect since the only bill Congress has debated was passed has the answer. I am old enough that my future is easy to see. Now that there's no longer public medical subsidies, perhaps we will be leaving this life sooner, rather than later. Perhaps that is their unexpected purpose. Whatever the case I will spend what little time I have resisting at every step the loss of the popular democracy that might make it to celebrate 250 years, next year. I will oppose with whatever strength remains, not just the people using elective office to ruin government for the electors but the people who elected those public officers to 'own the libs'. There are no Better Angels. I am now Philip Nolan. Join me. Resist these oligarchs attacks on what once was a flawed form of government working, and occasionally succeeding in making this a better world for all of us.