Here is the text of the Email that I sent out to 500 or so on my lists with the links to my posting:
Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
After more than a half-a-century as a registered Democrat, since 1972, one can accumulate a lot of reasons why one might leave and "park" oneself as an "Independent," or as Maryland requires, an "Unaffiliated" voter. Not even the dignity of Independence in that term.
The essay here at my Substack site https://williamrneil.substack.com/p/memories-of-party-train-wrecks-1972 was worked on all through the fall of 2024 after the election, and over the past few months. Don't read it, though, as withdrawing from the struggle to salvage our republic from Trump the budding, now open, tyrant. I do what I can giving to Bernie and AOC and Jamie Raskin, calling Cory Booker for his 25 hour marathon protest speech. And postings from time to time.
Today, I left this comment in the NY Times responding to an excellent if brutal Ezra Klein interview with Asha Rangappa, a former F.B.I. special agent and now an assistant dean at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. The title, appropriately enough is "The Emergency is Here."
Here's what I said:
Brutal but accurate, combining the insights of the host and guest. I don't think the nation can wait for the mid-term elections. I think we are headed for mass protests in the streets, and maybe they should be targeted to the institutions which Trump has taken over. He will then invoke the Insurrection Act and try to deploy the military. And that may, depending on whether the military complies and might even see revolts in its own officer corps, as in the suppression of the Bonus Marchers in the Great Depression, end in a Tiananmen Square massacre. Or something less, but the scenario just laid out for the nation in the White House meeting with the President of El Salvador suggests mass arrests and maybe mass deportations. I would add that I think the role of judicial "last stands" - clear rulings that Trump is violating procedures, laws and the Constitution itself, even if the judge issuing such a ruling knows they cannot enforce it, it is still worth while for the nation and history to lay out all the steps, what has been discussed here in the Kilmar Garcia case. If we are to save a republic with the rule of law, many Americans, maybe a majority, need the education in the basics of democracy which apparently the schools have not supplied. I thank Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen for going on a futile rescue mission this week; he came back empty handed but in illuminating what we are dealing with - a legal charade and suddenly powerless power hungry tyrants, helps.
I think that David Brooks, the conservative columnist at the NY Times, wrote an important column yesterday, April 17, 2025. It got 3.7K comments, at the top of the "thermometer" there for reader response. It is quite in line with the mood of the Ezra Klein column I cited in my Email Introduction to this post, entitled "The Emergency is Now."
Brooks' column is entitled "What's Happening in America is not Normal. America needs an Uprising that is not Normal." From a guy who is temperamentally not "an uprising type of guy."
Here's two key paras from this column:
"Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice."...
"It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power."
Now the major reservation I have is to the phrase "threatening all of that." Translation: essentially ripping apart the globalized civilization which has developed in a good part of the world (note my caution over the scope). He concedes that those left out of "all of that" in the US are driving the Trump movement - at least "the masses" who back him - his alliance though, of various wealthy libertarians and medium businesses as so many have pointed out and as we are seeing in visible splits, is hardly of one mind even on tariffs. Tax cuts and anti-immigration and gutting regulations are the common denominator. (and it may be that part of his business supporters are just biting their tongues over the immigration, knowing they are outvoted within the coalition and that it is red meat to the "rank and file." ) But I do not, as Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville believe (or the head of the DNC) that the Trump movement and his presidency will self-destruct. So far, and this is where Brooks is really on target, as is Ezra Klein and the now in exile at a Canadian Univ., Timothy Snyder, Trump is trashing checks and balances and the Constitution to brazen intimidate opposition, and threatening even worse. I did take that Veterans Day, Nov 2023 speech in NH, what I call the "vermin" speech seriously. That language was Fascist from the worst of the 1930's in Germany, and coupled with the White House office visitor from El Salvador and the talk of exporting US citizens to foreign jails...well, it's clear where this is going without the mass protests and more.
Brooks realizes the pain that the globalized and financialized policies have caused, and says it has to be - the remedies - part of the promise of the protests. But this Democratic Party cannot put a convincing set of remedies on the table, which is one major reason I'm leaving and writing now that I think the remedy and the success of Brooks very broad course of proposed actions has to unfold in good part outside the party...without excluding anyone from the center or even the alienated old line R's who have publicly opposed Trump.
It's a start, and reminds me of the way the Russian Revolution began with a peaceful march in St. Petersburg in the winter of 1905, led by Father Gapon.
Here is the text of the Email that I sent out to 500 or so on my lists with the links to my posting:
Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
After more than a half-a-century as a registered Democrat, since 1972, one can accumulate a lot of reasons why one might leave and "park" oneself as an "Independent," or as Maryland requires, an "Unaffiliated" voter. Not even the dignity of Independence in that term.
The essay here at my Substack site https://williamrneil.substack.com/p/memories-of-party-train-wrecks-1972 was worked on all through the fall of 2024 after the election, and over the past few months. Don't read it, though, as withdrawing from the struggle to salvage our republic from Trump the budding, now open, tyrant. I do what I can giving to Bernie and AOC and Jamie Raskin, calling Cory Booker for his 25 hour marathon protest speech. And postings from time to time.
Today, I left this comment in the NY Times responding to an excellent if brutal Ezra Klein interview with Asha Rangappa, a former F.B.I. special agent and now an assistant dean at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. The title, appropriately enough is "The Emergency is Here."
Here's what I said:
Brutal but accurate, combining the insights of the host and guest. I don't think the nation can wait for the mid-term elections. I think we are headed for mass protests in the streets, and maybe they should be targeted to the institutions which Trump has taken over. He will then invoke the Insurrection Act and try to deploy the military. And that may, depending on whether the military complies and might even see revolts in its own officer corps, as in the suppression of the Bonus Marchers in the Great Depression, end in a Tiananmen Square massacre. Or something less, but the scenario just laid out for the nation in the White House meeting with the President of El Salvador suggests mass arrests and maybe mass deportations. I would add that I think the role of judicial "last stands" - clear rulings that Trump is violating procedures, laws and the Constitution itself, even if the judge issuing such a ruling knows they cannot enforce it, it is still worth while for the nation and history to lay out all the steps, what has been discussed here in the Kilmar Garcia case. If we are to save a republic with the rule of law, many Americans, maybe a majority, need the education in the basics of democracy which apparently the schools have not supplied. I thank Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen for going on a futile rescue mission this week; he came back empty handed but in illuminating what we are dealing with - a legal charade and suddenly powerless power hungry tyrants, helps.
The full interview can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-asha-rangappa.html and a brief version here at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN1oBfg0fwI&t=12s
Best to all of you and have a decent Passover and Holy Week.
Long live the Republic!
William R. Neil
Frostburg
I think that David Brooks, the conservative columnist at the NY Times, wrote an important column yesterday, April 17, 2025. It got 3.7K comments, at the top of the "thermometer" there for reader response. It is quite in line with the mood of the Ezra Klein column I cited in my Email Introduction to this post, entitled "The Emergency is Now."
Brooks' column is entitled "What's Happening in America is not Normal. America needs an Uprising that is not Normal." From a guy who is temperamentally not "an uprising type of guy."
Here's two key paras from this column:
"Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice."...
"It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power."
Here's the link to the full column: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/trump-harvard-law-firms.html
Now the major reservation I have is to the phrase "threatening all of that." Translation: essentially ripping apart the globalized civilization which has developed in a good part of the world (note my caution over the scope). He concedes that those left out of "all of that" in the US are driving the Trump movement - at least "the masses" who back him - his alliance though, of various wealthy libertarians and medium businesses as so many have pointed out and as we are seeing in visible splits, is hardly of one mind even on tariffs. Tax cuts and anti-immigration and gutting regulations are the common denominator. (and it may be that part of his business supporters are just biting their tongues over the immigration, knowing they are outvoted within the coalition and that it is red meat to the "rank and file." ) But I do not, as Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville believe (or the head of the DNC) that the Trump movement and his presidency will self-destruct. So far, and this is where Brooks is really on target, as is Ezra Klein and the now in exile at a Canadian Univ., Timothy Snyder, Trump is trashing checks and balances and the Constitution to brazen intimidate opposition, and threatening even worse. I did take that Veterans Day, Nov 2023 speech in NH, what I call the "vermin" speech seriously. That language was Fascist from the worst of the 1930's in Germany, and coupled with the White House office visitor from El Salvador and the talk of exporting US citizens to foreign jails...well, it's clear where this is going without the mass protests and more.
Brooks realizes the pain that the globalized and financialized policies have caused, and says it has to be - the remedies - part of the promise of the protests. But this Democratic Party cannot put a convincing set of remedies on the table, which is one major reason I'm leaving and writing now that I think the remedy and the success of Brooks very broad course of proposed actions has to unfold in good part outside the party...without excluding anyone from the center or even the alienated old line R's who have publicly opposed Trump.
It's a start, and reminds me of the way the Russian Revolution began with a peaceful march in St. Petersburg in the winter of 1905, led by Father Gapon.