Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

           Having been pushed to the limit by November’s atrocity, and no longer recognizing this land of the free and home of the brave, we have given ourselves a shot in the arm.

           We have been treated as Trump’s Toy: he who plays golf while markets the world over free-fall; who has not an inch of likeness to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and either Roosevelt, who led by consent of the governed; he has stirred us to a rebellion of our own. The resistance taking hold where we live is the punctuation mark of a brewing revolution.

           Recently, High Street in Newburyport was a flash-point of energy stretching as far as one could see, palpable enough to be virtually seen as it was felt, and the stream of vehicles honking steady, loud approval was the kind of tonic that showed we’re made of the stuff long said of Americans before the day we woke from a nightmare.

           This can be the real Tea Party, the one begun when our forebears baptized the continental beverage and called England’s bluff. Not the misfit, outlaw bag of worms that started this early century in the chaotic townhalls. Republicans, bereft as usual of any ideas, didn’t know what it was but knew it was something and told the miscreants their problem was Democrats.

           That was one big lie, and all the pieces of banalitly, bad behavior, crudity, and plain stupidity came together like the pieces of corpses that became the mythical Frankenstein. The biggest lie is now with us and those who don’t know between that and the truth have been cheering it on.

           Now there is a change in momentum. One cannot but feel it. To this time of boiling point, bone-heads have had the day, led by a clown-car cabinet who are dumb as posts, chosen because they are bootlickers of the worst sort. I’ve said before that the governor of Florida governor is a punk; now Rubio and Vance have joined that growing club, fawning over Trump and giving agency to his madcap ideas, misnaming them “policies” when they are none of the kind. It’s all theater, whether tariffs, loss of our best longtime allies, or giving Europe back to tyrants.

           The future judgment of Trump’s self-declared greatest-show-on-earth will be that knuckleheads were in greater number than ever we dreamed; yet they are but a flash in the pan. Make no mistake, this is going to be a fight but it will be one of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the ballot box, and not of lawlessness.

           But our blow-back came not all at once. Things have been brewing and the far-right is of late in panic of the coming mid-terms. Their own minions are not happy with them and threaten to vote for others or not at all. Cowering leaders in Congress and the courts—including the Supremes—who pledged never to do what they are doing, have needed to hear from us. If they continue to do so, they’ll begin to behave more like savants than shills.

           Mussolini famously embraced the notion that people the world over were tired of freedom, and he was last seen hanging by a leg in Milan. Yes, there are times that the fearful want someone else to do everything for them. Other times there were no options: life meant eat or be eaten, beat or be beaten, and might was right. Tyranny ended only when another one began, not because subjects had a choice.

           Democracy is elastic because citizens decide. A bit ago some made an ominous choice and here we are. But elections are like whack-a-mole: one is done, another looms. Big changes can come all too soon for America’s most celebrated felon. Democracy, unlike dictatorship, is elastic, not a wall replaced by another wall.

           Trump and his ilk love to poke us in the eye. Now they’ve poked the bear and we’ll see who can take a punch.

           In a like time the poet Byron, overlooking the Bridge of Sighs, wrote: “…Freedom, thy banner torn but flying/streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.” Yes, and Old Glory can soon be ours again.