GREENSBORO – This week the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense (or War?) gathered 800 generals and admirals for a peculiar sort of political rally. The President told stone-faced generals and admirals they would be crucial in his fight against the “enemy from within” and that they could use the homeland as a “training ground” for the military. The Secretary of Defense lectured them on body fat and personal grooming.
If this was a movie it might have been funny. But it was not a movie. These are the people who the entire free world looks to for leadership.
We are less than a year into President Trump’s second term. This is just the beginning.
Already the President is playing with fire, baiting communities where he is especially unpopular (like Portland and Chicago) by threatening an unwanted military presence.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are now hiding their faces behind masks. They are pulling people off the streets and students out of schools, some for no better reason than because their skin is brown. Our President wants these people deported to prisons in foreign lands without even the semblance of a hearing.
Journalists who cover the Pentagon must now pledge not to write about even unclassified information without prior authorization from the now Secretary of (Defense) War. God forbid the public should find out the place is run by a guy who emails classified information to reporters for the Atlantic.
The Justice Department is being told to be more aggressive, not in the pursuit of justice, but in the prosecution of the President’s critics. James Comey, John Bolton, Letitia James, Adam Schiff and others are all supposed to be prosecuted, not because there is probable cause, but because we have an attorney general willing to do what she is told and to spread fear.
The President is using every lever of the federal government to compel universities, broadcast media and law firms to serve his own personal political agenda instead of the legitimate purpose of free institutions.
The UAE recently invested two billion dollars in the Trump family’s new cryptocurrency business, “World Liberty Financial,” and were then given access to advanced microchips forbidden to be sold to China when China is Qatar’s leading trade partner. The deal was brokered by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, whose family now co-owns World Liberty Financial with Trump’s family. Maybe a new book is in the offing: “The Art of the Steal.” Vladimir Putin must be green with envy. It’s his kind of deal.
A few months ago, I believed that as long as we had comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert who could ridicule the President and his minions, then the First Amendment was alive and well and our democracy was, more or less, safe. I was wrong.
Our President has studied Putin’s handbook diligently. In the midst of what most lawyers would agree was a frivolous lawsuit with CBS, Stephen Colbert, with the highest ratings in late night television, had his contract canceled. A few weeks later Disney, the owner of ABC, fired Jimmy Kimmel amidst FCC threats to scuttle the merger of network affiliates.
A small ray of sunlight in this dark landscape was Jimmy Kimmel being rehired. Apparently when millions of people canceled their Hulu and Disney-plus accounts. Mickey Mouse was listening.
We are not yet one year into this presidency, and it feels as if a virus that infected Russia, Tunisia, Hungary, El Salvador and other countries has begun to infect us. For generations Americans have inspired other peoples’ struggles for freedom and democracy. Perhaps it is time for us to find renewed strength from some of them: the Poles who stood with Solidarity in the Gdansk shipyards or the Ukrainians who stood for democracy and human rights in Maidan Square.
John Kennedy reminded us: “In a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, ‘holds office;’ every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.” It is time for all of us to demand better before it gets worse.
David Kelley is a lawyer and a former member of the Greensboro Select Board.
David Kelley is a Vermont attorney. He lives in Greensboro and is a former chair of the Hazen Union School Board. He was part of the legal team that represented more than two dozen rural elementary school districts that appealed forced mergers under Act 46.
