I Have Friends Everywhere, Part 2

Political writers

Dec 06, 2025

From a Google Image Search - The Guardian

What Trump and his Republican allies are doing to America is in his words “huge”. It promises to change every aspect of our lives. What we need to think about is whether we are really on board for the changes being foisted upon us. We seem to be mesmerized as we watch the basic premises America has governed from changed to new premises without any input from citizens. (Mike Johnson keeps sending our representatives home.)

The argument the administration puts forth is that electing their leader, Donald Trump, gave them a mandate to govern as they please. They say that we knew they weren’t honoring the Constitution, and yet we elected them. How can we now expect them to use the old Constitution to govern? Donald Trump also has friends everywhere.

Everyone except Donald attests that there is a sort of constitutional base for their actions, and that if you go back to the forefathers, you will see that there were two factions fighting over what our founding document should say. The Federalist Papers presented the two sides of the argument. Republicans and their allies, the Evangelicals, say that the founders chose the wrong faction. These not-so-modern political thinkers created an ideology which they call “Originalism” to represent the faction that did not win the day in 1789. They want to erase any liberal ideas from our past governance and side with the elitists, the slave owners. They are not necessarily backing slavery (but they would like to turn poorer Americans into wage slaves to compete with China).

These reactionaries (folks who want to recreate the past) favor a two-tiered society where the wealthy rule and the poor serve. They are trying to end our system of public education. Why do you think they want to do that? They will say that public education is too expensive. They will say if you want the government to fund education then the government should have a say in what is taught in our schools, and indeed, even in our universities, which receive grants from our government. How much say should government have in what is taught in our schools? What things are off limits to read, what things are offering up the wrong ideas, and what books are offering up the right ideas? Who decides?

America was a great big country, geographically, but there was plenty of room and a need for more people, usually those who would do labor no one else would do. We had waves of immigration from nations abroad that were in difficulties of one kind or another (famine, oppression). We welcomed immigrants because we wanted to fill up a country that seemed to have plenty of room. Now we are told that immigration is no longer welcome in America unless the immigrant is white and Christian. In fact, we are told that Europe is being overrun with the wrong kinds of immigrants and will be forever changed by this. Do we bear any guilt as an industrialized nation for climate change which is causing political upheaval and migration? Not if you just say climate change isn’t real.

Does our climate change guilt make us somewhat responsible for extreme climate changes that seem to be affecting the least industrialized nations first? If you must leave your country or watch your family die, what would you do? Is it possible that the power to accept or reject immigrants from nations that will no longer support life, either because of greedy, cruel dictators, or out-of-control diseases, or famine, might not stay in the hands of more stable nations, that the numbers could become too great to manage. Putting off solutions to real problems, closing doors to migration, denying changes that might be handled by adaptations could (and will) exacerbate the effects of climate change everywhere and force people to migrate or die.

Because every aspect of our lives as Americans is being shifted to some new reality that most of us had no hand in designing, and because the only way to stop this “takeover” is to turf out the people who are engineering these changes, we are caught in a dilemma. We are peaceful people, who have always desired comfortable lives that offer us the freedom to pursue whatever legal goals we feel would fulfill us and give our lives focus or purpose. We value education. We value family. We value hard work and the financial benefits that work provides. We value freedom and that means freedom from authoritarian rule, either by the right or the left.

As we watch the things we value slip from our grasp we think there must be some way to rid ourselves of the people who embrace an ideology that is so un-American that it shocks us every day and to do that peacefully, without another horrific Civil War. We don’t seem to have a secret underground rebel force working to overthrow these, as Robert Reich call them, Frankensteins.

There are, however, many great writers spelling out the reasons that we should be doing more to stop the “originalists” before things go too far. Because most of the billionaires feel that the right will offer better profits and outlooks for their fortunes, we don’t just have ideologues and con men to contend with, we also have those who hold extreme wealth. It all seems quite overwhelming and the remedies on offer seem rather weak. We hope there is some secret group on the left planning ways to counteract this takeover, or that the next election will do the trick. What if both hopes are simply wishes?

When I say that I have friends everywhere I am talking about other writers. Here are some folks that you might want to be friends with if you aren’t already.

Daily Dose of Democracy, good every day, you can subscribe

The Daily Beast - Google it.

Read James Bruno’s piece on Tremr.com today - (my articles also appear on tremr.com)

https://www.tremr.com/angkor/why-do-maga-supporters-delight-in-inflicting-pain-on-others

Read Heather Cox Richardson’s piece for today- Anne Applebaum wrote about this also-Heather is a good writer to follow

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse hold their Saturday coffee klatch today