Tag Archives: Trump

The Mission – The CIA in the 21st Century

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Admirably demonstrating the value of professional journalism, The Mission is factual, detailed, incisive and – despite being a nearly 400-page history of a government agency – thrilling. With more than one hundred participants interviewed, many verifiable sources and its most critical opinions credited to persons who clearly have both the knowledge and the background to deserve being heard, this is an authoritative accounting of a very complex subject. 

Having previously written Legacy of Ashes to chronicle the first 53 years of ‘The Agency,’ as the CIA is colloquially known, Weiner begins the new millennium on a downbeat, depicting an Agency whose capabilities were sadly ignored and unmaintained once the Soviet Union collapsed.  Deprived of the purpose and challenges which had pushed it to excellence (and sometimes overreach…) ever since it sprung from the seeds of WWII espionage to meet the needs of the old War, the CIA in 2000 was not held in great respect either inside the government or among the public. So little respected, we learn, that the shiny new Bush2 administration refused to listen when Director George Tenant presented substantial indications that Al Qaeda had something big planned, soon, and pleaded for authority to eliminate him before it could happen. To his great frustration, and the even greater losses of others, that plea was ignored – in early 2001!

Like a speed bump beneath all the smoke, dust and debris of the 9/11 attacks, political leadership quickly passed over their own failure to comprehend, instantly deciding The Agency was a great tool for what they conceived as their own brainstorm – the War on Terror.  That effort, which had already been one of the Agency’s areas of focus for decades, would become the public reason for much of its activity over the next 25 years. 

Using sourced quotations for section titles such as “We were all making it up as we went along,” “The U.S. didn’t want peace.  We wanted the war on terror,” and “We have to say Iraq has WMD,” Weiner quickly arrives at one of this central themes: a continual conflict between The Agency’s focus on providing the most useful and reliable information it can glean out of hostile environments versus politicians’ desire for sound bites to serve their pre-determined policies (at best) and (not infrequently) their emotional needs.  Unsurprisingly, CIA staffers from that era are harshly critical of the Bush2 administration and Weiner is cogent in describing how intelligence was ignored or actively misused in order to justify a doomed Iraq invasion to which the President and his team appear to have been fully committed from at least November 2001, if not earlier.

Even as The Agency is bent to serve debatable ends, Weiner gives us many tales of dedicated agents serving honorably; one standout being that of Tom Sylvester, who led a ten-person team into northern Iraq to prepare the ground for the Bush/Cheney invasion. An Arabic-speaking ex-Naval special forces operator, he took great personal risks to forge links with Kurdish forces, Sufi mystics and others, produced intelligence direct from Saddam’s highest ranks and closest advisors to guide invasion planning.  Sylvester would go on to lead the Agency’s clandestine services two decades later, under very different challenges.

Another eye-opening episode is related in Chapter Ten, ‘A Beautiful Operation.’  Having heard over many years that Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan was known to have shopped nuclear weapons secrets around the world, I’d always been curious how he got away with it. Answer: he didn’t; at least not for long.  Weiner describes how, learning from a 1920’s sting played by the Soviet ‘Cheka’ spy agency against Russians who had fled the USSR, the CIA created their own front companies to do fake business with Khan, eventually penetrating his facilities and dealings sufficiently to have him arrested, tried and convicted. Moreover, where a quick drone strike could have eliminated Khan sooner but allowed his proliferation efforts to continue, their smart and patient approach allowed them to also roll up associates and customers, completely destroying his operation and drastically diminishing the danger of nuclear weapons getting into the hands of people like Muamar Gaddafi, and Osama Bin Laden.  A service to humanity that required the Agency’s characteristic willingness to use dishonest means in order to further admirable ends which, Weiner notes, is a fundamental and unavoidable characteristic of all espionage.  

The successful pursuit and eventual killing of Bin Laden is treated in detail of course, as are the waterboarding scandal and other episodes not so laudable.  As we approach 2016 though, the tone of this history changes considerably, from one of challenges and ambitions to one of dread and despair.  In both his narration and in the quotes he includes from various agency sources, Weiner makes clear just how little Mr. Trump understands or values the proper purposes of The Agency, and how far he and his allies have by now penetrated our nation’s intelligence agencies (and the FBI, as well).  Acting more like double agents than principled overseers, they are now focusing those resources to protect not the nation but their own political and financial interests.  With extensive attrition of experienced and qualified personnel and heavy thumbs laid on those who remain, every page increases the premonition that we are in for some oncoming catastrophe on the scale of 9/11 – or even greater.

The CIA has never been entirely a hero, nor an utter villain, but an institution of fallible human beings who are willing to serve as tool for those who make policy and direct its execution – the President, the Cabinet and, ultimately, the votes who put those officials in office.  Its many characters have included some cads but are mostly honorable patriots, willing to compromise their own safety, morality and maybe even a part of their souls in service of a greater public good – protecting us all from the worst of the world.

At times a tale of ignorance and human weaknesses, at others a triumph of courage and will, The Mission is important information for every American.  Please read it and share it with others!  (If you can’t buy the book, check a copy out from your local library; if you can’t read it all, just start at Chapter Twenty-One, which carries the catchy title ‘Face-eating baboons.’)  Democracy depends on informed voters!

P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel with its own take on where the pursuit of power for power’s sake may be leading our nation, and how even tragic events can spawn new possibilities for the future. It is currently being serialized digitally at no charge and you can be among the first to read its opening pages via this link:

E Unum Pluribus

If you prefer not to open links from unknown sources, just navigate to this site’s home page and scroll down to the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus’ or select the item of that same name in the top menu.  Any way you get there, it’s totally free!

Stronger Together

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“… you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” 

Where commentator Leighton Woodhouse rightly sees those words of Trump-whisperer Stephen Miller as a retreat from Christian values*, they also suggest a tragic misread of our nation’s history.

As Ken Burns’ recent documentary, The American Revolution vividly reminds, the story of the USA has never been that of the strongest and most powerful singlehandedly dominating those around them.  Rather, the founding generations were wise enough to see that their thirteen colonies must work together- despite very significant differences around religion, economics, politics and, perhaps most profoundly, the pernicious institution of slavery – in order for any among them to have a hope of breaking free from British tyranny.

Once the colonists united – a unity as messy, tenuous and frustrating as any representative system tends to be – even their combined numbers and resources did not assure success; from its start, the colonial coalition actively sought the support of other nations.  Ultimately, after six long years of brutal fighting, it was direct French participation (along with the indirect assistance of other nations and peoples who further taxed the Britain’s resources by opposing it in other parts of the world), that enabled Washington’s forces to triumph at Yorktown, turning the tide of attrition and so winning our independence. 

Power, strength and force, yes, but born of compromise, cooperation and alliance; that is what allowed a band of ragged upstarts to defeat the British Empire, which was, at that time, the greatest exemplar of Mr. Miller’s professed ‘laws’ of existence.

Similarly, the decades which established America as a superpower were never about the U.S. going it alone, even if we were by some measures the most powerful single nation.  Both World Wars were won by alliances in which we participated, sometimes as leaders sometimes not (Russia’s defeat of Nazi forces on the Eastern Front set the stage for Hitler’s eventual defeat which was, until then, far from a certain outcome).  Nor was the Cold War ‘won’ by unilateral American action; we could not have strained the Soviet economy to the point of failure without the economic cooperation and military participation of our allies in Europe and elsewhere – including Japan and Germany, two one-time conquerors whose defeat in war was accomplished through force but whose rehabilitation and future contributions as allies were made possible by reason, cooperation and patient hard work.

Yes, the qualities Miller cites – strength force and power – play a role in life and international relations.  And yes, there are ruthless players in the world today against whom we must defend our nation and civilization.  But coming from a cadre dedicated to belligerent unilateralism, who have employed military force, willful brutality and a single-minded claim of their own superiority against not only other nations but many of their fellow citizens as well, his proclamation smacks not of wisdom but of hubris.   If he and his ilk won’t take the word of American history for that, let them consider how few of history’s most famous strong, forceful and powerful tyrants – Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Bismark, Napoleon, Alexander, Julius Caeser, et al – established or continued any institution which lasted nearly as long as the 250 years which our more measured nation celebrates this year.

Perhaps a dog-eat-dog America such as Mr. Miller envisions can temporarily proclaim itself a bigger fish by shrinking its pond to just the western hemisphere and consigning the rest of the world to their own fate.  But the USA is and always has been a part of the world and will eventually be affected by the fate of other nations.  If we wish truly to fulfill the promise of its founding, to honor that era’s sacrifices and to deserve the bounties we all continue to enjoy thanks to them, we must relearn the value of building alliances and collaborating with like-minded forces wherever they reside. 

America First has never been America Alone

(And if, as it sometimes seems, Mr. Miller’s and Mr. Trump’s real goal is to forge an alliance between the USA and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, one need only look at the quality of life, rule of law and economic vitality of Russia today to see where that road leads.)

*Donald Trump, Pagan King, by Leighton Woodhouse, New York Times online, 2026-01-11

P.S. – For another vision of how our current politics may play out, try E Unum Pluribus, currently available free of charge to Beta Test readers. Click the box below to access its first installment: 

E Unum Pluribus

I hope you will take a look, and even if you do not, please share this post with anyone who believes the written word can help to bring us together!

Playground, by Richard Powers

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What Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018) did for the astounding canopy of trees above our heads, Playground does for the super-abundance of seawaters that surround us. 

Part letter of appreciation, part eulogy, each novel employs intriguing characters to weave a scrim upon which to embroider an abundance of colorful facts and observations about the environment which gives those characters and all of us life, purpose and – if our eyes are at all open – a measure of sorrow for how carelessly we are diminishing our descendants’ futures.

Where The Overstory was structured around a tale of eco-warriors campaigning to stop forest destruction, here it is Silicon Valley’s takeover of our time and imaginations that drives the plot. Powers braids together the lives of a poet, an explorer, an artist and a social media software tycoon to create both compelling mystery and satisfying conclusion.  With thirteen previous novels to his credit, it should be no surprise the product feels mostly effortless and ordained.  What does startle though, is how the few moments which do feel effortful – when the wealth of scientific detail seems to veer into pedantry or showing-off – are cast in an entirely different light once it dawns on the reader just who has been narrating the story.  Suffice to say that that realization brings into focus yet another level of questions the novel is raising, about memory and knowledge, about fact versus fiction, brain vs. whatever, and about whether the answers to those questions will diminish the stories we read, hear and watch in future eras as greatly as we are currently diminishing our own and only habitat.

(As angry as Powers clearly is about our destruction of species and environment, he is wise enough to include reminders that nature itself will hardly notice our waste.  For as many species as we destroy and cry over, natural processes will someday create new ones.  Perhaps not as photogenic as the old or perhaps more so – nature has other things to worry about – but either way, new habitats will spring up and new species with them.  Long after mankind departs the scene in whatever fashion we do, natural processes will continue creating and embellishing, erring and correcting.  Only cosmic forces and events can end that process, and those will operate on their own scales regardless of human activities. It is only we and our descendants who will be injured by our carelessness; to the rest, we are irrelevant – as is whether we find that fact reassuring or insulting.)

Heartfelt, informative, moving and timely; the evidence of this outstanding novel suggests that individual human minds will continue to create entertaining and enlightening stories for many generations to come. 

One aspect of our future, at least, to which we can look forward with eagerness.

If you like what you read here or at robinandrew.net, please share any posts as widely as possible – and consider subscribing: it’s totally free!

P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel that explores multiple themes – language and gender, identity, guilt and even the origins of faith and belief – but speaks loudest in its vision of a post-USA future.

The manuscript is available in six instalments, starting at:

E Unum Pluribus

A free book? Why?

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As the years 2016 to 2020 unfolded, I found myself preoccupied with a particular aspect of human history: that even the greatest empires, dynasties, governments and nations have each eventually ended and been replaced by…something else.  The ongoing self-segregation of Americans along various lines – urban/rural, elites/masses, investors/workers, digital/analog, etc – suggested our own nation’s end might come sooner than later, and not through some external conquest, virulent plague or invasion of space aliens, but our simple failure to appreciate the myriad benefits of remaining ‘United.’ 

Starting in 2021, those thoughts began to coalesce into a speculative fiction, structured as a tale of murder and conspiracy happening a decade or so in our future in one of many new sovereignties sprung up among the remains of the U. S. of A. The novel toys with other themes as well – of language and gender, identity, guilt and even the origins of faith and belief – but speaks loudest in its depiction of just how much we all stand to lose if we remain divided into factions which each act only for their own needs and interests.  

Writing the book took many months and once it seemed ready, the publishing industry proved impenetrable, even as the politics of disorder and division grew stronger.  By the end of 2025 it had become clear I must find another pathway to the public and so I offered the first installment in a post which can be reached via the following link:

E Unum Pluribus

That and all subsequent installments may also be accessed via the ‘E Unum Pluribus’ buttons in the top menu or the right-side Categories list of this website’s home page.

Maybe the novel will find an audience this way, maybe not, but regardless, if you believe in the message that we Americans must overcome our divisions and preserve the USA as a government of all the people, by all the people and for all the people – or if you simply support authors being heard without reliance upon the gatekeepers of corporate commercial publishing – please share this post and the above link as widely as possible.

Sincerely hoping the world of E Unum Pluribus turns out to have been a naïve exaggeration, and wishing this great nation the good fortune of avoiding it, I thank you,

Robin Andrew

The Hundred Years War on Palestine – A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017

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Starting with early Zionist writings, Rashid Khalidi takes the reader step by step through the intricacies of Israel’s founding and expansion – and the parallel displacements of the families which once called the same ground their home (aka, the ‘non-Jewish residents’, to those by whom the label ‘Palestinians’ is taken as an affront).  No doubt there are some who will say his history is biased – despite being heavily referenced and filled with quotes from actual participants and documents – but then, what historian’s account is not shaped by their education and values? 

The overall impression one gets from reading The Hundred Years War… is of a disorganized and unsophisticated populace whose interests have repeatedly and consistently been subordinated by stronger forces to those of the Jewish persons who chose to emigrate to the region starting in the late 19th century for the purpose of establishing a nation of, by and for Jewish people.  It further claims that the colonial powers with the most control in those parts chose to favor the Zionists for a variety of geopolitical reasons, some about the Jewish people, some not, but which they hoped conveniently to sweep under the same geographic carpet. 

After recounting events from 1917 to 2017, Khalidi (writing sometime between 2017 and 2020), completed his history on a note of strained optimism.  Admitting that the year 2017 “… might seem an opportune moment for Israel and the United States to collude with their autocratic Arab partners to bury the Palestine question, dispose of the Palestinians and declare victory,” he cautioned that “It is not likely to be quite so simple.” In explanation, he offered the possibility that shifting popular opinion around the world combined with a U. S. government tight-focused on Mr. Trumps avowed ‘America First’ reorientation might “allow Palestinians and others to craft a different trajectory than that of oppression of one people by another.”  Despite generations of  poverty and virtual imprisonment in their ghetto territories, despite Mr. Trump’s obvious sympathies toward Netanyahu and his methods (which are after all, ones Mr. Trump would dearly love to emulate in dealing with any who do not genuflect to him) Khalidi at that time held out a slender hope that the balance of events might shift just enough to allow the non-Jewish inhabitants of the contested lands some form of self-determination and self-rule.

Reading today, we know that the years since 2017 have not been kind to that hope.  The bright promise of 2011’s Arab Spring petered out, leaving autocracy the rule and cutthroat capitalism the guiding principle for much of the Middle East.  Despite Biden’s election in 2020, progress toward any just solution was impeded by the fact so many interested parties bought the line that Jared Kushner’s so-called Abaham Accords meant peace was fully under way, rather than seeing them for the callous money-for-silence racket they actually represented.

Most tragically, the brutal Hamas attack on Israel beginning October 7, 2023 dashed whatever hopes remained by giving Netanyahu and his conservative buttresses the perfect pretext for what they may have wanted all along – the virtual elimination of a non-Jewish ‘people’ in the Palestinian region, paving the way for total and permanent Israeli control of all the lands once referred to as Palestine.  Even avoiding the wilder conspiracy theories,* it is still possible to say that Israel has since taken full advantage of the attack as justification to bury any possible path to Palestinian self-determination. The U. S., far from becoming less of a player, has been drawn by Mr. Trump’s greed and ego into proposing a ‘Peace’ plan which is anything but, consisting of removing the non-Jewish indigenous people while his cronies rebuild their homeland (at significant profit) into a luxury resort wherein, if the original inhabitants are allowed to return at all it will be only to fill dead-end service jobs in the venture-capitalist’s high-dollar playground by the sea. 

For over one hundred years, The Hundred Years War on Palestine… shows us, repression has generated pushback, military tactics have generated militant responses and violent repression has been met with more violence.  There is, unfortunately, little reason to imagine that cycle will stop now – unless the result of Mr. Trump’s ‘Peace’ plan is that there will simply are no longer any ‘Palestinians’ in Palestine to remember that their ancestors once occupied those lands.  In that case, this book may well be crucial in reminding future generations of how they were disappeared, and why, and by whom.

If you like what you read here or at robinandrew.net, please share any posts as widely as possible –and consider subscribing: it’s totally free!

P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel that considers the enormity of what the U.S.A’s current leadership may cost our nation, and how even tragedy of that magnitude may yet spawn new possibilities for the future. It is currently being serialized and you can be among the first to read its opening pages here by opening the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus.’

*  Among the conspiracy suggestions I’ve read are:  Did Israel (and Netanyahu specifically) allow/encourag the Gulf States to provide many millions in funds to Hamas over the years because that would keep the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other factions at one another’s throats, preventing the PA from unite the populace and so becoming more effective at dealing with Israel? Was it not obvious to Isreal and the U. S that the Abraham Accords, by leaving the Palestinians virtually no peaceful means of advancing their legitimate interests, would result in the most radical among them resorting to non-peaceful means? Did Israeli leadership in fact turn a blind eye to warning signs leading up to the Oct 7 attack because they were willing to risk some losses in order to have a pretext for their desired cleansing and achievement of the greater Zionist vision? And, if none of those claims are true, why has Netanyahu never allowed any substantive inquiry into the intelligence failures surrounding Oct. 7, when his entire administration is predicated on the claim that he and only he can keep Israel safe from exactly that sort of attack?

Age of Revolutions – Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

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In the historical/political realm, the word ‘revolution’ is commonly applied to a singular event of momentous change. In the realms of physics and mechanics, as Fareed Zakaria reminds us early in this very timely political history, ‘revolution’ means movement of an object or a system around its center, in which any point other than that exact center moves in a circle, initially getting farther away from where it once was but eventually returning to that same point before repeating the cycle.    

With that in mind, the author cogently and persuasively recounts several significant revolutions of the past 500 years, considering each as a cycle driven by some changed circumstances (new knowledge, new inventions, ravaging disease, etc.) and shaped by human choices (often with crucial contributions by extraordinary individuals).  Most importantly, he points out how in each case, the great upheaval we tend to best remember was followed by counter-revolution, a complimentary (in the geometric sense, that is, not the conversational) effort by those not in favor of that revolution’s effects to roll back the cycle of history.

A second crucial point of Zakaria’s is visible in his choice of ‘revolutions’ on which to focus: not only the political (England’s supposedly ‘Glorious Revolution,’ France’s admittedly horrific one) but also technological, economic and social revolutions.  Innovations in navigation and ship building lead to wider trade which brings different cultures into contact, at the same time it finances urbanization and thus greater education and innovation.  Industrialization creates new occupations and allows leisure for intellectual pursuits while also allowing wealth to be generated with less reliance on slavery, conquest or serfdom.  The printing press disseminates knowledge faster and wider than ever before, fostering ideals of personal choice and expectations that government should be a protector of freedom rather than an instrument of domination.  Paper and print in turn are overtaken by an electronic information revolution leading – well, we’re not yet sure where this one is taking us.

Less bloody than overt political ‘Revolutions’, it is arguably these knowledge revolutions which played the greatest role in enabling most humans today to live healthier, more comfortable and perhaps more satisfying lives than any who came before us, even as they present our greatest challenges for the future.

That’s the bulk of the book as finished in late 2023, and it’s an engrossing and valuable analysis.  Given how long it takes for even a veteran author’s work to navigate the publishing gauntlet, though, Zakaria has added an Afterword composed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s 2025 re-ascent to the highest office in our land. 

This crucial update begins by recounting China’s ‘Cultural Revolution’(1966-1976), a backward-facing assault on what Mao perceived as the threat of modernization and ‘liberal’ thought among his subjects. Tellingly, the excesses and destruction of Mao’s minions soon led to their own counterrevolution; an opening up and partial shift toward capitalism and entrepreneurism resulting in tremendous economic progress for the people of the PRC (though far less on social fronts). This history serves as a lamp under which Zakaria examines the USA’s current leadership and direction, bringing to mind another observation about ‘revolutions’ in classical mechanics: that when a revolving object or system is simultaneously moving along a larger axis – a wheel, say, revolving around its axle as a cart moves along a road, or humankind’s cycle of innovation/reaction/regression/innovation as it moves along the axis of time, for another – what results is not an endless repetition of the same events, but a sine curve of events rising up and then sinking down before beginning to rise up again. At any given moment, in fact, some specific parts of the revolving system are moving ‘forward,’ others rising up or dropping down and some are even, for an equal moment, moving backward, despite the entire system continuing its overall progress along its axis of road or time.

Do not mistake one moment’s regression for permanence, Zakaria’s text reminds.  Humanity throughout known history has been incessantly creative and innovative in seeking betterment.  For all recorded history, despite individual points upon civilization’s wheel moving upward, downward or backward, the overall motion of us all has been forward, in the direction of greater equality, greater freedom and greater physical wellbeing for more and  more of us.  If we can avoid the greatest catastrophe of total self-destruction, there is every reason to believe that future revolutions of time’s wheel will see us our fitful history continuing to move in those directions.

A reassuring conclusion in this very daunting moment…

P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new novel that considers where our current divisiveness may lead in the near term, and how even tragic events can spawn possibilities for better futures. It is currently being serialized at robinandrew.net and you can be among the first to read its opening pages there in the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus.’

If you like what you read here or at robinandrew.net, please share any posts as widely as possible – and consider subscribing: it’s totally free!

E Unum Pluribus

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Wondering where our nation’s increasingly divisive politics may lead us? E Unum Pluribus is a new novel which explores one very real possibility:

Amid feudal chaos following the USA’s collapse, one city-state seems promising, until an amateur’s murder investigation exposes its weaknesses and the conspiracies threatening to destroy it.

In order to receive community input, I’m serializing a Beta Test draft of E Unum Pluribus free of charge. (So I can track interest, the final installment may be posted only to subscribers, but even that subscription will be totally free of charge or obligation.) A .pdf of Installment One is included below and may also be downloaded for a more comfortable reading experience. Either way, you get to explore this new novel at absolutely no expense!

2025-01-01 E Unum Pluribus – Installment OneDownload


Succeeding installments are available at robinandrew.net by selecting the ‘E Unum Pluribus’ button in the home page’s top-menu.

In addition to posting the manuscript, I will be sharing thoughts about the novel’s themes and objectives in future posts on both this website and on Substack at nobodysays2025.substack.com

If you find E Unum Pluribus of interest – or if you simply support the concept of authors sharing their work without reliance upon commercial publishing corporations – please share this post as widely as possible.

Have a wonderful 2026!

Robin Andrew

MAGA’s Great Replacement Fantasy (Delusions of the popu-lost)

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By now many observers have noted Mr. Trump’s tendency to accuse his detractors of whatever sin he himself is engaged in. Those observations suggest some thoughts around the Great Replacement Theory which, in Trumpian usage, holds that Democrats are intentionally perverting democracy by opening our sacred borders to untold millions of immigrants (who just coincidentally tend to be black, brown and/or from ‘shithole’ countries not part of the Anglo-European heritage which we are now being told defines true Americans).

Thought number one: acknowledging that Mr. Trump won the election in 2024 and so is legitimately occupying the Oval Office, he still received fewer than half the votes cast,* an inconvenient truth which makes one wonder if perhaps there is a hidden thread connecting several of his administration’s current priorities.

To whit: contrary to the populist image their leader loves to act out, he and any thoughtful members of his court must be aware that theirs is a minority faction and so will never be able to hold power by democratic means. Unable even to rely upon their slender majorities in Congress to do their bidding, they know they cannot govern by legislation (as the Constitution intends) but must rely almost exclusively on Executive Orders, Presidential Determinations, Proclamations, administrative directives by their chosen technocrats, petty prosecutions and the like – despite the dubious validity or effectiveness of many such.

Second, since he and they are unwilling to adjust their policies to the beliefs of the voting majority, they choose instead to speak and act as if the voting majority itself is invalid, tilted toward ‘radical’ outcomes by the presence of millions of non-citizen immigrants. If – goes the fantasy they imply to their base – the administration can eliminate enough of those ‘illegals’ through holding-camps, deportation, self-deportation, remigration or whatever other terms they come up with next, then the voters who are left will constitute their dream of a majority MAGA electorate. That hope energizes their base and recruits enforcers for ICE and other agencies, but unfortunately for MAGA, their inability to produce any credible evidence of voting by non-citizens in numbers that would make any difference in any election at any level demonstrates the fallacy of such hope. Illegal immigrants have never swung actual voting so even their complete extermination would not affect any future outcome. The pro-Trump minority is not democratically viable* and his power can only be ensured by non-democratic means.

Which explains the Administration’s doubling-down on tactics to frustrate the democratic will. Demands for state gerrymandering, discouragingly cumbersome voter ID requirements, restrictions on drop-boxes, voting locations, hours or mail-in options, false accusations of voting machine irregularities, placement of threatening ‘monitors’ at election sites, these and many other strategies are designed to deter enough voters to ensure MAGA victories whether or not the majority of eligible voters want them or, in the worst case, to provide excuses to override the true verdict when it proves they do not.

One can even interpret MAGA’s recent call for Americans to have more children as a supply side complement to these strategies. Refuse to naturalize any but the wealthy and pale at the same time the MAGA faithful produce more and more purebred American babies (who will, presumably, be groomed by their parents to vote the ruling party’s ticket from birth) and they might just turn their minority into a real majority – in twenty or thirty years.

All this can be seen as one more indication we’re lost on a dark and very slippery slope or, looked at from another angle, it may give a sliver of hope. Since the people he is tossing out the door were never part of the majority who voted against him, Mr. Trump’s epic cleansing will do nothing to change his minority status. In fact, if the callousness and brutality of it repels even a few of his past followers, it will actually drive his share of future vote tallies lower. In which case, the majority of the American electorate may one day reject Mr. Trump’s imperium by a large enough margin that not even doomed third-party candidates and the misrepresentative calculus of the Electoral College will be enough to save him.

Here’s hoping that whenever that day comes, there is still a nation left to rebuild!

*Of the three elections in which Donald J. Trump has ever competed, he has never won a majority of the votes cast. If that is any sort of mandate, it is a mandate against Mr. Trump, not for him. The fact that he was elected in 2016 reflected just how unsuited our present Electoral College structure is to today’s electorate, in which the population disparity between large states and small ones is more than five times as wide as it was at the time the Constitution was being developed, yet each of those states still gets an equal two Senate-related votes. The fact he was elected in 2024 despite not winning a majority is its own indictment of an election process held captive to two ossified major parties which cannot possibly represent the true diversity of their electorate.

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Free Speech on Trial? I. F. Stone’s ‘The Trial of Socrates’

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Isidor Feinstein Stone was widely known and read as a liberal/socialist leaning journalist and newsletter writer from the 1930’s to the ‘80’s.  His introduction to the paperback edition of this book suggests it was the product of a late in life desire to move away from investigating current injustices and stake a claim to something timeless. 

In that, Stone acquits himself admirably, analyzing the works of Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Xenophon and others like a professor of the Classics, along the way citing a wealth of references both primary and secondary, some of which seem quite obscure.  His commentary on specific words of Ancient Greek – their origins and multiple usages and especially the implications of how they’ve been translated (or mistranslated) over the ages – suggests an ability to read the original Greek language sources, which is impressive in one whose Wikipedia entry records only that he dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania

Greatest take away for this unschooled reader is to reframe Socrates from a revered name in the pantheon of Athens’ great philosophers into a rather disreputable rascal; a gadfly and rabble-rouser accused of corrupting the state’s youth by arguing the efficacy of oligarchic tyranny at a moment when such evils had very recently taken advantage of democracy’s natural disorder to seize power for themselves – twice! – and stood eager to do so again at any time.  Also, as Stone puts it, a man who habitually and resolutely argued the negative side of every issue without ever offering a single positive value to which he would actually commit.  This, in Stone’s view, is the real reason Socrates seemed to actively seek and welcome his death sentence (at an age when he could otherwise look forward only to sickness and decline) and turned his own death into a performance calculated to seal his place in posterity.  As likely as it was that a defense on the grounds of free speech might have saved his life (the last chapters of the book analyze this in extravagant detail), Socrates would not demean himself by pleading a principle against which he had previously argued with all his eloquence.  Even more, he seemed purposely to alienate his judges so as to be sure they would not honor their own and their City’s principles by freeing him on those same grounds.

Which last leads into the second lesson of this author’s analysis. An ardent supporter himself of the right to speak freely, Stone reminds the reader that such a right has very rarely been the policy of any government or governing system.  Even among the Golden Age Greeks it was a niche freedom, always tempered by its applicability only to those accredited for a specific body or forum, or only those of wealth and privilege, only those meeting citizenship requirements, only those owning property, only those not owned as slaves or reviled as foreigners or uncivilized – the list goes on.  That freedom of speech was not a universal value even among those greats in that great time and place is a very valuable reminder for those of us living in this one (U.S. A, 2025)

Certainly worthwhile to read and know, Stone’s analytics in The Trial of Socrates feel repetitive and over-argued; one imagines the same points could have been made in an essay rather than a book. But then, an essay about such a scholarly subject would never have achieved the visibility and stickiness this stand-alone book has (much less been deemed a ‘NATIONAL BESTSELLER’ as the paperback jacket proudly proclaims). Pulling Socrates off his pedestal at the same time it raises the U. S. First Amendment’s guarantee of Free Speech up onto one of its own is pretty good work for a small volume (247 pages plus Notes) by the college-dropout son of an immigrant shop owner? Achievements well worthy of a space on the shelf.

Ripe for Amendment?

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Saw an excellent opinion piece recently about the history of Amendments to the U. S. Constitution, starting with the fact that the document’s authors fully intended it to be revised – the Amendment process is written in, after all (Article V) – and running up through our fifty-plus-year drought of amendments since the 1970’s.   It can certainly be argued whether our current divisiveness and the dysfunctionality of Congress are one reason we’ve had no Amendments recently, or one result of that, but the phenomena are certainly related to one another.

Well-thought-through and widely-accepted new Amendments could allow our nation’s founding document to grow and adapt to conditions which have changed dramatically, including: a population which has gone from about four million peeps in 1790 to some 330 million in 2020; a mix of states which has gone from 13 small, young and rural ones to 50 with wildly varied histories, populations and urban/rural characters; multiple technological and cultural revolutions; and an international context the Founders might well struggle to recognize. 

Given all that, here are a few modest proposals to be considered when the time seems right

Free the Courts:  we’ve all been taught that the Federal government has three branches -the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial (perhaps equal, perhaps not, depending…) and that this configuration ensures checks and balances on the power of each, thereby protecting the system and our freedoms.  Current events are making clear that the Judicial branch is not really an effective check or balance so long as the Chief Executive appoints (even with Legislative approval required) and can fire (at will and whim) the Attorney General, thus allowing that Executive to direct and weild the enormous power of the Department of Justice as he or she wishes.  A new Constitutional Convention, or a renewed and less-rigidly divided and more collaborative Congress would do well to consider an Amendment to remedy this by making Justice independent of the Executive branch and the Attorney General an elected office with a four year term, perhaps voted upon in Presidential off-years, and no longer a member of the President’s Cabinet (though still with other rights and privileges of Cabinet level responsibility and authority). 

While we’re at it: how about also solidifying the makeup of the Supreme Court by fixing it’s number (rather than leaving it vulnerable to change by some future legislature) and specifying a limited term for justices (so the Court better reflects gradual changes in society and culture) with staggered start dates (so no one President/term gets to appoint more justices than another (whether by random happenstance or by McConnel-esque abuses of Congress’s approval authority). Those changes would work against the politicization some believe we are experiencing with the current Court.  And, since we’re talking pie in the sky, maybe even consider requiring each Justice as they take their seat to designate a successor who will fill out the rest of their term should they die, be incapacitated or simply exhausted before it runs out (thus avoiding any lucky President – or violent actor – taking advantage of such an event to pack the court with their preferred jurists).

Speaking of elections: one aggravator of our recent discord has been the ascent of Presidents to office without receiving even the barest majority of the votes cast (not to mention those who did not even receive a plurality!).  More than just casting doubt upon a leader’s legitimacy, this has led too many citizens to conclude that their votes are not worth casting.  A constitutionally-mandated two-stage election would address this issue, with as many candidates/parties running in the first stage as wish to and then just the two top vote getters participating in a run-off election to decide who will hold the office.   That format would ensure the winner receives a majority of votes, while also offering an unmistakable indicator of just how strong or weak is their mandate. It might also diminish the stranglehold of two-party politics, since a third-party or independent candidate need only defeat one of the two major parties to reach the runoff (and have a legitimate chance at the White House), rather than having to surpass both of them from a standing start as under the current system.  Whatever expense or delay is incurred by this two-stage process might have ruled it out back in the founders’ days of carriage rides and snail mail but would be entirely manageable in today’s electronic age.

(Debating and reaching agreement on issues like those might even serve as a warm-up so said Congress or Convention could address the stalemate between small and large states with an amendment that retires or at least updates the Electoral College so Presidential Elections would more fairly deal with the enormous disparities in populations relative to Senatorial votes.)

Obviously, tons of other ideas for amendment are out there and more will quickly arise if the ball ever gets rolling, but those above seem to this writer to be top of the list.   The time is ripe for us to use the tool those wise heads passed down to us in order that their legacy may be improved and sustained for many more generations!

P. S. – This post was inspired in part by “Amend It!” written by Jill Lepore and appearing in the print and online editions of The Atlantic, October 2025.  Neither M. Lepore nor The Atlantic have any connection to this post or site, nor are either in any way responsible for its content.

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