Face Facts and Fight Tyranny

I feel a moral imperative to speak out for the common folks who built this nation. Is it too much for the blue-collar majority of this country to want the basics of day-to-day living while the rich feather their nests on the backs of the working class?

When I dare to publish editorials that take this U.S. administration to task, I fully expect pushback. I’ve had threats from right-wing wackos and ugly reviews from an anonymous critic. 

But I don’t write for intellectual cowards. I write for the general public, the people on whose backs a minority of super-wealthy U.S. businesses built their dynasties. I have no desire to subsidize billionaires.

I wear my humility on my sleeve as a badge of honor, speaking truth to power, grateful for the loving embrace of better angels and friends. We don’t want Canada and Greenland. We want the simple security of any cultured nation: a sustainable life. That includes affordable food, shelter and clothing, health care, a decent education for their children, free speech and freedom from debt, the new slavery of the 21^st century.

Arrogant stooges

Let’s look at this with common sense, domestically and globally. If you saw the Sunday, May 4, New York Times, it’s worth saving as historical. A rare double Opinion section exposes every member of Trump’s Cabinet as selfish, money-grubbing straw men, sycophants and arrogant stooges.

Let it be known that these are the people who brought low our Democracy and divided the once United States under Donald Trump with help from Vladimir Putin, like-minded tyrants, the Republican Party and the propaganda outlets that perpetuate falsehoods, including Truth Social, Trump’s personal fire-hose of lies.

Globally, three major despots currently pursue the takeover of two new territories that belong to their neighbors. All three evade multiple charges for crimes ranging from wide-scale fraud to international war crimes. Each of these authoritarians acts with the help of selfish interests in direct opposition to the majority of their nation’s people.

Vladimir Putin’s military is wiping out Ukrainian civilians while annexing Crimea and overrunning the Donbas region for its rich natural resources, particularly coal and iron ore vital to Ukraine.

But if Russians were allowed to speak freely, they would protest en masse and end Putin’s reign of terror.

Right-wing hawks

Benjamin Netanyahu is overrunning Gaza with help from Trump, bombing hospitals, choking off all humanitarian supplies, starving children and wiping out civilians on his path to displace 2 million Palestinians and annex that territory while carving into the West Bank.

But the majority of Israelis do not support Netanyahu and his right-wing Knesset hawks.

Not to be outdone by any other bellicose bully, Trump repeatedly insists he will take over Canada and Greenland. Ignoring advisors, he demands fealty as he declares economic tariff wars on every major U.S. trading partner except his personal backers. Like a drama queen with his panties in a twist over the issue, he put Jeff Bezos’s privates in a vice. He doesn’t read, is obsessed with greed, power and vengeance, and stays up all night tweeting his bile. He hates the light of day the press sheds with fact checks and attacks everyone who exposes his fabricated stories.

Today’s Republican Party has become everything my father went overseas to fight in World War II. But the majority of good Americans don’t support the Trump mob.

Robots, finks and Bible thumpers

Project 2025 had 100 executive orders already written for the signature of the ignorant tyrant they elected with help from billionaires, Putin’s Russian robots, Fox finks, voter suppression and an unholy alliance with Bible thumpers.

Anonymous critics eventually slither back under the rocks where they hide. Naturally, hayseeds get ugly. There will always be toxic critics who mask their identity and guilt.

The point is this: We ALL have a moral obligation to stand up to tyrants. We ALL need the backbone to defend our countries and fight back.

Watch out, Republicans. The people are finding out how they were tricked. They are screaming at you in town halls. The same people you fooled will tear down YOUR safety nets, your feathered nests and your evil, self-serving president.

Pepper Pro writes creative nonfiction, short stories, essays, editorials, poetry and songs. His forthcoming book (second edition) is Essays, Op-Eds, Eulogies and a Toast. A news editor for 20 years, he advocates for human rights, environmental justice and diversity.