It certainly won’t be the cavalry. They are occupied elsewhere. This week the President of the United States deployed the cavalry — that would be his D.C. National Guard — to protect District of Columbia citizens and the Washington Monument from violent criminals hanging out in the night around the imposing obelisk on the Mall.
The earnest sergeant in charge of a handful of soldiers had been ordered to demonstrate to the media that the military had arrived in the nation’s capital and all was well. He did his duty. He saluted and sent a partial squad up the paved path to the iconic monument. The soldiers looked about carefully, observed a few puzzled and curious tourists, and then went back down the path. The entire show of force was over in a few minutes. The sergeant couldn’t entirely conceal his embarrassment and bewilderment over the charade he had participated in. Of course he couldn’t.
It was another harebrained and risky scheme from the President, using the military at home to advance his domestic political objectives. It was also expensive, ineffective, and at odds with how most presidents deploy the military. The risks and danger cannot be overstated. One fatal shot on an innocent citizen at home and no one knows what happens next and how it all ends. This week the President has his military policing streets in Washington, D.C. In June it was his California Guard and combat-ready Marines policing in Los Angeles over the objections of the mayor. He recently said he might send his troops next to police Chicago.
We must face it. The President is mad. Say it clearly. Firmly. Make sure the people hear you. There is little doubt. The President is mad, dangerously mad, as he grabs more power for himself. If we continue to brush aside or ignore the mind-boggling wholesale changes Trump and his henchmen have been up to over the past seven months, we do so at our great peril. The President and his band of frightening toadies are up to nothing short of seizing control of our entire government, our military, corporate America, our public and private institutions, and our very way of life. We must end the denial and this nonsense of telling ourselves there is nothing we can possibly do about the madness and danger going on in Washington. That sort of muddled thinking is precisely what President Trump expects from us. He’s counting on it, confident he will beat us down; and weary Americans, exhausted from Trump fatigue, will continue to sit on the sidelines, foolishly hoping the Trump nightmare ends without lasting harm to the country and those we love.
This alarming chapter in our history doesn’t have to continue or play out the way the mad President and his creepy cronies have put in place and are planning to expand upon. There is a better way, and that may take some of your precious time and talents. It could mean becoming involved politically in your community or state; it could mean giving your money if you have some to spare. Maybe you aren’t ready to join a local political party or organization or give money just yet, but you can certainly figure out where you will be comfortable and helpful politically. Maybe you contribute brains or brawn — or maybe you can bring both to the table.
The important thing is to take that first step politically. Make it small. Do one thing politically you have never done before. If you feel Trump is a danger to your community and country, show it. Maybe you are tired of stale political platitudes rolling off the lips of tired suitors and politicians, show it. Not by more words. As George Bernard Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle may well have said, “Words, words, words! Never do I ever want to hear another single one again. Show me!”
If you are knowledgeable and well-versed in the political issues of the day, you have the opportunity to give and do more where you live and work. Republicans knew how important it was for them to win the House and Senate as well as the White House. If you see how Senate and house races and the road to the White House, coupled with voter turnout, are often tied together, maybe you can help carry that message to your community and candidates.
I can tell you Republicans carried the last elections because they did more work to win. They were better prepared and equipped on several fronts, clearly more engaged and more eager to win, and they showed up. Look to see why millions of registered Democrats didn’t even bother to vote last time. Democrats still haven’t figured out why. Maybe you can help with the why. Have Democrats really lost touch and become overly educated, overly concerned with the rule of law?
Our country is not reserved for the privileged few and assorted hustlers and obsequious hangers-on out to reap millions and billions, score rich federal contracts, and other obscene rewards Trump bestows upon those who bow and dance to his madness. We rejected that royal road nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, and we are not going back to it, as our greedy President and his avarice royalists would have us do.
If enough voters muster up the will and if this struggle for our country’s soul and destiny is important to them, they can and will get back on track. No doubt, at first blush, that sounds sophomoric, straight out of Andy Hardy and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but it need not be — not if enough people still think the rule of law is important and facts and integrity still matter. They should. A frightening racist bully is loose roaming in the White House corridors. He is mad and ignorant, but he really is President of the United States and determined to control everything.
No matter where we live or work — clerk or Vice President, nurse or doctor, student, retired or looking for work — the color of our skin or where we came from, what political party, if any, we favor, or where we worship or don’t worship, or who we love, it’s up to us to stop this well-oiled Trump march to madness.
No one is coming to your rescue. The President is out to change this country into one you will not recognize. Most Americans do not want WWII Germany and Italy here. Today, the President touts Putin and Netanyahu and ridicules Ukraine’s Zelensky, who is fighting a dictator. Maybe Trump’s vision of a new world order will be Putin and Netanyahu light. Maybe it won’t start out as a total police state. Maybe the nice and right sort and agreeable people will have little to fear. Maybe.
But just this week we saw how Trump would use the military in every state if he were left unchecked. We saw the brilliant mad engineer President dictating how Nvidia, the leading chip manufacturer, and its CEO would get a license to sell AI chips to China and what it would cost them. We heard him say another CEO should be fired. He is out to take over corporate boardrooms and hire the CEOs. And we haven’t heard a peep or objection from the chip industry trade association, the Business Roundtable and their CEOs, or from the Chamber of Commerce. We don’t even know if this chip transaction is legal. Last week we also saw the President very annoyed because he didn’t like statistics coming out from the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So immediately he fired her with much fanfare, claiming, without any documentation, the mean career civil servant had manipulated unfavorable labor numbers to make him look bad. A few days later he announced he was hiring his own economist from the Heritage Foundation to do the labor statistics for him. Not a peep from the bankers who rely upon credible numbers to help maintain a strong dollar and attract foreign investors looking for a safe and reliable place to park their money and invest. This week the busy President also found time to extract more money and concessions from another university foolish enough to think they can meet his changing demands. The Paul Weiss law firm in New York and Columbia University and the other cowering university and college presidents, along with Republican senators, all forgot or never knew rule number one on the playground: you can never make a deal with a crazed bully. He always comes back. The danger is real.
But in recent days, notwithstanding a frenzy of presidential deals, announcements, threats, armed service members in combat gear and heavy combat vehicles in the Washington streets, an upcoming major summit in Alaska, appearing up on the White House roof, and zipping over to the heavily guarded Kennedy Center to brag about his show business chops and announce (guess what) — roll the drums — he, the newly installed Chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, would MC this year’s televised Kennedy Center Honors in December, still, the President, privately, had his own real and present danger to deal with. While he may have distracted the media temporarily, he still feared one person, and he knew she wasn’t going away, and he knew precisely what she wanted.
Ghislaine Maxwell. The woman who may know too much. The woman who may have her own private Epstein files with videos and recordings stashed away. The woman who was in the room, often in bed with Epstein and underage girls 14 and 15. The woman who knew who came and who went. She also knew the “security cameras” were rolling 24/7 in every bedroom and every bathroom in every home Epstein owned around the world.
Ghislaine Maxwell, with her electronic files, could bring Trump world tumbling down. Maybe a mad Trump really could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, as he once boasted. However, I don’t think he survives a Ghislaine Maxwell bombshell with her files — if she can take away his “credible deniability.” And if she takes that same “deniability” away from MAGA and the Christian Right and Fox News, she is not safe in any federal prison. She knows what happened to Epstein in jail; she figures, and rightly so, that her chances of staying alive are better on the outside. For Ghislaine Maxwell, the sooner the better — and only Trump can make that happen. How ironic that these two should fear one another and, at the same time, desperately need each other.
Aubrey Sarvis
Army veteran, retired lawyer and corporate officer.
Bob Moores says
Wow!
Great article!
Patricia W Deitz says
Thank you for this passionate letter. We need more of our fellow citizens, powerful, privileged, and otherwise, to say honestly what is happening to our country, really to our civilization, at the hands of this manipulative “strongman” and his cowering syncophants in Congress, many state legislatures, businesses, and elsewhere. We must continue to keep the horrible truth in plain sight, and galvanize action by the actual majority of Americans who do not want this abuse of the Constitution and decency. Millions are standing up and speaking out. More need to. If you are reading this, please join us. Every act of Resistance matters.
Vic Pfeiffer says
Great article. We should be in the streets in large numbers. Why aren’t we?
Anne Stevens says
Thank you. I cannot make sense of this alternate reality we are living in. The vandal in chief is stealing our country.
Joanne Tobriner says
Americans like Aubrey Sarvis speak out about all the positive aspects of America that are now under threat. Things used to work out pretty well in this country and there was bipartisan support for many programs that have now been defunded….research in science, medicine, health, education, math and science interaction. Many scientists now consider relocating to countries that are more welcoming.
Our military is not helping war torn refugees and starving children in other parts of the world. Their boots are patrolling American cities whose mayors did not want or request them. Ice is handcuffing restaurant kitchen workers, hotel cleaners and lawn mowing landscapers. Jobs like these were performed by many of OUR ancestors when we arrived and many of them were as unwelcome as these workers are now. They are not taking work from Americans. Americans don’t want these jobs!
Empathy used to be a good word. Where is our kindness and our putting ourselves in anothers’ shoes? What about, “There but for the grace of God go I?” I agree with Mr. Sarvis that there is a well oiled Trump march to madness.