Our Battle with Trump and the Republicans is Written in Our Declaration of Independence.

From the beginning we've been against despots and tyranny. We seem to have forgotten that. Now's the time to remember.

Photo by Larry Alger on Unsplash

Our Founding Fathers, as fallibly human as they were, saw right up front that if they were going to build a great society, they would have to form a country that worked ‘for the people’. They were rich men, and powerful, but they didn’t see themselves as monarchs, or dictators, or even popes. They understood the enormity of the job ahead. They were out to form a more perfect union, unlike the one they’d fought over, where the church and the monarchy held all the power and had the last word.

In 1776, 11 years before the Constitution was signed, many of the men now working on a stronger constitution to replace the weaker Articles of Confederation), created and signed a Declaration of Independence from anything remotely British.

*** I’m going to take a moment to list many of those grievances that brought on such a drastic action. They’re all cited in the Declaration. If you see similarities between the Brits of the day and the Trump regime, I’ve made my point:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

As they worked on a constitution, they tried to see themselves as ‘the people’. Granted, ‘the people’ to them were almost exclusively white men, but they were new at this, and not from a culture that yet recognized women, Black people—or the Americans who were truly native—as equals. (We’re still working on it, in fact.)

They started the awesome task of building a federal government almost from scratch. They took on the task of creating a completely new form of government. They hashed it out in the Federalist Papers, trying to consider what might happen, what could happen, and what should happen. They looked to other constitutions for inspiration and found the guidelines and practices of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy would be the one most likely to work for us, too.

They established a pliable Bill of Rights, edicts that could be amended as needed. They weren’t commandments, but they came close:

The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. It spells out Americans’ rights in relation to their government. It guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual—like freedom of speech, press, and religion. It sets rules for due process of law and reserves all powers not delegated to the Federal Government to the people or the States. And it specifies that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

And on September 17, 1787¹, a bunch of them signed their names to a document they decided they could live with. Because God forbid, we’d ever be like the British—or any other country that wasn’t us.

And yet, here we are (You knew this was coming), so far beyond anything the British—or any other country—might have foisted on us, even our greater minds spend way too much time scratching their heads. They’ve tried to come up with reasons for all of this, tried to come up with ways to sabotage it, tried to use the law, of all things, to stop the onslaught—and nothing has worked.

This takeover has been in the planning stages for decades—long before Ronald Reagan decided government—our kind of government—was the problem. The Tea Party was a late-comer, deliberately named to throw us off—as if a group of citizens throwing tea into Boston Harbor as resistance against tariffs were the forerunners to a bunch of wealthy businessfolks working to relieve themselves of those pesky regulations designed to keep them from profiting off of everything American.

So here we are. Do we believe in our Constitution or don’t we? Does that Declaration of Independence mean anything anymore? Have we really become a country that will so easily forget the reasons we established rules and laws and mores, and let what’s happening happen?

Are we still free enough to declare that we can’t be bought or owned? Are we really going to let a petty tyrant take over and change everything for the worst by way of the millionaires and billionaires he has in his pocket? Will they turn against him at some point, when and if they see—as Elon Musk did—that an alliance with this madman can only hurt them in the long run? Or will we be fighting them until who knows when over who gets to own a society that has never been for sale?

Those long-ago documents give us the power to realize our own destiny. This isn’t it. We’re moving to end this tyranny and nothing in our history has shown that we’ve ever backed down from aggression. Trump and the Republicans haven’t yet seen who they’re dealing with. We won’t back down. It’s written in our founding documents. They’re still revered for a reason. To believe in them is to believe in who we are.

We are Americans. We’re unique in that way. Our patriotism ignites whenever our democracy is threatened. We will not be bought. We will not be owned. We will be free of this.

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(The Declaration of Independence hangs in Trump’s Oval Office, a symbol of everything we hold against this current-day despot. He thinks he has the original but he doesn’t. It’s a copy, but you’ll never convince him otherwise. When he was asked what the Declaration means to him, he babbled, "Well it means exactly what it says, it's a declaration, it's a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot and it’s something very special to our country." So the ‘independence’ part is lost on him, along with all the rest. It’s just as well. I’m more than okay with the idea that a document railing against petty tyrants is hanging over Trump’s head in the Oval Office as he entertains his sycophants and apparatchiks.)

1. I was born on September 17, 1937, exactly 150 years after the signing of the Constitution, so it’s personal with me. If Trump decides to call that day anything but ‘Constitution Day’ you will hear me screeching from wherever you are. So if you’re with me, come a’running.

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