Karl Meyer is a journalist whose particular focus is giving voice to the key truths of the Connecticut River.
GREENFIELD, MASS.-It’s time to consider postponing the April celebrations at Lexington and Concord — maybe just until federal troops no longer patrol the nation’s capital and anonymous, armed agents stop terrorizing our cities.
Perhaps hold off until we’ve reinvigorated and reinforced our constitutional rights under the First and Fourth amendments. Freedom Trail celebrations held under the eye of a tyrant will ring as hollow at Boston, Bennington, and Philadelphia, as they will in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Mexico City, London, and beyond.
This White House seeks only to divide us — treating states as colonies and running roughshod over constitutional guarantees. Its current occupant, a spoiled proclaimer, assails whole cities with scattershot chaos, with fear, and with rolling military-style deployments.
Faced with endless threats, swarming raids from ICE (and other federal agencies), and manufactured violence, citizens respond in rearguard standouts at each assault. Then another city comes under occupation, and all run to battle that fire while Congress and an abetting Supreme Court fail our Constitution.
It all serves a tyrant’s objective: fanning flames of hatred, terror, racism, and misogyny.
* * *
In truth, the world is waiting on “We the People” of the United States to prove we’re not a failed democracy. To demonstrate our commitment to human rights, justice, human dignity.
They’re asking whether we can be trusted in friendship, alliance, rule of law, treaty.
Given the current state of our democracy, fireworks don’t seem appropriate.
These next months might best be spent rescuing our Constitution, perhaps assembling on the National Mall in a dignified, resolute display of our First Amendment rights in honor of our history.
* * *
An enabled Donald Trump is today’s de facto 24/7 anchor of local, national, and world news and social media — the firehose flooding the internet with threats, lies, and A.I.-propelled slop.
Emboldened, he acts as sole arbiter of language, history, trade, banking, treaty, and law. He acts as both accuser and summary judge in a shadow courtroom.
He told The New York Times that under international law, the only limits to his power are “My own mind. My own morality. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” No Nobel Peace Prize, no peace! Welcome to the “Gulf of America” on the Planet of the Dupes.
We’ve been decreed subjects, to be ruled by smartphones and tweets, abetted by soulless lawyers and crypto-grifting tech billionaires happy to cook the planet while cities are invaded and our neighbors disappear.
How did this grim despotism descend? Forget Project 2025. It appears Trump looked to the inspired words of our Declaration of Independence and simply read them in reverse — deconstructing its reasoned, dignified demands for freedom, civil governance, and rule of law.
Here in reverse order are some key indictments against King George III from our Declaration of Independence:
“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.”
“He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us [...].”
“For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:”
“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.”
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”
“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices […].”
“[He has] a History of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny of these States.”
I’ll stop there.
* * *
The Boston Massacre is mirrored in the Minneapolis killings. The abuses of the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, and the Intolerable Acts tariffs echo in current attacks on neighbors, friends, and allies from Washington to Los Angeles, from Chicago to Atlanta, all the way to Canada, the United Kingdom, and U.N.
And not only are vulnerable working immigrants targeted. Trump continuously denigrates journalists venturing into harm’s way among courageous citizens to file stories of masked ICE raids, about racist and warrantless so-called “Kavanaugh stop” searches, about child abductions, and about citizen killings. Reporters have been arrested and jailed, their phones and documents seized.
Sam Adams and Thomas Paine were journalists, bulwarks in the fight to end tyranny. It’s time for all of us to stand up for journalists and civil rights.
Publishers and editors have a unique opportunity to shine the light indicting a new tyranny, to re-trumpet our solemn rights to speech, a free press, peaceable assembly, and prohibitions on search and seizure.
As guardians of truth grounded in facts, we have an exceptional bullhorn to defend the Constitution: the editorial. That cherished free speech platform — a sacrosanct First Amendment space — exists to support and protect the rights of all.
And, in truth, all of us now must stand together, in justice and human dignity, to rescue our embattled democracy.
The courage and sacred honor of those patriots can unite us to stand up as a free people and reject a cruel and soulless tyranny — and pass on our cherished civil freedoms to generations that follow.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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