The United States is rapidly heading toward a dictatorship.
The massive abuses of power of the Trump/Musk oligarchic regime mount daily. I will list a few examples:
• Immigrants who have committed no crime and are here legally are being jailed or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
• The power of the purse lies with Congress, yet the regime is stopping funding mandated by our legislators, attacking veterans’ benefits, health care programs and Social Security, and demolishing the Department of Education.
• Civil rights laws, including voting rights, are being attacked.
• Gay rights are being attacked such that personal safety is at risk.
• And to crown it all, Trump is aligning with the dictator, Putin, instead of our former democratic allies. In fact, he is directly attacking our closest allies, Canada and Mexico.
I feel it useful to analyze what existed before this slide toward dictatorship. We had three co-equal branches of government, the presidential, judicial and legislative branches, designed such that one branch would check excessive power by another branch. What happens when there are no checks on the power of the president and his oligarchic assistants?
By definition, that is a dictatorship. The legislative branch of House and Senate composed of our two parties, Democrats and Republicans, are either not believing that we are losing our democracy, are cowards, or don't care, with a few exceptions, such as Democrats Al Green, Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc. Part of the judicial branch is fighting back, but the Trump regime is shredding the Constitution by ignoring and threatening them.
I experienced a direct civics lesson while in graduate school at State University of New York at Binghamton. A small group of confederate flag-wearing students took over the student government and immediately took away funding from representative groups on campus, including the Women's Center, Black Student Union, Rainbow Club, and so on, all funded under the legislative branch.
Protests on campus mounted and intensified, and I will never forget the image of the campus police removing Black students from the lobby where, behind closed doors, the new right-wing government was making their judicial appointments. The next unforgettable image was the finding by election investigators of the original ballot boxes in a nearby swamp; the new regime had committed election fraud. We later learned that this right-wing takeover of student government was funded by an outside political group.
Eventually, the culprits were maneuvered into a student meeting and effectively confronted by a packed auditorium, such that they caved.
So even though our present situation seems dire, we can remember that power resides in the people and we have the right to protest. We can also make demands on our elected representatives via letters, phone calls and showing up at town halls. Call Washington's Sens. Maria Cantwell, 202-224-3441, and Patty Murray, 202-224-2621. Our congressional Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, can be reached at 202-225-3536, or local office 308 S. Pacific Ave., Ste B, Kelso.
Or, if you want to get involved with the opposition party the Lewis County Democrats, visit their website.
Linda Warren
Winlock
