From A Veteran Editor of 'Stars And Stripes'

Regulars here will know I’m not a fan of BS and half-measures. Don’t piss on my boots, and tell me it’s raining …

This has been a horrible month for anybody who still cares about America, her place in the world, and her duty to her people.

We are under attack by Donald Trump’s soulless, gutless Republican Party, and the United States of America will never be the same again.

Anybody who really cares about this country knows this.

And if you really care about this country, you are hurting badly right now.

And if you hurting badly right now, I am proud to know you, because you are all heart.

And if you are all heart, then let’s lean on each other, and keep giving it hell, dammit …

There has not been a president in my lifetime who has so purposefully and gleefully inflicted pain on people like this one. He is completely dead inside. His very own sister once described him as “cruel.”

Sisters know …

I get it, in many ways Ronald Reagan set the pretext for much of what we are seeing now, and if you still want to put all this on him, I won’t fight you, but I will tell you that this president is intent on setting fire to us all — including, of course, plenty of his idiotic Republican supporters, who are most to blame for this gruesome chapter in American history.

They are about to find out that everybody gets hurt during a coup, except for the king.

Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (I choked typing those names and titles) were in Europe this week surrendering to Nazis and Vladimir Putin, spitting on our NATO partners, and doing literally everything they could to show the entire world just how pathetic and weak America has become under the hateful reign of King Gorge.

Measles are making a comeback in Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico has sued for a divorce.

So screwed up, incapable, and hateful are these people that they actually fired 300 staffers who manage our nuclear stockpile Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration, not realizing the agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.

By Friday morning they were googling. “ How do you un-fire government workers that are crucial to making sure we aren’t blown to smithereens?”

As my grandfather used to say, “No sense being an incapable a--hole unless yer gonna show it …”

And before going any further I want to thank all the public servants in our federal government like those at the NNSA, who are in the middle of bloody hell right now simply because they care about America.

Those federal workers who aren’t under constant threat, intimidation and surveillance, have already had their lives completely ripped apart and turned upside down.

Consider the National Park ranger … or the Forest Service botanist … or the scientist in the Department of Health and Human Services who worked their tails off for the necessary qualifications to use that expertise to serve their country only to be kicked to the curb by a drug-addled multi-billionaire, and his boot-licking band of baby hyenas.

These complete pieces of s--- don’t belong outside their basements, much less anywhere near our government. Yet there they are on the inside stealing everything they can get their grubby little hands on.

This is called “a national emergency.”

So why isn’t it being reported that way, mainstream media? There’s just so goddam much blame to go around right now. And say, how are you dopes in Dearborn, Michigan, and elsewhere in this country who just couldn’t vote for the woman making it right now?

Like I said, it’s been a horrible month, and it has driven me to the point of distraction … but back to the heroes in our government, who have been treated like trash by King Gorge.

Many of these human beings who were fired this week had accepted these jobs only months ago. Thousands of them moved hundreds of miles from home, brought their families with them, secured housing and new schools for their kids, all so they could go to work for America.

Now they are jobless, without benefits, and in deep, deep trouble thanks to the orange psychopath, who attacked the very country they aspired to serve.

Only Trump can turn the American dream into a nightmare. It is his specialty, in fact.

Ya know, I really don’t know where in the hell we go from here. The best advice I can give to you right now is to think local. What can you do inside your community that will make a tangible difference and reverberate outward?

Here in Wisconsin, we have the latest “most important election ever” in April when the balance of the state Supreme Court is up for grabs. The Forces for Good finally beat back the Forces of Evil on the radical right to take control of that court two years ago. That resulted in the most gerrymandered state in the country finally getting something resembling fair legislative maps.

Judge Susan Crawford is who you want to support in that one, patriots. So if you can, please help, and thank you.

A Crawford victory will also put a check on Republicans’ plans to take away a woman’s right to choose in this state. That this battle is still being fought is completely absurd, but here we are in America …

Look, I wish I could type about warm, happy times, good people, but we are probably best dealing with the cold realities right now.

We are in deep trouble, and moving about in a dangerous environment where literally anything is possible.

But you knew that, because you care …

If it means anything to you, I plan to keep fighting like hell. This old, salty sailor still has plenty of kick left, even if I suffer from the occasional limp. So if we really are committed to leaning on each other here, then I say we should all take heart, because heart is what we have, and then some.

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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

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