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"T" For Torch Of Triumph [1]
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Date: 2025-04-17
It is time I think to reclaim the letter ‘T’ in America, for it has been much degraded of late. Trump, Tesla, Tariffs, all are now T-words of infamy for Americans, and will remain so, associated for generations to come when a fascist dictatorial Tyrant, and he is that, another T-word ... got his seditious opportunity to destroy our Constitutional Democratic Republic from within. Trump gleefully declared tariff war on our economy, damaged the world’s economies, then went golfing for corrupt blood-money riches as the bodies of four American soldiers training in Lithuiana were Transferred With Dignity without his greed-distorted soul attending the ceremony. Truth … a crystalline-sharp T-word misappropriated to shamefully name the tyrant’s own gaslighting propaganda social media money grab … is that his absence from that Dignified Transfer at Dover Air Force Base was an unintended mercy, as Trump’s dark malicious disrespectful shadow hovered over his own hands clutching Saudi gold near his infamous Florida lair, and not their American Flag-Draped coffins. Trump, uniquely in our national presidential history, occupies a place of dishonor, of treason many believe, even as he exercises Commander-In-Chief authority over the American military. I hope, speaking for myself, that he never again attends a Dignified Transfer, nor an Arlington Cemetery Wreath Laying Ceremony, nor any other military honor event … our uniformed forces deserve so much better than him. He avoids Dignified Transfers because some family member might say something to him he doesn’t like, as happened once … so I may get my hope.
The Statue of Liberty in New York on Liberty Island … Her official title is ‘Liberty Enlightens the World’... holds above her head in her outstretched right arm, a ‘Torch’. The Torch symbolizes human ‘Enlightenment’ as we travel history’s journey vanquishing enslavement on the path to Liberty. She stands there with her left foot upon a broken shackle chain, a restraint used in our past for slaves brought to the colonies and later the states. Liberty also holds a dovetail handled tablet, a ‘tabula ansata’ , inscribed with the date of ‘July 4, 1776’ in Roman Numerals. She welcomes human souls bound by oppression to our free country. As American national symbols go, The Statue of Liberty is second only to our Flag. The free country she welcomes the world to, however, is currently under attack from inside its’ own house. The attackers, Trump and his fanatical Magazi cult, are trying to shackle our minds, diminish our government, control our lives, dictate our future, and rewrite our national history. Liberty’s Torch, for me anyway, also illuminates that broken shackle chain She stands upon. How, we must ask in these dire times, did those chain’s evil links come to be broken? What else can we see in the Torch’s light of our American history? Of our human history?
One answer, a glorious one in fact, is ‘Triumph’! Americans Triumph over evil, over enslavement, over fascist dictators trying to subjugate the world, over the darkness that from time to time hurts and kills so many. We Americans have Triumphed over so much. Now, we need to do so, once again. In that Torch’s light, we see what it sometimes has taken to break those chain links wherever or whoever tried to fasten them. And that is … the force of violence directed toward those who forged and emplaced those chains. We hope and we try to avoid that, always until desperation, through negotiations, protest, civil dis-obedience, boycotts, swaying votes for the next election, international diplomacy, trade restrictions on dictator-benighted countries ... the list of methods to overcome the evils I listed and others, wherever they originate from, is long, and sometimes thankfully, it is effective. Other times, however … it is not. What it will take this time is not clear yet, but our concerns are real and increasingly dire for many.
Trump is relentlessly pushing a tyrannical agenda that crowns him as a dictator king who alone determines what is legal for him to do, and that will in all likelihood eventually be met with violent resistance against his un-American un-Constitutional dictates. The majority of Americans will not consent to obey the demands of a dictator, even one from our own midst. So we should expect conflict as Trump’s extreme lawless evil insults to our history and our founding ideals engender resistance outside the usual methods of political opposition in democracies. When tyrants try to destroy their own national democratic institutions and remove the long established safeguards that protect citizens from out-of-control government abuse by a dictator and his believers ... in this time here, the Magazis … safeguards achieved over centuries at great human cost and sacrifice … there will inevitably be forms of resistance against the resurrection and emplacement of those broken shackle chain links Lady liberty stands upon fronting the harbor of Trump’s own hometown. Perhaps he never visited her. If he ever did, he was not, it is sadly obvious now, paying attention. In fact, given his morbid obsession with his own narcissism, he might try to replace Liberty with a statue of himself. Don’t laugh … “not a joke” as our previous President liked to say. And the Republicans called him a dictator. That was a joke, when compared to Trump now we all know, but they did it anyway. We are all unfortunately, however, hoisted on their false, now far too real, petard. That was one of my Dad’s favorite sayings.
I have written before of my love for old movies. Recently I saw an excellent one, Oscar-nominated 1941’s ‘The Son of Monte Cristo”. The movie is an adaptation of French author Alexandre Dumas’ original story ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, who first serialized and then published his story of political repression, false charges and revenge, as a book in 1846. This derivative movie (free on YouTube), tells a different story, of an attempt by a scheming tyrannical military ruler to squash all political dissent in a small fictionalized Balkan European nation, trying to cement his absolute rule by imprisoning and executing opposition leaders, destroying underground printing presses, marrying the rightful hereditary ruler’s daughter ‘Princess Zona’ who supports freedom in her nation, and getting funding to do all his evil tyranting through a vast loan from the wealthiest man in Europe, who is the son of the deceased ‘Count of Monte Cristo’. In this movie, the wealthiest European man it turns out, also supports freedom and abhors political repression, just the opposite of here and now, with the abominable Magazi-saluting Elon Musk. While on a visit to this small country, The Son of Monte Cristo learns of the dictator’s evil efforts to destroy the citizen’s freedoms there, and he decides to fully cast his lot in with the oppressed dissidents, despite it being a very perilous choice for him personally.
To fight the dictator’s repressions, the Son of Monte Cristo decides to assume two personas, one not genuine but useful to ingratiate himself with the tyrant while concealing his true intentions, whereas the other is designed to inspire hope and resistance among the increasingly oppressed population. As that second persona and as a symbol for the people, he calls himself ‘The Torch’. Sometimes alone, or sometimes in concert with others, he engages in acts of sabotage and resistance, some violent … to confront the increasing outrages the military tyrant inflicts upon the people to crush all opposition to his absolute rule by fear and violence. ‘The ‘Torch’, whose signed written statements are left at scenes of political acts and in public places, is in this movie, as it also is in Liberty’s raised hand on Liberty Island … a symbol of resistance to those who seek to deny human freedom, to oppose evil dictators and tyrannical enslavers who demand and reward only absolute obedience to their immoral and evil mercurial whims in their exercise of political power. Filmed eighty-five years ago, ‘The Son of Monte Cristo’ and his ‘The Torch” opposition fighter disguise, could not be more relevant to our current political crisis of impending absolute tyranny, than if it came out of Hollywood last week. At least, for myself, anyway. Trump is now saying he wants to deport and exile into brutal political foreign prison camps American citizens, where he and his Magazi minions conveniently then proffer the claim that those deported are outside the jurisdiction of their power to ever return them to the USA. Trump’s list of crimes that would warrant such disappearance are certain to expand, to soon likely engulf those who speak out against his tyranny. Disobedience, different thinking, and failure to extol his virtues always, are Trump’s most hated behaviors. So, we must expect this will be coming our way.
The image that sits at the top of this story, is indicative of the quandary American’s who are not in the Trump Magazi cult, find ourselves in. There are many historical teaching precedents, even in our lifetimes. These are two somewhat disparate ones only. Mahatma Ghandi practiced non-violent opposition to oppressive racial repression and multi-generational national occupation, yet despite suffering violent retaliation by occupying British soldiers, he eventually liberated hundreds of millions from the then-hated rule by force of the British Raj in India. Guy Fawkes, a fanatical religionist, with other conspirators, tried to use violence to destroy by gunpowder the British House of Lords and install, he hoped, a Catholic Monarch to the Throne of England. Non-violence in India, succeeded. Attempted violence in England, was thwarted and failed. Had Fawkes’ conspiracy detonated, that result is forever unknown. But … what will happen here? What will happen when Trump’s accumulated oppressive acts, his thrusts of lawless spearheads into our revered Constitution conceived in Democracy and written in ink but preserved by the blood of centuries of patriots who fought for freedom… a document already wounded grievously in just his first three months of power … exceed the tolerance of those who oppose the absolute obedience-first dictatorship of a self-crowned Magazi king? I believe I know. I hope I am wrong … but hope, as someone said … is not a plan. We must have a plan to confront the existential political threat our nation faces today. To keep those shackle chains broken beneath Liberty’s foot, to keep the ‘Torch’ in Liberty’s hand lighting our inherited destiny. Difficult times are here already, and more difficult choices loom ahead. Americans before us, however, have Triumphed in the crises they faced. I believe we will also … And so I began this story with an idea that we reclaim the ‘T-words’ for ourselves, especially the best of them anyway. A modest suggestion, but a useful one perhaps.
Violence undoubtedly has broken chains. But also non-violence has as well. What will it take here and in coming months, one or the other, or perhaps both? I fear if it is the former. Sometimes, however, when the outrages against liberty are unbearable ... a “Torch’ is required as in that movie I described. Tyrannical dictators do not relinquish power, even those more grounded in reality than Trump in his Magazi fever-dream mental ‘worship-me-always’ hellscape. Indeed, everything they do is about acquiring more, and securing what they have. Perhaps, and this is a long shot … if some key Republicans somehow realized their tool they used to gain power again, has become a political voracious parasite that will destroy it’s host if left un-treated … we might avoid the most-feared outcomes marching toward our nation. If you think you might want to tell them that, it might not be a bad idea. But, so far … they do not seem to be able to grasp the real peril they have put us in. Doing something is at least doing something, however, and beseeching them to recognize the onrushing darkness increasing daily, is one of those things. We are at the point now, though, where a whisper of a Republican group considering something like impeachment … will mean their freedom and health is endangered. We are that far down the dark hole of true unbridled tyranny already. Trump spends his hours ranting and raving in print and to microphones every chance he gets, about what’s wrong with everybody he despises. It is a long list. And then his threatening cult-drenched Magazi regime enforcers fan out to repeat his grievances, extolling his wondrousness, insulting and threatening anyone not obeying just like them. Even if you then spend a night in a Holiday Inn, you don’t feel better the next day.
Of course, we who write resistance stories here, or comment here, may be exposed to the dictator’s wrath eventually, somehow. But silence is not an option, is it? I do expect the dark net of dictatorial ordered media repression to increase, although in this age of social media there are so many talking fishies that hauling them all in will never be possible. Each new freedom-denying and thought-constricting and democracy-destroying outrage the Magazi leader orders, creates new swimming schools of fed-up Americans ready to throw tea into the water because our history, our cherished ideals, our American identity are for most of us, in mortal opposition to any dictator king telling us what we are allowed to think and to say. Trump in his evil Magazi madnesses has quickly managed to get those democracies of the world that mostly liked the United States, even Canada!, to dislike us under him. And in those countries whose people hunker under evil tyrants of their own, they see those murderers popping corks and getting gilded invitations to The White House.
For me, here as the Magazi gloom spreads under Trump … I truly believe that the ‘Torch’ Lady Liberty holds lights the path to certain victory over the fear cast upon our nation by a corroded vile villainous dictator who will fail, and fall or be toppled, like all of them do, sooner or later. Each of us, in our own ways, can be a Torch also. The time is here now. Our free country is in great peril. We will not obey. Eventual Triumph over this wretched tyranny will come. Triumph! We reclaim that T-word. It is what we do, what our ancestors have done, and what we will do one way or another whatever the cost, once again.
[END]
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