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In America, the Game of Thrones is for pretenders-- no kings, not ever... [1]
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Date: 2025-06-15
a nation of dreamers
America once had a King with a dream. And for him, it will always be a dream deferred. He was a King by birth. His dream was shaped by America’s then-unfulfilled promise of full equality. He was assassinated for his efforts. Who would have thought that a nonviolent movement could breed so much residual hatred and violence? What was true then, as now, is that for those who dare to dream, dreams die hard amid the harsh realities of human nature. Others have darker dreams, twisted dreams, and for them, nonviolence represents weakness. Their aggression displaces dreams with nightmares.
Donald Trump, today, wants to be king. The history of America began with a rejection of a monarch. We have no thrones, no royal ambitions. Our founders dreamed of a nation in which citizens ruled and, as imperfect as their efforts were, their dream forever changed the world. In America, no one bends a knee to royalty. To be a king here is to be a pretender to a non-existent throne.
This week, the nation was awash with broken dreams and promises. The obsessions generated by the far right are embodied by those exhibited by Donald Trump and his administration. His dream is of an amber-encased America, trapped in a past that favored some but held out only promises for others. An America that enslaved blacks, ignored women, welcomed immigrants to take advantage of their cheap labor, and inveigled their children to work long hours for even less pay. These were the good old days for the wealthy and privileged, and the days that held out a promise that someday we might all be lifted up. Full equality for all men promised to be a by-product of the founders’ heady dreams of a burgeoning, inclusive democracy.
The Great Pretender
Of all the preinaugural pledges made by Mr. Trump, the one in which he promised to be a ‘dictator for only a day’ is one he has conveniently ignored, a broken promise. The accepted fact by both his followers and his opposition is that he will lie. The would-be king speaks exclusively in ambiguities and vagueness. The ‘Dictator for a Day’ was simply a pretext for “as long as I feel like.” The MAGA culturati who snickered at us for taking him seriously knew all along he was just kidding. His day-one dictator to-do list included a host of policy measures that would make any dictator blush:
To say that America, on paper, is a very different place than it was just a few days ago would be an understatement. And while Trump’s Day 1 has come and gone, it does not appear like he’s slowing down anytime soon – there is good reason to believe these Day 1 broken promises could be kept in Month 1 or within the first 100 days. And for the Trump voters who believed he was all talk and not so much action, they are likely in for a pretty nasty surprise. — Courier News, “A comprehensive list of Trump’s broken (and kept) Day 1 promises,” by Lucy Ritzmann
Let’s remember, he promised mass deportations and to “drill, baby drill” (wonder if he knows he borrowed the phrase from a Michael Steele slogan unveiled at the 2008 McCain convention), but openly added to his list of items freeing all the J6 criminals, dismantling the Education Department, ending birthright citizenship, and ending food and medicines to starving and sick children. And at that, the day one dictator wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
visions of grandeur
At the moment, we are all caught up in Donald’s fever dream. Today, we have to deal with his birthday parade, a multi-million vanity splurge pretending to honor a military whose dead he despises as suckers and losers. During the week, he was humiliated in turn by Vladimir Putin and Bibi Netanyahu, who openly dismissed his diplomatic overtures. The wars he boasted he would end in a day erupted into even more treacherous phases. Only in his mind, they were to be his ticket to Oslo and the Nobel Peace Prize. He failed to research the history of the Nobel honors. No dictator, not even a dictator for a day, has ever received the honor. It should be noted that in another time when madness reigned, the Axis butchers Mussolini (2x), Stalin (2x), and Hitler were nominated for the honor but were rejected out of hand.
More news today that 2 Minnesota lawmakers were gunned down along with their spouses by a Trump supporter angered by their politics. One couple died, the other is recovering from a madness his violent nature has unleashed upon the land. No Nobel category covers his curious attributes— he provokes violence, he fills others with hatred. His madness defines his dreams.
The American Dream was always aspirational— attainable, but never fully realized. The phrase was minted in the depths of the Great Depression by the author and historian James Adams in 1931. This “Adams”, unrelated to the founding family of Adamses, ironically was the son of a Venezuelan immigrant who was descended from an indentured servant. In his book, The Epic of America, he defined the American experience as "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement." It acknowledges the universality of the opportunities available here. Those opportunities are what despots target to create divisions based on wealth and status. Adams finished his definition of the dream with:
“It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." — James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America
It was a codicil of our founding documents, spelling out the consequences of the experiment that earlier Adamses had helped set in motion. In America, there are no kings, no dictators, only citizens and pretenders.
And the dream so long deferred remains powerful and motivating, waiting for the day it is fully realized:
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