What Would Nellis Say?

 By Rick Stiller 

Our nation has survived societal and political divisions since before the founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia to negotiate a truly equitable form of government two-hundred and fifty years ago. Despite defending conflicting perspectives, their dedication to the most basic principles of liberty and justice for every citizen permitted them to create conciliation and compromise to birth a new more perfect union.

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Through triumphs and tragedies, a civil war that tore the nation apart, economic depressions, social and civil unrest, partisan conflicts, countless foreign wars and entanglements, and devastating natural disasters, we have managed to stand together in defense of the most basic concept of democracy when threatened from without or within…until now.

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For the first time since the Civil War, a tyrannical racist sect has sowed deep divisions in the philosophical and moral core of our society that jeopardize the unity and common purpose that bonded us into a nation. 

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White supremacy and permission to hate were blended into a magic elixir that contrived this cleavage and elected a totalitarian régime to dismantle and demolish the most precious principles that define who we are as a people.

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Targeting refugees, racial minorities, foreign accents and heritage, non-fundamentalist-Christian religions, or opponents of oppression, and branding them as “others” responsible for our nation’s economic and social challenges, provides a focal point for fear, hate, and disunion that fuels the MAGA cult.

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While it’s easy to point fingers, those who defended the indefensible by turning a blind eye to the thousands of children separated from their migrant families (many have yet to be reunited) during Trump’s first term, or the lies that led to more than a quarter-million needless deaths during the Covid crisis, or the hundreds of thousands of refugees (as well as American citizens) who have lived and worked among us for years and are being brutally disappeared by the President’s armed-masked-unidentifiable and unaccountable private army to horrifying concentration camps on American soil before being shipped to even bleaker conditions in African jails. 

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We, all of us, are equally responsible for the shame and disgust we share for allowing a soulless tyrant to be elected to the presidency of the United States and not being brave enough to denounce the inconceivable corruption and feral immorality of the current regime by demanding a return to honesty, integrity, and justice.

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It was not that long ago that we prided ourselves as a nation that welcomed pilgrims and refugees who seized the opportunity to pursue their dreams with vigor and determination by contributing energy and innovation to the nation’s intellectual and economic engine.

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The inscription on the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi’s colossal copper-clad Statue of Liberty, France’s gift to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the United States, reads 

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Our nation has thrived by sustaining the belief that most of us are descended from immigrants, that we are all created equal, and that we are worthy of respect and inclusion by contributing our voices and our allegiance to this experiment in democracy. Welcoming each wave of refugees invigorates our culture and expands our traditions in this melting pot of humanity, instead of demonizing and brutalizing the pilgrims who were desperate enough to brave a journey of hope and embrace the quest for real freedom. 

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While we boast of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, fewer and fewer of us will have the opportunity to enjoy those blessings as our rights and benefits are being stripped away to defund and demolish our government to finance tax rebates for the tyrants and oligarchs behind this insurgency.

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We have allowed bigotry, hate, and cruelty to replace our traditions of empathy, inclusion, and compassion, we have allowed lies and propaganda to replace facts and professional journalism that allowed us to debate consequential issues, reach compromises, and make intelligent decisions that benefitted all of us, and we are allowing extremist censors to erase and rewrite our history and distort reality to gratify their white-supremacist base.

We have witnessed the horror of ethnic cleansing throughout history (the Holocaust, Somalia, or Israel’s mass genocide of civilians and complete devastation of Gaza – with weapons supplied by the United States) and occasionally sent troops to protect the innocent victims of those atrocities but we, as a nation, have never fully overcome our original sin of slavery and segregation. 

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We must demand and accept nothing less than an end to the savagery of detention and expulsion of valued members of our community for the crime of being “undesirable” in the eyes of the henchmen like little Stevie Miller, heartless Tom Homan, or ignorant and inept Marky-Wayne Mullin who command thousands of untrained and untethered troops in our American Gestapo to kidnap, brutalize, and murder our neighbors.

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There is nothing Christian or patriotic about the illiterate flag-waving MAGA bigots who want to return us to the 1860s when white men could legally own slaves, women were the property of their husbands and denied a voice or an independent identity, religious freedom excluded Jews and Catholics, and power was reserved for the wealthiest few.

Our country has struggled through centuries of conflict and confrontation to guarantee real democracy for everyone in our American Community and to resist the relentless enemy within that threatens everything we claim to stand for. We are failing to defend that most sacred ambition.

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While little more than 30% of the population supports the President’s cruel and divisive agenda, nearly 70% of us agree that MAGA fascist autocracy must end. 

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The nation has suffered through Trump’s endless lies, blatant racism and xenophobia, the vehement  vengeance campaign, flagrant and unprecedented graft, and losing a pointless war that never had a defined goal nor a strategy to resolve it, while the country is hemorrhaging blood and money, which impedes domestic trust and confidence. 

His administration is denying reality by ignoring the economic nightmare facing middle American families, while he boasts about wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on tacky vanity projects to reinforce and commemorate his own inflated ego.

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At our core, we have always prided ourselves with the belief that we are a kind and generous people dedicated to protecting and defending our neighbors and our communities, willing to lend a hand to those in need and welcome the wayward pilgrim…but either it was never true or we have lost our way.

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There was a time when ethics, empathy, kindness, generosity, and compassion were revered and respected, when knowledge and intellectual curiosity were valued, when opposing views invited debate and compromise, when we could believe that tomorrow held unlimited promise, if we were willing to join in the quest for a better life for all…but we’ve allowed the best of who we are to be hijacked and replaced with anger, hate, and division. The new mantra is that anyone who isn’t just like you, or advocates a different political philosophy, or worships a different god is an enemy to be feared, attacked, and punished.

We are at our best when we value and honor the multifaceted rainbow of talents, opinions, and perspectives that provide a unique diversity in finding creative solutions and reconciling insurmountable differences, building trust and respect, and constantly improving the admirable foundations for our children’s future.

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We know who we can be, who we are capable of being. Now we need to refuse to accept anything less.

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The enormous success of the No Kings rallies reveals the magnitude of pent-up resistance in the population, but in order  to shut down the dark forces, we need to have massive protests in every city every day. 

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We need our better angels to gather outside every ICE detention facility, in every courthouse hearing immigration cases where ICE agents wait in the hallways to harass and arrest refugees who are following the law, real patriots need to show up in every school, church, or sanctuary in every minority community where our neighbors are threatened.

Trump has made no secret of his intention to employ every available power to restrict and impede voting in the November elections. The patriots who marched in protest need to organize to man and protect every polling place in the country against intrusions by ICE thugs, Federal Agents, or MAGA-Republican “observers” who intend to intimidate voters and disrupt the balloting.

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It’s time for real Americans to stand together to defeat this monster and renew our commitment to each other, to the future of our democracy, and everything it stands for. The moment to act on that responsibility is upon us and procrastination will guarantee the demolition of all we hold most sacred.

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The Declaration of Independence concludes, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

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We would be wise to heed the Founding Fathers’ advice.

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Stand Up! Speak Out! Volunteer! Make a Difference!

For more of Rick’s essays and novels visit www.rickstiller.com and check out the magnificent floral portraits from his garden at www.rickstillerart.com.