What Would Nellis Say?
Save Our Democracy
save our democracy
By Rick Stiller
Trump’s poorly attended micro-convention in Dallas, which most national Republican legislators refused to attend and half the audience walked out during his rambling, self-indulgent, incoherent tirades, was testament to the complete failure of the imposter president, his administration’s policies, MAGA-moronics, and the dissolution of his shrinking base.
His egocentric second term has been dedicated to erecting monuments to himself, destroying government services, seeking revenge against his enemies, getting us embroiled in pointless and endless foreign conflicts, picking fights with our closest allies, crushing the economy with self-destructive tariffs that are driving inflation and bankrupting families, farmers, and small businesses, and using his position to stuff his family’s bank accounts with billions of dollars in the first year alone.
Trump’s lineup of second-string MAGA surrogates could not find any accomplishments to boast about besides his personal Gestapo rounding up, brutalizing, and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of workers, grandparents, and innocent children in revolting conditions in hastily constructed, privately mismanaged concentration camps without legal representation to await deportation to sadistic and inhumane incarceration in third-world countries they have never visited. Most were not guilty of any crime besides having brown skin or speaking with an accent.
None of the speakers mentioned the cost of gas, soaring grocery prices, the myriad of challenges affecting working people, the loss of programs and benefits that support our children (school lunches, after-school care, SNAP, vaccinations, and Medicaid), or the degradation of our standing as leader and defender of the free world to become an incompetent pariah and laughingstock in diplomatic circles. Most of his feckless proxies who took the stage in Dallas resorted to 1950’s McCarthy-esque propaganda dog whistles by screaming about phantom Democratic “communists” and “socialists”, while none of them could define those two words or identify any actual threats to our system of government.
If “communism” is partially defined as government control of industry and the economy, Fat Donnie, who campaigned on “free markets” and railed against government interference in commerce, is guilty of blackmailing lawyers, institutions of higher education, and the tech industry, while demanding a financial stake in more than 30 companies, including U.S. Steel, semiconductors, critical minerals, and nuclear energy. His tax return revealed income of $2.2 billion since taking office and sons Donald, Jr. and Eric’s investment firms have signed more than $6 billion in Pentagon contracts (for which they have no background or expertise) and more billions from foreign construction and branding projects.
Trump and his MAGA devotees are going to lose the House and the Senate in the November elections because they trashed a healthy economy, demolished critical government agencies, programs, and benefits, kidnapped hundreds of thousands of our neighbors and murdered more than a few, cashed in on their power and positions, ignored the hardships being endured by working Americans, and failed to fulfill the phony campaign promises that got Republicans elected in 2024.
Their only hope of avoiding investigations, indictments, and convictions is to employ the levers of state to suppress voting by gerrymandering maps, diluting or removing minority districts and adding to the red roster to bolster local control and salvage potential House seats, eliminating many polling places in non-Republican districts, attempting to delete opposition and minority voters from Voter Registration Rolls, and proposing that a United States Postal Service Ai program based on those federally edited voter rolls would decide which unopened mail-in ballots are valid and which would be tossed in the trash.
With ballots in North Carolina, Delaware, and Alabama already being mailed, the Supreme Court finally blocked this part of their plan to disrupt this election, with radical extremists Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas ignoring the Constitution and their oath of office to side with Trump, as they have in almost every decision since his second term began, by dissenting.
The Supreme Court’s rulings (particularly their April 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais allowing states to enact discriminatory voting laws and maps) nullified major portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was passed and amended to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments protecting minority voting rights. Those decisions have eviscerated the intent and enforcement of the legal ramparts terminating restrictive Jim Crow laws permitting discrimination and disenfranchisement that made the best intentions of Reconstruction after the Civil War irrelevant and unenforceable.
The Republican Court opened a pandora’s box of venomous vipers when they allowed political action committees to collect massive anonymous contributions and distribute unlimited funds without oversight. Pushing it into absurd realms, radical extremist billionaires have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into state and local elections that might affect their businesses. (i.e. Musk’s failed attempt to sully a State Supreme Court election in Wisconsin in 2024 with a $24 million last-minute contribution or his massive (purported to be $200 million) generosity to Texas’s corrupt, impeached, and indicted Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s failing campaign).
DHS and the Department of Justice have sued (and lost) in more than 30 states to allow federal access to voting machines and force state officials to hand over unredacted election data and voter registration rolls with private information like voters driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers to find non-existent evidence of voter fraud. They have threatened to withhold disaster relief funds and counterterrorism grants from states that do not cooperate, and sent threatening letters to intimidate top election officials in blue or purple states with fines, criminal prosecution, and harassment of family and loved ones.
“Mr. Trump also gutted the government’s election security infrastructure. Experts warn that his cuts to agencies tasked with coordinating election security with state governments could reduce visibility into foreign influence campaigns and cyberattacks.”
Although the Constitution excludes the executive branch from any role in running elections, Mr. Trump argues that he is trying to secure the integrity of the vote (without presenting any evidence of tampering) by proposing that the federal government usurp authority to dictate management of State-run elections. His claims of widespread fraud in the election system have been investigated and debunked repeatedly, and critics say his actions needlessly sow doubt about the outcome of the vote.
“A survey showed that only 34 percent of U.S. adults trust government certifications of election results “a great deal” or “quite a bit,” down from 40 percent in 2024.” The Brennan Center and other academic reviews conclude voter impersonation and large-scale illegal voting are vanishingly rare and none has changed the outcome of an election in the history of our country.
As we rush towards November 3rd, the administration’s efforts to instill chaos and doubt in the leadup to the election is exposing their desperation by proposing installing Republican/MAGA “monitors”, armed ICE troopers in full regalia, and Federal Marshals in polling stations, seizing ballots, voting machines, and the computers that tally the votes, and ultimately creating a “national emergency” that would warrant deploying federal troops (particularly in minority districts), and/or cancelling or postponing the election altogether.
This might be our last opportunity to cast a vote that is registered and counted in a free and fair election. Only a massive turnout and a decisive undeniable landslide will guarantee an end to Trump’s corruption, reigning in our flagging economy to preserve the working class, bringing indictments and convictions for the crimes committed by this administration and our American Gestapo, and restoring pride, purpose, and unity to our national conversation.
We know who we are and who we’re supposed to be, and the only way to resurrect our democracy is to end the Trump nightmare by denouncing the bigots and racists who have divided our once tolerant and empathetic society into warring camps, denied and demolished the very concept of truth, and tarnished the American dream.
Vote! Take everyone you know with you! Then volunteer to protect minority polling places from intimidation and interference by Republican intruders or federal obstruction. The American people can win this election for an American future that benefits and includes all of us…but it depends on your vote!
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.