Three weeks in and we have Fort Sumter. By Hal M. Brown

If you know the most basic bit of American history, and I assume since no MAGAs read my Substack, that you do, when someone asks you why Fort Sumter is significant you can tell them that this is where the first shots of the Civl War were fired by Confedrate forces attacking a Union fort.

Here's how Wikipedia describes this battle:

The attack on Fort Sumter is generally taken as the beginning of the American Civil War—the first shots fired. Certainly it was so taken at the time—citizens of Charleston were celebrating. The First Battle of Fort Sumter began on April 12, 1861, when South Carolina Militia artillery fired from shore on the Union garrison. These were (both sides agreed) the first shots of the war. The bombardment continued all day, watched by many happy civilians. The fort had been cut off from its supply line and surrendered the next day. Major Robert Anderson took the flag with him as they evacuated.

What has just happened mere few weeks into the Trump presidency is that we have had our Fort Sumpter in the form of Trump attacking federal agencies and, as I wrote yesterday, locking Democratic members of Congress out of federal buildings. 

The war is about to escalate as Trump threatens to defy court orders and Vance, Musk, and some Republican members of Congress say he has every right to do this.

It is worse than that. There are also thinly veiled threats to try to take control of the media.

Two Substacks describe this today:

Ben Meiselas writes in The Meidas Touch “Trump is threatebning to prosecute us.”

We knew this would happen. As Trump gets more desperate, we always thought he would try to use his Department of Justice and FBI to attack Meidas and try to shut us down. Since MeidasTouch is not on terrestrial TV or cable TV, the FCC does not have regulatory authority over us. Since we don’t have investors, the SEC and DOJ do not have regulatory authority over us to approve mergers. So what is an authoritarian regime to do?

This weekend, Elon Musk published a letter from the top Trump federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., stating he would be investigating “networks” that covered and exposed Elon Musk’s team for seizing control of government agencies and people’s private data. Then, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary stated she would be going after networks that exposed ICE raids and protected migrants. Trump is apparently livid at the coverage by us and others who have alerted migrants about ICE raids.

Robert Reich wrote “The end of law?:”

He is the most lawless president in American history.

He’s allowed Musk’s rats unfettered access to the Treasury’s payments system. Banned birthright citizenship. Refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. Closed independent agencies without Congress’s approval. Substituted political loyalists for civil servants. Unleashed the military on civilians. And on it goes.

Republican lawmakers won’t restrain him. In one of the most shameful apologia for dictatorship I’ve ever heard coming from a public official, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina admits that much of what Trump is doing “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.” But, Tillis adds, “nobody should bellyache about that.”

We shouldn’t bellyache about Trump’s torching the Constitution?

As Trump’s marauding continues, America's last defense is the federal courts. But the big story here (which hasn’t received nearly the attention it deserves) is that the Trump-Vance-Musk regime is ignoring the courts.

Here’s some of what George Conway said on Morning Joe: 'Mark my words': George Conway predicts alarming showdown that could 'end' U.S. democracy.

"They are violating the text of statutes by having DOGE run around and do all the things that they've been doing, the executive orders, there's no reason that this government that has decided not to obey the laws and the Constitution of the United States is going to obey a court order and, as you know, having practiced law there's really only one way that courts can enforce their orders when somebody is being contumacious and refusing to obey an order, and that's to send the U.S. Marshals out to take somebody in and to hold them in contempt or to otherwise enforce court orders."

"Well, who does the U.S. Marshals Service work for?" Conway added. "The U.S. Marshals Service is part of the United States Department of Justice. It reports to Donald J. Trump, and what's going to happen here, mark my words, is that at some point, they are going to basically tell the United States Marshals Service, do not enforce any of these orders, we will not obey them, and you are not to enforce them and, once that happens, I mean, I hope it doesn't happen, but I know in my heart that it will, our 236-year experiment in the federal rule of law, in democratic self-governance for the United States of America, in American constitutionalism, is essentially over."

Conway didn't see any institutional bulwark against Trump's abuse of the rule of law.

The difference between what is happening now, and what happened at Fort Sumter, is that we now have the equivalent of the Union firing on a Confederate fort. The Confederate soldiers were the rebels. They were waging war against the elected goverment of the United States. Now we are the rebels. We are engaged in a battle against an elected government. There is an equivalency. The country is equally divided. Unfortunately, this is only by population rather than by hard power. We have the ability to wield soft power which, unfortunately, is akin to bringing a knife to a gunfight.

We are the rebels. We are like guerrillas. Guerrillas can win a war when a majority of the population supports them, but we only have half. We have to fight smart though being on the side of righteousness isn’t enough.

Robert Hubbell writes” We are not sheep. Get louder. Take action. Create a shadow cabinet.”

Over the weekend, Musk and JD Vance each posted statements asserting that the president should or could defy court orders. A Harvard law professor joined the conversation by endorsing the notion that judicial restraints on the president violate the separation of powers doctrine.

They mean business, folks. They want Trump to be unbounded by the Constitution, Congress, or the courts. In other words, they want a dictator. They think we are sheep who will huddle together for safety and look the other way. They are wrong, and it is time for us to let them know by raising the volume.

Let’s skip through thousands of words of analysis and get to the point: Trump believes that he is immune from all laws, can ignore Congress, and spend money (or not) based on his whims (or those of teenage hackers and rogue AI), and that we will dutifully send our tax dollars to Washington without so much as a whimper.

Hubbell recommends the actions we can take against this:.

• Street protests must continue to grow daily.
• Telephone lines into the offices of every US Representative and Senator should melt from the volume and anger of the messages.
• Everyone in America should belong to a grassroots organization that is actively involved in planning protests (even if you are unable to show up at the protests).
• Engage in daily acts of resistance: Jessica Craven Chop Wood Carry Water, Third Act, and 5Calls.org, and others.
• Support Democrats while demanding that they act in a manner consistent with the constitutional emergency we face.
• Support the legal advocacy organizations leading the fight in court: Democracy Forward, Public Citizen, Democracy Docket, ACLU, and other legal advocacy groups

We should do as much of this as we can but not kid ourselves into false optimism but we should not wallow in pessimism. We must be realistic. This is a battle against an enemy that is better armed than we are which in addtion to controlling Congres is supported by of half the population. 

The Civil War lasted four years. It is a grim coincidence that this is how long Trump’s presidency is supposed to last. If he wins the war it may last longer than that, but our power will be be greatly diminshed. Since mass peaceful protests will have been outlawed we may end up being solitary rebels hiding in basements trying to find a way to use the internet to have our voices heard. This may be difficult since Substack and Google Blogger which is owned by Google where it’s CEO is a Trumper and where I post a mirror of my Substack, may be shut down.

You may not be ale to read what I and others post on Bluesky. Not that more than a few people are interested in what I have to say, but if they take RawStory down they won’t be able to follow my comments to their articles.

Addendum

We all may have to figure out how to use TOR to post and read websites on the dark web. Make a hard copy of this: What Is the Dark Web? Here's How to Access It Safely (and What You'll Find)

Related Substack about our resistance using peaceful unconventional warfare.

Update: If you think I am going overboard in raising the alarm about what Trump would like to do, and how Kash Pattel wants to turn the FBI into Trump and his Gestapo, read this.

Bending at the knee before Trump with a pile of Benjamins: A new to me Ben Franklin quote deserves to be shared. By Hal M. Brown

 

The irony of all this, depicted above with a generic AI created billionaire bending at the knees (you have to imagine he's before Trump), is that Ben Franklin ended up with his face on the $100 bill. I wonder how he'd feel today about the role money plays in politics?

He might remind us of the following:"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

I read the quote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" in a comment to Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column "The risks of declaring fealty to Donald Trump: Don’t count on the president-elect to reward knee-bending with gratitude" (subscription).

Robinson begins:

Titans of industry and commerce, beware. When you bend the knee to the Mad King, when you shower him with money and bathe him in flattery, he will receive your gifts with apparent gratitude. But he will want more. He will always want more.

He concludes:

But if history is any guide, reasonable people who try to work with Trump eventually reach a point where they feel they have to part ways with him. And when those reasonable people tell the world why, Trump lashes out at them. He tries to hurt them. He does not forgive — unless the “traitor” offers a humiliating public display of submission, as did Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, and so many other Republican politicians. But even then, Trump never, ever forgets.

Meanwhile, half of the country — the half that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, and that believes Trump has forfeited the right to ever be seen as a “normal” president — sees the traffic jam of limousines in the Mar-a-Lago driveway as, most charitably, an obvious mistake.

What’s the definition of hubris? Telling oneself, “I’m going to be the one who finally talks some sense into Donald Trump. Surely, he’ll listen to me.”

I saw the Franklin quote, which was new to me, in the comments (click below to enlarge). You can read my reply to Kevin Slick on the bottom.

This is Kevin Slick's BlueSky page. He confirmed that the comment was his.

He has a substack page which includes his music (here).

As I promised I posted the quote on BlueSky with the illustration I used for this blog:

It turns out that this quote has been the subject of scholarship, for example in the website "A Quote in Context" I found a 2020 article by Leya Delray on the subject (here) which goes into depth about the meaning. 

This is the paragraph in Franklin's writing which includes the quote which I highlighted:

“…we have the most sensible Concern for the poor distressed Inhabitants of the Frontiers. We have taken every Step in our Power, consistent with the just Rights of the Freemen of Pennsylvania, for their Relief, and we have Reason to believe, that in the Midst of their Distresses they themselves do not wish us to go farther. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety…”

I also found an interview on NPR's All Things Considered with Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the editor of Lawfare (here), which includes the following about what Franklin was referring to in the quote:

He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.

Here's an article about how liberals (supposedly) misuse the quote: How The World Butchered Benjamin Franklin’s Quote On Liberty Vs. Security.

That article begins:

One of America’s favorite liberal phrases has been sent through the political spin machine and polished into a Frankenstein of sorts, thus rendering it inaccurate and far from its original intention. You might have heard that American founding father Benjamin Franklin said something like “Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither.”

The quote has been the siren song of anti-war protesters and, most recently, the banner for mass online protests against the NSA’s surveillance program.

 

However, it goes on to explain:

The letter wasn’t about liberty but about taxes and the ability to “raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him.”

 

Indeed, if you look at the text surrounding the famous quote, it’s pretty clearly about money: “Our assemblies have of late had so many supply bill, and of such different kinds, rejected, on various pretences,” wrote Franklin.

 

There’s not much on liberty, as we understand the concept, in the entire letter.

You can see how the quote is quite relevant to the situation today where a billionaire bunch is bending at the knee before, as Robinson describes Trump, a  mad King, with bags of cash to curry his favor. In this sense the quote applies to these drenched in dollars corporate king kissers. It is about their liberty and their safety to make as much money as possible. 

Addendum:

I've admired Ben Franklin since I was a child and read the 1939 book "Ben and Me" which is a story told from the perspective of a mouse, Amos, who lived in his house and became his good friend and advisor.

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