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You Will Cry Out Because of Your King
When we eventually become aware of what we have given up, what it really means to surrender participation, voice, and responsibility, it will be too late.
Mar 14, 2025
As a clergy person who has served congregations in the Black and of-color communities in Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C. for over 45 years I am acutely aware of the traumas and anxieties that are encountered because of changing political administrations nationally, regionally, and locally, and how they impact families and lives.
Politicians and even the media often speak in broad generalities of what a change means statistically, according to the latest poll, and its implications for government and how it may set a precedent or not. But those of us serving pastorally in local communities are called upon to allay fears, to bind the wounds, make meaning out of the meaninglessness, find silver linings amid the dark clouds, and to identify hope in the despair and confusion. We have done this many times, but at no time has the impact been as stark, devastating, or as frightening as it is now.
With U.S. President Trump, Elon Musk, DOGE, and their radical approach to government there are many lives traumatized by the fears who are suffering from the emotional abuse inflicted on those who have worked for the federal government and their families. There are also many contractors and vendors associated with government work experiencing the same high anxieties that come with the uncertainty and worries associated with the political battering of uncertainty and threats inflicted on families and their sense of stability and security.
Now is the time to stir from our shock and catatonic state and begin to act, demonstrate, drown out town hall and community gatherings wherever they occur before we completely lose all memory of participatory debate, discourse, dialogue, or what the compromise and tensions of democracy look and feel like.
Living in Washington, D.C., I along with my colleagues feel that we are in the epicenter of this upheaval and must deal with this psychological tsunami. But by no means does this affect only Washington, D.C., because 80% of government employees are outside of the Washington, D.C. area. However, the perception is government equals Washington, D.C. and the message telegraphed by the Trump-Musk-DOGE fraternity is that they are dismantling The District of Columbia, its "deep state," putting Blacks and people of color in "their place" (as D.C. serves as a symbol of a Black and diverse town with a "woke" population, and where DEI abounds). They are stridently trying to demonstrate that they are reestablishing the good ole days of white supremacy and Manifest Destiny by taking the country back and making it Great Again in terms of absolute control both at home and abroad.
The imperialistic whim is expressed in changing the name of the Native American-associated Alaskan mountain peak, Denali, to Mount McKinley. The name Denali is largely used by Alaskans and Native people and translated to mean "The High One," referring to the more-than-20,000-foot mountain peak that dominates the landscape. The royal decree is amplified in the assertion that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America and in punishing The Associated Press by banning them from the White House press corps for not acquiescing to the imperialistic name change. The list of royal decrees has suggested that Canada be annexed along with Greenland, and insinuated that Panama come under the control of the U.S. again. These are all imperialistic assertions and fantasy.
These assertions should be stridently questioned and analyzed by various media. However, in January 6 fashion the media forums historically entrusted to be defenders of democracy by maintaining a free and non-government controlled press have been bullied and overrun by a royally inspired overtaking that has usurped democratic order. Diverse and robust political discussion have been taken over by an imperialistic demand to assert the order of a feudalistic system of oligarchs, dukes, duchesses, billionaires, and courtiers seeking lands and fortunes by supporting the royal order. This is evident in Jeffery Bezos' nullification of The Washington Post's editorial board's endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024. It has been reported that more than 250,000 Washington Post subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions in protest since owner Bezos interfered in the endorsement and recently demanded that the paper's opinion pages reflect libertarian priorities excluding opposing points of view.
Bezos wrote in a March 2025 memo to the paper's staff, "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets..." In other words, the opinion page will be slanted toward less or no criticism of the Trump dynasty, its policies, or its encroachment on democratic order. The Post's former Executive Editor Marty Baron called the new direction "craven" and suggested that Bezos is "basically fearful" of Trump. Whether it is fear or greed motivating these oligarchs only they know. But we cannot overlook the lucrative government contracts awarded Bezos, Musk, and many others currently feeding at, or hoping to feed at, the royal trough.
The contraction and absence of media that are independent and distant from the Trump royalty pose an immediate and imminent danger to the freedom of political debate and moral discernment. Columbia University has been penalized $400 million by the Trump dynasty for not shutting down the protests and encampment on Columbia's campus last Spring that educated the public of the genocide and war crimes in Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil, who is a green-card holder, a graduate of Columbia, and married to a U.S. citizen, having led some of the demonstrations and protests at Columbia, was arrested by ICE because his political expressions ran counter to the proclivities of the Trump dynasty. The Trump monarchy is weighted toward imperialistic initiatives that are expressed through Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands; ethnic cleansing; the attempted annexation of Ukraine by Russia; or by its own fantasies of seizing Canada, Greenland, and Panama.
People are perplexed by how quickly and radically these changes could have occurred in the United States. The national narrative has been that fascist takeovers, and the emergence of tyrants and dictators, happen other places but not in the U.S. But now we are confronted with what we believed was commonplace elsewhere having happened here. I find myself turning to tools of my trade trying to explain to people this current moment and why and how this could have happened.
In the scriptures that I use, First Samuel, chapter 8 offers a hauntingly accurate explanation for this historical moment. The words in this text describe people who felt let down by government, troubled by the state of the economy, fearful of an uncertain future, scared of changes, living where one set of political leaders was perceived as ill-equipped to serve the interest of some people, and where apparently a few had grown richer at the expense of the poor becoming poorer. Whether this was true or only perceived to be true we do not know.
The 2024 elections appears to have similarities with the text, where the framing of the issues were the ruinous effects of inflation; immigrants taking jobs and criminally violating communities; and where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies forced the hiring of incompetence and overlooked those who were more deserving and were white, male, and straight. A significant portion of the population wanted a leader who would address their fears and resolve their anxieties of an inclusive world. The political ideologies of the campaigns either cited an increasingly diverse population or the dangerous nature of democracy as it strived to include diversity and create equal opportunities. The ideologies were on a collision course. One ideology warned of the threat to democracy, and the other offered the protection of the American way of life through a strongman that would protect the country by reclaiming and protecting its past. When talking about the things that were seen or felt as wrong with the nation, the strongman pledged, "I alone can fix it." Some people clamored for this strongman—this king, the restoration of the past, and the good ole days.
It was just like the people in 1 Samuel 8, who demanded, "Give us a king" so that they could go back to the familiar; the fears of the future could be tamed; and they would not have to wrestle with or agonize over anything that was unfamiliar, frightening, or defined as "woke." "Give us a king" that will solve all our problems, navigate us through a frightening world, and ensure we don't have to deal with the messier things of democracy. And this is what we got. In 2024 we have unconsciously or consciously given up a president for a king.
But this scriptural text goes further by warning what a king will do, and it is not pretty but so relevant to today. It warns that by giving up discourse and participation we will become victims of the wants and desires of a king. The king will reward his patrons and supporters and harm his detractors. The billionaires who lust after more billions as well as those fearful of the loss of billions fall into line and tout the monarch's political framing of issues. He will take a portion of all that we have worked for and earned, and he will give it in tax breaks and lucrative contracts to his patrons and supporters. He will press us into his service, and likewise our children. We will parrot the fears of diversity and inclusion. We will turn in those who we suspect of being undocumented and accept it as natural when people are stopped and arrested for driving while Hispanic or Black. And when we eventually become aware of what we have given up, what it really means to surrender participation, voice, and responsibility, it will be too late.
The damage will have been done and will be revealed in disasters because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that predicts atmospheric and weather changes, has been dismantled. There will be an increase in diseases such as measles that was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. Unemployment will increase because of firings and layoffs in the governmental sector that will spread into the private sector because of protectionism, tariffs, and the interconnection of one economic sector to another. And there will be fewer places to challenge the royal decrees as the courts, informational platforms, and people are silenced out of fear of retribution and punishment. In all, democratic order will disappear, become extinct in practice, and eventually fade from memory. All of this will occur because we have chosen the dictates of a king over the messier and cumbersome discourse of the democratic process. The scriptural text warns, "In that day you will cry out because of your king." So many of us are crying out now because of this wannabe king.
So, what can be done? Now is the time to stir from our shock and catatonic state and begin to act, demonstrate, drown out town hall and community gatherings wherever they occur before we completely lose all memory of participatory debate, discourse, dialogue, or what the compromise and tensions of democracy look and feel like. The Trump-Musk-DOGE fraternity has been rattling off dictates of firings, downsizing, policy, and name changes so rapidly that it is hard to pivot fast enough in response, let alone being able to act instead of reacting. This is a tactic to keep us off balance. But our challenge is to engage, question, and resist and not be wearied by the avalanche of the various decrees, Executive Orders, or the whiplash of on and off again policies.
In the 1960s and 70s many of us wore buttons that read "Question Authority." It was a statement of independent thinking, not falling into line simply to fall into line, and to remind ourselves and governments that we are only governed by our consent. We sought to remind ourselves of the authority of average citizens and not the absolute power of government. This mentality needs to be reborn. We need to question, act, and challenge all things and everything that comes from this royal fiefdom.
They may not be wrong in everything they do, but we know that unless we exercise the discipline of questioning authority, challenging policies, and making the administration prove every single assertion we will certainly lose all forms of democratic order. After all we really don't want or need a king, but we truly want a government that is of, for, and by the people. This however will require that we exercise the muscles of messy democracy before they completely atrophy.
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Making America Powerless Again: How Trump Is Robbing America of Its Greatest Strengths
While Trump fixates on the symbols of 19th-century power, he systematically dismantles the infrastructure of 21st-century American influence.
Mar 11, 2025
Donald Trump fundamentally misunderstands power. He is not playing chess; he is playing a reckless game of Jenga with the foundational components that actually made America great. With each ill-conceived move, he pulls out another critical block from our national structure, destabilizing the entire edifice while claiming to strengthen it. His vision for American greatness is anchored in a historically dishonest version of
the Gilded Age—a period he explicitly admires, when he believes "we were at our richest." It's no coincidence that this era represented the apex of white supremacist control following Reconstruction, when newly enfranchised Black Americans were systematically stripped of their voting rights and democratic participation.
"We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That's when we were a tariff country," Trump has declared, revealing his nostalgia for an America where oligarchs accumulated vast wealth while the masses struggled in poverty, where women couldn't vote, and where Jim Crow laws ensured white supremacy remained intact.
This conception of power is devastatingly wrong and dangerous. In Trump's worldview, might is measured solely through domination: tariffs, walls, military threats, economic leverage, and the unchecked authority of the executive branch. His fantasies about seizing Panama or purchasing Greenland reveal a colonial mindset where sovereign nations exist merely as potential American acquisitions—trophies for his ego and extensions of a twisted imperial vision. This approach not only reflects a backward 19th-century understanding of power but abandons the very sources of American influence that have made us a genuine global leader for generations.
True Power Lies in Innovation and Academic Freedom
While Trump fixates on the symbols of 19th-century power, he systematically dismantles the infrastructure of 21st-century American influence. For the first time in modern history, China has edged past the United States in producing the most frequently cited scientific papers—a critical measure of research impact and intellectual leadership. Research tells us what is true, research shapes reality, and research determines which voices hold authority. The United States for decades led in research and therefore was positioned to determine truth and shape worlds. This position of power is now being deliberately eroded as Trump attacks universities, academic freedom—a necessity for innovation and discovery—and withdraws vital funding.
History demonstrates that America's greatest achievements often came from embracing the persecuted and marginalized whose lives were threatened by authoritarian, white supremacist regimes.
The power of the United States has never stemmed primarily from military might or economic leverage; it has flowed from our leadership in knowledge creation. Researchers worldwide have looked to institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance. The articles published in American journals have become foundational concepts within disciplines, allowing the U.S. to lead in virtually every intellectual field. When federal agencies generate data and analyses that become the global standard, America exercises an influence far more profound than any military operation could achieve.
When Trump attacks universities that dare to uphold academic freedom, cutting their federal funding and threatening scholars with deportation, he isn't demonstrating strength—he's surrendering intellectual authority. The recent arrest of Palestinian academic Mahmoud Khalil—a green card holder detained by ICE "in support of President Trump's executive orders"—reveals how quickly academic freedom can collapse under authoritarian pressure. This is not projection of power; it is its destruction. Trump is making the United States powerless and weak.
America's Power has Come from Welcoming the Persecuted
Trump's vision of American greatness is narrowly nativist, focused on exclusion and ideas of racial purity that have ties to eugenic projects that have historically ended in atrocities like the Holocaust. Yet history demonstrates that America's greatest achievements often came from embracing the persecuted and marginalized whose lives were threatened by authoritarian, white supremacist regimes.
When Hitler's Nazi regime drove Jewish academics and intellectuals from Europe in the 1930s, America's willingness to welcome these refugees transformed our scientific and cultural landscape. Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi and countless others fled persecution and found new homes in American universities and laboratories. Their contributions to the Manhattan Project and beyond revolutionized physics, mathematics, and engineering—laying the groundwork for America's technological supremacy in the latter half of the 20th century.
True power comes not from building walls and criminalizing free speech but from recognizing talent regardless of origin or wealth. Trump's methodical dismantling of immigration pathways and his demonization of foreigners don't make America stronger—they deprive us of the next generation of brilliant minds who might otherwise choose our universities, our laboratories, our companies, and our communities. Our greatest resource has never been the oligarchs who were invited to buy a "gold card" but the persecuted who found that this country welcomed them and supported their work.
The Gilded Age's True Legacy
Trump's romanticization of the Gilded Age is an admission of his true aim: the systematic dismantling of American democracy in service of white supremacy—a defining feature of those years he aims to recreate through his brutal agenda attacking diversity initiatives, public service workers, universities, and fundamental human rights.
Between 1885 and 1908, all 11 former Confederate states reformed their constitutions and electoral laws to disenfranchise African Americans. Though these efforts couldn't explicitly mention race, they introduced ostensibly neutral poll taxes, property requirements, and complex literacy tests designed to prevent Black citizens from accessing the ballot box. In South Carolina, these measures reduced Black voter turnout from 96% in 1876 to just 11% in 1898. Across the South, Black turnout plummeted from 61% in 1880 to a mere 2% by 1912.
This is a legacy of the Gilded Age—a retreat from democratic principles that locked in white supremacy for nearly a century. The era Trump celebrates as America's peak was precisely when our democracy was most severely compromised.
The Choice Before Us
Trump's conception of power represents a devastating miscalculation. By fixating on the trappings of 19th-century dominance—tariffs, military posturing, white supremacy and misogyny, and oligarchic wealth—he surrenders the very sources of influence that have made America genuinely powerful: our intellectual leadership, academic freedom, diverse talent pool, democratic institutions, and moral authority.
The question isn't whether Trump makes America powerful—it's whether his understanding of power belongs in a modern world. When he severs relationships with allies, seeing cooperation as "weakness," he doesn't demonstrate strength but reveals a profound failure to understand how international influence operates in the 21st century.
True power has always resided in our democratic values, our intellectual leadership, and our willingness to embrace the full spectrum of human talent and possibility.
When he dismantles the Department of Education and undermines scientific research, he isn't eliminating waste—he's surrendering our most significant competitive advantage. How do we measure the loss of a great mind who might have contributed to our understanding of climate science, identified cures for devastating diseases, or developed technologies to preserve our democratic systems? The cost of his destruction is beyond measurement.
Trump is indeed making America powerless even in ways that he should be able to understand through his myopic worldview—after all, he is making America bow to the richest man on earth and embracing dictators who destroy democracy. But he is abandoning the very sources of American power that have made us exceptional: our commitment to knowledge, our embrace of talent regardless of origin, our democratic institutions, and our capacity for moral leadership. The world could once rely on the United States, that is no more.
The gilded America he envisions—where oligarchs extract immense wealth from land and labor, where white supremacy reigns unchallenged, and where democratic participation is systematically suppressed—isn't a vision of American strength. It's a return to a time when our nation's power was narrowly concentrated among the few at the expense of the many. That is no power. That is a monarchy. That is death to democracy.
True power has always resided in our democratic values, our intellectual leadership, and our willingness to embrace the full spectrum of human talent and possibility. By abandoning these principles, Trump isn't making America great again—he's making America powerless in the ways that truly matter.
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Working-Class Unity Key to Defeating Oligarchy, Says Sanders in Response to Trump SOTU
"We can win. We will win," said the senator. "Let's go forward together."
Mar 05, 2025
If working-class people in the United States were wondering why President Donald Trump had "very little to say about the REAL crises facing the working class of this country" in his State of the Union address, said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders Tuesday night, they need look no further than the people Trump surrounded himself with at his inauguration in January.
"Standing right behind him were the three wealthiest men in the country," said the Vermont Independent senator, naming billionaire mogul and "special government employee" Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "And standing behind THEM were 13 other billionaires who Trump had nominated to head major government agencies. Many of these same billionaires—including Musk—were there tonight."
Despite Trump's repeated campaign promises to address the rising cost of living for working people, said Sanders, the State of the Union address offered the latest proof that "the Trump administration IS a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class."
Watch Sanders' address in full:
LIVE: President Trump’s Congressional Address needs a response. Here’s mine. https://t.co/O9yN04isIw
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 5, 2025
Sanders amplified the message he has sent on his National Tour to Fight Oligarchy—which he is scheduled to continue this week with stops in Warren, Michigan on Saturday and Kenosha, Wisconsin on Friday.
The senator called on working people of all racial identities, religions, and sexual orientations to join together to fight Trump's agenda and the billionaires who would benefit from his tax cuts, slashes to essential public services like Medicaid and food assistance, and efforts to divide people by demonizing immigrants, transgender people, and people of color.
"Yes, the oligarchs ARE enormously powerful. They have endless amounts of money. They control our economy. They own much of the media. They have enormous influence over our political system," said Sanders. "But, from the bottom of my heart, I am convinced that they can be beaten."
"If we stand together and not let them divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our religion or sexual orientation; if we bring our people together around an agenda that works for the many and not the few—there is nothing in the world that can stop us," he said.
In his address, Sanders remained laser-focused on issues that impact working people—raising the federal minimum wage of just $7.25 per hour to a living wage of $17 per hour, repealing the Citizens UnitedSupreme Court ruling to end corporate influence over elections, and Trump's desire to pass a "big, beautiful" budget that would cut Medicaid by $880 billion, leaving up to 36 million Americans, including millions of children, without health insurance.
His response to the State of the Union address contrasted sharply with parts of the Democratic Party's official response given by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who spoke out against the "unprecedented giveaway" Trump wants to give "to his billionaire friends" but also signaled the party leadership's disinterest in focusing primarily on issues that impact working people when she spoke positively about former Republican President Ronald Reagan.
"After the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling over in his grave," Slotkin said, referring to Trump and Vice President JD Vance's attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "As a Cold War kid, I'm thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s."
Historian Moshik Temkin wondered why the Democratic Party chose to hold up Reagan as a positive example of a president—considering his deregulatory, anti-taxation policies and promotion of so-called "trickle-down economics" that helped pave the way for rising economic inequality and the decimation of the middle class—instead of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who introduced Social Security, reformed the financial system, and provided relief to people who were suffering due to the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression.
"Who was this for?" asked historian Michael Brenes of Slotkin's address. "You don't rebuild the New Deal coalition with Cold War nostalgia and deference to Ronald Reagan. A better message: national security begins with economic security."
In contrast, Sanders' response, said former journalist and author Paul Handley, "is how you respond to Trump and define him for the American people."
Sanders ended his address by acknowledging the challenge of fighting against a political system increasingly controlled by billionaires, but warned, "despair is not an option."
"Giving up is not acceptable," said Sanders. "And none of us have the privilege of hiding under the covers. The stakes are just too high. Let us never forget. Real change only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice—and fight back."
"We can win. We will win," he concluded. "Let's go forward together."
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