America the Changeling
Time to restore and reinforce our democracy
The nation's capital is a liberal city with many immigrants and people of color. It is the sort of place Donald Trump likes to call a crime-ridden hellhole, despite the evidence contradicting him.
Considering that the Civil War ended 161 years ago, why are some people still fighting it? Americans could get along better if our latter-day Confederates would knock it off with their resentments and fake grievances, stoked by oligarchs to divide us so they can hoard most of the wealth.
Trump did not create this. He merely has a knack for exploiting it. He is a relentlessly ignorant, pathological narcissist who appears amused by the prospect of destroying our nation and the world.
The Vatican on April 10 denied a report by The Free Press that the Pentagon had bitterly lectured the Vatican's ambassador to Washington over Pope Leo's criticisms of Trump's warmongering. His Holiness, a humane and kind man who understands servant leadership better than Trump ever will, was rewarded on April 12 with a direct personal attack by Trump via social media.
Trump, with his utter lack of decency and self-control, thus confirmed once again our well-advanced slide into a post-American world disorder he created thanks to millions of voters refusing to recognize he is not a leader but a saboteur.
It is one thing for a country to grow and develop. It is another to be a changeling—to transform into something completely different and contrary to what one previously stood for.
Fundamental freedoms are under assault, including freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right of the people peaceably to assemble, the right to vote, and due process of law.
The president postponed by two weeks his threat to end an entire civilization, which was as blatant a threat of genocide as one could make without using the word. To completely destroy Iran, including its civilian infrastructure, would be a violation of international law and a betrayal of American values. We cannot accept being turned into such a monster.
Our leaders' willingness to commit and even boast about war crimes invites our adversaries to do the same to our service members.
Generations of Americans have struggled to make our country live up to its principles, including the promise of "equal justice under law" carved above the entrance to the Supreme Court. These basic values are being dismissed and derided as "wokeness," as if only straight white cisgender men could possibly be qualified for any job.
That assumption flies in the face of a great deal of evidence, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's sharp grilling of counsel during oral arguments, and her written opinions.
Pretending that we can wall out the world only leaves us worse off. Past colonialism and imperial conquest come back to us in the form of migration, while electing a sociopath to lead our country has spread violence across the globe.
We cling to comfortable certitudes and prejudices, and when they leave us worse off, we find other people to blame.
An Afghan-born teen whose father helped American troops in Afghanistan is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Senator Richard Blumenthal decries this cruelty, and the MAGA response on social media is a false disparaging generalization about immigrants and a claim that our president is protecting America.
This has it backwards. The main criminal endangering our country is the man in the White House. The main terrorists are the ICE agents he is using as secret police.
Israel's insistence on having defensible borders means in practice that it is entitled to expand its borders as its leaders see fit. That sabotages a two-state solution. My support for a state of Israel does not mean a constantly shape-shifting, imperialist one.
The shape-shifter I am most familiar with is the fictional Odo from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." He was played by actor René Auberjonois. Odo had been raised by humans, or "solids" as others of his kind called them, and felt a certain attachment to them.
In a 1993 episode, Odo was stuck in an elevator with Betazoid Ambassador Lwaxana Troi, played by actress Majel Barrett. He grew extremely tired, but did not have his bucket to melt into to rest, so the ambassador raised up her metallic dress and he gratefully melted into that.
It would be a great blessing if our shape-shifting president melted into a bucket. That option being unavailable, we have some serious, old-fashioned political organizing to do to restore and reinforce our democracy.
Richard Rosendall is a writer and activist who can be reached at [email protected].
Copyright © 2026 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.