2026: Keeping the Light Alive

A call for a New American Revolution and New Amendments to the United States Constitution

Presented at the Progressive Voices Lecture Series at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, Feb. 4, 2026 by David Silverberg

Text as prepared

If anyone doubts that Donald Trump regards himself as a king, “they should just look at the artificial intelligence-generated images Donald Trump posted of himself in the past year.” The author making his presentation. (Photo: June Fletcher)

In 1655 the French King Louis the Fourteenth reportedly said, “L’Etat, c’est moi” – “I am the state” (or literally, “the state is me.”).

This past January 8th, President Donald Trump was asked in a New York Times interview if there were any limits to his global power and he replied, “Yeah, there is one thing: my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Think about that for a moment. He is “The only thing” that can stop him. He didn’t say Congress. He didn’t say the courts. He didn’t say the people. He didn’t say the Constitution. Just himself.

And he also didn’t say international law, which was the context of the question. On that, he said, “I don’t need international law.” Direct quote!

My friends, it pains me to say this but America has just had its Louis the Fourteenth moment.

Let’s take a moment to let all this sink in.

On its 250th birthday, the United States has become exactly what its founders worked and fought and struggled against: a dictatorship, a monarchy – and as I pointed out last year, monarchy doesn’t necessarily mean the title “King.” “Mono” means “one” “archy” means power – one power – and today we are a monarchy just as surely as we were before independence in 1776.

And if anyone doubts it, they should just look at the artificial intelligence-generated images Donald Trump posted of himself in the past year.

Note those crowns!

We’re not yet a complete monarchy. The Constitution has not been formally abolished. We still believe and act as though we have the rights granted us by the Bill of Rights. We’re gathered here tonight legally in the belief that our ability to do so is entirely proper. I believe that the words I’m speaking to you now are protected by the First Amendment.

But the President and all those around him are on a path toward ending that Constitution and those rights—and they make no secret of this. Donald Trump said he would be a dictator and during the course of last year he proceeded to expand his powers and disregard the law, legitimized by a Supreme Court ruling saying he had immunity for his official actions. And then we’ve seen the seizures and shootings on the streets of Minneapolis.

Now, I could spend the entire rest of this talk enumerating his sins, his crimes and his outrages. But I have other things to get to. Rick Wilson, the Florida pundit and Lincoln Project co-founder who remotely addressed a gathering here last year, has published what is essentially a new Declaration of Independence on Substack, that lists all this.

https://www.againstallenemies.net/p/a-declaration-of-independence-from

If you want to read this later, I recommend that you take a picture of it and the Internet address.

The essential question that confronts us is: What do we do about this? What can we, as normal, everyday, non-violent, law-abiding citizens, people who don’t hold public office and aren’t in the public eye, do about it?

I have a few thoughts, which I hope you find worthy of consideration.

First, all my suggestions are non-violent and lawful. I still believe in the law and obeying it. American law still provides us with tools for change and great latitude for action. We still have numerous avenues of appeal, redress and change.

Having said that, I believe that the situation and the threat are so dire, we need a New American Revolution. Not a violent overthrow of what we had before but what I’ll call a restorative revolution. We need to restore the rights, the checks and balances and the democracy that existed before Donald Trump usurped them.

But we have to look at the effort holistically.

Remember something: The Trump presidency is not merely an administration in the mold of past presidencies. It’s a political, social and cultural revolution of its own that seeks total control. It aims to utterly oppress, dominate and subjugate Americans and the world to the whims, the hatreds, the prejudices and the rages of one single man. It’s an attack on everything we had before he became president and everything this country has meant for the past 250 years. It’s truly American carnage.

Everyone who values democracy, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law and who takes action should see himself or herself as part of a new American revolution. This goes beyond Republican or Democratic labels. And it goes beyond any single, particular action. We need to view the demonstrations in Minneapolis and the protests at the Government Center on Route 41 in Naples as connected, they’re all part of the same movement. We have to see the lawsuits and the vigils against Alligator Alcatraz as part of the same effort as the midterm elections and the grassroots organizing that has to be done there.

I would hope that if we see all these individual efforts as a single mass effort, unified with a common purpose, we can be more effective—at least conceptually—than if we only look at those efforts as individual and fragmented. All these actions together have a cumulative effect.

The actions we take are aimed not just at protesting this president’s illegal actions but at reversing their worst abuses and restoring sanity, dignity and decency to our government.

The list of reforms and changes that are needed are long. Anyone can come up with his or her favorites.

We also have to recognize that nothing is quick in a non-violent movement. Whatever their aims, non-violent mass movements are always marathons. They take long-term, persistent pressure on a multitude of fronts. But history has shown that they can work.

But as a start, one goal has to be to end the domestic terrorism of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS.

On a personal note, from 2004 to 2013 I was editor of a magazine called Homeland Security Today, so I watched the department and this particular directorate evolve.

ICE was created in 2002 by combining the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the US Customs Service. It was intended to prevent bad people and bad things from getting into the country.

So I know what ICE was supposed to be—as opposed to what it’s become.

Every country has to protect its borders and regulate its immigration. That’s a fundamental function. But ICE under the second Trump administration is a violent, lawless, unaccountable force of domestic terrorism, like Mussolini’s Blackshirts or Hitler’s Brownshirts.

ICE was intended to protect the American people from terrorism. Under Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, its mission has become imposing terror and purging the Hispanic and foreign-origin population of the United States.

Sadly, I don’t think it can be redeemed. When sanity returns, its functions need to go to other agencies or a new agency with a different name. But ICE today is too twisted and tainted to remain as is. It needs to be demobilized and dispersed and those guilty of crimes prosecuted and the whole thing overhauled.

So that’s an example of an immediate, practical measure. But I want to look beyond the moment.

There are two revolutionary proposals that I think are particularly important, if less emotionally-charged than the many others people want to pursue. Both are constitutional amendments and could be enacted if the Constitution and its mechanisms remain in force—i.e., if they aren’t abolished altogether, which, by the way, Trump has threatened to do.

One amendment, which would be the Constitution’s 28th, would state that:

“The President of the United States shall be subject to the laws and penalties of the United States in his or her official and personal capacities.”

It is absolutely astonishing that this would have to be passed but when the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that the president has legal immunity for all his official actions, they opened the gate to the outlaw dictatorship we’re suffering under today. This president is above the law and he knows it and he’s exploiting it. That can never be allowed to happen again. As the Supreme Court’s motto on the lintel of its building declares: “Equal justice under law” and that equality needs to be restored. Everyone—and I mean, everyone—has to be subject to the law.

Another amendment, which would be the 29th, would state:

“No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who has not served in a prior elected office or held a military position of command. No Person previously found guilty of a crime by a jury of his or her peers, or found guilty of insurrection, or previously impeached and removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors, shall be qualified to hold the office.”

No more criminals as President! This amendment is intended to ensure that never again can an utterly inexperienced, grossly unqualified, completely unfit individual attain the power of the presidency. Never again should the American people face the prospect of a criminal candidate running—or governing—from prison. It simply says: criminals need not apply.

Those are just a few suggestions.

Now, I put these and other ideas into a website post called “Manifesto for an American Rose Revolution” that went live on January 2nd.

A rose revolution? Why that?

Well, perhaps this is sentimental on my part but I—and maybe everyone in this room—can remember the Kennedy Administration.

And maybe you can remember when Jaqueline Kennedy created the White House Rose Garden.

It was a small area, only 125 feet long and 60 feet wide (38 meters by 18 meters) outside the Oval Office of the White House. But it was a place of beauty, elegance and grace that reflected the First Lady’s own.

The Rose Garden is no more. Trump paved it over to create a hideous patio.

What’s more, having destroyed the garden, he created an exclusive “Rose Garden Club” for his cronies, which costs a million dollars to join.

Well, you know, Trump believes that as President he owns the White House. He believes he can alter or destroy it as he pleases. He demolished the East Wing to replace it with a massive, gargantuan ballroom bearing his name, whose cost keeps ballooning and he has even more desecrations in mind.

But the White House doesn’t “belong” to the person who temporarily occupies it. It belongs to the American people. We’re the homeowners’ association. What’s more, every resident of that house is just a temporary tenant who holds it in trust for the next occupant.

The same can be said of the country as a whole. Trump thinks he owns it.

Folks, the time has come for the American people to take back their house—and their homeland.

And if there’s any one moment that will mark their success, it will be when that hideous patio is dug up and smashed and its pieces distributed as souvenirs and roses bloom again in the people’s garden.

That’s why I think a Rose Revolution is a good idea. The color “rose” is neither blue nor red; it includes a wide variety of shades and everyone and anyone can be part of it.

This is not just about a garden, of course.

Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”

The great thing about democracy, and the reason I believe in it so, is that it’s a form of government built on hope and courage and possibilities. We can all remember when Tim Walz thanked Kamala Harris for bringing joy back to politics. Democracy isn’t just about the way people are governed, it’s about enabling the pursuit of happiness—and giving people the hope and tools to achieve it.

By contrast, monarchy, dictatorship, autocracy are built on despair, and submission and hopelessness. In that kind of government there can be no success without the monarch’s approval or—especially with this president—getting his piece of the action. This is a presidency run on threat and fear and extortion.

So a Restorative Revolution, a New American Revolution, a Rose Revolution – whatever you want to call it – is not just about legislation or protests or particular measures, it’s about restoring joy and hope and dignity and decency and democracy and ending a reign of fear and intimidation. It’s about upholding the true values of America and restoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And everyone has a role to play.

Now, I know that a single blogger typing in an obscure corner of Florida, throwing out some ideas, is hardly earthshaking. Believe me, no one is more conscious of the odds and the obstacles and the prospect of oblivion than I am. This talk may go up on the Internet along with billion and one other posts and comments and disappear completely into that great blogosphere in the cloud, or the sky, or whatever.

But you never know how history will play out—and this should inform all our actions. The one thing we can be certain of is that if we don’t do anything then nothing will ever be done.

I’m inspired in this by a hero of mine, Thomas Paine.

January 10th marked the 250th anniversary of the publication of Paine’s little pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which can truly be said to have sparked the American Revolution.

Who was Thomas Paine? Well, when he wrote Common Sense he was a nobody. He’d been a failed businessman and husband. He’d done some writing in his native England but of little more than local note. He’d immigrated to America in 1774 and was so sick from the passage that he had to be carried off the ship.

But he immediately grasped the potential of America and he had hope and could see the possibilities in change. He hated monarchy and oppression and he conveyed it to all the English inhabitants of North America. All he had to work with was language and logic and he put them to use, proving that anyone can have an impact.

Common Sense is as relevant today as it was in 1776 when it was published. I encourage everyone to make the effort to read it—and it does take some effort.

But even more immediate and relevant to us today is an essay that Paine wrote after Common Sense called The American Crisis. He wrote it during the darkest days of the American Revolution. He was a member of the Pennsylvania militia. American forces had been defeated in New York and pushed back through New Jersey. The army seemed about to dissolve and it looked like the revolutionary cause was at an end. The story is that he started writing an essay using a drumhead as a writing table.

It was under these circumstances that Paine penned the most famous paragraph he ever produced. Everyone knows the first sentence. But it’s worth listening to the entire paragraph because it’s every bit as relevant and as inspirational today as it was 250 years ago. We need to heed it.

I’m going to read it and I’m going to get through it.

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

So with that in mind, it’s time to start shaping America’s next 250 years.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Liberty lives in light

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After the storm: Looking ahead at the state of democracy

A lecture delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, Fla., Feb. 5, 2025.

*The author speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, Fla. (Image: UUCGN)*

This was the 2025 kickoff of the Progressive Voices speaker series.

The speech begins at mark 13:00 and goes to mark 43:00 followed by the Q&A. Total time is 1 hour, 18 minutes.

As prepared for delivery

Feb. 5, 2025

I know that I’m speaking on a secular topic. But since we’re in a house of worship, I thought that it would be appropriate to begin with a story from the Old Testament.

I take as my text Genesis 25, from verses 23 to 29.

It tells the story of Esau and Jacob, both sons of Isaac. Esau was the older son, a hunter-gatherer and due to inherit all his father’s flocks and wealth. Jacob was “a man of the tents,” a pastoralist and a homebody.

One day Esau came in from hunting in the fields, he was tired and hungry and Jacob was at a fire cooking what the King James version calls “pottage,” or in Hebrew, “adamshim.” It was a stew or soup and the Bible is very specific: it consisted of lentils, or beans, and bread and it was colored red. It sounds like a chili.

Esau was famished and demanded a portion – the King James version calls it “a mess”—of the stew. Jacob said he could have it, but he would have to trade his birthright—his inheritance—for it. Esau, according to the story, said he couldn’t see any use for his birthright and he just wanted to eat so he agreed.

So based on this conversation, Jacob became the inheritor of all his father’s wealth, with the ultimate result that he became the father of the nation of Israel and Esau was left to live off roaming and hunting.

So why is this story relevant today?

On November 4, 2024, Americans had a birthright—a birthright—to inalienable rights, among them democracy, freedom of thought, expression, worship, health, freedom from want and freedom from fear. They had a right to determine how they were governed and a right to assemble and protest when they didn’t like it. They had a right to American citizenship at birth—a literal birthright.

The next day, on November 5, 2024, when the votes were counted, a narrow majority had chosen to sell that birthright for a stew of lies, illusions, hatreds, empty promises and a mirage of lower grocery prices. Talk about a literal “mess of pottage.” Talk about selling your birthright!

So here find ourselves today. And I’m sure you’re wondering, as I am, what to do and how to respond and most of all, how to protect what we hold dear, our freedom, our rights and out Constitution.

Now, we can go over all the awfulness that has happened so far. But given our limited time, I think that’s unproductive. We all have our lists of outrages. We can get into what I call a “spiral of hate.” I think it’s more essential to figure out how we’re going to preserve our freedoms, our democracy and ultimately—our sanity.

And that brings to mind another Biblical reference: The Book of Ecclesiastes. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to sow and a time to reap,” and it goes on to enumerate the different actions.

Well I would add: There’s a time to progress and a time to protect.

I think it’s pretty clear that now is the time to protect and defend.

In our system we have our say in an election and then we give the levers of power to those we elect, trusting they’ll act responsibly on our behalf.

But this time, this is not a mere change of administrations. It’s a revolution from the top starting with Donald Trump and it’s from the right from his cultists, enablers and his sycophants. It aims to affect every aspect of our lives.

Those of us who are so inclined are not going to break any new ground. We’re not going to right newly found wrongs. We have to protect and defend the essentials: our birthright, which means our inalienable rights to life, liberty and happiness, our democracy and our Constitution—because they’re all under attack.

Trump aims to reverse not merely the past four years of the Biden administration, Trump wants to reverse the past 80 years of social progress since Fascism’ s defeat in 1945.

Think of it: they say “make America great again.” When was it great, in their view? How far back do they want to go?

Well, in their attack on birthright citizenship, Trump and his minions are seeking to turn the national clock back to the Dred Scott decision of 1857, when the Supreme Court declared that black people could not be United States citizens.

You have to conclude: Donald Trump sees the time when America was “great” as the time before the Civil War when there were masters and slaves, when black people were considered three-fifths of a human being and when women did not have the vote. He even wants to go back to the days of the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s when there was a movement to cut off immigration and suppress Catholicism.

Everyone who vowed last year that “we won’t go back,” had it right—we shouldn’t. But that’s where this is all going.

Actually, you can make the argument that Trump wants to turn the clock back to before there was a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, to a time when America was ruled by a single ruler, a monarchy. Remember, the word “monarchy” is derived from the Greek words for one, “mono” and power or authority, “archy.” It just means that power flows from a single source, not necessarily someone with the title “king.”

I would also argue with people who say this is an “oligarchy,” which means rule by a small group. It’ s also been called a “kakistocracy,” rule by the worst people, or a “kleptocracy,” rule by compulsive thieves.

Whatever it is, it’s not democracy, rule by the people.

I wish I could say that we can change this with the push of a button but right now but frankly, I can’t do that.

But today all the levers of power, from the White House to the Capitol, and here in Florida, to the governorship and the statehouse and even down to the Collier County Board of Commissioners are in Trumpist hands. We can’t count on the judiciary or those who implement judicial rulings. As we saw in the special session of this state’s legislature, Republicans in charge are competing with each other to be as extreme as possible in their submission to Trump’s will.

It’s already an awful year and it’s going to get worse. What’s more, it’s going to do permanent damage to the country and its standing in the world.

When I think about it, I’d compare it to a hurricane and as Floridians we all know what to do when those come around: get lots of bottled water, check your batteries, and prepare for a siege.

One other thing that’s a good idea in the runup to a hurricane is to take stock and make an inventory. That means going around the house, maybe taking pictures of each room and all your possessions.

But in this storm it means taking stock of ourselves. I’m not going to offer specific actions or global prescriptions. Right letters to the editor? Yes. Phone banking? Yes. Demonstrating? Yes. Most of all, of course, I’m sure all of us here voted, which is the most important thing although we don’t get another chance until 2026—I hope.

A resistance is coalescing. Democrats, with both a capital D and a small d are regrouping and reorganizing. People who may have been indifferent are now paying attention. People who thought they knew what they were getting with their vote are now waking up to what they really elected.

But that’ s going to take time and in this storm each of has to ask: How can I personally resist the crimes and these injustices I see happening? What can I personally do to protect my freedom and my country’s freedom? How can I personally preserve my rights and the rights of all my friends, family, neighbors, and fellow citizens? How can I personally defend the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the democracy I believe in?

And we have to ask ourselves these questions each and every day because they’ll all be under assault each and every day.

I would point out some dangers where extra attention is necessary and these are potential changes that would permanently institutionalize a dictatorship.

One is any change to the Constitution or Bill of Rights. Whether it’s eliminating birthright citizenship, or ending presidential term limits—in other words, making Trump president for life. Changing the Constitution is, to use a political phrase, a “hill to die on.”

Another is declaration of a state of emergency. This is a classic dictatorial tactic. It’s what Adolf Hitler used after the Reichstag fire. It gives an executive additional, nearly unrestricted powers. It usually means crushing democracy in the name of facing the emergency. Trump has already declared two emergencies—one on the border and one on energy, giving himself power to deploy the military and take on other powers. Another one on the economy has been rumored. But where this will really be dangerous is when it comes to elections. Remember, in 2020, he was considering having the military seize voting machines and he tried to overthrow the results.

That brings us to another threat to watch: any attempt to postpone, suspend or cancel elections. All elections must be conducted on time, as scheduled. That means insisting on a free, fair and open election in two years.

We also have to defend a free press. There’s a lot of turmoil in media right now and some very disappointing kowtowing to Trump in major media—and in local media. We’re already being inundated by a tsunami of lies and propaganda. But we have to determine how we can each seek truth and to the degree that we can, make sure that our media fulfills its fundamental mission.

We can only hope that our judiciary and law enforcement remain true to the law and its impartial application. The early signs are not promising. But to the degree that any of us have any influence we need to do what we can to keep our justice system just.

Like a hurricane, this is all scary and intimidating and seems overwhelming. But also like a hurricane, there’s a point when the storm passes. Even Trump’s storm will eventually run out of energy. The historical pattern is that the regime and the MAGA movement will probably devolve into factionalism and squabbling, especially once Trump himself passes from the scene in some form or fashion.

Also, as I said, resistance to the most extreme measures is already congealing. But that still has a long way to go to be effective.

Now, I’ve been purposefully vague in these remarks because I wanted to provide an overview. I’d like to get into the specifics you have on your minds in the question and answer period, which I hope will be vigorous and lively. Please, challenge everything I’ve said. I truly hope that the bad predictions I’ve made are wrong. I’ve never wanted to be proven wrong so badly.

I want to leave you with two quotes that I think are very relevant to our moment.

I actually heard one when I was working as a journalist in Washington and it came from, of all people, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Bandar bin Sultan. He was a very elegant and accomplished man, spoke perfect English and he was addressing an audience of diplomats and high officials at the Cosmopolitan Club. He said something then that has stayed with me ever since.

He said, “We in positions of great responsibility have a duty to be optimists.” Now, he was talking to diplomats and a diplomat can never just throw up his or her hands and just say, “It’s hopeless, I give up.” No matter what the problem, there’s always a solution, you just haven’t found it yet. So you’ve got to keep working at it, sometimes it takes years, even decades but there’s no giving up—it’s not an option.

Well, I would argue that all of us are in positions of great responsibility—we’re American citizens. We the people have to make sure the fate of the country remains in our hands. We can’t just throw up our hands and walk away. We will solve these problems, we just haven’t found a way yet. We have an absolute duty to be optimists.

The other quote is this: “America is great because it is good. When it ceases to be good, it will cease to be great.”

This quote has been attributed to Alexis de Toqueville, the French political scientist and traveler who visited the United States in the 1830s and recorded his observations.

Now, President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters went looking for this quote in de Toqueville and couldn’t find it anywhere.

But it really doesn’t matter. If de Toqueville didn’t say it, he should have, because it’s true.

Right now, America isn’t good, so it’s not going to be great, no matter how much Trump and his clones bray to the contrary.

I think it’s up to us, we the people, to do whatever we can, whenever we can, wherever we can, to try to make America good again.

I’m actually confident we’ll succeed. But only when we do that, will we REALLY make America great again.

Liberty lives in light

Help defend democracy in Southwest Florida—donate here!

“Let’s Roll”—The Fascist Threat to Florida and What To Do About It

*The author addresses the Democracy Under Siege forum in Naples, Fla., on Oct. 5, 2024.*

Oct. 17, 2024 by David Silverberg

On Oct. 5, 2024 Southwest Floridians gathered for a forum titled “Democracy Under Siege: The Fascist Threat to Florida and What To Do About It.”

The forum, held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples in Naples, Fla., was sponsored by Floridians for Democracy, The Lincoln Project, Florida Veterans for Common Sense, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, Choose Democracy, and The Paradise Progressive.

Speakers were Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, who joined the gathering remotely; Dale Anderson, a Sarasota-based pro-democracy activist and advisor to Choose Democracy Now; and David Silverberg, founder and author of The Paradise Progressive blog.

The full 2-hour program can be seen on YouTube.

The author’s 22-minute speech can be seen here.

It focuses on the threat to democracy in Collier County, Fla., the greater danger of “fasco-Trumpism,” ways individuals can defend democracy, and the importance of elections in general and this year’s election in particular.

Thank you very much for that. My name is David Silverberg and I want to talk about here in Collier County and what’s been going on.

First of all, I’m going to take a little quibble: We don’t have Fascism as it was defined in Europe; we do not have a Fascist Party by that name here in Florida. We don’t have a movement that’s Fascist with a capital “F.”

What we have is a lot of fascistic development both here in Florida and here in Collier County, I’m sorry to say, but I’m going to really draw that distinction.

And I’m also going to use a term called “fasco-Trumpism” because, you know, it’s fascistic and we know that when we say fascism we mean it in a generic sense: it’s authoritarian, it’s dictatorial, it’s oppressive, and, of course, we have Donald Trump who has unleashed all this in the world.

By the way, I googled “fasco-Trumpism” and it’s nowhere on Google so we’re hearing it here for the first time.

Here in Florida, we have “Trump-lite,” the man “where charisma goes to die” as Rick Wilson put it, Governor Ron DeSantis, who, by the way, as we all know is a total creature of Trump; he would not exist on the political stage if Trump had not endorsed him in his race for governor and got him through the primary and he is—as Dale very ably showed—is trying to coordinate across the state, its culture, its society, this anti-woke fasco-Trumpist culture.

But right here in Collier County we’ve had some disturbing trends and I’m sure you’ve all been following them and the chief evangelist for this is our very own Francis Alfred Oakes III, whom we all know as Alfie.

When you look at it the similarities between Alfie and Trump are really remarkable. They’re both businessmen, they’re both bombastic, they’re both mercurial, they’re both fanatical in their ways, they’re both fasco-Trumpists, MAGAs. Alfie once got a phone call from Trump and thinks he’s just about God.

And before I go further on Alfie—and it’s not entirely focused on Alfie—I want to make clear that I don’t hate this guy. I have met him. I did an article on him for a magazine called Mother Jones. He sat down with me, we had a two-hour interview, he was gracious, he was cordial, he was—I think—forthcoming and truthful where I think it was in his interest. If the guy stuck to food and groceries we all—and he—would be a whole lot better off.

But Alfie has his opinions and he is absolutely entitled to those opinions and he’s entitled to express those opinions. I support that. But we are entitled to respond and react to those opinions and to his actions—and it’s the actions that really count.

And one other thing, just to cover my backside—he is a public figure. Alfie is politically active, he is a state committeeman in the Collier County Republican Party, so his actions are subject to scrutiny, criticism and analysis.

Having said that, he has tried to impose a fasco-Trumpist ideology on Collier County and especially, on the Republican Party in Collier County.

He won as a state committeeman in 2020, he ousted a guy named Doug Rankin, he was riding on his defiance of COVID protocols in the midst of the panic and the pressures of the pandemic and he pretty much took control of the Republican Executive Committee here in Collier County, the REC, or, as I prefer to call it, the Wreck. And between the Wreck and his own political action committee, Citizens Awake Now, CANPAC, he succeeded in altering the political balance here in Collier County.

Now, in 2022 he put up three candidates for the school board and two candidates for the Collier County Commission and he won all his races, which was an achievement, if you want to use that word. But as a result, we have in Collier County a very fasco-Trumpist agenda and the Commission and the School Board have moved in that direction—although there are changes in the school board.

When you look at what our Board of Commissioners has passed, they passed a federal nullification law, the so-called Bill of Rights Sanctuary Ordinance, which says that Collier County has the right to nullify federal law, to not obey it if it considers it unconstitutional, which is really going to come back to bite this county, which I can go into detail later.

They’ve outlawed mask and public health mandates. They passed what was a very, very, very critical anti-public health resolution that got watered down but that anti-vaxx, anti-COVID, anti-mandate, anti-public health effort is very much promoted. Fortunately, the ordinance, the law, that has penalties that they passed, duplicated state law. State law says that you can’t have mask mandates anymore so this says the same thing so it doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Like Sarasota County, they withdrew the county from the American Library Association.

Then, last month, they passed an anti-Amendment 4 resolution. Now, that doesn’t have the force of law but it was a start, here in Collier County, of a movement to have counties come out against Amendment 4 and a woman’s right to choose and we saw it just passed again in Lee County, so it is moving along. I don’t know how many people it’s going to influence to go against Amendment 4 but they did that.

Then, weirdly—and I have to admit, I did not see this coming—they voted to end fluoridation in Collier County’s water. So now all the kids can get cavities and they can make more work for local dentists, and Alfie will protect his pineal gland, which he was worried about.

And, by the way, everybody who buys toothpaste has got to look for that fluoride because you’re not going to get it from the water in Collier County.

Let me also point out—and this came up in our interview—he says, Alfie, that he owns 3,000 guns, that he can arm every employee at Seed to Table and in 2022, he was addressing a group and he said, “I’m all in. We don’t want to talk about what that is”—meaning that if he didn’t like the way the 2022 elections came out he might launch an armed revolt, he said “but we have to be all in.”

Well, the ’22 elections came out very well for him so we all live under law and order.

Now, all this is very menacing and he was moving to further extend this in 2024 but something very, very interesting happened and it happened this past August on August 20.

There was a revolt! There was people who had enough of Alfie and Alfie fasco-Trumpism and MAGAism here in Collier County and the people who revolted were all the Republicans. The Republicans in their primary repudiated the Alfie-MAGAs for all the different offices that he was proposing.

Alfie didn’t care about anybody’s qualifications, in fact, I heard him once say in a speech, he said: “I don’t care what a person’s IQ is, or what their education is, all I need is some back and common sense.” So he’s looking for fellow fanatics and he had them up for two school board seats, he had them up for county commission—all three were incumbents but he really wanted to get rid of Burt Saunders in the 3rd District. And, of course, he wanted to get rid of Melissa Blazier as supervisor of elections; that was a very dangerous one, and the county assessor.

At that point he had reached a point where the Republicans said, “no!” Especially in the technical offices like Supervisor of Elections where expertise is really important and you have to know what you’re doing, even Republicans had had enough. And Collier County, and I hope you appreciate it, is a pretty well run county. This place functions and it functions very well. Maybe Steve Bannon will call it the “deep state” but I’ll call it the “deep county” and it works for us. And had he gotten these other people in, it would not have.

Now, there was one position that he did win, a lawyer, and she is now a committeeperson on the Wreck, and she was the one who drafted this anti-federal nullification law, which in 1821—1821!—in 2021 (it might as well be 1821!) when she did it in 2021, our own David Millstein characterized that law as “proposed by someone who doesn’t know constitutional law.”

But she won her election as state committeeperson.

So why is this revolt, this little revolt among the Wreck, so significant?

Well, I think it’s significant because it shows that there is a line, there is a point beyond which this kind of fasco-Trumpism becomes oppressive even to those people who adhere to these party principles—and these are the folks that Rick Wilson was talking about. These are people who still think, people who are thoughtful. They’re very conservative, I mean, have no doubt about that, but they know fascism when they see it and they didn’t want any part of it. And they responded with a fundamental American patriotism and belief in freedom and liberty and they expressed this at the voting booth and all those MAGA candidates lost.

And, by the way, Alfie got disqualified, of course, because he didn’t fill out his papers properly and so he is off the Wreck and Doug Rankin, who he deposed in 2020, is now going to be head of the Wreck. He’s a very conservative guy, he’s been a conservative Republican, I think, since the womb, but he is not Alfie’s Republican.

So, my hope is that the same kind of revulsion and the same kind of revolt and the same kind of discontent with this kind of fasco-Trumpism is abroad in the land. And Rick will get the percentage of Republicans who have had enough, they will vote for freedom and liberty but, you know, we have to remain vigilant.

Now I want to talk about the “what we do about it” part of this presentation.

Remember something: even after this election, as Rick Wilson pointed out, there are going to be attempts to negate what happens, to overturn the results, and Florida, Lord knows, has a record of passing constitutional amendments that the legislature and the governor then ignore. We’ve got to hold their feet to the fire.

But there are maybe three broad principles that we can follow.

One is vigilance. We’ve got to be on top over everything these people doing. As Dale mentioned, one effort that is truly fascist—and Fascist with a capital “F”—is the attempt to make this a one-party state. And there have been those attempts.

Christian Ziegler, who was chair of the Florida Republican Party before he got deposed in a sex scandal, once said that: “For the Republican Party of Florida the work continues as our job is not done until there are no more Democrats in Florida.”

This is not competition. This is extermination. And that is a very, very bad trend. There was one bill proposed last year that would have decertified the Democratic Party in Florida. It wasn’t serious. It didn’t advance but it shows a mentality and we have to be especially vigilant to that. We have to be a multiparty state because we’re a multiparty society.

Our media plays an essential role in this and I have to say that I have been disappointed by our local media, I don’t think they keep track of these people, they don’t emphasize the political threats that are out there to the degree I wish they would. This is why I started The Paradise Progressive blog, which I hope you’re familiar with, or will be familiar with afterwards. It’s trying to fill the gap that I see in our political reporting from our traditional media. We’ve got a good reporter in Dave Elias, who’s very active on NBC2 but he can’t do it alone. We all have to be our own monitors, own Minute-people to keep track of these kinds of loony ideas like getting rid of fluoride and do it when it’s coming up.

You know, they passed an anti-immigrant law last year. That law went through subcommittee, it went through committee, it went through the legislature in its entirety—and this is a statewide law—and then Ron DeSantis signed it into law and then suddenly the protests start.

I’m sorry, that’s not when you do it. You may be mad about the law but you’ve got to be active when it’s being formulated, when it’s on the table.

That brings us to the second pillar, which is response. You’ve got to respond. Be vigilant and when you see something bad you’ve got to respond.

Here in Collier County that means contacting our Board of Commissioners and even if they don’t listen, even if they vote against it, they need to know there are people who are watching what they do.

There have been statements in the Collier County Commission…[Commissioner] Chris Hall [R-District 2] once said, “something is out there,” he couldn’t understand why there was all this protest against it. It was because he put it out there! It was a loony law that he wanted to do and everybody saw what it was and they protested. And it does have effect. And that also applies to the congressional level and we can get into our congressman some other time.

But you’ve got to be vigilant, responsive and the third pillar is activism.

You’ve always got to be active, it doesn’t end with the election, it doesn’t start with the runup to the election; the day after the election we’re going to have to be active.

As Michelle Obama said to the Democratic National Convention: “Do something!”

Look, none of us are going to take up arms. I’m pretty sure that no matter what happens none of us are going to go out and shoot up a firehouse or something like that.

We all know what the traditional things are: making phone calls, canvassing—which, by the way, is a great exercise. It gets you to meet all your neighbors, talk to people. Writing postcards. All of these are democratic norms.

I want to add another challenge to everybody.

Since social media is now our preferred, most common use of communication, I want to challenge everybody here to reach out to ten people you have never met, never contacted, and don’t know and try to convince them to your point of view whatever that point of view is, if you think that’s important. Ten people you don’t know. You’ve got to get outside of your bubble. You’ve got to talk beyond your friends. Lord knows, there’s plenty of feeds and all sorts of things. There’s all these nice Chinese ladies who want to get to know me, I could talk to them.

You can reach out to people you’ve never talked to and never met and do it on social media. You can do it at home, you can do it at any hour, you can do it unprompted, when you’re relaxing or taking a bath or whatever. But try to reach out to people and that’s really important. It’s especially important for this election.

Now, all my recommendations are based on the premise that we will have a democracy; that our laws will function, that you can do these things, that it’s legal, that it’s protected.

If we lose democracy we lose everything. I think everybody in this room knows it.

Today, as Rick pointed out, is 30 days to the most important election of our lifetimes, of our children’s’ lifetimes and our grandkids’ lifetimes.

I don’t have a grandchild who’s ready to vote yet, but she will be affected by what we do here next month.

It brings up to me what I consider one of the most meaningful elections that ever occurred—and that occurred on September 11th, 2001. All of us in this room remember that day.

It was an election held in the back of an airplane, United Airlines Flight 93

We know what had happened. Al Qaeda hijackers had taken over that plane, killed the pilot and the co-pilot and there was one standing outside the cockpit threatening to blow up the plane with a bomb.

The passengers went into the back and they had to decide what to do. They knew that other planes had hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They didn’t know where they were headed.

And so what did they do? They took a vote. They held an election. They held an election because that’s what we as Americans do.

When we are faced with a decision, when we are faced with a course of action, we take a vote. There was one passenger, Todd Beamer, who said, “OK, let’s roll.” And they voted to try to take back that airplane.

Nobody said the vote was rigged. Nobody said that there had to be a hand count of ballots. Nobody said that there was a secret landslide that no one had seen. And nobody said that they weren’t going to accept the results of that vote. Because that’s not what Americans do, not what real, patriotic Americans do and that’s not what those passengers did on that airplane.

They took a vote, they acted on their decision.

Now, the plane crashed. They fought for that cockpit and ultimately it crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

But by their action they may have saved the United States Capitol. They may have saved the White House. Who knows how many American lives they saved?

Let me tell you, I was on the ground in Washington, DC on 9/11, my wife was working at home, my son was in a high school next to the CIA. We were all saved by those people—as a result of their election.

Now, today, we have hijackers again. We are the passengers in the back of that plane. And these people are trying to take that aircraft into darkness and dictatorship and disaster. And we have got to get control of that aircraft.

And on November 5th we will hold that election and I hope—and I hope that we will all work and I certainly intend to—to make sure that we get that airplane under control and we land it safely in a free democracy.

So, that is one month from today. Each of us has something to do.

So, let’s roll.

Liberty lives in light

Florida Redistricting, Collier County and you

A presentation on new districts at the congressional, state and county levels made to the Collier County Democratic Party on May 11, 2022.

Hours before this scheduled presentation, Judge Layne Smith of Leon County, Fla., struck down the governor’s congressional redistricting map. The fate of Florida’s congressional districts remains undecided at this time.