For any DU'ers who even occasionally doubt that Democrats are doing enough -- Democrats are doing enough.

[slightlv]

168. I hear you, Jill...

and boy, am I right there with you... especially this paragraph...

I am talking about bold, creative, unprecedented action that surely some of our SMART, LEGAL SCHOLARS in the Democratic party can come up with. Don't ask me to figure it out. Hell, I'm just a stupid person who wants to see my country NOT turn into a dictatorship.

I'm just an old woman who's done before what doesn't seem to be working now. Marched until my feet bled with blisters. Protested as much as possible anywhere I could get to. But that all seems so insignificant as to what's going on now, and what is effective now. Before, even the opposition party still conducted themselves under rules of civility (for the most part). They cared when they were held up for embarrassment and shame. Kent State hit more than a few of them as hard as it hit us. That's not the world we live in today. The last time a major protest came close (physically) to trump, he hid himself in a damned panic room under the capitol, and was ridiculed for months because of that action. He wanted the military to shoot the protestors, if only in their legs...thinking that a mercy.

Today, he has federalized the National Guard and called them in to "police" DC. I haven't heard of the specifics yet, but only seen messages on the few substack blogs I follow about people heading to DC for a protest. The last one I read was 9 hours old, and I read it early this evening. Trump isn't going to go back to the panic room. Instead, he will insist the Nat Guard shoot the "terrorists" (aka protestors) as they assemble in the People's Park. I'm convinced THIS is the reason he's done all this about DC. He feels the walls closing in around him, even though he publicly rejects all the reasons showing them to be doing so. He won't be ridiculed again, so he'll let his inner sadistic terrorist rise to the occasion by ordering the military to fire on their own countrymen. And more than a few of them will follow his orders, he's made sure of that by the changes he's already made to the military, notwithstanding the inordinate number of maga and maga-types in the military at this very moment. He says "jump" and they don't even ask how high. They just jump. I'm worried sick over the first big protest to show up in "our Park." I also worry about protests in other cities, especially Democratic cities, being nothing more than shooting galleries. That's not going to stop me from attending one in the closest big city to me (especially since we seem to woefully inadequate in the small rural city I live in), but like I said before, I'm old. The time of my death is closer to me than not, no matter how it happens. And I'm a veteran of a once great, proud country. To give my life in honor of the truths we once held would be preferable to dying in my bed, struggling for the next breath.

Beyond this, I *don't* know what else to do! And it's so frantically frustrating to me. Tibetan monks set themselves ablaze in very obvious, public places. Other countries have nearly their entire populace marching in the streets when their rulers get out of line. They live lives even closer to the bone than we do. Ask, and we would sacrifice, I believe. But we don't want the sacrifice to be in vain. So what, then? I'm certainly not smart enough to figure it out, and I'll admit that. Maybe, if I were 40 years younger I could have... but not now. trump and his maladministration has turned a once gentle, soft spoken, kind hearted individual into one who one buy a gun for the simple pleasure of putting one right between his eyes (if MY eyes could only see that straight, anymore!) For all else he's done to people, to the government, to the animals on the extinction list, to the planet itself, I detest him for what he's brought out in me. Is this a normal response, I ask myself. But how else am I to feel when I see so much pain and suffering surrounding this supposed human, and him gleefully calling for more of it.