Any American politician that does not support a Ukrainian peace agreement that restores all of Ukraine's sovereign territory to its rule, including the Crimea, and the Donbas, is a traitor to America.

All of this talk about negotiating this and what price Ukraine must pay for peace in a war that it did not start is ridiculous. It shows no understanding whatsoever of any kind of American idealism, the kind of strength, freedom and humanitarian consideration upon which our nation was built, and after whom the Ukrainians modelled their democratic republic.

Any true, patriotic American who has any understanding at all of what our own country stands for, and the values it represents cannot take any other position, other than demanding Russia withdraw from Ukraine, all of its territory is restored, all of the people they have kidnapped are returned and then, that Russia pay for the damage they have inflicted.

There is no integrity in anything else. There is no value and respect for freedom or democracy in any other position.

Nevertheless, I did not expect the Democratic party leadership to disappear after it was all over. They left behind a bigger vacuum than I would have expected, into which Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have come with a uniting, progressive narrative. They are directly responsible for spurring what appears to be growing anti-Trump sentiment coming from some unexpected sources, including more conservative independents and some Republicans. The Democratic party in Congress seems to have gone into self-preservation mode. Yeah, there are some signs of leadership here and there, Cory Booker's filibuster, Chris Van Hollen's trip to El Salvador, some angry speeches and fist pumping.

Trump resistance and opposition, however, is going in a bit of a different direction. There are signs that "corporeal politics" are developing in response to the tyranny that is unquestionably unfolding. Perhaps in spite of the scattered policy wonk messaging that Democrats are known for, a simpler message is appealing to people and capturing their attention. That message is, "Get him out." That seems to be the one thing providing the energy and enthusiasm that is getting people into the streets, and motivated to action against the war on our democracy and our freedom. Democrats who want to lead need to pay attention to this message, and get on board with it.

Just before the election, in fact, when polls were bouncing up and down like tennis balls, a political analyst, Rachel Bitecofer, appeared on the David Pakman podcast, and said that there was still a way for Democrats to concentrate their messaging and win enough support to eke out a narrow win. They didn't follow her advice. And they lost by a razor thin margin. Somehow, that has caused this paralysis of leadership. The poll numbers are dismal for Trump, but they are a disaster for Democrats. And yet, a clear majority of Americans are highly dissatisfied with everything Trump is doing.

Democrats need to hook up with the opposition's message. Messaging is difficult for Democrats but this is an opportunity that cannot be wasted.

If there's anything that actually indicated this Pope was on the right track when it came to reforming the Catholic Church, aiming to return it to its biblical roots, it was the opposition he received from the more conservative elements within the church, especially in the United States. A quote from an article in America Magazine, a Jesuit publication, says, "What really bothers the detractors of Pope Francis is that his theology stems from reality: from the reality of injustice, poverty and the destruction of nature, and from the reality of ecclesial clericalism."

In other words, because he was from South America, his ministry faced a different world than that of most previous popes, one where the academic side of church theology found itself much less relevant in the face of the kind of ministry necessary to bring spiritual comfort along with meeting the physical needs of an overwhelming amount of political oppression, instability and injustice, and a high level of poverty. He was, according to his critics, not authoritarian enough when it came to pronouncements of sin, too merciful when it came to controversial issues like homosexuality, too lenient on dogma and too critical of conservative politicians supporting the church's political influence in those parts of the world where it is still exercising its Christian nationalist power.

In other words, he was too connected to an emphasis on practice of the core principles of the gospel of Jesus, and on building a ministry foundation based on that, and that made him seem like a left-wing crusader bent on undermining the church's political influence.

In other words, Pope Francis was, in whatever way being Pope allowed him to be, "woke."

I have yet to meet and engage in discussion with a Trump supporter who can factually articulate exactly what it is that Trump has done for this country, and specifically for themselves, that merits their support. Maybe there is someone out there who can say, truthfully, "He cut my taxes, he made the economy better, he made the nation safer, both from foreign threats and from crime, and insofar as it was his responsibility to do the things the Constitution demands of its government, he did so."

But that would be a rare individual, indeed. That's because Trump did none of those things.

There are plenty of people who believe this, but what they might believe and what is actually true are two different things. That's been part of the problem with Trump all along, his political success rest on falsehoods, invented statistics and outright lies. For one thing, people are generally not educated enough to understand the way government is supposed to work. They've bought into this "winner take all" mentality, not understanding that this is a democracy, and its government is a republic. That does not mean that a candidate who wins an election by a razor thin plurality does not have any mandate to claim that their agenda is "what the American people voted for."

Those who put the emphasis on the "Republic" part of American democracy don't understand that in a Republic, the rights of the minority are equally protected under the law. So to simply start "cutting" government budgets, under the false pretense that there is massive fraud and that spending is "out of control," both very nebulous and undefined arguments, is in direct conflict with the rule of law.

What's happening is not just partisan political battling over how much or how little government should do for its people. That ended when the GOP decided they were going to adopt the Rush Limbaugh methods of "our way or the highway" and started their attempt to turn the United States from a constitutional democracy into a white, Christian nationalist oligarchy. Resistance and opposition only work when all three branches of government are committed to democracy, which guarantees the protection of the rights of the minority. What's happening now is that people's guaranteed rights are being taken away from them.

That's tyranny. And the American people have, in their history, demonstrated an ability not only to recognize it when they see it, but they know how to fight it and defeat it. And that must happen, once again, in order for American Democracy to prevail and survive the tyranny that is attacking the United States now.

Some of the same polling data that those opposed to Trump are celebrating, watching his job approval rating fall to levels below where it was during his first failed term, is showing the Democratic party members in Congress getting a 29% job approval rating, with only 7% "strongly approving" of the job they are doing. That kind of puts a damper on a celebration, huh?

Well, what did you expect?

It's hard to put a finger on just exactly where it was that things turned south, but if I were a professional polling analyst, and I was interested in truth, not just projecting a political image, I'd be looking into what transpired around the time of Biden's first debate with Trump, and the fallout that happened afterward. The image that Democrats have built for themselves has never really been sharp, clear and focused, but that was a disaster of epic proportions. We looked like the GOP for about six weeks, with shadowed influence built around money interests calling the shots and trying to run the show.

That's when I realized that the hope we had placed in the fact that mountains of evidence had been produced and that Trump had finally and actually been indicted for his massive crimes would wind up coming to nothing. I realized, when the Justice Department and the attorney general Merrick Garland went completely silent after a tremendous congressional investigation made the case for proving Trump's guilt as the seditious inciter of an insurrection against the Capitol, that this was going to come to nothing.

And look, I get it. Trump was the insurrectionist, inciting violence for the purpose of overturning the results of an election he clearly could not prove was "stolen" from him. The Republicans are the ones who have basically pooped their brains out and turned into walking zombie yes men, lacking the will or the patriotism to serve their country as anything but a shill for a con artist.

But when Democrats had the chance to stop this from happening, they chose to give the old status quo, politics-as-usual, give-and-take, compromise and dealmaking that the GOP abandoned during the Reagan Administration one more try. That was the safe route. We got the rhetoric, "Trump is an existential threat to democracy." But nothing was done about bringing him to justice. Excuses were made about Republican justice appointees and the delays he made in his trials that stretched cases out for years, a travesty in a system where the rule of law is supposed to be the way things are governed.

Palm Sunday, in the small Baptist church in which I grew up, was just the Sunday before Easter. The Baptist tradition followed by most of the members wasn't big on the events of the Christian calendar, except Easter and Christmas, we didn't cover the pulpit with the various colors representing the different seasons of Christian tradition, our pastor wore a black suit, with a black tie and a white shirt, and the only thing different about Palm Sunday was that we sang the typical crucifixion hymns and left church in a somber mood.

So, did anyone go to church on Palm Sunday? Maybe to a non-denominational church, where it seemed to be a cute thing to gather all of the younger children in a room off the side of the sanctuary, give each one of them a palm branch and have them come in, adding a little kick to the emphasis of the day. Or maybe worship was more formal at a mainline Protestant or Catholic church, where there was a processional, during which the clergy marched in with the palm branches, waving them around while other clergy carried incense burners and others sprinkled holy water on the worshippers in the pews.

Most of us in the United States went to church after the news of the Russian bombing attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy had already been circulated. In fact, I heard about it on my way to church, on MSNBC's satellite broadcast. I thought to myself that there would not be a single worshipper anywhere in the United States who would be sitting in their church that morning, worried that a foreign enemy's drone would sent a bomb through the roof, while some of our fellow Christians in Ukraine were dead, because that had happened to them while worshipping in their church on Palm Sunday.

It made me angry. I'm enraged that this happened, that historically, people who are even more closely aligned in ethnic culture and especially in the same Christian tradition could attack their brethren without even giving it a second thought, that such an incredibly evil act could reach right inside a Christian church, and have American Evangelical supporters of Trump try to brush it off, excuse it, justify it or simply ignore it as insignificant. That makes them as evil as those who did it.

In the late 70's and early 80's, though some very useful television evangelists, like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and a little known Texan by the name of James Robison, they managed to take over the leadership of most of the conservative, Evangelical branch of the American church, using abortion on demand and gay rights as the "evils" against which they needed to fight. This constituency, made up of ultra-conservative fundamentalists and Pentecostals, had a tendency to avoid participating in what they called "secular" politics, but their leadership, over time, convinced them that they were called by God to save the country from evil by voting against liberals who just wanted to destroy things.

That added, to the treasury and the power base of the Heritage Foundation, a significant constituency and it provided a religious endorsement for their right wing extremism, though the message, morality and ethics of the Christian gospel did not phase the Heritage Foundation's agenda, which bears no resemblance at all to any known practice of the Christian gospel.

Setting aside the core principles of the Christian gospel in order to benefit from the power of secular politics has become the M.O. of the Heritage Foundation and its Evangelical allies. They are getting the political power and money that they have always had at the center of their pseudo-Christian agenda.

This is what we are fighting against. Can someone point me to an agenda driven, money raising, media powerful foundation of equal influence and effect on the Democratic party's side of American politics?

The Republicans, with their Heritage Foundation Project 2025 plan book being followed to the tee, have been running amok, doing exactly what we were warned they were going to do, and that was make Trump dictator and impose a Christian nationalist regime to control the United States.

We were warned. It's been written about, reported, good grief, copies of this draconian, anti-Democratic piece of trash have been circulating around for a while not. We knew it was coming. Nothing was done from November to January, to develop a plan for resisting it and opposing it and making it difficult for Republicans to implement. "Woe is us," is the cry, "They have a razor thin margin on both houses."

Nothing was done from January, through February, into march, except the activism of Senator Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez. I can't donate much, but that's where all my donations are going right now. That seems to be the only place where there is some good being done. They sure helped draw attention to the crisis, and we are finally seeing people out in the streets. But that's not going to be nearly enough.

Tim Murphy's observation on Saturday's mass protests against Trump's actions and policies is a great narrative on the subject, one of the best I've read. You can read it too, by clicking the link above. He does a great job characterizing the feelings of protesters, and pointing out that this is a movement that exists everywhere, that opposition to Trump's second term in office is widespread and condemning.

It's a pity that this wasn't happening prior to the election, when it would have made a real difference. But, as Murphy observes, most people think the first time around wasn't nearly as bad as what we have seen, and a lot of people just didn't believe it would go where it has so quickly. So it is that we have what we have.

What is the goal of the opposition? Protests are design to put forward the idea that a chosen political course of action is not popular, and needs to be reconsidered. For someone like Trump, who will never be influenced by protests or opposition, and who doesn't have the ability within himself to compromise on anything, the question goes back to the purpose of the protest.

The size and scope of the turnout shook the Republican party's Congressional leadership to its very core. They, of course, won't admit it, but it's not really much of a secret at this point. If that was one of the goals of the protesters, it was achieved. What the result of this will be, short term or in the long run, is anyone's guess.

The Constitutional options are limited:

Impeachment and removal, which seems highly unlikely. However, it was Republican pressure on Nixon, after the Watergate scandal broke, threatening removal if Congress did impeach him, that got him to resign. We seem to be a long way off from that kind of pressure coming from enough Republicans to force him out by resignation.
Invoking the 25th amendment, also unlikely given that many of those in the cabinet are his own hand-picked sycophants who don't see his insanity, or do see it but want to use it for their own advantage.
Putting enough public pressure on him to get him to resign on his own. I don't see this as a realistic possibility. Trump is emotionally incapable of seeing mistakes he makes. He has been the worst President in history, by far and away, worse than even poor James Buchanan, whose lack of leadership actually caused the Civil War, or John Tyler, who succeeded William Henry Harrison after just 31 days, and whose term can be characterized as one of the most anti-Constitutional, anti-patriotic times in history, except for Trump. Tyler managed to alienate himself from the entire electorate, and both major political parties in just four years.

So, considering the options, what is the goal of the opposition?