Pandering to a tyrant
We are still creating America
The awarding of the FIFA Peace Prize to Donald Trump by the international federation for what Americans call soccer suggests that pandering to our wannabe dictator has officially jumped the shark.
Where's the ref with a red card? The creation of such a prize by a notoriously corrupt sports federation is way outside its lane and should embarrass anyone still capable of embarrassment.
No decent person could seriously consider giving a peace prize to a man who is murdering people in small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific while gunning for war against Venezuela. Not only has he provided no evidence of drugs aboard those boats which were far from American shores, he hypocritically pardoned one of the greatest cocaine traffickers, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández.
For a while I have toyed with a possible column titled, "We deserve a better class of mobster." Perhaps I should change it to, "We deserve a better class of monarch." King Charles, for example, has a much cleaner mouth than King Donald.
America has had racist and corrupt presidents, but never before have I heard a president call entire populations of people garbage as he did to Somali Americans.
Every insult Trump hurls is a confession. He is not the king of the United States, but is definitely the king of projection.
The greater question is not why so many Americans enjoy his bigoted appeals—though it is sickening to watch—but what we who embrace the reality of diversity will do to escape the gutter into which he has dragged our national discourse.
Let us be clear: "All men are created equal" is part of our national creed. The question for white supremacists and religious bullies is this: How many people are they prepared to slaughter or place in prison camps to set that aside and erase all the social progress we have made? Because we will not stand for the betrayal of our nation's fundamental principles.
Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona set the right tone by refusing to be intimidated by Trump's threats to prosecute and execute the former Navy combat pilot and astronaut for daring to point out that military service members are legally forbidden to obey unlawful orders. Kelly aptly says that so-called Secretary of War Pete Hegseth acts "like he's a 12-year-old playing army."
It is time for grown-ups to take charge. Trump doesn't care about the Constitution any more than he cares about human lives. He simply assumes that his every addlepated impulse magically becomes law. He is getting so out of control that even some Republicans are overcoming their fear of crossing him.
The speed with which the foundations of our constitutional republic have been undermined, led by the Heritage Foundation and their allies who drafted Project 2025, is frightening. It should serve as a reminder never to underestimate the persistence of racism, xenophobia, and hostility toward democracy, intellectual freedom, and the scientific method.
Let's recall some history. The successful codebreaking of the German Enigma device by computer pioneer Alan Turing in World War II played a crucial role in defeating the Nazis. Afterward, he was forced to take chemical castration because he was gay, and committed suicide. He was pardoned decades later. Now he is featured on the British Fifty Pound note.
Gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny had to lie about his sexuality in order to fight the Nazis in WWII. My father also fought the Nazis, as did many of my readers' parents and grandparents. Yet some of the January 6 insurrectionists incited by Trump into storming the US Capitol carried swastika flags. As recently as October, Politico ran a story with the headline, "Capitol Police called to investigate swastika in GOP congressional office."
In the eighty years since WWII, many of us fought peacefully here on the home front to make our country live up to its creed of freedom and equality. That we made significant progress is shown by the eagerness of the MAGA horde to erase our work.
The gap between our highest aspirations and the often grim reality around us need not cause us despair. It can remind us that we are still creating our country. The alternative to embracing equality is a dark amalgam of becoming Nazis ourselves and resurrecting the Confederacy.
For Frank Kameny, Alan Turing, and all our ancestors who fought the Axis powers in World War II, we must redouble our efforts to defeat the modern-day villains who betray our beloved country while posing as patriots.
Richard Rosendall is a writer and activist who can be reached at [email protected]. Copyright © 2025 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.