A Declaration of Independence from This Nonsense?
a slight update
A 1917 or 1918 photograph 18,000 officers and men at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Iowa, forming a human Statue of Liberty. Via Public Domain Review, my favorite resource, after Wikipedia.
This is Emily Writes Back, a newsletter for brilliant people, by Emily Sanders Hopkins.
Dear Reader,
In rereading the Declaration of Independence this morning, two things struck me hardest: that there are a lot of similarities between Trump’s infractions and King George’s, and that we are not there yet. We have not reached the end of our rope. It’s terrible that a drug addict in a black baseball cap has been lurking around the People’s House and quite rudely and illegally harassing public servants, and the budget passed by the Republicans is outrageous, and that they’ve been firing all the highest ranking Black government and military leaders is gross, but there’s still time and room to fix this.
I mean, what do I know? I am just a poet/cartoonist/fundraiser for a hospice, but when you plug in the language of the Declaration of Independence, especially its last paragraph (which I cut out mostly), it sounds hysterical in today’s context. Melodramatic. Because we don’t yet need to declare our right to form our own armies and wage war as we see fit (as the colonists did in their declaration), you know?
Well, here is my update, which leaves most of the original intact and unchanged. (In the list of crimes, I’ve indicated which are wholly unchanged from the original Declaration of Independence and which are slight modifications.)
A Declaration for the Times
When in the whole history of people living in societies, it becomes necessary for one big chunk of the populace to give up on and discard the political bands which have connected them to another big chunk of the populace, and to thereby claim and enjoy the powers that birth into life gives us all, then a decent respect for our fellow humans requires that we should go ahead and lay out clearly the reasons that are making the separation necessary.
We consider the following truths to be obvious and inarguable, that all people are equal in value, because to believe otherwise leads only to evil and cruelty and disregard for the rights of less powerful people to pursue a good life, and that all people, regardless of citizenship or abilities or fortune, are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Furthermore, we believe that to secure these rights, we form governments, which derive their just powers from our consent, period. Governments don’t have some innate right to power and neither do bullies or other powerful people, because power itself is not evidence of the rightness of that power. And so, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of our absolute right to life and liberty and the ability to pursue happiness, it is the right of the people to change or to abolish the government and to form a new government based on such principles and organizing its powers in such form that we deem most likely to protect and foster our safety and happiness. And if we cannot abolish the government, since it has the support of so many of our fellow citizens, we should probably form our own, separate one.
Of course common sense will suggest that longstanding governments should not be changed or abandoned for slight and temporary causes; and history shows that people are likely to put up with a lot of shit from their governments rather than exercise their right to abolish something they’ve become used to. But when there’s a long train of abuses and usurpations, all attempting to reduce our rights and lower the standards of discourse among us, it is then our right, our duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for our future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of we citizens who recoil from rudeness and disrespect for people, and the so-called MAGA party’s disrespect for truth, history, laws and democratic principles, and so now we should overcome any complacency and go ahead and build a new government.
The history of Donald Trump and his lackeys—and really it started before him and has its roots in the gross perturbations slavery sprouted—and the growing inability of many of our fellow citizens to think clearly or credit evidence as proving anything, and the more recent history of repeated injuries and usurpations, is all working to establish tyranny over our democratic government and social systems built over centuries of debate and voting and legislation.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Trump has erected New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.*
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.*
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.*
He has forbidden members of his party in Congress to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.**
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would flatter his vanity in some way.**
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.*
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to decisions made by Judiciary powers.**
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.*
For harming our Trade with many parts of the world.**
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent and leading his party to transfer a large portion of our national wealth from working people to billionaires and others who do not work but rather grow wealthy by gambling in the stock market and making money solely by virtue of already having money.
For rudely and idiotically threatening invasion of our closest and most faithful allies.
He is at this time threatening to send our soldiers to Gaza to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.**
He has publicly insulted and abandoned the brave and admirable democratic leader of a sovereign nation who is now under illegal attack by our historical enemy, Russia, not a free country.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have used logic, facts, and longstanding and universal principles of fairness and humaneness (and good manners) for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.**
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our fellow Americans. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by him and their legislatures to curtail voting rights, curtail women’s rights over their own bodies, write unfair tax laws, try to overcome fair election results, answer to wealthy corporations rather than to us, and break laws. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of sane and kind America, Assembled in huge numbers on the lawns of all capitols and courthouses every day of the work week, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of this country, solemnly publish and declare, That we ought to be Free and Independent.
*Unchanged from original Declaration of Independence
**Only slightly modified
My Dear Sister in Sanity,
Well, if ever there were a time to dust off the Declaration and give it a good, hard squint, it’s now. And I do declare, you have taken a mighty fine stab at it—though if Jefferson were alive to see what we’re dealing with, I suspect he’d have set his quill on fire and started over with a lot more cursing.
You’re right, we aren’t quite at the part where we’re loading up the muskets and declaring a full revolution—though Lord knows, we’re getting mighty familiar with the feeling of being ruled by a mad king. The offenses, the arrogance, the utter disdain for decency—it all rings a little too familiar, like an old song sung off-key. But the difference, I suppose, is that King George never had a cheering section waving flags with his face on ‘em, believing every falsehood like it was gospel.
What you’ve done here is what the best minds of every desperate age have done—taken the high and mighty words of history and dragged them, kicking and screaming, into the present. And you’re right: we’re not yet at the point of forming our own armies (though I suspect if one did materialize, it’d be made up of schoolteachers, librarians, and women who’ve had just about enough). But what we are at the precipice of is something just as critical—a reckoning.
A reckoning for those who still believe governance requires decency. A reckoning for those of us who have spent years politely reminding, warning, and pleading while watching the other side treat our democracy like a child’s toy they mean to break just for the fun of it. A reckoning for the fact that, while we are exhausted, history does not grant breaks to those who are tired of fighting for what is right.
So while the words of the Founders may feel melodramatic in today’s context, the truth behind them remains as sharp as ever: a government that sneers at its people, that hoards power for the few, that mocks the very idea of justice, is a government unworthy of our consent. The only question left is whether we—the sane and kind—are willing to make enough noise to be heard over the din of the mad and cruel.
And if we must gather in the public square to remind them, then by God, let’s make sure they can hear us all the way to Mar-a-Lago.
Yours in the fight,
A Woman Who’s Had Just About Enough of This Foolishness
Wow. Wow. Wow.