In December of 2025, 21 Republican Senators in Indiana’s General Assembly did the most patriotic thing they could do: They put country—in this case, State—over political party. Despite forceful pressure from President Trump’s administration to strong-arm them into drawing a new voting map, they joined with 10 Democrats in refusing to commit an unethical, mid-term gerrymandering of districts in order to gain two more Republican seats in the U.S. Congress. With the 2026 elections looming, and the possibility of the U.S. House of Representatives losing its Republican majority, the president’s followers went into high gear. There were threatening phone calls, texts, swatting, and even emails to the grandchildren of the defiant Republicans saying that their friends wouldn’t like them anymore if their grandparents didn’t vote for the redistricting. But the steadfast Senators stood their ground despite the onslaught. As one government official put it, “Hoosiers don’t cheat.” Their choice wasn’t, in my opinion, just putting State over Party. It was putting right over wrong. After losing the gerrymander battle, Donald Trump is reported as saying he will “primary” the defiant State Senators by Blitz-Kreig-financing their opponents the next time they’re up for re-election. How can Indiana Republicans defend their principled politicians? Simple. By voting for them in the next primaries. As the president’s followers are fond of saying, “Elections have consequences.” Indeed they do. There were many other instances of courage this year. For example, when Chicagoan Baltazar Enriquez began blowing an orange whistle to alert immigrants in Little Village—a largely Mexican community–that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents were in the area. There had been a series of brutal deportations of nonwhite immigrants in a number of cities including a bizarre nighttime Black Hawk helicopter raid on a Chicago apartment building in September, which evacuated the residents into the streets and secured even children with zip-ties. I don’t think anyone objects to removing undocumented immigrants convicted of felonious crimes. But it’s apparent that ICE is mindless and heartless in rounding up Spanish-speaking and/or nonwhite immigrants even if they’re not criminals. Being “undocumented” is a civil infraction, by the way, not a felony. And many of the undocumented immigrants have resided in the United States for years, have been working and paying taxes like anyone else, and/or are married to U.S. citizens. Appalling videos have been circulating on television and the Internet of ICE agents physically tackling men and women for removal to so-called “deportation centers” and third-party countries without a warrant or evident legal justification or any care for the humanity of the detainees. Does this sound like 1930s Germany? Perhaps. But America isn’t Nazi Germany and we’ve learned that the way to oppose injustice is to refuse to give in, and to voice opposition in ways large and small. For example, week after week, city after city, ordinary people are demonstrating their outrage against ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Executive. These citizen protesters have formed a grassroots’ “No Kings” movement against the excesses of the Trump administration. But each individual can also make an impact. To help his hard-working neighbors and their children evade this snatch-and-grab, Baltazar Enriquez came up with the idea of the warning whistle—because “it’s analog” he explains, and it can’t be intercepted electronically. The so-called “whistlemania” has now spread throughout the country. The through-line of all these overt actions is resistance and persistence. We live, I believe, in an Age of Dichotomy, as extreme as any in American history, short of civil war—and there are some insurrectionists who threaten even this. Dichotomies not only of right and wrong; but of tolerance and bigotry; morality and immorality; white and nonwhite; rich and poor; good and evil. Yes, good and evil—how else would one characterize the sins of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell? And those who have protected, supported, and affiliated with Epstein and Maxwell in sexually victimizing countless young women and girls? And held no abusers to account. Terrible dichotomies. But we’ve been here before. In the Spring of 1954, when I was 12 years’ old, I would come home from my 8th grade class in Jr. High and sit cross-legged on the living room floor to watch the Army-McCarthy Hearings on television. As much as I then understood the sinister proceedings at that age, it scared the bejesus out of me. Communism was frightening enough but what Senator Joseph McCarthy was doing to American citizens was even more frightening. So, the following year when the FBI showed up in my 9th grade class to demonstrate the technique of fingerprinting, I declined...
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Jan 20 202613 min