Democracy Under Siege: Donald Trump Ain't No Friend of Mine

By Bob McGill

Can anything bring a greater sense of awe than viewing a chain of mountains from afar? Observing a long line of craggy peaks spread across the horizon and rising upward into an azure skyline gives a special perspectives to what a mountain really is. Such sites provide memorable experiences that last a lifetime..
Hiking that same mountain chain provides another perspective to the mountains. The rough terrain, winding and hazardous paths, and sheer drop-off cliffs provide a totally different, if equally memorable perspective. There are dangers in walking in the midst of mountains. Mountains can be hazardous.
So it is with politics. Democracy, too, is a beautiful thing. This nation embodies a near-perfect set of rules and guidelines devised by men that we call our founding fathers and embodied in a document we call a constitution. Our constitution, too, creates a sense of awe.
Today, watching the daily machinations of politics; the, the process of voting, campaigning, maneuvering, the political intrigue and the oversized egos of so many of our politicians throughout the nation makes us wonder. Politics, too, has its craggy paths and steep cliffs that so many of us disdain. It, too has its precarious nature..
At no time since the civil war has the fractured nature of the nation been more obvious than in the current political scene. Democracy is under attack, in danger of being replaced by an autocratic form of government.
The author of this book has lived through the presidency of 15 chief executives—that’s 84 years of presidency. Born in the mid-west into a Republican family of long-standing, McGill spent his early years cementing that early belief through family conversations and school classes listening to history and civic teachers. He developed the engrained belief that, somehow, the Republicans best served the needs of the American people.
It was sometime during his college years that the author began the long shift from Republican to Democrat. McGill shares that transition even as he warns about the current political dangers threatening the future of the nation.
There is an urgency to the book—a concern for the future the children of today. A recurring question in the book asks about the world the children and grandchild will inherit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jun 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9781665760256

Bob McGill

In 1952 a youngster, Bobby Jim McGill, moved with his parents from a small town in Oklahoma to a hardscrabble farm in Missouri. Not long after the move, Bobby Jim’s uncle visited the family for a few days stay. At one point during the visit the uncle, put his arm around the young lad and rather forlornly told him he would never be the president of the United States. “Harry Truman is from Missouri,” the uncle stated, “and the people will never again elect a Missourian to be president.” The uncle was correct, of course. The young lad never became president. Nor did he ever, in the intervening years, run for any public office. But he did, for some instinctive reason, maintain an active interest in politics, occasionally writing letters to elected officials: the town mayor, a representative to congress, a U.S Senator and once, even to the President of the United States. President Eisenhower did not respond. Now after working at many levels in the field of education, Dr. McGill is retired and resides with his wife in the foothills of the beautiful Ozark Mountains of Missouri.

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Copyright © 2024 Bob McGill.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-6023-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-6024-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-6025-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024910050

Archway Publishing rev. date: 06/18/2024

The Statue of Liberty

Shortly after the Civil War the French, as a sign of friendship between the United States and France, proposed building a mammoth statue as a symbol of friendship between the two countries. The statue would honor the still young nation’s commitment to democracy. The project was to be a joint effort between the two countries with the French responsible for the statue and its assembly, while the Americans would build the pedestal on which it would stand.

A permanent site for the statue was found on Ellis Island, located in a bay near New York City as the permanent home. The massive 150 foot tall creation, titled Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, depicted a woman holding a torch in her raised right hand and a tablet in her left, upon which was engraved July 4, 1776, the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Scrawled along the base of the statue is a pair of unclasped shackles, a signal to the world that America was a free nation. Engraved on the base are words, part of a sonnet penned by Emma Lazarus’s Petrarchan that served as an inspiration to all of America, especially the millions of immigrants who arrived on America’s shores seeking a new and better life.

"Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Today the Statue continues serve as a symbolic of the very best the nation can be.

Is our nation on the verge of losing our own freedom? Are we placing chains on the Statue of Liberty?

About the Author

Robert McGill

In 1952 a youngster, Bobby Jim McGill, moved with his parents from a small town in Oklahoma to a hardscrabble farm in Missouri. Not long after the move, Bobby Jim’s uncle visited the family for a few days stay. At one point during the visit the uncle, put his arm around the young lad and rather forlornly told him he would never be the president of the United States. Harry Truman is from Missouri, the uncle stated, and the people will never again elect a Missourian to be president.

The uncle was correct, of course. The young lad never became president. Nor did he ever, in the intervening years, run for any public office. But he did, for some instinctive reason, maintain an active interest in politics, occasionally writing letters to elected officials: the town mayor, a representative to congress, a U.S Senator and once, even to the President of the United States. President Eisenhower did not respond.

Now after working at many levels in the field of education, Dr. McGill is retired and resides with his wife in the foothills of the beautiful Ozark Mountains of Missouri.

In Appreciation

Karlene

Melinda

Paul

Tim

Vicki

Contents

1     Dad Moves to the Farm

2     Now I have a Chance

3     Sam Adams One Cultural Renegade

4     Common Sense Society

5     2021 Personal Experiences

6     The Sins of a Nation

7     Incendiary Language

8     Second Step

9     The January 6 Committee

10   Democracy Under Siege

Appendix : January Six Hearings, Notes, Bibliography

1

Dad Moves to the Farm

This particular study actually started with a personal introspection into my past. I discovered just a handful of years ago that I really knew very little about my father, a kind and gentle man who rarely talked about himself and about an intentional decision he made to change his own lifestyle. He was what we later learned to call a homesteader.

Dad first introduced me to homesteading when I was a little boy. Shortly after dad returned home from service in World War II and after having seen multiple days of horrifying action, he announced to our family that we were moving from a mid-sized town in Oklahoma to a farm in Missouri. Even Mother’s reluctance to support the move did not deter him and soon we found ourselves on a small, remote Ozark farm, miles away from the nearest town. Immediately, we found ourselves milking cows by hand each morning before being hauled off to school in a yellow school bus some twelve miles away. We lived a vastly different lifestyle than the one we would have experienced had we stayed in Oklahoma.

Dad was a novice farmer, having never before farmed. From the very beginning our family was greeted warmly in the new community and neighbors were ready to give needed help and advice when asked and included Dad in the community work crews that passed from farm to farm during the harvest season.

Still, it wasn’t easy. At first there were those drought years during the 50’s when Dad had to take off-farm employment and even absenting himself from the farm for a year to take a construction job coming home only on week-ends.

But through it all, dad learned the art of farming. He loved the rural lifestyle, the seasons, the livestock he owned, and community life.

Mother, too, even after the arduous first years, came to fondly embrace farm life. Mom and Dad lived on that same farm until the day they died. I think Dad never doubted the wisdom of the move.

But Dad was always a very private person. Rarely did he ever talk about himself. He was always congenial and pleasant, but rarely did he ever talk about anything personal, only about his work and efforts on the farm. Only once, when I was a kid, did I ever ask Dad about his participation in World War II. That one time I asked him, Weren’t you in heavy combat during the war? Instantly, I received the sharpest rebuke of my life from him. Don’t ever ask me that question again, was his crisp response. The firmness of his tone startled me. And that was that. I never approached the subject with him again.

It was only after a lifetime on the farm that my father could, when his retired wartime buddies came to look him up, that he could sit and laugh and tell war stories. The war experience took an indelible lifetime toll on him.

It took years for me to understand that the move was his transition from horrific wartime experiences back to civilian life. It took a lifetime to heal his wartime wounds.

2

Now I have a Chance

The job ahead of us was gigantic. We were downsizing, moving from a big, old house out in the country to a much smaller one closer to town. We had raised the kids. Gone were the special family gatherings. Even the grandkids seldom appeared anymore at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners as they had years earlier. No longer did we hear them in the living room singing Ring around the Rosie in their merry voices as they excitedly danced around in a circle. The kids and even grandkids were now grown, celebrating the festivities with families in their own homes.

Add to this the yearly upkeep of the house, mowing the lawn, cleaning gutters, washing windows, and repairing any wind damage after an occasional storm. Even for my wife, a cleanliness fanatic who many years ago declared war on dirt and dust, the constant house cleaning had grown tiresome. Yes, we wanted to keep the memories of living in the house, but it was time for the big old house to go. The house was just too much to keep clean for a couple of retired folks who now had their sights set on another stage of life: travel, visiting our new great grandkids and going to ball games. We were retired. We wanted to live by the motto don’t ask us to do anything.

But what to do with all the stuff we had. The furniture in the old house was too large for a smaller home. Most noticeable, there was no longer a need for that big dinner table that had seated a dozen adults for those yearly family gatherings that were now never held. Nor could we take all the other furniture, the chairs, and desks, and beds or all the old clothes we never wore anymore, and other keepsakes. The list went on and on. The stuff we had collected over the years had been endless. It wasn’t easy, particularly as we decided what memory items to keep—photos of our marriage and the birth of the children, their school pictures, our souvenirs collected from vacations, and those special Christmas cards we received and what to discard. But we dealt with it. It took several months but eventually we got rid of most of the excess stuff we had.

But even as we planned this move, we were discovering for ourselves what other retirees had told us, we don’t know how we ever had time for working, there is now so much to do. Yes, travel, ballgames, and seeing the grandkids were all on the table. Wasn’t the world open to us for the remaining years that we had left?

Well, just maybe!! The next thing we learned is that the golden years may not be so golden after all. When senior citizens gather at reunions, church, or senior centers the conversation always included talk of new aches and pains and afternoon naps, of not being able to do what I used to do. and trips to the doctors’ offices. And, it was always unnerving to hear the occasional announcements at these occasions of a friend, sometimes one even younger than ourselves, who had passed away. Nostalgia was giving way to reality.

And then! And then again I came against the biggest quandary of all. What should I do with the stuff in my home office, particularly with all the material I had stored in my four file cabinets, each crammed full of papers and thoughts and articles saved even after years of having been forgotten? Much of it stuff I had not looked at and forgotten about years ago. But there it was, more than a few notes left over from my college days, a few stories I had written back when I aspired to be a writer, and even the many files collected during research for a couple of books I had published. There were reams and reams of paper haphazardly and indiscriminately placed into files over the years. They had meaning for me at the time, but by now I had absolutely forgotten about much that was contained it the writing. These were mementos of my past. Somehow, I was reminded of an elderly neighbor from my youth who over the years collected a large ball of string she labeled as string too short to use. Maybe that’s the way it was with my writing. Anyway, I appreciated the understanding of a grandson who told me that’s not clutter, Papa, that’s a collection. Whimsical as the comment might have been intended, it was all a matter of definition. So, I had been a collector all my life!!

Yet, I tackled reading this material, of skimming material page by page, almost word for word, of what I had collected remembering why I had written this, about that interview, or what had prompted me to raise that question, or why I had saved this particular piece of paper. Thick files of research papers on books I had written were included. But mostly, it was just notes and stories and thoughts that had seemed pertinent to whatever my interest was at the time. It was a nostalgic voyage back into my past, and I became engrossed in the adventure. It seemed this incoherent pile of material was a reflection of my life’s activities, a diary of the road I had traveled through much of my life. It was related to my soul. And I was supposed to discard it as I had thrown away that old, overstuffed and worn-out chair? I didn’t think so.

So, as I again read these thoughts, revisiting many of them for the first time in years, I began to see a coherent theme, a continuous thread to what had long been of interest to me. How do people get through life, how do they cope, how do they become what and who they are? Now as a retiree, I have time to think back not just on myself, but to call upon the knowledge acquired from others about how one becomes oneself. Isn’t it all related to freedom?

The Department of Community Development

These questions of course are universal. Not only have the great philosophers of history pondered on the questions, but surely everyone, at some time or another has asked themselves, How did I get to where I am? What’s all this living about, anyway? How can I figure it all out? And so here I was in the latter stages of life again asking the fundamental question that had from time to time over the years crept into my mind.

I was surprised to find that several of the files in my cabinet dated all the way back to my graduate study days at the University of Missouri in the mid-1960s. The files contained classroom notes, copies of papers I had written back then, and even some personal notes I had made. The contents of several items applied to those same questions, a significant reminder of the studies that had shaped my early thinking.

The department where I studied was called the Department of Community Development, an applied sociology if you will. Through their teachings the professors raised questions, many questions, about community life. Paramount to their teaching was how, if we were to work in communities, would we spend our lives helping create not just good communities, but better communities. Our studies were diverse and far-reaching, encompassing in scope far more than the name belied, ranging from the development of a human life to the vastness of a culture into which an individual might be born.

One of our professors talked about the composition of communities; the interrelations of business and education and churches and housing. Who benefits, he asked, if a new industry comes to town, or when urban communities swell into sprawling suburbs, or when sections of towns and neighborhoods become poverty ridden, or racial tensions erupt in a town. He spoke about the wisdom of including participation from a wide spectrum of community members in the decisions that communities must make; at neighborhood meetings, on school boards, town councils, or as elected officials. Communities, he pointed out, often exclude participation from certain segments of a community, limiting the quality of decisions from what we believe to be democratic institutions. It’s often not an easy task, he conceded.

Within the last few years a couple of my friends from these early years, Don and Doris Littrell, by now seasoned veterans in both practicing and teaching community development, published a small but very useful book on the subject; Practicing Community Development. The book outlines a list of the ethical and practical aspects of community development. They are listed below:

Those who work in community development need to give carful thought to the quality of the democratic environment in which they are functioning. The answer to the question of who does or does not have easy access to the political decision-making process will usually provide useful and vivid insight into the quality of democratic tradition and the way institutions function. In many places, people are purposefully left out of the democratic process except at election time when their vote is solicited to support a predetermined agenda. People are left out for invalid reasons such as race, religion, caste, class, place of residence, gender or age. The profession of community development as a whole and the people who practice it cannot support systems of exclusion. We must support the basic democratic concepts of the profession. However, there is a major difference between supporting such systems and working with and through them to change the quality of community democratic life. It was during this time that I assisted in forming an international organization, The Community Development Society, an organization that still flourishes.

Community Development Principles

• Participation in public decision making should be free and open to all interested people.

• Broad representation and an increasing breath of perspective are conditions that are conducive to community development.

• The use of sound, trusted methods is imperative to the study of the community by the community.

• Understanding and general agreement are the basis for community decision formation, implementation and enforcement.

• Any person has the right to be heard in open discussion and dialogue whether they agree or disagree with the norms of society.

• A holistic, systemic approach is key to working with communities.

• All people can participate in creating and recreating their communities.

Still another professor, while not discounting the above, was concerned about the bricks and mortar of a community. A successful community, he maintained, needed to be well planned with good streets and roads, adequate transportation, sufficient housing, and good employment opportunities with adequate wages. He talked about trade centers and the economic challenges of a community. How could people live well, he asked, if they could not support themselves economically.

But there were still other ways to view communities. Another professor, a cultural anthropologist by training, expanded our knowledge of communities and community change by talking about culture