No Kings - In Search of the Sequel to The Last Independence Day: Secession

Having just earned my parachutist badge from the U.S. Army Infantry Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, I was primed to finish my last year at New Mexico Military Institute as Regimental Commander of the Corps of Cadets, Class of 1985–86. Some say I might have peaked that year. I don’t disagree, though I’ve lived a productive, meaningful life since.

At 59 and some change, I posted that old photo of me in recognition of the No Kings Day demonstrations happening across the country because even an oath-taker possesses the right to dissent and make his political views known.

U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia (Airborne Course, 1985)

My first oath was as a cadet. My second, as a reserve officer. My third as a lawyer. Each time, the words were the same: to defend the Constitution of the United States.

I posted it knowing full well that some would misread my intent. But service to country takes many forms. Once, I served in uniform. Later, I served in courtrooms. Both oaths were born of the same conviction: that allegiance to the Constitution also means defending the right to dissent.

And sure enough, my post lit a fire. Out of the crowd were detractors who did their best to accuse, insult, and project. Someone even called me gay. Imagine that! I nearly ran downstairs to tell my husband the news. How did he not know?

Another oath to be a lawyer.

So, instead of working on the sequel to The Last Independence Day: Secession, I’m writing this. I just had to. Because what unfolded on my feed reminded me that I still struggle to understand the anger from the Right.

It’s not their approval I seek — nor their outrage I fear. I know their kind. They’re not my enemies; they’re my fellow citizens, people who are tragically misled by leaders who’ve traded conscience for power. The modern GOP has perfected a terrible alchemy: transforming fear into doctrine, division into identity. They’ve turned “the other” into the enemy — urban versus rural, white versus everyone else, straight versus everyone else, men versus everyone else, a narrow “Christianity” versus everyone else.

It’s always been there — that divide — but now it’s out in the open more than ever. And we have to face it. I have to face it and reckon with it eventually.

The question is how. Part of me feels such deep contempt that words fail me. My rage, at times, feels primal. I bet theirs does, too. Now, that’s a thought. Even so, my better angels intervene and remind me that the only way forward is through understanding — not agreement, but understanding.

It’s hard because the hateful and intellectually dishonest (or ill-informed) rhetoric and name-calling offend everything my parents raised me to believe. Come to think of it, the year after I was born was when the Supreme Court made anti-miscegenation laws illegal, striking down state bans on interracial marriage and cementing marriage equality as a fundamental civil right. But I digress!

From the time I could form a thought, my parents instilled in me the notion of taking up for the little guy and standing against bullies. To get an education and be of service to my fellow humans. To think. To tell the truth. To be honorable. To treat others with dignity, whether born high or fallen low. To live by the Golden Rule. To love my neighbor as myself. But today, those once-American values are mocked as weakness — “liberal,” “soft,” “naïve.” Once common sense, now treason to the tribe. How did this come about? Or, more likely, was it always there, waiting for the license to come out of hiding?

So yes, I am angry. But I’m also searching. It is that “searching” that informs the sequel to The Last Independence Day — because Jon Freeman is lost, too. Like so many of us, he must wrestle with rage, grief, and the yearning to find a way out of the darkness — to redeem himself, and maybe, just maybe, to light a way forward for the rest of us.