25° and Clear
To: The Editor
From:
James C. Johnston Jr.
Re:
Our Thugocracy
Date:
January 9,2026
Dear
Sir,
Starting on January 20.2025, we all began living in a new and
unique form of government, a “Thugocracy”. Yes my friends, we are
ruled by a Thug who thinks that he is unrestricted in his
presidential powers by any force except for his own moral code. Trump
has actually articulated this just this week. We all had the
opportunity to hear him say this on the news program of your choice.
Trump has served notice on the world that his own “Morality” will
be the measure of all things!
Trump
pardoned convicted felons who invaded our capitol with the avowed
purpose of disrupting the 2020 Presidential Election. The “Donald”
himself sent these vandals off on their mission personally on live
television as I watched him in real time. He released his minions
whom he had called to the capitol for a demonstration of support. He
commanded his thugs to attack a meeting of the people who were
conducting the official tabulation of the Electoral Vote!
It
was the bravery of the Vice President, Mike Pence, who carried out
his Constitutional duty and also carried out the Electoral College
tabulation. Trump’s Thugs cried out for Pence’s blood with
threats to hang him in a horrible environment of hate and fury by the
thugs with their Trump flags and signage. The whole Hellish scene was
televised to the entire world for all to see. One of the few promises
that Trump actually kept on assuming office on January 20, 2025 was
the pardon of the hundreds of vandals who had attacked the Capitol
and threated the lives of our lawmakers and Vice President.
The
President has sent masked and unidentified and under-trained I.C.E.
agents to cities supposedly to capture illegal immigrants, but what
these de
facto members
of the Thugocracy actually do is grab non-white people, who are most
often citizens and legal residents of this country, and brutalize
them. These I.C.E. Thugs , with their faces masked, dressed in
fatigues, and traveling in unmarked vehicles, attack women, children,
the elderly, and anybody who does not look white. These Thugs too
frequently throw their victims to the ground handcuff them and often
leave them in the cold weather for indefinite amounts of time while
lightly clad. These I.C.E. thugs also invade homes in the middle of
the night spreading terror. The vast majority of the people they
attack are innocent victims of campaign if terror. You might very
well be a victim of this terror yourself during the next three years
of living in this Trumpish Thugocracy.
The
Thugocracy also extends to nations beyond our borders. Venezuela,
which is hardly a poster child for the “ideal” national state
suddenly became the object of Trump’s attention. Venezuelan Boats
were sunk instead of captured by the U.S. Navy under Trump’s
orders. Sailors who survived the horrific attacks by our Navy were
murdered with impunity in contravention of international law. Trump
has already opined that he does not feel constrained by such things
as international law which our fearless leader said he did not need.
Trump
has invaded Venezuela, a nation with who
we are
not at war, and taken their president, Maduro, and his wife, and he
has brought him back to the United States for trial. I have no
sympathy for this tin-pot dictator, Maduro, who holds office as
President of Venezuela illegally, but we have also violated the
sovereignty of a country at which we are not at war. Does Trump
propose to invade North Korea and seize the Thug and Dictator of that
unhappy nation? Does Trump plan to grab Putin who is also an
international murderer? What will happen if Maduro suddenly buys a
billion dollars in Trump’s crypto-currency? Will he too suddenly be
understood to have been treated unfairly like former Honduran
President Juan Orlando Hernandez?
On
November 28, 2025, no doubt motivated by his deep feelings of
“Morality”, Trump pardoned the convicted drug dealing former
President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, and made possible for
him escape his forty-five year sentence in prison after being
convicted of massive drug dealing by a United States Court. Hernandez
made billions of dollars selling drugs in these United States!
When
asked why he had pardoned Hernandez, Trump said that he felt that
Hernandez had been treated “unfairly” and that he knew how that
felt! I guess that it is just a case of one rich thug pardoning
another. I wonder if Hernandez bought a few billion dollars of
Trump’s crypto-currency. People who make investments of that sort
usually get invited to Mar-a- Largo. I wonder how Maduro intends to
use his ill-gotten-gains to secure his future?
Today,
January 9, 2026, the courts have stopped Trump’s thuggish attempt
to cut off educational funds from “Blue States”. The judge cited
the intrinsic unfairness of Trump’s action of cutting off funds as
a punishment for being seen as a Trump enemy! Is that unfair?
Trump
has been very kind to the super-rich. He lavishly entertains them at
his gaudy-palatial home in Florida, gave them great seats at his
inauguration, and now has called his Billionaire Club of Oil Dudes to
Washington for a nice investment opportunity in developing Venezuelan
oil! These same Oil Barons gave Trump a billion dollars for his
presidential campaign in 2024. And now he offers these fine gentlemen
the vast oil resources of Venezuela. But will these gentlemen want
this gift?
These
guys are not stupid. Venezuela does have one of the world’s great
deposits of oil, but it is very thick and viscous. The United States
oil barons have been in Venezuela before, and their experience was
not very good. They were kicked out at least twice, and the place is
far from pacified. The Thug-in-Chief ,who sits in what is left of the
old White House, does not really control the Venezuelan real-estate
he proposes to give them at this time. In order to do that, our young
men who make-up the U.S. armed forces would have to physically occupy
that unhappy nation which is still a dictatorship.
Our
fleet is off the Venezuelan Coast. As Trump has said, “We are
locked and loaded!”
Oh,
wait a minute. Trump said that in reference to the prospect of taking
over Green land. Greenland has some domestic autonomy, but Denmark
still manages its foreign policy and sort of owns it. Back in 1917 we
did buy the Danish West Indies for twenty-five million dollars. We
were afraid back in those World War I days that the Germans would
grab the islands at the time and turn them into a naval base.
The
Danes who lived on those islands were very unhappy about the sale and
even issued a poster stamp proclaiming their opposition at the time,
but the Danes in Denmark voted in a plebiscite in favor of the sale.
Today, these islands are known as the American Virgin Islands. Almost
all of the Danes, whose ancestors had lived on those islands since
the 1600’s, went back to Denmark when the sale was finalized. So,
it can be argued that there is a precedent for selling the odd colony
now and then.
Trump
has let it be known that if he decides to take Greenland. I believe
that he will do so regardless of what international law might dictate
if the thought actually sustains life in the wilderness of his head.
Trump’s “Morality” has been shown to be very flexible. Thuggery
must “will-out” I guess.
Trump
also had voiced an interest in taking over: Canada, The Panama Canal,
as well as Greenland. Trump has also threatened: Columbia, Mexico,
Cuba, Iran, and a number of other entities beyond listing with
war-like bellicosity if they do not conform to his wishes. Now it
seems that what Trump articulates, he tends to at least give it the
good old college try! Watch out!
After
all, Trump sends troops, National Guard, Border Guards, and other
entities to cities he sees as being dangerous. Yipes! Aren’t you
just a little disturbed about living under this cloud of Thuggery? If
you do, you have very valid reasons for feeling just a tad paranoid.
God knows, I do.
What
about all you guys who depend on Obama Care for your medical support
system? If Trump actually carries out his plan of giving everybody
two thousand dollars to buy our own health care plans, can we
actually do it with that tiny amount of money?. How will you do then?
Does the term “Catastrophic Disease” or
“Serious Condition” have any relevance to you? How long will two
thousand dollars last in paying medical and prescription-related
bills over the course of a year. Trump’s medical plan will be the
death of the Working-Middle Class in more ways than one. Be glad that
you live in Massachusetts where an enlightened Governer Mitt Romney
supported a health plan that takes care of folks who would otherwise
not be insured.
The
truth is that Trump is not sensitive to the problems of any of you if
you are not members in good standing of his “Billionaire-Boy’s
Club”. He does not care about you, and he is going to be very
unhappy very soon, because his Billionaires Oil Guy’s Club” will
not want to go to Venezuela. Most of the oil in Venezuela is not the
sort to sell well unless it is properly processed which is a very,
very, very expensive proposition. This largely inferior oil is thick
and requires special refineries to make it salable. This is a very
expensive operation under any set of circumstances, never mind in a
very unstable dictatorship where Donald Trump is far from being
in-charge. Also there is the reality that setting-up business in
Venezuela is not a sound business plan due
to the fact that security is never going to be a reality. No amount
of organized thuggery, no matter how many tens of thousands of troops
Trump commits to the occupation of Venezuela, is going to make that
unhappy and challenged land safe.
So
what do
you call a country that just throws its weight around and takes
whatever it wants from other weaker countries? I call them
Thugocracies. The members of the world community call such
bad-acting-political entities “Rogue-Nations”. I don’t think
that the Founding Fathers saw this national situation back in 1787
when they wrote the Constitution. Happy 250th
Birthday America! I hope we can all make it to January 20, 2029. It
seems like it is a million years away!
[Editor's Note: These opinions are Mr. Johnston's]
* Suum cuique -- 'To each his own'
