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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 on January 6, 2021 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 to 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 a horrible campaign of terror. You might very well be a victim of this terror yourself during the next three years of living in this Trumpish Thugocracy.
Trump’s 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. As I previously stated, Trump’s personal “Morality” is the only limitation on his power
Trump has invaded Venezuela, a nation with who we are not at war, and has taken their president, Maduro, and his wife prisoner in the middle of the night, and he has brought the evil duo back to the United States for trial. I have no sympathy for this tin-pot dictator, Maduro, and his wife, who holds office as President of Venezuela illegally, but in terms of international law, we have also violated the sovereignty of a country at which we are not at war.
On the same basis, does Trump propose to invade North Korea and seize the Thug and Dictator of that unhappy nation? Does Trump plan to grab Putin out of his bed, in either Moscow or St. Petersburg in the middle of the night? After all, Putin is also an international murderer is he not? What will happen if Maduro suddenly buys a billion dollars of 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 that 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 rich thug. 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 and anything they want. I wonder how Maduro intends to use his ill-gotten-gains to secure his future.
Today, January 13, 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 educational funds as a punishment for being seen as Trump enemies! 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 after all. And now he offers these fine gentlemen the vast oil resources of Venezuela. But will these gentlemen actually want this gift?
These guys are not stupid. Venezuela does have one of the world’s great deposits of oil, but that oil 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 today, the place is very far from being pacified. The “Thug-in-Chief” ,who sits in The Oval Office” in what is still left intact of the old White House, does not really control the Venezuelan real-estate he proposes to give the reluctant Oil Barons 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 ruthless dictatorship.
Our fleet is off the Venezuelan Coast with tens of thousands of troops. 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 degree of domestic autonomy, but Denmark still manages Greenland’s foreign policy and still 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 of their traditional homes to the United States, and they even issued a poster stamp proclaiming their opposition to the sale at the time. But the Danes who actually lived 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 Denmark selling the odd colony now and then, but Greenland is not currently on offer.
Trump has let it be known that if he decides to take Greenland, he will just take it with impunity. I believe that he may very well do so regardless of what international law might dictate if the thought actually sustains life in the wilderness of his somewhat vacuous 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! Remember, his only constraint is his own “Morality”!
After all, Trump now sends troops, National Guard, Boarder Guards, and other Federal Law-Enforcement Entities to cities that he sees as being dangerous or centers of anti-Trump sympathy. Yipes! Aren’t you just a little disturbed about living under this cloud of Tump’s 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, you are in big trouble! What can any seriously sick person actually do it with that tiny amount of money? Does the term “Catastrophic Disease” of “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 Republican Governor, Mitt Romney, supported a health plan that takes care of folks who would otherwise not be insured. In point of fact, “Romney Care” was for all practicle purposes the precursor to “Obama Care.”
I hope that 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” does not come as a great shock to you. The fact is that Trump does not care a Tinker’s damn about you, and he is going to be very unhappy about something unrelated to your health care very soon, because his Billionaires Oil Guy’s Club” will not want to go to Venezuela to take advantage of that “Golconda of Oil”.
It seems that 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 because it is not of “First Quality”. This largely inferior oil is thick and requires special refineries to make it salable. In fact most of it is most suitable for asphalt for paving highways! Refining it is a very expensive proposition under the best of any circumstances, never mind the little fact that the said oil is located in a very unstable dictatorship where Donald Trump is far from being in-charge no matter what he thinks!. Also there is the reality that setting-up business in Venezuela is not a sound business plan do to the fact that security is never going to be a reality unless we put a couple of hundred thousand pairs of boots on the ground!. No amount of organized thuggery, no matter how many thousands of troops Trump commits to the occupation of Venezuela, is going to make that unhappy and challenged land safe ever!
So what, in the final analysis, so you call a thuggish country that just throws its weight around and takes whatever it wants from other weaker countries? I call such political entities Thugocracies. The members of the world community call such bad-acting-political entities “Rogue-Nations”. I don’t think that our Eighteenth Century 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 that date is a million years away![Editor's Note: These opinions are Mr. Johnston's]
* Suum cuique -- 'To each his own'
