Our country’s government has been preempted. The grown-ups cower within their little circles of privilege, while a bullying leader — whose mantra is “I want” — tests the limits of his power, inflating and flexing his ego as he deploys his new toys: the U.S. military, the once heroic team that won World War II enabling an 80-year-long peace in historically fractious Europe. 

The Marshall Plan, the resulting European Union, NATO pact and arms agreements seemed to create stability enough to think beyond defense, imagine happiness and get to work on climate and social problems. Sadly, we’ll never expand that hard-won peace to make decent lives for all Earth’s creatures, unless the bully-in-chief is forced to take his long overdue “time out,” and infantile idealogues in his orbit are left to bray and whine in a vacuum, beneath the notice of responsible journalists and serious statesmen.

The Supreme Court of the United States majority needs to take a hard look at their protege and consider their place in history. Members of Congress are sent to Washington with a mission more crucial than their job. They must defend their right to govern and ours to have sane, courageous representatives, so we can stop the suicidal madness that is passing these days for U.S. foreign — and domestic — policy. 

Brooke Pacy
Waldoboro