Political protest – bendingtheneedle

Book Number 2

Hi folks,

I’ve just published “Imagine There’s No Donald” on Amazon.com.

Imagine There’s No Donald is a lyrical collection that channels the melodic cadence of (mostly) Beatles songs to deliver searing poetic indictments of Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and their corrosive impact on American democracy.

Each poem echoes the structure and emotional resonance of iconic musical tracks—think “Rocky Racoon” reimagined as the tale of Donald Trump’s destructive path to the presidency, or Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun” transformed into a lament on Republican cowardice and lost democratic norms.

Through this fusion of pop nostalgia and political critique, the collection:

🎶 Harnesses Familiar Rhythms: The song structures serve as scaffolding for verses that are both accessible and subversive, drawing readers in with rhythm before confronting them with truth.
🔥 Excoriates Authoritarianism: Trump and MAGA are portrayed not just as political figures but as symbols of a broader erosion of truth, decency, and constitutional integrity.
🕊️ Defends Democratic Ideals: The poems mourn the fragility of American institutions while fiercely advocating for civic engagement, accountability, and moral clarity.
🎤 Amplifies Dissent: With a voice that is at once satirical and sincere, the book invites readers to sing along in protest, turning melody into a megaphone for resistance.

Whether riffing on “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” to expose the sycophantic rot of the Trump administration or twisting “When I Saw Her Standing There!” into an elegy against oligarchs and authoritarianism, this book is a poetic rebellion—an artistic act of defiance that refuses to be silent in the face of democratic decay.

Most free thinkers, poets, and essayists are but a thorn in the side of the authoritarian regime that is running roughshod over America’s democracy. Writing and speaking truth to power sometimes feels like screaming into the void. But with critical mass and momentum, art can influence public sentiment and mobilize opposition to repressive policies and tactics, making it a powerful adversary to regimes that rely on propaganda and control.

Verbal resistance alone won’t revive our democracy. If we’re going to right the ship in America, we’re going to have to do more than sing and complain. We’re going to have to take to the streets and, as the honorable Georgia Congressman John Lewis famously said, “get in good trouble, necessary trouble” by the millions.

Get your copy of Imagine There’s No Donald on Amazon. Please feel free to share the link with others on your social media or simply by giving the book to a loved one as a gift.

Peace (and FUDT).

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my first book, My Paper, My Words: Rantings from a Progressive Boomer and Peeved Parent, from Amazon. And if you feel moved to write a review of the book on Amazon or elsewhere, I’d be honored.

My Paper, My Words is a collection of essays, stories, and poems that reflect the challenges of a middle-class husband and father trying to navigate a rapidly changing political, religious, and technological landscape of post-9/11 America.

Sympathy for the President

Sing to the tune of “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of greed and girth
Been around since 1946
Learned from father that wealth is worth

Remember the Republicans
had their moment before I came
cowered, caved, and complied
and forever changed the game

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
Spreading hatred all ‘round
Is the nature of my game

Stuck around New York City
When I saw it was a time for a change
Called Vlad and his ministers
Melania screamed in vain

I rode that dark
birtherism train
to kill hope and change
on the open range

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Spreading hatred all ‘round
Is the nature of my game, ah yeah

I watched with glee
as the MAGA crowd
beat and tazed their way
to our darkest day

I shouted out
“Who killed democracy?”
when after all
it was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
I’m the god to whom you pray
I laid the trap for Ukrainians
and dashed their hope on election day

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
And spreading hate all ‘round
Is the nature of my game

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what’s confounding you
Is just the nature of my game, mm yeah

Just as every pol is a criminal
and all the sinners’ saints
my lies are truth, just call me President
one that’s dipped in orange paint

So, if you meet me, show some courtesy
have some sympathy, and some fear
use all your well-learned politeness
or I’ll make you disappear, mm yeah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what’s confounding’ you
Is the nature of my game

The Agent of Rot

Rot has an agent –

an orange bartender

he pours lies

and half-truths

like drinks from blender

he pours shots of hate

with no sign of surrender

sending his patrons

on misguided benders

The agent of rot

knows who to seek

he prays on the fearful,

the dumb, and the meek

The agent of rot

is a master of evil

he burrows in ears

like a sick twisted weevil

his whisper-warm breath

takes a crap in your ear

he laughs in your face

and fucks from the rear

With broken promises and

malevolent behavior

the gullible get

screwed by this unsavory savior

The agent of rot

is the person who serves it

aim all of your rage

at the one who deserves it

The disdainful malevolent essence of rot

the smell of the stink

the slime on the snot

the grand wizard of

falsehoods

The tweeter of lies

The vindictive and petty

muncher of fries

Use your vote like a shiv

and twist it in deep

Don’t ever forgive

That fat orange creep!

America’s well placed disdain

We all know people who rub us the wrong way simply by their appearance or the sound of their voice.

After Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy of the President’s State of the Union speech, I saw many criticisms leveled at her on social media. Most of the criticism ripped Pelosi for her mannerisms, her “insincere” smile, her “loose dentures,” blah blah blah.

Personally, I become agitated whenever I see or hear Ted Cruz (I just want to punch him in the face) — so I somewhat relate to this kind of shallow knee-jerk visceral response to someone’s personality or looks.

But my disdain for Donald Trump has nothing to do with his looks, or the way he talks, or how he mangles the English language nearly every time he opens his pie hole. No, my disdain for Trump is based mainly on his behavior. My disdain is based on a public record of what he’s done and said for the last 40 years.

I ask myself, would I ever point to this man as an example to my children? That’s my barometer. Is this man a decent, high-character individual, one that I can say without hesitation that I am proud is representing our country?

This has nothing to do with an economy humming along — or whether unemployment is at an all-time low.

No. Instead, I ask myself:

If I had a 13-year-old daughter, would I feel comfortable letting her ride the elevator alone with Mr. Trump?

Would I feel uncomfortable sitting in front of a television with my 13-year-old daughter listening to Donald Trump equate a woman’s value with her looks or degrading a woman because she is overweight?

If my 13-year old daughter was sitting next to me during one of several interviews where the President sexualized his own daughter, would I wince, or would I laugh along with it?

How would I explain the post-presidential debate comment from Donald Trump insinuating that the tough questions from a female reporter were somehow tied to her menstrual cycle? How would I justify it?

If I had a handicapped child and we were watching the news report and video of the President mocking a handicapped reporter, how would I explain that away?

In the lead-up to his run for the Presidency, Donald Trump continuously spread the birtherism rumor about Barack Obama. This was not because Trump believed the lie – he simply wanted to discredit the first African American President. He just wanted to knock the first African American President down a peg by spreading lies and misinformation.

How does that jibe with the integrity we should expect from our commander in chief?

How do I put aside the fact that the person who sits in the Oval Office is the same man who created a fake university to scam money from working-class people who were simply looking to better themselves?

How do I disregard the fact that the President ran a charity as a criminal enterprise?

I could cite a dozen more examples that demonstrate Donald Trump is not simply a flawed man but rather a shitty, self-absorbed, vindictive, and intellectually vapid douche bag.

So many of this man’s actions are part of the public record; there is nothing really to dispute.

But what’s so frustrating is that none of these facts are show stoppers for people that I know (or thought I knew) – and that baffles the fuck out of me.

Dangerous sheep in MAGA hats

“I know you don’t like Trump, but….”

I hear this from people all the time — people I thought I knew.

I’ve come to realize we don’t really “know” anyone except our family and closest friends.

I’m done assuming that the people I “know” and associate with on social media are decent-minded — as if “decent-mindedness” was an inherent human trait. It’s not. Decency is taught, learned, and practiced — it is fed, nurtured, and supported by those closest to us, but only if those people themselves have been taught or shown what it means to be “decent.”

What I’ve learned over the last 4 years, in an eye-opening-perspective-changing-punch-in-the-face, is a fuck-load of my “friends” are not decent-minded at all.

Despite the never-ending shit-show of the last four years, many of them are unwilling to call a liar a liar, a criminal a criminal, a traitor a traitor, and a demagogue a demagogue – even when the President (through actions and words) demonstrates he is all those things.

I wrongly assumed that if I just pointed out the obvious, people with a modicum of intelligence and a smidgen of integrity would be able to connect the dots — especially when those dots reside on a fairly straight line — that the President of the United States is a habitual liar, a criminal, a traitor, a narcissistic demagogue and, in the words of his own sister, has “no principles and cannot be trusted“.

The President’s desperate attempt to cling to power, which is inextricably tied to his fear of criminal prosecution, come at the expense of our national security, the safety of our troops, the health of our citizens, our national unity, and the principals of western democracy on which our country was built.

I wrongly assumed that the continuous four-year flow of misinformation and lies that fall from the President’s mouth, like garbage from the back of a sanitation vehicle, would be evidence enough to convince all Americans that the President of the United States is a threat to the country.

Instead, what’ I’ve learned over the last 4-years is that none of the President’s behavior matters to the millions of sheep in MAGA hats, who are so full of fear and drunk on conspiracy theories, that they follow this President like bewitched cultists, bludgeoning our democracy with their bibles and strangling our freedoms with the American flag.

I left Facebook because every time I logged in, I was reminded that America suffers from a malignancy of dimwitted nationalists and hateful bigots — and unfortunately, my Friends-list was littered with them.

America will collapse under another 4 years of this President unless decent-minded citizens show up en masse on November 3rd 2020.

Thug

pexels-rosemary-ketchum-1464205

“She’s gonna go through some things.”

“Take her out.”

“Get rid of her.”

Menacing phrases that we’d expect from a mobster, a gangster, a thug – not the President of the United States.

When a president wants to replace an ambassador, a simple letter asking for their resignation and thanking them for their service is the norm.

Instead, we get:

“She’s gonna go through some things.”

“Take her out.”

“Get rid of her.”

Instead, we get presidential tweets and ginned-up articles from right-wing propaganda machines that sully and degrade the reputation of a career diplomat with an impeccable record of service and sacrifice.

Instead, we listen and watch as the most powerful man in the world publicly drags a distinguished member of our foreign service through the mud.

And for what?

Because her high ethical standards served as a barrier to the President’s craven lust for power and political advantage.

“She’s gonna go through some things”

“Take her out”

“Get rid of her”

Trump’s threat to Ambassador Yovanovitch and the smear he initiated during her testimony (via a fucking Tweet) were despicable and beneath contempt, and ANOTHER example of the character (or lack thereof) of our President.

How much more evidence do people need that the President is a thug, driven by self-interest?

What is the moral tipping point for those who use low unemployment numbers and a high stock market as rationale for turning a blind-eye to presidential thuggery and crimes?

By the way, we can have a decent and moral president – AND a strong economy – Just look at our last president.