Not a Democrat or Republican. Not Liberal and not Conservative. I am an Independent American: Follow me on Bluesky, I-Could-Be-Wrong, Written by David P
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Growing up, every morning in school, my whole class would recite the Pledge of Allegiance. As a young man, I thought I was swearing loyalty to a flag, some piece of cloth. As I grew older, I realized that I was swearing loyalty to the Republic and to what that Republic stood for, as defined in the Constitution. I wasn’t swearing loyalty to Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson. I was swearing loyalty to…
When Loyalty Only Flows One Way There’s a pattern running through the last several years of American leadership, and it’s time we stop pretending not to see it. It shows up in foreign policy, in military decisions, in the way allies are treated, and even in the way his own staff is handled. The pattern is simple: loyalty only flows one way. Trump demands it from everyone around him — sailors,…
When a Party Has No Record, It Turns to Cruelty There’s a point in American politics where desperation stops looking like politics and starts looking like cruelty. You can see it clearly with today’s Republican Party. When they have no record to run on, no achievements to point to, no plan to make people’s lives better, they reach for the one thing they’ve mastered: destroying innocent people. And…
What Real Freedom Looks Like — And Who Walked Away from It Freedom is supposed to be simple. But somewhere along the way, the people in charge made it complicated. They turned it into a slogan, a TV line, a talking point. They made it something you hear in speeches instead of something you feel in your everyday life. But if you walk through real neighborhoods — the places where people work, raise…
The Military in the Digital Age: When Leadership Lies, the Record Doesn’t There is a lot of lying going around. Much of it revolves around the things that the Republican Party brings to the table: Racism, Bigotry, and Hatred. The same things that plague society have always plagued the military. There was a time when discrimination within the military could be hidden behind paperwork. A commander…
Fighting Alone — And Why I’m Not There are days when writing about truth, constitutional limits, and the slow erosion of our civic culture feels like shouting into a void. I sit at my desk, type out what I know is real, what I know is happening, what I know is dangerous — and I wonder if anyone out there is actually listening. I wonder if I’m fighting a battle most people have already walked away…
Most Americans never think about the “unitary executive theory.” Why would they? It’s a niche constitutional idea usually debated by scholars, not shouted at rallies. But Donald Trump dragged it out of the law journals and turned it into a kind of political weapon — a way to claim powers the Constitution doesn’t give him and to convince millions of people that he’s entitled to them. So let’s start…
The Blame Machine That Ate American Politics There’s a superstition in American politics now — a reflex so automatic it fires before thought, before evidence, before even the slightest glance at a calendar. It’s the reflex to blame Joe Biden for everything. Not just the things a president might reasonably influence. Everything. If a grocery store runs out of eggs, blame Biden. If a hurricane hits…
The Outrage We Keep Swallowing — America Protects the People Who Protect Rapists America has a habit of looking away from the things that should stop us cold. We soften the language, bury the reports, and pretend the failures are isolated. We talk about “abuse,” “misconduct,” “exploitation,” “trafficking,” anything but the word that actually describes what happened to these children: rape . And…
When Leaders Cry “Communism,” But Act Like Fascists Americans hear a lot of talk these days about communism and fascism. Both words get thrown around like insults, stripped of meaning, used as weapons. But here’s the truth: neither communism nor fascism could ever be confused with a constitutional republic. In fact, both systems destroy the very foundations that make a constitutional republic…