I'm not writing to you today about all the things I am thankful for as our 2025 holiday season visits us, because I am too damn busy with what makes me furious to type otherwise.
We are a country at war against fascism, and its racist, evil residue. We are at war against a dark, lawless, centralized force that does not believe all men and women are created equal, and do the bidding of soulless billionaires who fund all this hell to pad their absurd fortunes.
You can say I don’t have my priorities straight, and in return I will do you the courtesy of suggesting you quit reading now, to save you your precious time. Hopefully, we can catch up again next week.
To the brave who have stayed, I will endeavor to put down words of molten steel that do you justice, and send my gratitude for your heart and soul. You are what is needed in abundance right now as we stare down the most dangerous time in America since the 1860s.
So thank you for your fight.
I have always loved the notion of Thanksgiving and hope to celebrate it with vigor again someday. It was a time for friends, food, football and family. It was a break from school, and later the chaos of working a 50-hour-a-week job, that never seemed to love me as much as I loved it. Journalism always called, and I always listened, but Thanksgiving was my day to try to tune it all out.
Now I refuse to tune anything out, because there is danger everywhere. It is in our streets and in our homes. In our churches and our government. In our workplaces and in our personal business.
This Thanksgiving, I did not invite anybody into my home who I know supports the grotesque, anti-American Donald Trump, nor did I accept any invitation to be anyplace where I might find people who do.
And you can save the high-minded, snooty lecturing that goes something like this: “Come on, Earl, can’t you just let it go one day, and drop the politics?”
No. No I can’t. And I don’t understand how anybody can. We aren’t dealing with a difference of politics in 2025 America, we are dealing with a difference in human decency and monstrous vulgarity.
Democracy vs. monarchy.
I have my lines, and I won’t be crossing them. Ever.
Besides, I don’t trust myself not to haul off and belt a Trump supporter at some gathering, because I unabashedly hate these people and the tiny, no-good things they stand for with a blistering rage. I hate them for enabling this hell, and the hurt they are unnecessarily bringing to millions of lives here and around the world.
They are heartless, thoughtless bullies, who only look after themselves, because they are too weak in mind and body to carry anything else besides what they stuff in their big mouths and bottomless pockets.
Look, I tried for the better part of eight years to reason with these people, but I’m done with that. Old friendships, are now dead and gone. If Trump appeals to you, then you’ll want no part of me, because it turns out we have nothing in common.
You go your way, and just keep on going …
Our democracy is hanging by a thread, and I will not surround myself with people who make excuses for racists, and make it harder, not easier, for people to feed themselves, clothe themselves, and get the medical care they deserve.
And I have lost every inch of patience I might have had in the reserve for the selfish and willingly ignorant who don’t have the decency to care either way. They are the ones who really fry my ass.
You know the type. They’ll tell you how tired of it all they are, and that they have enough problems in their lives without having to deal with the rest.
How nice for them that they can concentrate only on themselves at the expense of the millions who are less fortunate. Turns out, they are the reason we are here, and how Nazi Germany happened so many decades ago.
Indifference is nothing but appeasement wrapped in a suffocating cloak of willing ignorance. It’s weak, and lifeless.
Believe me, I wish more than anything it wasn’t this way. I wish I could wake up and sit down with my cup of coffee, devour my newspapers, and then write about beautiful things. I know they are out there, and I endeavor to be among them whenever possible. But these days I see these things as needing our protection from bloodthirsty Republican politicians, and the corporate raiders who fill their overflowing bank accounts, who are coming after them.
Our air, our water and our animals are all under steady attack by these corporate heathens who worship guns, and killing above all, and then have the gall to tell us how important life is.
Just this week, it was announced Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency will be abandoning air pollution rules that save thousands of lives a year. What kind of sick ghoul would support such a thing? Hundreds of thousands of children with asthma will now be at risk, because some fat cat loser believes in profits over breath.
As I climb toward the end of my life, I want it known that I stood for what is good and right — on Thanksgiving and every day. I want it known that I stood for an America that I served in the Navy back in the ‘70s when we knew oppressive places like fascist Russia were the enemy, instead of the strong arms of the cowardice Republican Party.
I want it known I stood for voting rights, equal rights, and women’s rights.
I want it known I stood for our environment and its air, water and wildlife that make life truly worth living.
I want it known I stood for democracy and against fascism.
I want it known that if you can’t stand for at least this much then you are my enemy, not my friend, and I will work tirelessly to defeat you and your morbid kind.
Because if these anti-American fascists will come after a patriot’s patriot like Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), they’ll damn sure come after us.
They are desperate, have no ideas for improving America, and stand with a woman-abusing, draft-dodging, America-attacking goon, who is rotting from the inside out.
They must be stopped, because they are traitors. All of 'em.
This might not be the message you wanted to read as we steam through the holidays, but I am mad and indignant. I am giving more than I get.
I am not standing for this shit.
We beat this rotten son of a bitch fair and square once, and then didn't do all we could to make sure he stayed beaten. I am furious about this, and will never let it go.
I’ll give plenty of thanks when he and his terrible kind are gone.
Until then, I will rage.
I will fight.
I will resist.
And I will never give up the ship.
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
