More Civics for Grownups

Of COURSE my favorite story of the year involves the plethora of Trump supporting tweeters who found dreadful parallels between King George III and the president and made their displeasure known to NPR, which had taken the radical step of tweeting the Declaration of Independence on Independence Day.

It is a radical document, designed to foment passion and revolution. And indeed, there are parallels.

• But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. 

• a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states

• his invasions on the rights of the people

• He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

• He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. (cf: The Koch Brothers' attempts to get rid of the blue slip rule)

• giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation

• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us

• A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Plus there's the mental illness. But Georgie, unlike Trump, had one wife and no mistresses and was by all accounts both thrifty and pious. Not a big brain, and a weak leader, but still in some ways better than what we've got.