Author: Sharron Burnett

My father was a patriotic man. He was in the Corp at Texas A&M College as it was called back in the 1940s. He entered the Army during World War II but never saw action because the fighting was nearing its end. He had recordings of speeches by generals who had guided the United States armed forces in that war. He spoke with reference of General Eisenhower who eventually became President Eisenhower. 

My mother was a patriotic woman. She recounted how her father, an immigrant, taught her and her siblings to cherish their citizenship which was duly granted to them by the 14th amendment of the Constitution. She would literally shed tears of gratitude for the freedoms of her country whenever she heard patriotic songs. She taught me and my brothers to be proud Americans not because we believed that our nation was inherently better than others but because it was right and just to honor the country that had provided opportunities to people from across the globe for so much of its history. 

Both my mother and father were learned people with college degrees in an era when they were the exception rather than the rule among their contemporaries. As students of history they were honest about mistakes that the United States had made but they marveled in our country’s willingness to admit to its error and right wrongs. They both understood that we were still moving toward a more perfect union but were not yet there. 

I am a patriotic woman. I have always felt fortunate to be a citizen of the United States of America. At the same time I realized that i did not have to do anything for that designation other than being born from two parents who were citizens. I often thought of people in what was then Czechoslovakia, the homeland of my immigrant maternal grandparents. For much of my life the people there were under the tyrannical rule of the Communist USSR. I imagined relatives that I had never known living in dire circumstances while I enjoyed freedom. It saddened me to realize that my own luck had randomly made my life so much easier than theirs. 

I am still a patriotic woman today. I love the United States of America and its people but in this moment I feel shame that we have a president who is taking down so much of the progress for minority groups that had been created during the decades of my lifetime. While I had been encouraged by the goodwill that prompted a recognition of faults in our laws I took for granted that once the necessary improvements had been made that they would remain forever. It never occurred to me that the kind of anti-immigrant fervor that made life so difficult for my grandparents and their children would suddenly be resurrected and used as a cudgel to place a cruel and vindictive man in the White House. 

I am a patriotic woman. I love my country and because I do I cannot abide by what I am witnessing. I feel as though I am watching an arsonist put a torch to the hard work of citizens, congress men and women, and former presidents. We the people have tried to create a more perfect version of our nation. It is an enormous task but I felt comfort in knowing that at the very least we were inching forward in the right direction. Now I am confounded, anxious, and deeply saddened by the ugliness that I am witnessing and I worry that so much damage will be done that it will not be possible to repair during the short time that I have left on this earth. 

I am a patriotic woman. I love my fellow Americans but I do not understand how so many of them have been fooled by a dangerous man who appears to have very little concern for any of us. Every word he speaks and every action he takes is centered on himself and somehow the guardrails on which I have always depended seem to be failing, stolen from us with deceit and fear. I truly cannot understand why every American is not appalled by what they are seeing. I wonder why our sense of love for this country is paralyzing our willingness to speak out before so much damage is done that we will not recognize where we are. Everyone who has ever felt gratitude for our freedoms should be willing to protect the decency and morality of almost two hundred fifty years of ever increasing democracy for more and more of its people.

If a mother sees her child in a dangerous situation she does everything to save her little one. If a soldier sees his platoon in a dangerous situation he does everything to save his comrades. If a patriot sees the United States in a dangerous situation she does everything to save the most long lasting democracy on earth. 

So this is where I am. I will not stand by and watch the dismantling of the country that I love. I hope that every American will see clearly what is happening and join me in saving our nation. We can do it without violence and tanks in the street. We must exercise our rights and join in numbers that get the attention of those we sent to represent us. Contact the members of Congress today! Send your concerns to the White House. Let your voices be heard. If stand idly by our nation will become more and more unrecognizable. This is not a time to be silent.

I am a patriot. My democracy and my freedom are in danger. I will do whatever I can to save it.

There was a time when the average person living on the earth lived in a kind of darkness. The wealthiest and most powerful men had some access to learning how to read, write and calculate but most men and virtually all women were confined to ignorance. 

This did not mean that they were lacking in the ability to think and create, but it was certainly more difficult without the benefit of a more formal education. The rich and powerful were often able to maintain their hold over the peasants because they denied the common person the incredible gift of an education. In fact one of the most abusive ways of holding groups of people down has always been keeping them unaware by outlawing them from learning. 

It was illegal to teach slaves to read or write because the owners understood that keeping them ignorant made them easier to manage. One of the first things despots often do is tear down educational systems, burn books that suggest freedoms, deny certain groups the ability to learn truths. It is a devious plan that has been used again and again as in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge executed teachers, destroyed schools and kept a generation of children from learning anything but propaganda. 

We like to believe that we have come a long way from the times when only the elites in a community or nation were allowed the incredible gift of learning but in this year of 2025 there are still efforts to destroy public education and freedom of thought. Here in the United States of America there are attacks on the work of scientists. An anti-woke effort demonizes the idea of attempting to understand differing cultures and ways of living. Intellectuals are being scorned and bullied and even threatened for daring to submit their honest analyses of our society.

In the name of meritocracy we are reverting to backward time when it was assumed that women were less qualified than men, when certain races were deemed more intelligent that others. Some among us look at any woman or person of color who has achieved status as a probable winner because of DEI efforts  and rules. 

How sad and insulting it is. The diversity that we now see in our daily lives has enriched our nation, not made it less effective. The equity means that no one group can use its power to push out those that they believe to be inferior. The inclusion allows for a variety of ideas and skills that might not have happened had we simply stayed with the mindset in America when my grandmother was illiterate but her brother was a doctor simply because society believed that women had little to offer other than bearing children and caring for the home. We have all too often undervalued and underestimated the brilliance of those descended from slaves well into the current time. When the power of our nation did not include entire groups of people we were missing out on talents that had been hidden before we made the effort to give people a fair opportunity to demonstrate their skills.

it is insulting beyond measure when people automatically pronounce certain individuals as being inferior or when they insinuate that minority groups, including women, have stolen the rightful awards of White men. The truth is that once anyone is invited into a particular university or job they have to prove their mettle. People do not rise to the top out of pity or a desire to push them along. They always do it by their own hard work and merit. 

We have an incoming group of mostly men who will be running the important agencies of our government. Most of them are unqualified and lacking in the kind of experience and intelligence they will need. If ever there was an effort of Affirmative Action or DEI it is visible in the choices made for the Trump cabinet. With few exceptions these individuals have only one quality to offer, a willingness to be unremittingly loyal to Donald Trump. Rather than bringing resumes of success to the jobs they are known for spreading lies and hoaxes. To suggest that they represent a return to meritocracy is a joke.

Donald Trump is an unserious man who has gathered together a stunningly unserious group of individuals to help him guide our country. In the meantime this ship of fools is promising to attack the very bedrock of our educational system, our medical and scientific excellence and our willingness to recognize the need to hear all voices, not just those beholden to a single man or set of ideas.

I hope that the damage done to the incredible progress we have made in reaching toward the ideals of our Founding Fathers will not be too destructive. It would be a travesty to create an oligarchy or to take an axe to public education. it would be wrong to shut out huge blocks of Americans and to send them into a modern day dark age. I truly hope that those of us who see the danger will be ready and able to right the ship of state when the storms arise.  

Many years ago I was studying for a Masters Degree at the University of Houston Clear Lake. I had some phenomenal professors who introduced to to ideas and knowledge of which I had before then been unaware. I took a class in Labor Law that was so enlightening that if I had been a bit younger I might have considered going to law school as the professor encouraged me to do. Another class on Public Administration taught me all about the agencies in Washington D.C. and the people who work at them. I learned the importance of keeping such agencies as free of political influence as possible. The trouble with them is not that they are attempting to ram regulations down our throats but that some political parties are attempting to reshape them to represent certain ideologies. 

I also became convinced that there is great benefit to everyone when individuals work together within teams to create and work for common goals. When the initial phase of arguing and storming does not lead to cooperation it is a sign the the institution is severely broken. This is where we appear to be today within all three branches of our government. The executive branch of the incoming president is attempting to choose a cabinet whose loyalty will be to him rather than to the Constitution and the American people. The Congress and the Senate accomplish little or nothing because they are always bickering. They have surrendered their focus on making laws to the president who just issues executive orders that change with each new election. The Supreme Court has decided that the chief executive is immune to the same laws that everyone else must follow. The result is a federal government that seems to go in circles and cater more to a particular ideology than to the idea of working things out and compromising for the good of all the citizens. 

Perhaps the most informing class that I took was called Benefits and Compensation which focused on the kinds of perks that companies and institutions provide for employees beyond salaries. Some are specified by unions, some by law, and some are related to Social Security and Medicare rules. I remember the professor warning of the ultimate crash of Social Security if the Congress continued to refuse to make needed changes bit by bit. 

The prof explained that when Social Security first came to be an actuarial study was made to learn when the average American would most likely die. At the time is was the age of sixty five so when that age was used as the time of retirement and payout of the funds most of the people who had contributed would already be dead. In other words they understood that there was no way that the program was sustainable unless most people never made it that far. 

Over time medical care improved but the age at which citizens could claim the SS benefits only slightly changed. In the nineteen nineties when I took the class on benefits and compensation the average age of death for Americans was in the late seventies. I would suspect that it may be even a bit higher by now. Not only that, but the Boomer generation is huge and there are even a few older folks who are still hanging on in their nineties. As the prof pointed out the system will only work in the future if we are willing to make changes. 

I remember an uncle who was fairly well to do saying that he felt it was wrong for him to take the Social Security payments even though he had paid into them. He commented that many of his retired friends would joke the SS was paying their greens fees so that they might play golf more often. He suggested that there should be some kind of cutoff point after which a person is no longer eligible for the payments much like they do with retirees from the military, firefighting, politicking and teaching. I don’t know how much of a dent such a thing might work out to be but I would hate to think that those who really need those payments might one day lose their checks otherwise. 

My husband has pointed out that a while back Congress put a cap on payments to Social Security after reaching a certain income. We now have billionaires who don’t pay another dime after they very quickly reach this plateau. Maybe we should return to a time when there was no cap. If someone reaches a very high income it would help if they would have to continue paying their proportional share. 

I could go on and on about what I learned in the class that so changed the way that I think. I have ideas about Medicare as well and even health insurance. All I know is that we seem to be speeding toward a crisis caused by our need for basic security and healthcare. Like far too many things our government fears the idea of doing the right things and working together to solve the problems. Instead we are now faced with the prospect of unelected billionaires deciding the fate of so many of our agencies. Somehow I suspect that some of my old professors would be shaking their heads and reminding us that they tried to warn us about what was coming. When will we learn to look ahead rather than waiting for the last minute? There have always been feasible answers but they will only happen when we finally decide to work as a team and assess payments and needs according to proportion. 

When I was a young mother I hardly noticed what was actually happening on the political scene. My time and devotion was mostly dedicated to caring for my babies. I tended to vote for parties rather than people, often being unfamiliar with policies and beliefs of different candidates. It was a rather slipshod way of voting and I regret any mistakes that I may have made but in retrospect I mostly got lucky in making good choices. 

During my career as a teacher I became more interested in politics and much more aware of the issues and platforms of the different parties and candidates. I felt that my decisions were based more on facts and informed viewpoints than they had once been. In fact, I actually became rather interested in the whole process of our democracy and began to learn about things that I did not previously understand. I nonetheless knew far less about local politics than national issues. Sometimes I rather dangerously voted for someone based on which party they represented rather than actually knowing what their platforms were. It was a rather shaky and maybe even a bit dangerous way of voting. 

In my retirement years I approached our political system with a passion. Thanks to the internet and multiple subscriptions to different publications I voraciously read about all of the issues and became more and more familiar with the backgrounds of those running for office. At the time I was not a one party voter because I often found that doing so would force me to accept candidates whose views collided my own. 

Somewhere around 2014, I even spent time watching Fox News to see if I might learn about something that my own sources did not discuss. I was shocked to see how one sided that media outlet was. I felt as though their reporting was little more than 24/7 editorializing and even that was based purely on ideas and sources that I knew to be riddled with falsehoods. I began to understand the kind of brainwashing that many voters were experiencing by tuning in exclusively to a network that claimed to be fair and balanced but which never appeared to present more than one point of view. When they threw their unswerving support to Donald Trump in the 2016 election I tuned out but still kept track of what they were saying just so I would know what kind of propaganda they were peddling. 

I was actually stunned when Trump won in 2016 and not surprised at all when his administration was chaotic. When Covid came along I hoped for the sake of the nation that he would set aside his pride and work for the good of the people and for a brief time he actually did. Then he saw the signs that some of his supporters were feeling anxious about the two week national quarantine that he created to flatten the curve of the virus. He realized that people did not like hearing the truth about the sickness and the numbers of people dying. They wanted quick and easy answers but the doctors that Trump had enlisted to help were being scientific and following the premise of first doing no harm by being conservative in their advice. 

Trump lost his patience and soon began creating doubt in the minds of his supporters that they were being properly guided. He pushed the experts aside and began making ridiculous suggestions of his own. He eventually juggled the situation so badly that the United States with its incredible health system was leading the world in deaths. He lost control of the situation because he was not thinking about the good of the nation but his own poll numbers. Little wonder that he lost the election in 2020.

But of course we all know that Trump was unable to accept defeat and so he began to spin a web of lies that led to an insurrection and riot in the Capitol unlike anything ever before witnessed in the history of the United States. At that low point in our nation I thought that surely Trump’s political career was dead and that he would quietly go home and just spend his time golfing and hosting friends at Mar a Lago. Instead he beat the drum of pity so incessantly that people began to believe that he was the aggrieved party and not the sanctity of our election process. Still I did not believe that there would be enough Americans willing to turn their gaze away from his immoral actions and words to send a felon and traitor back to the White House and yet here we are. 

I think of the people that I know who almost enthusiastically voted for Donald Trump as though they were righting some terrible wrong and standing on the side of all that is good about America. I believe that most of them are sincere in their beliefs but I cannot help but wonder why they did not question the lies and hoaxes and hatefulness that Trump fed them. Were they just too busy living to realize how they were being played? Were they guilty of relying on only one propagandized source of information? Did they really believe that this cruel man was actually sent by God to save them and their children? Did they somehow allow themselves to be gaslighted into believing that evil was good and morality was bad? 

These are questions that still linger in my mind and somehow I need an answer because it is very clear to me that our nation is in danger because a petty, vindictive man is out for revenge against those that who tried to hold him responsible for his crimes. He spoke of trying and hanging his own Vice President and having a trial for the doctor who did his best to help us navigate the pandemic. None of it makes sense to me and yet very good people with very kind hearts celebrated his victory. 

Nothing is normal. The media, the Republicans and a huge swath of Americans act as though Trumps plans are good and cruel and even a bit crazy. Why aren’t more people speaking up? Why does it have fall to the ACLU to call him out for his overreach? Why are we not upbraiding him for railing about an Episcopal Bishop who gently reminded him to remember how Jesus taught us to love and care for each other? Why do we not fear the motive behind the actions of someone who claims to believe that he was saved from an assassination because God wanted him to wreak havoc on immigrants and transgender persons? When was it ever right to demand total loyalty from the people who work daily to keep the agencies of our nation running smoothly. How can we accept the idea of using our military to guard the border or stop protestors? What could possibly make us safer with the ugly divisions that Trump is creating?

I would appreciate knowing why anyone thinks that what is happening is good. I will listen and then quietly and patiently give my views on each point they make. I think we need to meet and express our love and concern for each other and then have an honest talk. When all is said and done Trump is wrong. We need each other, not a bully tearing our nation apart. 

It is a snowy day which is incredibly unusual where I live in Texas less than fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s quite peaceful to just sit quietly looking out of my window. I enjoy watching the children making snowballs and throwing them at each other. I like their laughter as they attempt to build snowmen. I should be calm right now, but I am not.

I’m sipping on hot cocoa and thinking about how much I enjoy the scene all around me but also worrying about what will happen to my beloved country in the future. I want to just look away and hope for the best after the inauguration of our new president, but I don’t think it would be wise for me to do so. Donald Trump and his dreadful plans frighten me in a way that little else in my life has ever done. His attacks on innocent people fly in the face of all of the beliefs I foster and the work that I have done with young people for decades. His description of a “golden age” sounds dystopian and authoritarian to me and I fear what the coming days and weeks will bring. 

I am the granddaughter of immigrants who were as disdained back in the early nineteen hundreds as today’s immigrants from south of our borders are today. Somehow the people seeking refuge, work, and opportunity in our country are all too often viewed as a stereotypical whole rather than the individuals that they are. Where Trump sees them as a nuisance I know most of them to be good people who are willing to work hard to provide their children with better lives. I know that they often do jobs that most of us would be loathe to consider. 

They remind me of my grandfather who first worked on farms tending and harvesting crops when he came to America from Slovakia. Eventually he landed a job in a meatpacking plant cleaning the floors and walls in the area where animals were slaughtered. It was back breaking work that allowed him to feed and clothe his eight children during the Great Depression, but it no doubt cut his life short. His legs were riddled with bulging veins that he wrapped in bandages to alleviate the pain. Nonetheless he reported to his job every single day without complaint and taught his children to love the United States and the freedom that they had. He died from a stroke before he was able to retire and only month before I was born.  

I am sure I would have liked my grandfather because he was an avid reader and learner like I am. In his memory I spent much of my work life teaching recent immigrants to this country. I never asked who was legal and who was not but sometimes students whispered to me their fear of being deported. I always promised them that I would protect them if anyone attempted to send them away. I still feel compunction to honor that pledge even as Trump promises that his roundup of such people will be swift and without compromise. 

I worry about the fate of trans people who have done absolutely nothing to incite the ire of Trump and his MAGAs. They are such a small percentage of the population that they hardly register a bleep. Most people have never met a trans person but I have. I know them to be gentle and sincere and caring. They are not folks who would even think of hurting anyone and they mostly just want to be left alone to live in peace with the freedom to be who they are. 

I worry that Trump has created such a ruckus over them that they are in danger. I am anxious about their safety and feel a sense of foreboding about what will happen to them. I know that Trump is using them as a tool to rile up his followers and to get them to believe that he is a savior of some kind. The truth is that he is simply a vindictive bully who is a master of propaganda. He knows full well that when people are frightened they are often willing surrender unlimited power to anyone who claims to make them safe. 

Trump has just pardoned some of the vilest individuals in our population for their abominable crimes on January 6, 2021. Many of them are modern day Nazis and far right extremists who will do Trump’s bidding even if it requires violence against others. I fear what will happen if Trump calls on them again to carry out violence against our government. Who will be hurt this time? How can we just look the other way as they spew their hate?

The snow is beautiful and comforting and clean but it will melt and I will have to go back into this new world that feels so dangerous. I’m not generally a fearful person and I’m not one for conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, I am worried about what the next four years will bring. After all Trump has told us what he plans to do and it will constrict the freedom of so many innocent people. I keep wondering what I might do to help them. 

I suppose that I write about my concerns because it is one of the things that I know how to do. In a sense I hope to keep others informed of the dangers and enlist their help if the time becomes to save our freedom and democracy. Trump seems intent on persecuting groups filled with innocent people. I believe that it will be immoral to simply look away and do nothing to help them. Sadly I suspect that I am just preaching to the choir while those who know my views but disagree with me will simply ignore what I have to say and cheer on Trump to be strong in his determination. 

I will linger a bit longer feeling the comfort of the snow. I’ll file this picture away in my mind for days in the future that may become grim. It will be a way to soothe my anxieties and remind me of my resolve. I suppose that I won’t be the first American who has had to take a deep breath when defending our nation or making life more free for marginalized people. Maybe this is how my great grandfather felt as a Union soldier in the Civil War. War is frightening and he must have witnessed horrors. I must remember my ancestors who have endured hardships for their families and for this nation I owe it to both my grandfather and my great grandfather to be brave.