Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.
This is where I plan to post my Old Guy Says social media posts for posterity. I don’t know that it will matter or that anyone cares, but since it will represent, to some degree, my efforts to write and perhaps even influence a few people, I thought I’d do just that.
10/4/25 Are We At The Precipice?
I fear that our nation is devolving into a conservative, fascist state that is shutting down any pretense of being a democracy, and that unless Congress steps up to do its job, we are facing a very violent future.
By that, I mean that I fear we will devolve into a shooting war on the streets of our cities as Trump employs the military and deputizes gangs of his private police force to end any and all opposition to his rule.
Trump, with the backing of the authors of Project 2025, and surrounded by sycophants, is setting the stage for declaring a national emergency, suspending the Constitution and habeas corpus, and declaring Martial Law.
Trump said he plans to meet with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought, an author of Project 2025 —a 900-page blueprint developed by conservative groups to reshape the federal government.
President Trump has ordered federal agencies to search actively for connections tying philanthropic funders and activist groups, almost all of whom are progressives, to a vaguely described effort to foment violence, intimidation, and suppression of political activity.
In his memorandum of September 25, 2025, Trump posits a dramatic increase in political violence, driven by “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence” that aim to suppress speech and force changes in government policy. He’s talking about Democrats and Progressives. It presents no evidence to substantiate these claims. Then, he does this.
“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby direct the following:
Section 1. Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. Heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence in the United States have dramatically increased in recent years. Even in the aftermath of the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk, some individuals who adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence.
This was preceded by the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive and the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Two separate assassination attempts against my own life in less than 3 months took place during the 2024 Presidential election cycle. Riots in Los Angeles and Portland reflect a more than 1,000 percent increase in attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since January 21, 2025, compared to the same period last year. Just yesterday, a shooting targeting an ICE facility in Dallas resulted in multiple casualties. Separate anti-police and “criminal justice” riots have left many people dead and injured and inflicted over $2 billion in property damage nationwide.”
He is beating the drums of fascism as he demonizes any and all who disagree with him.
He is also asking the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service to weed out any philanthropic groups (again, mostly progressive and Democrats) funding political violence.
In the aftermath of Kirk's killing on September 10 and a shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas on Wednesday, the Trump administration has repeatedly blamed left-wing groups, without evidence, of being part of a coordinated campaign of political violence.
Trump has downplayed violence from right-wing groups, insisting that political violence is a problem rooted in the left.
As he decries violence, he is sending unwanted troops into our cities to root out what he calls organized crime, which is nothing more than a front to remove as many non-white, non-Christian immigrants from our land as he can.
We are facing the most significant threat since the Confederate States seceded from our nation, starting the Civil War.
All this, I fear, is Trump setting the stage for him to declare war on our democracy. I hope I’m wrong, and I hope our Congress on both sides of the aisle will step up to save our great nation from this evil. Because with almost 400 million guns in our nation, our streets will run with blood.