by Dominique Margolis

I’ve got a bad case of betrayal trauma. It started on July 1, 2024, when the Supreme Court of the United States of America created the Imperial President. I’m in the dumps because, since July 1, 2024, I am no longer a citizen of a democracy because how can I be the citizen of a democracy where the president is above the law? President above the law and democracy don’t mix. I don’t know what to do about it, but I still need to believe that my vote will count. I will vote Democrat. Other than that, I don’t know what else to do, so I start writing this essay because writing usually helps me counter despondency.

In the month that followed, I imagined flying the American flag at half-mast next July 1^st like on September 11. But I think half of the country would take offense. Would they take up arms like on January 6  over me choosing to fly our nation’s flag at half-mast. The self proclaimed patriotic enemy from within no longer feels the need to hide.

I find myself uttering “I don’t know what kind of America I’m an American from anymore” to random people. After forty years of my adult life in the United States of America, I still have an accent. Not so long ago, strangers would think my accent was a hint that I was a Democrat. But now, MAGAs with even stronger accents than mine assume that I’m one of them. Perhaps it’s because I can pass for a “good” immigrant from the north or from Russia. These days, Putin is in, at least with the MAGA crowd. They love a “Strong Man”.  In the USA, they are ready to enshrine an orange one – this time until death does us part. He’s promised to be “A dictator from day one.” He’s saying that’s what we need because it’s gotten so bad. No need to vote again if you vote for him” He promises safety, yet he is the danger.

I’m past horrified.

This July was my fortieth anniversary of being on American soil. Before I could deplane, I had to sign an official form from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to certify that I had no affiliation with the Communist Party, and that none of my family members were Communists. If I had any love for the commies, I could not deplane. Plain and simple.

Now, forty years later, the orange MAGA cult leader loves the megalomaniac geniuses that have been produced by the great communist countries of Russia, China, and North Korea. How many millions of men and women did these madmen kill in their own countries? And another madman wants to imitate them here in America? No way!

America’s greatness will never be found through dictatorship or fascism. America’s greatness comes from our democracy. Being great doesn’t mean a free for all where everyone can do what they please.  It’s not, “I’ll shoot you because I can”. It’s not, “I’ll do as I please, and fuck the Deep State, and Big Daddy loves me, and He will lock you up if you don’t do as I say.” That’s not the kind of thinking that makes America great.

You should hear the things I hear in Southern California. “It was a lot better when Trump was president. There was no inflation, you could still afford rent, or a mortgage. You could still pay for your groceries and a little bit left over for fun times. And when COVID hit, a little swig of bleach here and there could have derailed the pandemic that wasn’t a pandemic. And when Biden took over, people were forced to shutter down. They lost their jobs. They lost their businesses! And when Biden took over, you could not find anyone to work anywhere anymore because it became more profitable to stay home and cash the government COVID checks than to look for a job. It’s gotten to where it’s better if you’re poor, in this country, now. You can’t even afford college anymore. Unless you’re poorer, and then you get Pell grants. All the jobs are going to the illegals anyway. And crime. It’s never been worse.” That’s what I hear from people with jobs that pay well enough but whose money can’t stretch as far as it used to. That’s what I hear in a state where over 63% of voters elected President Biden in 2020.

I say, “But what about your daughters? What about our daughters?” Their tone of voice chills me to the bone. I recently made casual contact with a woman whose job it is to interact with university students from all over the world. I knew that one of the young women she interacted with had just been raped. Naturally, I assumed that the older woman would be outraged that Trump was found liable for sexual assault. I was wrong. The older woman laughed in my face and told me that wasn’t true and poor Trump was just a victim of political machinations. She did not like him, she added politely, but she would vote for him because “we need him to make this country great again.”

Like with drunks, there’s no point in arguing. Economic uncertainty can bring out the worst in people regardless of where in the world you live. As fascists know too well, reason is no match for frustration. There’s no need to talk about the devastation brought about by the Supreme Court. I can talk about interest rates kept too low for more than a decade; lack of regulation regarding the reselling of real estate for a quick dollar; lack of rent control; lack of effective regulations by the Federal Government to keep living affordable. Federal regulations? Did you say regulations? Go back home to France where all the real commies live! Here, we have Project 2025. It’s all about deregulation! No more federal oversight for anything. That’s what we need to make this country great again!

I do go home, but I’m going home down memory lane, back to when I first arrived on the threshold of my America. I was twenty, then, and I did not speak English well, which allowed me plenty of time to observe what was going on under my umbrella of foreign words and even more foreign ways. I lived with a host family. They were a military family. The father was a senior military officer. I’ll call him James here to protect his identity. As a veteran of the Korean War, he had spent most of his military life commanding warships. The summer of my arrival, Will was home by 6 p.m. on the dot for a whiskey, a few minutes of Bible-reading, meat and potatoes, the nightly news, and a bit of conversation with me. His natural austerity was in stark contrast with the wild mood swings of his wife, which scared me, so I hung out with him in silence and paid particular attention to his behavior. He studied the newest developments in underwater sound propagation to enhance the detection of enemy submarines; and yet, he could not detect the danger lurking in plain sight within his own family structure. Perhaps he did not care. Perhaps he did not have the manual to understand interpersonal relationships outside of the controlled environment of a warship or a submarine. In any case, his daughter and his wife were dating the same man, a thirty-year old Neo-Nazi meth dealer who looked a bit like Charles Manson but blonde and who spent way too much time at the house. He gave me the creeps. One Sunday, that cocky punk put both arms around mother and daughter, one on each side, and started kissing them in front of James. James, about twice his age, punched him and took the fight out to the front yard, where it did not end well. My favorite officer was left sucker-punched and bleeding on the meticulously trimmed grass of the front yard as the enemy from within grinned a triumphant smile over James as he took off on his Harley, his raised fist signing the V of victory. 

I think I feel like James, right now. I feel a searing, humiliating betrayal that I did not see it coming. I put myself down a bit, probably a barely conscious posture designed to soften the blow. I never had the professional skills that James had, so the discrepancy between what I did not see coming and what hit me is not as wide as it was for James. Still, I’d already gotten acquainted with the nefarious works of a Supreme Court that interfered to hand over the election to Bush in the year 2000. At the time, though, I’d only been voting for a handful of years. And even though I was smart enough to be in in graduate school, the workings of the American political system were still too complicated for the immigrant that I was, still too complicated for someone who had spent the first twenty years of her life in France where there were too many political parties to count and  where there was no such thing as a Supreme Court where judges are politically appointed for life to serve the needs of one party. I did sob, then, when Gore and the image of the blue earth seen from above, so fragile and in need of protection, vanished from the air. But then, life went on.

The dubious unitary executive theory championed by Ed Meese III, Reagan’s second Attorney General, started to grow legs and tentacles to demolish the system of checks and balances that it sees as unconstitutional. In “The Supreme Court Cleared the Way for the ‘President-Kint – The Right’s Prize for 50 Years of Planning,” Annika Brockschmidt argues that the theory has informed legal developments at The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, two institutions that “have worked for decades to create the current right-wing majority on the Supreme Court” and to which we owe the Project 2025.

President Biden has announced that reforming the Supreme Court to make sure that no president is above the law will be the focus of the remaining months of his presidency. If Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz, her running mate, are not elected in November, however, Trump will become dictator on day one. The legal system is already ripe and ready to enthrone him. What goes first when democracies die? Women’s rights? Environmental protection laws? Animal rights? You name it because they are all reeling from the impact of Trump’s first term.  In the USA, women’s rights came down first when Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022. In June 2024, further rulings gutted the ability of the EPA to enforce environmental reforms and culminated in giving Trump presidential immunity. You can be sure that, if Trump wins – by whatever means – women will forever become second-class citizens, the elderly will no longer receive Social Security, the needy will no longer have access to Medicaid, average citizens with average incomes will no longer have access to relatively clean and unpolluted soil and water, etc.

You ask me what I am going to do? Write, Talk to my Southern California neighbors, and most of all Vote Kamala!

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