Each day I read another chapter of the ongoing destruction of government, the embodiment of the value system that has held us together. Each day I read the struggles of the Supreme Court to preserve the Constitution—the core framework that holds the value system in place. And each day I try to imagine where it will end—and can’t. I alternate between outrage and hope, praying that the extremists on both sides discover a common set of values before their loss of faith in democracy destroys all the rest of us.
The Right has all of the power and spent its 100-day victory celebration destroying as much of the system as it could. Then said “OOPS!” and tried to put Humpty Dumpty back on the wall. Its rampage of deportation, however, has caused far more grievous damage, both to immigrants and ourselves. Governors of Democratic states have fought back, as have the courts, but we’ve lost the 
respect of the world and ourselves, and respect isn’t easy to restore. Now, in Iran, Trump is using his Godfather style of negotiating (extortion) with bombs. I read, yesterday, that the “Proud Boys” who Trump pardoned a couple of weeks ago for their part in the attempted coup of January 6th , are furious with him for negotiating with a foreign power, betraying his promises of isolationism. In Congressional debates on the budget bill, according to an article in the New York Times, Republicans are fighting the GOP on tax issues. When those became separate entities, I don’t know; perhaps nothing but hatred and retribution are holding that party together.
On the Left, Democrats have not recovered from their loss of the 2024 election which gave Congress to the Republicans. Biden’s late withdrawal hurt, but the increasing extremism of the Left must share the blame. Over the years, the party had grown more and more intolerant of dissent on issues like undocumented immigrants, free college for everyone, surgery for pre-adolescent trans-gender rights, abortion, and gender pronouns. Ever a collection of separate causes, the authoritarian style, especially of the feminists, is divisive, and the party was late in responding to Trump’s threat to democracy as a unifying issue. The widespread protests against Trump’s autocratic rule are making a difference now, but can’t replace the loss of Congress and the Presidency.
On both sides, voters express distress at the actions of their party, and neither shows any great success—either at destroying our institutions or maintaining them. The only effectively silenced citizens are the moderates and independents. I might argue for an independent party if I thought it would be more than a collection of the disaffected. We need leaders on both sides who take us back 
to the founding principles that underlie the Constitution. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Diffusion of power controls excess. This principle is based on a realistic assessment of human behavior and applies to the private sector as well as the public. We need to unite against an oligarchy of the very rich as well as the autocratic extremism of both Left and Right.
As I posr this blog, the Supreme Court has ruled that lower federal courts do not have the power to act on the President’s executive orders, a huge triumph for Trump which throws citizenship itself into chaos, as well as the power of the lower courts. The question now is whether the Supreme Court is willing or able to save itself from Trump’s thirst for total power.
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