Dead Patriots Society

Dead Patriots Society

may our children not behave like our president

Post #6 February 16, 2025

Mr. President,

A friend tells a friend what he should hear, not what he wants to hear. A friend would tell you that you are not well, and you need professional help, not more power. Indeed, your insatiable thirst for power, and need for blind loyalists like Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, is one indication you are not well. 

I do not pretend to be your friend, though I do not wish you harm. But I am authorized to advise you, because I hold “the only title in our democracy superior to that of President, the title of Citizen”.

I was 23 when Jimmy Carter spoke those words. The timing of his passing was uncanny, if not providential, because the contrast between you two is stark.

Whatever else one might say about Jimmy Carter, he aspired to be a good example for Americans and their children, during his presidency and afterward. Now many of us pray our children will not behave like our President. 

One lesson we try to teach our children is how to lose with grace, without loss of self-esteem or animosity toward the winner. Your inability to admit defeat in the 2020 election, and your willingness to put lives at risk which included egging on rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”, demonstrates that you never learned that lesson.

Mr. President, I was a classmate of Rick Reilly, whose 2019 book “Commander in Cheat” was prophetic. If Donald Trump cheats openly and shamelessly at golf, what is he capable of in the oval office?

To my knowledge, you have not uttered one word of apology to Mike Pence or any of the legislators trapped in the Capitol on January 6th, or the Capitol police who defended them, or those very people you incited to violence by your Big Lie. But releasing hundreds of them who were duly tried and convicted was no way to redress the wrong you perpetrated on the American people. Instead, you have put more people at risk.

I have written before that you seem incapable of self-reflection. The other day I inquired of an ancient source what advice I could give you. The answer I got is titled “Contemplation”. Here is part of that answer:

“Self-contemplation means the overcoming of naive egotism in the person who sees everything solely from his own standpoint. He begins to reflect and in this way acquires objectivity. However, self-knowledge does not mean preoccupation with one’s own thoughts; rather, it means concern about the effects one creates. 

“It is only the effects our lives produce that give us the right to judge whether what we have done means progress or regression.”

Mr. President, have you and Elon Musk stopped to ponder, for instance, what your abrupt halt to many humanitarian aid projects has meant to the world’s poorest people?  Do you honestly believe you have the right to dispossess Gazans of their land?

Mr. President, life is not about power. It is about doing good. The same ancient source quoted above says of power: “Whereas an inferior man revels in power whenever he comes into possession of it, the superior man never makes this mistake.”

Mr. President, from your own words and actions, and those of Steve Bannon, the American people have cause to believe you never intended to accept an electoral defeat in any of the last three presidential elections. We all need to know now that there will be a free and fair election in 2028, and that you will not attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power to a Democratic administration, should the Republican candidate lose. We need to know that you will put the Big Lie to rest, and your days of sowing distrust and division are done. 

Are you capable of living up to your oath of office, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution? Are you finished trying to usurp power from the other two branches of government?

We deserve, and need, to know.

The truth will make you free.

Todd Buchanan