“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us: that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Thomas Paine wrote these words in December 1776. The American Revolutionary War had been going badly since the Declaration of Independence was signed earlier that year. The British had kicked George Washington’s army out of New York, and they hanged his favorite spy, Nathan Hale (a Yalie, by the way), so Washington had Paine’s words read aloud to the troops to boost their morale.
It worked. They crossed the Delaware River on Christmas in the dead of night — no easy task in midwinter — and thoroughly thrashed Britain’s hired Hessian soldiers the next morning at the Battle of Trenton. It wasn’t the end of the war, or even the beginning of the end, but to use Winston Churchill’s words, it was the end of the beginning.
Now we’re under siege again — not by some foreign country but by our own government. The unconstitutional invasion of Venezuela (only Congress has the authority to declare war, not the president) is the latest example. The Trump administration’s man in charge of this operation is Steven Miller, of course.
I’m not saying Maduro is a good guy — he’s not. However, Trump loves bad guys, like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Victor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Recep Erdoğan in Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, the man who ordered the grisly murder and dismemberment of a journalist who was one of his critics — in short, anyone who loves power more than the welfare of his own people. Maduro is one of them too, and so is Trump.
When I was in college I took a course in Soviet history, and the professor talked a lot about something called the aggression/repression cycle. Putin’s Russia is a classic example: He uses the war in Ukraine as a pretext to justify repression at home and vice-versa. Trump is following his example.
What we can do? For starters, we need to listen to Paine. No matter how gloomy things look, we must hang on to hope. Trump is counting on us giving up. Let’s not. We must be winter soldiers, not summer soldiers. Remember, we still have a lot going for us, including the Constitution, our American traditions and simple right and wrong.
We have some governors who are standing tall; senators and members of the House of Representatives who are pushing back; and soldiers and sailors — from four-star generals and admirals down to enlisted personnel — who fear the politicization of the military that Trump is trying to shove down their throats.
We have reporters, editors and even television comedians who are brave enough to stand up for what’s right, even at the risk of their own careers. We have MAGA types who are starting to realize that they’ve been had. If Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, is jumping ship, how strong is Trump’s base, really? We even have the Pope.
Most of all, signs are strong that public opinion is beginning to change. People are starting to understand they’ve been lied to and nobody is eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Public sentiment is everything, and whoever can change public opinion can change the government.”
We’ve had crises before, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II and Watergate; and there was a time in each of these calamities when people didn’t know if it would come out all right, but in each case it eventually did.
As Otto Von Bismarck, the 19th century strongman who unified a lot of little German states and principalities into modern Germany, observed, “There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.”
It’s always darkest before the dawn. This is our moment. Let’s seize it.
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.
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