Only strong medicine can heal our ills in Kansas and these rapidly corroding United States
An attendee at South Dakota’s Freedom 250 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration wears a stars-and-stripes button-up shirt and a "Make America Great Again" hat on July 3, 2026. (Photo by Meghan O'Brien/South Dakota Searchlight)
In today’s world, “we the people” are nothing.
Feel moved to the sidelines, removed from the playing field? You’re not alone. Those in control have us in their power, and they’re not letting go.
One of my diversions is a bar with live music. Recently, one patron in the crowd was dancing enthusiastically. I could relate. I’m sometimes that guy. Movement is medicine, after all. But this dancer looked in more need of medicine than most. He was worse for wear, a bit tattered.
His weatherbeaten straw hat and T-shirt set him apart. The T-shirt visual was a fist raised with middle finger extended. Below it was written: “Yo Feelings.”
Immediately I thought of our present president, whose supporters say the same. I could only assume the dancer felt a certain kinship. Unless appearances belie reality, the dancer had not benefitted one whit from President Trump. Yet there he was, shirt and all.
Much of Kansas, much of America, is in the same boat. There’s denial at almost every socioeconomic level. Giving feelings the finger has become a rampant disease for which we all need medicine.
If you’re not feeling that, you’re either mentally healthier than I am, or you just don’t get what’s going on. My money’s on the latter.
Several vignettes drove this home on a recent drive through Kansas and Missouri Ozark territory. Nothing against the residents there, as similar signs are everywhere. But they are apt symbols of our nation at 250 years.
Tight, tree-lined highways feature many small off-ramp driveways. They wind into the woods to proud, often unseen, bastions of freedom. These mini- or maxi acreages display waving flags, the occasional Jet Ski, and in one case a car with missing bumper and rumpled hood, immobilized but hopeful. Each plot was separate from its nearest neighbors and the world at large. The road is punctuated by gas stations, rusted sculptures and pontoons in need of paint.
Those proud flags wave, pointing us in the direction of a final triumphal display. On this manicured lawn, a blow-up Uncle Sam waves his flag in the breeze, trees and highway forming a backdrop for his private theater.
The most prominent patriotic display was a large sign just west of Garden City, Missouri. “The Second Amendment Protects Us All,” it read, aiming a AK-47 assault rifle at us. The nearby gun and ammo store stood like a centurion, ready to assist.
Freedom’s for sale at the local gun store.
Despite this hype, this overwhelming iconography, there are three reasons why our freedom has crumbled on our 250th anniversary
Women are under threat. On July 7, immediately after “Independence” Day, Trump canceled almost all teenage pregnancy prevention grants —$67 million worth. Why? Because of their “radical leftist ideology.” Programs that successfully moved teens toward healthy sexuality and free adult lives have been wiped out.
Women, it appears, are only valuable as sex objects or playthings.
Second, citizens’ expectation of just treatment from federal service officers has been undermined. Only days before July 4, the Mitch McConnell Supreme Court took us back to the 19th Century, when the president governed alongside robber barons. The Supreme Court effectively eliminated civil service job security, exchanging federal workers’ loyalty to the public for loyalty to Trump.
If we weren’t already breathless at this government’s daily injustices, this decision should body slam us into gasping for air. Justice Sonia Sotomayor called it “grievously wrong,” giving “the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted.”
The court has resurrected a spoils system we escaped more than 100 ago.
Our most depraved former president, pre-Trump, was Andrew Jackson. (Jackson invented that spoils system and is Trump’s favorite president, with a picture hanging in the Oval Office.) When President James Garfield refused a speech written by James Guiteau, who sought a federal speechwriter’s job, Guiteau killed him. That resulted in the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.
The high court just ran roughshod over that. Now, it’s government by wrecking ball.
Terrible as these developments are, we at least know about them, especially through independent media. Our final freedom loss, however, is that unbiased information itself is under attack. With storied journalist Scott Pelley’s outspoken departure from CBS’ 60 Minutes, the situation is unmistakable.
CBS owner David Ellison’s followup takeover of Paramount would put him in charge of an empire that “spans movies, TV, streaming, news, sports and gaming” — including CNN.
Thom Hartmann summarizes it well: “Trump is 18 months into his project and he’s already taken down the Voice of America, defunded PBS and NPR, seen the Washington Post and LA Times acquired by sycophantic billionaires, and turned CBS over to a nepo-baby billionaire who’s going after CNN next. As Jefferson pointed out, this is how democracies are fatally corrupted, which is apparently Trump’s and his billionaire enablers’ goal.”
Democracy should not be served up on a silver platter. As Bob Dylan asked, “When You Gonna Wake Up”?
David Norlin is a retired Cloud County Community College teacher, where he was department chairman of communications/English, specializing in media. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.