HOW TO REPAIR THE ECONOMY

Trump’s Dictator’s Playbook: Wreck the Economy, Claim to Rebuild It

Economic chaos is not an accident under Donald Trump. It is the strategy. Throughout history, dictators have learned that a population reeling from financial collapse becomes easier to manipulate. When jobs vanish, prices soar, and households struggle, the strongman steps forward with a single promise: Only I can fix it.

Trump has studied that playbook, and his allies, Stephen Miller and the Heritage Foundation, and their sprawling “Project 2025,” have written it into policy. Trump is merely the messenger, executing the design.

The Twin Engines of Sabotage

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently outlined the precarious state of the U.S. economy. But what he did not say outright is that two of the most significant drivers of instability are deliberate creations of Trump’s policies:

1. Tariffs – Trump’s unnecessary and sweeping tariffs have fueled inflation. By raising the cost of imported goods, tariffs ripple through the supply chain, distorting prices and creating market unpredictability. Inflation is not just painful at the checkout counter; it undermines investment and consumer confidence.
2. Immigration Restrictions – Trump’s assault on immigration is shrinking the labor pool. Farmers, construction companies, tech firms, and service industries struggle to fill jobs. With fewer workers, wages climb unsustainably, supply shrinks, and inflation worsens. Instead of stabilizing the economy, Trump has engineered labor shortages to inflame division and claim victimhood.

Correcting both policies, ending tariffs, and restoring rational immigration would immediately boost the economy. But Trump’s aim is not correction. Crisis is.

A Dangerous Collision with Artificial Intelligence

The stakes are higher than another inflation cycle. America is entering a technological transformation unlike any before: artificial intelligence. AI will challenge our economic systems, strain labor markets, and require unprecedented infrastructure, education, and regulation investment. Meeting those challenges demands a strong, resilient economy.

Instead, Trump’s policies are designed to weaken the very foundations we will rely on. A nation stumbling under inflation and labor shortages will not be equipped to harness AI responsibly. Instead of leading the world in this revolution, we risk being undone.

The Real Plan: Authoritarian Power

This is why the economic argument cannot be separated from the political one. Trump’s sabotage of the economy is not incompetence; it is intent. The chaos lays the groundwork for dictatorship. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 makes this clear: strip the government of expertise, dismantle guardrails, and concentrate power in the hands of a leader who claims only he can fix the mess.

If Americans allow themselves to believe the lie that Trump’s destruction is salvation, we risk losing not only our prosperity but our democracy.

A Narrow Path Forward

The remedy is obvious, though difficult: reject tariffs, restore rational immigration, and stabilize the economy to prepare for the AI future. However, Trump will not do this, as it is contrary to his game plan. The responsibility lies with citizens, lawmakers, and leaders who still value democracy to act, not later, but now.

If we fail, the consequence will not be just higher store prices or longer wait times for workers. It will be the loss of our freedom under the shadow of dictatorship, all while we stand unprepared for the most significant technological shift of our time.

William James Spriggs 

RESIGNATION

In Veneration of Resignation

There is a point in life when the past hardens into permanence. The days lived, the loves lost, the victories and humiliations. These cannot be relived, reconstructed, or altered. They are sealed, like fossils pressed into stone. No wish for the future, no fever of regret, can reanimate them. And yet, we human beings are notorious for circling those fossils, running our fingers over them, and lamenting what once was.

The truth is more straightforward, harsher, and, if accepted, more liberating: they are gone.

The Folly of Re-creation

Much of human suffering springs not from what happened, but from the futile wish that it might happen again, or differently. To relive an hour of youth, correct a mistake, and restore what was lost is a fantasy. It breeds paralysis. To live in perpetual remembrance is to live in exile from the present. The cost is high, for it drains the only time we possess.

The First Resignation

So we resign. We accept that what is past is past. We step back into the current of life and allow it to sweep us onward. This is the first resignation, difficult, reluctant, and often painful.

The Second Resignation

But there is a subtler, deeper demand. Even after we resign, we are tempted to rehearse that resignation endlessly: I must get over this. I must get over that. Yet such repetition only ties us back to the very memories we meant to release. We need a second resignation, an act of “getting over getting over it.”

It is not enough to let go; we must let go of letting go. Only then does memory lose its grip.

Living Beyond the Echo

In its honest measure, life is not about constantly reconstructing what has gone before. It is about standing in the moment's immediacy, without longing for its return once it passes. Each instant contains enough truth and beauty to demand our full attention. When we relinquish the urge to relive or re-lament, we finally discover what remains: a present unburdened by the ruins of yesterday.

To venerate resignation is not to glorify defeat. It is to recognize the dignity of acceptance and honor the wisdom of release. The past cannot be resurrected, but the present, properly seen, is resurrection enough.

William James Spriggs

HATE SPEECH IS NOT FREE

Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech

One of the immutable constants of human life is that what goes around comes around. That truth is freshly relevant in light of the death of Charlie Kirk, who spent his public life preaching a poisonous mixture of hate and violence under the banner of “free speech.”

Like many on the far right, Kirk cloaked his rhetoric in the First Amendment, arguing that anything he said was protected, no matter how inflammatory or reckless. Yet he went further: He openly rationalized violence as a necessary consequence of speech, insisting that provocation and aggression were the natural, even desirable, outgrowth of his so-called defense of liberty.

But here is what too many forget: free speech is not absolute. The law has long recognized its limits. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously explained that one cannot falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theater without consequence. Why? Because speech that predictably causes harm is not speech at all.

We need to explain this clearly and enforce it consistently: hate speech is not free speech. It is an expensive speech. It costs society peace, civility, and sometimes lives. And today, it is overwhelmingly deployed on the far right, where demonization and threats have become part of daily discourse.

The First Amendment protects the free exchange of ideas. But when speech becomes weaponized to silence, intimidate, or incite, it ceases to be speech and becomes a form of violence. Genuine free speech fosters debate; hate speech poisons it.

How to Impose Limits on Hate Speech

1. Update Legal Standards for Incitement
• Current U.S. law prohibits speech “directed to inciting imminent lawless action” and “likely to produce such action.” That bar is often too high to stop hate speech before it does real damage. Congress and the courts should refine this test to include speech that predictably fosters violence, even if the violence is not immediate.
2. Define Hate Speech as a Category of Harmful Speech
• Like libel, fraud, and threats, hate speech should be treated as a category of unprotected speech. Targeted language designed to provoke hostility against groups based on race, religion, gender, or identity should carry civil or criminal penalties, particularly when linked to violence.
3. Hold Platforms Accountable
• Social media companies should face clear legal liability for knowingly amplifying hate speech that results in harm. Their algorithms should be transparent and subject to oversight, with fines for repeated violations.
4. Establish a Federal Hate Speech Oversight Body
• Just as the FCC regulates broadcast standards, a federal agency could monitor and enforce hate speech restrictions, ensuring that enforcement is consistent and not politically weaponized.
5. Educate on the Difference Between Free Speech and Hate Speech
• Public education campaigns should emphasize that restricting hate speech is not suppressing ideas. It is protecting communities from targeted violence. This would reinforce the democratic purpose of free expression rather than diminish it.

The Stakes

What goes around comes around. For years, Charlie Kirk and others like him treated hate as a game, a tactic, a means of building an audience and consolidating power. They dismissed warnings that words have consequences, that violence once unleashed cannot be controlled. Now those consequences are undeniable.

The lesson is stark: a society that tolerates hate speech under the pretense of “free speech” is not protecting liberty; it is undermining it. True freedom requires boundaries that protect human dignity and civic peace.

If America is to remain a democracy, we must draw this line clearly. Hate speech is not free. It is costly, and the bill is always paid in blood.

William James Spriggs

LIMITS ON FREE SPEECH

Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech. It’s Violence in Disguise

One of the immutable constants of human life, and perhaps of the universe itself, is that what goes around comes around. That truth is freshly relevant in light of the death of Charlie Kirk, who spent his public life preaching a poisonous mixture of hate and violence under the banner of “free speech.”

Like many on the far right, Kirk cloaked his rhetoric in the First Amendment, arguing that anything he said was protected, no matter how inflammatory or reckless. Yet he went further: he openly rationalized violence as a necessary consequence of speech, insisting that provocation and aggression were the natural, even desirable, outgrowth of his so-called defense of liberty.

But here is what too many forget: free speech is not absolute. The law has long recognized its limits. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously explained that one cannot falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theater without consequence. Why? Because speech that predictably causes harm is not speech at all. It is incitement. It is a weapon.

We need to explain this clearly and enforce it consistently: hate speech is not free speech. It is an expensive speech. It costs society peace, civility, and sometimes lives. It is disproportionately deployed by those who want to provoke violence in the name of their cause. And in today’s America, that cause is overwhelmingly on the far right.

The political left is not without flaws or excesses, but it does not organize around systematic hate speech designed to justify violence. That is the domain of the modern right — a movement that has normalized cruelty, demonization, and threats as part of its daily discourse. From talk shows to rallies, hate is broadcast as if it were a patriotic duty.

But the First Amendment does not protect the deliberate stirring of mobs or the rhetorical targeting of minorities. Nor should it. Hate speech undermines the very premise of free speech, which is to enable a free and fair exchange of ideas. When speech becomes weaponized to silence, intimidate, or incite, it ceases to be speech and becomes a form of violence.

What goes around comes around. For years, Charlie Kirk and others like him treated hate as a game, a tactic, a means of building an audience and consolidating power. They dismissed warnings that words have consequences, that violence once unleashed cannot be controlled. Now those consequences are undeniable.

The lesson is stark: a society that tolerates hate speech under the pretense of “free speech” is not protecting liberty; it is undermining it. Actual free speech empowers debate, dissent, and truth. Hate speech does the opposite. It poisons discourse, breeds violence, and destroys the very freedom it claims to defend.

If America is to remain a democracy, we must draw this line clearly. Hate speech is not free. It is costly, and the bill is always paid in blood.

William James Spriggs

  

A MARINE'S LAMENT

A Marine’s Lament: How Greed and Amoral Power Destroyed America

I grew up in America. At eighteen, I joined the United States Marine Corps and swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. I served my country as an officer, raised my family, paid my taxes, lived as a law-abiding citizen, and voted sometimes uncertainly, but always out of duty.

When I retired, I sharpened my awareness of history and current events. I began to write books, essays, and blog posts to make sense of what I saw unfolding. What I discovered is as simple as it is devastating: we were right once, had it once, and lost it.

The country I pledged to defend has been betrayed from within. Our inheritance, liberty, democracy, and moral leadership were squandered. In its place, authoritarianism crept in, wrapped in the flag, echoing the rhetoric of freedom even as it dismantled its substance. What began as a subtle corrosion became outright seizure: Nazis in new uniforms, clutching the levers of power.

We had one chance to stop the descent. Joe Biden, a decent man with a steady hand, offered a reprieve. But he faltered, and the moment slipped through our fingers. Now we are on the defensive, weaker than ever, and history suggests we will not prevail. We lack the power, the unity, and the courage that once defined us.

It is painful to admit that our undoing has not come solely from foreign enemies or ideological rivals. It has come from within, from our character's very weaknesses that we refused to confront. Greed, self-aggrandizement, and moral bankruptcy are the forces that hollowed us out. Wealth became our measure of worth. Power became our substitute for virtue. Truth became optional.

History will not remember us kindly. It will not be the foreign wars, the pandemics, or even dictatorships that sealed our fate. It will be our willingness to trade principle for profit, to accept lies when they suited us, and to abandon morality when it was inconvenient.

Greed and amorality, not famine, plague, or even nuclear war, will be recorded as the ultimate causes of our demise. And the bitterest truth of all is that this was preventable. We could have handed our progeny a stronger, freer, more just nation. Instead, we leave them a shattered inheritance, squandered by our selfishness and refusal to heed history lessons.

I write these words as a Marine, citizen, father, and grandfather. They are not words of surrender, but of reckoning. If history is to condemn us, let it at least record that some of us saw clearly what was happening and refused to look away.

William James Spriggs

THE JOYFUL SOUND

The Joyful Sound

We’re the Joyful Sound, not just a noise,
A chorus of seasoned girls and boys.
With Broadway dreams, we lift our song,
And prove that seniors still belong.

From Oklahoma! to The King and I,
We raise our voices toward the sky.
We’ve got Music Man right in our bones,
And Phantom’s echoes in our tones.

We dare to dream with Les Misérables,
We sing of Cats both great and small.
Our South Pacific hearts still pound,
And My Fair Lady comes around.

Sound of Music fills the air,
While Carousel spins without a care.
A dash of Annie, a touch of Grease,
We’re not retiring — we’ve found release!

Yes, Fiddler on the Roof still plays,
We’ve counted many “Seventy-Six Trombones” in our days.
Though some may think we’re past our prime,
We sing with angels, keeping time.

So here’s to Laura, who leads us through,
Our voices blend, both old and new.
At Merrill Gardens, we’re campus pride,
With Broadway’s glory at our side.

We’re not just noise, we’re heaven-bound,
We’re Broadway’s echo — the Joyful Sound!

 

 

CHRISTIANS WORSHIP A DICTATOR

Christianity and the Cult of Dictatorship

For centuries, Christianity has taught its followers to love and worship a dictator. At its core, the religion is built on absolute obedience to a single authority: one God, one master, one unquestionable ruler. From early catechism onward, believers are conditioned to accept hierarchy, servitude, and blind faith. “You shall have no other gods before me,” commands the Old Testament, the most explicit declaration of monopoly on loyalty that any dictator could ask for.

Worship as Submission

Christianity requires not just reverence, but obedience. The believer must accept a master-slave relationship with God. The Bible, a collection of man-made preachments, often contradictory and historically manipulated, is treated as the dictator’s rulebook. Obey, and you are promised eternal reward. Question, and you are threatened with eternal punishment. The mechanics are indistinguishable from political despotism: absolute loyalty, enforced conformity, and punishment for dissent.

Conditioning for Authoritarian Politics

Given this conditioning, it is no leap of faith for many Christians to embrace dictatorship in government. If religion trains the mind to accept one all-powerful ruler in the heavens, why resist one on earth? That is precisely why movements like Trumpism find such fertile ground among specific religious communities. When Project 2025, a blueprint for authoritarian restructuring of the American government, was released, it was no accident that it resonated most strongly with religious fundamentalists. The project functions as a political scripture, the equivalent of a Communist Manifesto for theocratic authoritarianism.

Theocracy as the Logical Endgame

The conditioning of religious dictatorship inevitably bleeds into politics. People who are taught to kneel before a heavenly ruler are predisposed to kneel before an earthly one. The dream of many Christian nationalists is not merely to “influence” government but to replace democracy with theocracy, to make the church the state, and the state the church. In their vision, the world must be reordered under one truth, ruler, and faith.

Faith Versus Facts

The danger lies in religious training that ignores facts when they conflict with faith. Blind obedience requires closing the mind to reason and evidence. This pattern is now repeated in politics: Many Trump supporters dismiss facts, data, and reality in favor of blind loyalty to the leader. Just as faith demands denial of doubt, political dictatorship demands denial of truth.

An Inextricable Marriage

Dictatorship in religion and dictatorship in government are not merely parallel phenomena but inextricably intertwined. Christianity’s architecture of obedience has created the cultural and psychological framework that makes political dictatorship not only possible but attractive. To believe otherwise is to deny history, from medieval theocracies to modern authoritarian movements cloaked in religious fervor.

The Scourge of Mankind

Suppose humanity is to move forward, toward liberty, equality, and survival. In that case, it must confront this truth: Christianity, as practiced by its fundamentalist adherents, is not a safeguard against tyranny but a template for it. By teaching billions to accept dictatorship in religion, it has normalized dictatorship in politics. Unless this spell is broken, unless the grip of religious authoritarianism is dissolved, Christianity may prove to be not humanity’s salvation but its undoing. This very scourge brings about the demise of the human species.

William James Spriggs