U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem takes a selfie as she attends at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, in Jasionka, Poland, May 27, 2025. Alex Brandon/Pool via REUTERS
The other night, I slept like a bear.
Before the bomb hit November 8, 2016, that would not have merited public mention, but for too many of us sleep has come hard for the better part of the last decade.
We have seen a few things.
We have internalized those things.
And try as we might, many of those things have been impossible to process.
Violent insurrections … vivid and horrid bigotry … attacks on NATO, women, children, human rights, voting rights, and our environment … lies, lies and more lies …
We live in a morally declining country, where the disintegration started in earnest the minute white and orange people started shouting they were going to make the place “great” again.
We saw how great things ended up for the people who lived on our chunk of the earth before “the settlers” arrived, and for so many others since they decided to stay. We saw how these kind of great things started in Europe in the 1930s and climaxed in the 40s.
I’ve typed before that if you are searching for the through line that led to all of this hyper-hate and madness we’ve witnessed the past decade, you need only look at this country’s racist roots that are still being dutifully watered by the deviant in the White House and inside millions of our nation’s households, where bigotry is being spoon-fed to our children with the dark hope it will continue to flourish in the generations to come …
“They’re eating our dogs and cats …!”
As many of you know, I’m in Wisconsin these days. It’s easily the least diverse place I have ever lived. Still, there is an inordinate amount of enlightenment in significant pockets of this Upper-Midwest state, where urban areas teem with outdated things like museums, libraries and concert halls.
The arts flourish in these places. Not because they are great, but because they are honest.
They make us look hard at what we’ve done and where we are as a society. They remind us that people can be beautiful, ugly and imperfect. They paint a candid picture of a nation that has reached hard to achieve its highest ideals — “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” — only to be dragged backwards by Republicans every time there’s a shot that “all” of us will ever get that justice.
If you’re looking for greatness then go stare at your bird feeder for five minutes; or lay down on your back and watch the sky. If you are lucky enough to find a wooded trail, quietly sneak through it.
You will encounter truly great things in these places.
And all these things — our wildlife, our air, our water — are under 24/7 attack by many of the very men and women who are blanketing us with all this noxious smoke from the smoldering, racist fires they have so eagerly rekindled …
So one recent morning, fresh from that uncommon night of deep sleep, I cracked open the local paper on my computer screen and was hit with this eye-opening slammer:
Trump, and his puppy-killing, dead-inside Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have put us "on the list" for "deliberately and shamefully" obstructing immigration enforcement.
How do you spell N-A-Z-I?
I can report to you that as a Madison resident I feel safe in saying we wear our humanity as a badge of honor, and will be toasting our success at making this list just as soon as we can.
And while the story was yet another account of the state of things in this roiling country, it also gave away the whole gruesome Republican game.
From the story:
“The administration on Thursday published a list of more than 500 "sanctuary jurisdictions" that includes the state's liberal bastions of Madison and Dane County, as well as the city of Milwaukee and Shawano County.
The department said it "demands that these jurisdictions immediately review and revise their policies to align with Federal immigration laws."
One of these things is not like the other. So enter Jim Davel, an administrator for Shawano County, who couldn’t wait to point that out. Davel told the Associated Press that the inclusion of his heavily Republican community on this list “must be a clerical error.”
He breathlessly continued:
“We have no idea how we got on this list whatsoever right at this point. I think it was just a big mix-up, probably some paperwork or something.”
Relax, sport.
After digging around a bit in some low places, I’m only too happy to expose you for being even more rotten than you want to be, and remind you that that list is reserved for decent folks, not cowards like you.
Turns out, that in 2021, in the wake of Joe Biden’s 7 million-plus win over the America-attacking Trump, the County Board in Shawano that Davel is so proudly a part of declared by bending over and breaking wind it was something called a “Second Amendment sanctuary county.” Thanks to this insidious declaration, the county sheriffs office could no longer enforce any laws which “unconstitutionally impeded on their fundamental Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”
Because rather than accepting the results of an election that at least pointed us in the general direction of greatness in 2020, Republicans in places like Shawano went reaching for their guns in 2021.
It sure looks a lot to me like Republicans figure guns, not people, are what truly make America great, and why it’s a damn wonder any sane person can get a decent night’s sleep around here …
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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.