How did this become okay in America?

D. Earl Stephens
01 April
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during an event to sign an executive order to shut down the Department of Education, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 20, 2025.

The Republican Party is now openly buying votes, facing absolutely no consequences for violently attacking cops when they don’t like an election result, and disappearing people who say things they don’t agree with.

So I am wondering two things:

  1. How in the hell has this become OK in America, and …
  2. … will we survive this?

I’m typing to you today with my left hand on the keyboard, while biting the fingernails on the right one. The grotesque Elon Musk just left my state of Wisconsin after publicly handing out millions of dollars of blood money in a greasy effort to buy our Supreme Court.

He wasn't arrested, because he runs with a party that has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they are above the law.

There was an innocent time about a decade ago, when I would have told you this would never happen, because nobody could possibly be this brazen and oily. Americans would never put up with this third-world balderdash and poppycock. Not in the land of the free and the home of the brave we wouldn’t.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, we had puffed ourselves up and somehow believed we were better than all that …

That was before a woman-abusing liar and bigot came along and offered everybody plenty of pathetic excuses to be just as completely awful as they wanted to be, but only if they lowered themselves into a gold-plated toilet and voted for him to be their president.

He openly asked for Russia’s help …

To say gruesome behavior rising all the way up to treason has been normalized in America since 2016, would be today’s massive understatement. Trump exposed an ugly underbelly of America that had festered in the vicinity of the surface of our fruited plain for hundreds of years.

So a third question: Is this what the majority of our country looks like?

The crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court election Tuesday that Republicans are trying to buy will go a long way toward answering all these questions I never even considered asking until now.

Judge Susan Crawford is running against the repulsive Brad Schimel. There’s plenty of detail about that one, and Wisconsin politics in general if you want more here.

In "Justice Calling” I take you through how Wisconsin has become America’s battleground state, as well as the heroic work that has been done up here by far better people than me, who have literally opened their homes and their hearts, and have dedicated their lives to our country.

These two groups in particular mean the world to me, Team Gold here in Madison and Bloc in Milwaukee, so if you can, show ‘em the love they deserve.

And while I’m handing out roses, I do want to duck in here real quick to thank the thousands of you out there all across this quaking country, who have pitched in with your time and treasure to help us out here. You are true patriots, and I love you.

I do.

Thing is, every damn election up here is bigger than the next, because by the time every damn election rolls around the threat to our state and nation has been compounding interest.

After falling agonizingly short in November, it is close to cruel and unusual to ask us to go at it hard again just months later in the latest “crucial” election that will determine whether the American experiment survives its latest test.

But here we are. We’re f------ tired, but we’re still giving it hell.

We’re giving it hell, because despite how little these repulsive people on the Right think of our country, we still believe that going forward beats slamming it in reverse and crashing into the 1950s.

We’re giving it hell, because we still believe buying votes and attacking your country when you don’t like an election result should be a line that can never be crossed, instead of obliterated by the lowest among us in the highest of places like our Nation’s Supreme Court.

I honestly don’t know if we are going to make it in America, but I do know there are hundreds of thousands of people here in Wisconsin who understand the stakes, and as long as we do, we will never be beaten.

There’s a reason our state motto is but one powerful word: FORWARD.

NOW READ: The shock market and Trump voters' buyer's remorse

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.

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