The Moral Volcano has been a Substack publication since late February 2022. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seemed a turning point in world politics and 21st Century history. Not to mention one with a drum beat of Nuclear war. Since then years have turned into the slaughter of humans in Eastern Europe. Now looking back it seem an another era to ad to the long list of battle for a bread basket and the hubris of autocracy. The fall of the Soviet Union brought us the Putinesque period of a less than transparent take-over by the Soviet’s KGB led by the former East German KGB guy himself. A petty butcher launching a stupid ground war on folks determined to carve out a legacy from a history of repression and mass murder. The Russians, the Nazis , the Soviet Stalinist Russians, the Ukrainians themselves, have played in a bloody Eastern European murder pool in the 20th Century the bloodiest Century in all human history. Then four years ago it began again as a punishment for Ukraine’s legitimate effort to achieve Democracy.
In the ensuing four years the posts began to chronicle other events. I put up YouTube posts from the headlines, a few essays from myself and others, poems and generally screams from the darkness of our present times — it was generally me posting with my own headlines something like, “Jesus would you look at this!” That the war crimes of Putin, the Russian monster, were evident from the beginning seemed to be a new chapter of human megalomaniacal large-scale murder. Little did we realize this was a harbinger of despotism that would drop on to our own nation with the second Trump administration. There was a conceit, perhaps a Neo-Liberal one, that ate of the status quo of both the ultra wealthy and the managerial class having our national interests at heart generally. This was stupidity from a high intellectual base. There were dragons in the caves that surrounded our Republic. Dragons with a profound lack of goodness — described as goodness itself. They had plotted a take-over for years with ploys and propaganda that spewed from Fox News daily and that the Liberal elite did not take seriously. Having failed to jail permanently the insurrectionist in Chief, during the Biden administration — a fascist state has now an almost stranglehold on the Republic of the United States. This has come precisely at the Quarter Millennium celebration of the United States Declaration of Independence. This failure was an act of hubris by the lever pullers in the Democratic party.
Now an International Crisis looms and the folks elected American fascists because decades of brain rot from minds like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Trump himself, and a clown car of fellow evil travelers have with help of the minions of the Federalist Society have spot welded into a Constitutional Republic that was thought to guarantee a democratic form of government — a now fascistic state, complete with a Gestapo (ICE), concentration camps (privately owned contracted detention centers), and an International policy of the invasion of sovereign that present only dubious threats.
Frightful uncertainty looms.
The phrase “a long train of abuses and usurpations” from the United States Declaration of Independence was not about one isolated act. It was about an accumulated pattern: concentration of executive power, weakening of representative government, intimidation of dissent, militarization of civil authority, and erosion of legal protections.
Critics of the second Donald Trump administration argue that a comparable pattern is emerging through executive orders, agency actions, and rhetoric. Supporters argue these are lawful exercises of presidential authority responding to immigration, cultural, and institutional crises.
Below is a current bullet list—written in the style of constitutional critique rather than partisan slogan—that parallels the structure of the Declaration’s grievances.
A Contemporary “Long Train of Abuses” Argument
- Declared recurring national “emergency” conditions to expand executive authority beyond traditional congressional processes.
- Attempted to reinterpret or limit birthright citizenship through executive action despite the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Expanded mass deportation machinery through aggressive immigration enforcement directives, including expedited removals and broad federal-state enforcement coordination.
- Framed migration itself as an “invasion,” invoking extraordinary constitutional language historically associated with wartime powers.
- Authorized or defended immigration courthouse arrests that critics argue chilled due process and deterred lawful asylum proceedings.
- Escalated denaturalization efforts against naturalized citizens, reviving powers historically used sparingly in American law.
- Reorganized immigration courts through mass replacement of judges and accelerated hiring practices that critics argue politicized adjudication.
- Increased ideological vetting of immigrants and visa applicants, including scrutiny of speech and political expression critics argue is protected by the First Amendment.
- Pressured universities through investigations and threats tied to diversity programs, campus speech, and political activism.
- Issued executive actions dismantling federal DEI and environmental justice programs across agencies and contractors.
- Directed federal agencies to narrow official recognition of gender identity and transgender status across government policy.
- Reinstated or expanded travel restrictions and heightened ideological screening regimes reminiscent of earlier travel bans.
- Pardoned or commuted sentences for January 6 participants, including individuals convicted of violent offenses tied to the attack on the Capitol.
- Sought to weaken institutional independence within agencies traditionally insulated from direct presidential control, including conflicts involving the FTC and Federal Reserve governance.
- Increased direct confrontation with courts and judges while portraying adverse judicial rulings as illegitimate political obstruction.
- Pursued executive pressure campaigns against media institutions viewed as hostile, including efforts to end federal support for NPR and PBS.
- Expanded executive influence over federal law enforcement priorities in ways critics argue blur the line between neutral justice administration and political loyalty.
- Intensified rhetoric portraying political opposition, journalists, universities, civil servants, and immigrants as internal enemies of the nation.
- Continued efforts associated with the broader Project 2025 vision to centralize executive control over the administrative state.
- Encouraged a theory of presidential authority that critics argue approaches the old monarchical principle of Rex Lex (“the ruler is law”) rather than Lex Rex (“the law is king”).
The Core Constitutional Argument
The Declaration against King George III did not accuse him merely of bad policy. It accused him of systematically placing executive will above constitutional structure.
That is the center of the modern analogy.
Critics argue the danger is not any single executive order, but the cumulative normalization of:
- emergency governance,
- executive supremacy,
- politicized law enforcement,
- weakened institutional independence,
- ideological loyalty tests,
- militarized immigration enforcement,
- attacks on dissenting institutions,
- and growing contempt for judicial restraint.
The constitutional concern, in their view, is a gradual transition from:
LEX REX — the law is king
toward
REX LEX — the ruler is law.
Supporters of the administration reject this characterization entirely and argue these actions are legitimate efforts to restore border control, national sovereignty, merit-based governance, and executive effectiveness after years of bureaucratic overreach.
But the historical parallel being drawn by opponents is increasingly explicit: that republics rarely collapse in one dramatic moment. They erode through accumulated precedents that normalize concentrated power.
Rebellion looms.
The Moral Volcano 