The Reaper is Our President

“America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics.” -Donald J. Trump

Believers. Dreamers. Strivers. Yes. That is who we are. That is who we have always been. But censored? Cynical? Led by critics? No. That is his America. Not ours.

And we know the difference, because this week in Illinois, Kristi Noem found out what America still looks like. She arrived at a city hall with her entourage, expecting the world to bend. Expecting doors to open. Expecting Trump’s name to carry her wherever she pleased. But the officers on duty told her no. No entry. No privilege. Not even to use the restroom. It may seem small. But it is not. Because that is how America survives, in the ordinary refusals of ordinary people.

That is the heartbeat of this country. The small acts that tell power its reach has limits. And that is exactly what Donald Trump cannot stand.

Because America is not supposed to bow to kings. It was never meant to. Power flows upward from the people, not downward from a throne. Freedom here is not a gift from rulers but a birthright. It is the dignity of believing that no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, this land can hold a place for you.

Our Founders were not saints. They were enslavers, hypocrites, men bound by their own failures. But they did one radical thing. They declared that freedom was not a privilege granted by rulers. It was a birthright. That governments exist not for the glory of one man but by the consent of the governed. That when power grows abusive, people not only have the right but the duty to resist it.

Madison warned that unchecked power “is the very definition of tyranny.” Jefferson believed that rebellion was sometimes necessary to keep liberty alive. Lincoln called America “the last best hope of earth.” FDR, in the midst of war, told the world that America stood for Four Freedoms: speech, worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

That was the dream. Not a perfect dream. Not a finished dream. But a torch carried from one generation to the next. Lit in Philadelphia, carried at Gettysburg, lifted at Seneca Falls, marched through Birmingham. To be American is to inherit that torch. To guard it. To pass it on.

And now, in 2025, it is flickering in the wind.

Trump today posted a message about the executive order he issued back on August 25th. Here are his words in full:

“To ICE, Border Patrol, Law Enforcement, and all U.S. Military: As per my August 25, 2025 Executive Order, please be advised that, from this point forward, anybody burning the American Flag will be subject to one year in prison. You will be immediately arrested. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

But the Supreme Court already answered this question decades ago. Texas v. Johnson in 1989. United States v. Eichman in 1990. Flag burning is speech. Protected. Sacred. Because America has never been about forced loyalty. Because if you can be jailed for burning a flag today, you can be jailed for criticizing a president tomorrow. That is the point. The First Amendment does not exist to protect popular speech. It exists to protect the speech we hate. Because if only the speech we like is safe, then none of us are free.

At the same time, his administration announced that it is preparing to offer unaccompanied migrant teenagers $2,500 to “voluntarily” leave this country. Picture your own teenager. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. Alone in a foreign land, handed a check and a form they barely understand. Told to sign away their chance at safety. Told to go back to a place where gangs or governments could kill them. They may think $2,500 is a fortune. But what they are really selling is their life. That is not the America promised by Lady Liberty. That is betrayal, children bribed into danger by adults who should have been their protectors.

In Portland, Trump prepares to deploy federal troops against protesters. Soldiers meant to defend our nation, now aimed at our neighbors. At our children. At us. Most Americans never imagined a day when U.S. troops could be deployed against citizens in their own streets. But that day is here. That is not democracy. That is dictatorship charging full speed in broad daylight.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced new rules this week, dismantling the watchdogs. Complaints must now be screened in seven days. Repeat complainants tracked like criminals. Imagine a soldier reporting abuse, fraud, corruption, war crimes, and watching their case vanish after a week. That is how dictatorships work. They don’t silence the crimes. They silence the people brave enough to report them.

We also learned that off the coast of Venezuela, twenty-one souls are gone in what the administration labeled an anti-narcotics operation. Four more just today. Blown into the sea, labeled narco-terrorists. No trials. No juries. No evidence weighed. Just the will of one man in the Oval Office. Judge. Jury. Executioner. The Constitution was written to stop that. America was not meant to be ruled by one man who decides life and death alone. But here we are.

Instead of condemning these travesties, we are rewarding them. The Treasury Department floated a coin for America’s 250th anniversary, stamped with Trump’s face. For 250 years, America has followed one simple rule: no living president appears on our money. Why? Because that is what dictators do. From Hussein to Gaddafi to Stalin. They mint their faces into coins and bills to demand worship. America drew a line, and Trump wants to erase it for his own glory. This is not commemoration. It is coronation.

And then there was another video posted. A grotesque AI “Grim Reaper” music video, set to Don’t Fear the Reaper. In it, Trump struts across a digital graveyard in black robes, holding a glowing scythe. Skulls float in the background, tombstones flicker with his enemies’ names, and flames rise around him while his face is warped into a grinning mask of power. At one point, the Reaper becomes Trump himself, larger than life, looking down on America as if death and glory belong to him alone. This is not parody or satire. This is the President of the United States commissioning an AI fantasy of himself as death incarnate, the one who chooses who lives and who dies.

We can’t shrug at this and accept it as normal. Because propaganda works. It makes the grotesque seem normal. It slips into our feeds. It reaches our children before we do. That is not leadership. That is cult behavior.

Quietly, and without much explanation, the FBI severed its partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. For decades, these were the groups that tracked hate in America. The SPLC has spent years building maps of active Klan chapters, exposing white supremacist militias, and documenting the rise of domestic terror networks. The ADL has done the same, monitoring antisemitism, cataloguing hate symbols, and warning when extremist rhetoric crosses into violence. They have been the watchdogs outside the government, feeding law enforcement the information it often missed or ignored. Now that lifeline is cut. Not because hate has disappeared, but because Trump’s allies demanded it. They accused these groups of bias, not because they lied, but because they told the truth. And when the government cuts off its eyes and ears, it is everyday Americans who pay the price. Extremism does not vanish when you stop looking at it. It grows in the dark.

And when ordinary people tried to protect themselves and their communities, creating ICE-tracking apps like Notifica and RAID so families could know when raids were coming,Trump’s administration today pressured Apple to delete them. Pressured Google too. These apps were survival tools. Warnings so parents weren’t snatched in the night. Now they are gone. That is censorship. That is silencing communities. That is un-American.

Even justice has been twisted into theater. After James Comey’s indictment, Trump wanted him paraded in front of cameras, shackled for spectacle. A perp walk for humiliation as part of Trump’s personal retaliation tour. One FBI agent refused. Refused to stage the show. Refused to turn law into propaganda. For that refusal, he was removed from duty. That is Trump’s America, not the America we know and love.

And here is the truth, stripped bare:

Free speech, criminalized.
Children, bribed to leave.
Troops, turned on citizens.
Due process, shredded at sea.
His face stamped on coins, like a king.
Propaganda, poured into our feeds.

That is not America.

Because America was supposed to be safe. A place where your rights weren’t favors from rulers, but protections against them. A place where dissent was sacred. A place where the flag was never more important than the freedom it represented.

America was supposed to be a candle in the storm. A torch passed from one generation to the next. A promise, unfinished but unbroken, that this nation would keep striving toward something better.

And yet. Even now. Hope is not gone.

Because hope looks like this: Kristi Noem expecting doors to open, and officers calmly refusing her. Hope looks like clerks who won’t bend the rules, teachers who won’t silence their students, neighbors who won’t let power shove past what is fair.

One “no” will not stop an authoritarian. But thousands of them? Millions? That is how tyrants break. That is how America holds.

In the end, power always expects doors to open. But sometimes the most American thing in the world is a door that stays shut.

Because America is not his. It is ours.

And you might be asking yourself: Will America make it?

It’s the question that keeps so many of us awake at night. And I understand why.

Here’s what I know and what I hold close to my heart. America has survived genuinely dark periods before. The enslaving of human beings. A civil war that tore the nation apart and killed over 600,000 people. The internment of Japanese Americans. McCarthyism. Watergate. The 1960s, when cities burned and the country felt like it was coming apart at the seams. Each time, people thought it might be the end. Each time, we found ways to course-correct, though often slowly and imperfectly.

What gives me hope is exactly what we saw this week in Illinois. Democracy doesn’t usually die in one dramatic moment. It erodes through a thousand small compromises. But it also survives through a thousand small acts of institutional integrity. Election officials who certify results they don’t like. Judges who rule on law rather than politics. Bureaucrats who follow procedures rather than pressure. Police officers who won’t let power push past what is fair.

The real danger isn’t dramatic collapse, it’s gradual degradation. When norms erode, institutions lose credibility, and we lose faith in shared truth. That’s harder to reverse than any crisis.

But Americans have shown remarkable resilience. Our system was designed to be inefficient and frustrating precisely because that makes it harder for any one person or faction to capture it completely.

Will we make it? I believe we will. But probably not unchanged. The real question is what form of democracy emerges from this moment; whether it’s stronger and more inclusive, or more fragmented and polarized.

That choice is in our hands. In every small refusal. In every door that stays shut to power. In every ordinary person who chooses to do what’s right instead of what’s easy.

Because believing America is worth fighting for, that belief itself is part of what makes it survive. And nothing can take that from us.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather