Election Fraud Myths And Modern Gestapo Tactics Put Our Country's 250Th Year In Doubt

We look at the unique challenge faced by Republican candidates in states dominated by their party for over a decade, particularly how they navigate elections with only outdated talking points to rely on. We highlight the situation in Ohio, using Robert Sprague as a case study. As the current treasurer, he seeks to run for Secretary of State with a platform centered on a familiar narrative about election fraud, despite his party's long-standing control of the state's electoral process any many voter suppression laws passed. Still the claims of fraud have been debunked by active investigations led by the state’s current Republican Secretary of State, emphasizing that the statistics reveal that voter fraud is exceedingly rare in Ohio. 

We shift focus to the deeply troubling incident that occurred in Minneapolis, where an ICE agent's reckless actions resulted in the death of an innocent woman. The systemic harassment faced by communities under the current administration, based on policies rooted in fear and racism have led to a culture of intimidation and violence, like a modern-day Gestapo. This violent encounter is part of a broader pattern of discriminatory practices, echoing the horrors of history where marginalized groups faced with physical violence that is labeled "legal".

Finally we reflect on the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States and its Declaration of Independence. There are alarming parallels between the grievances expressed in 1776 and today's political climate. We read from the Declaration, highlighting the founding principles that emphasize the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, stressing that these rights are compromised under the current administration. The ongoing legislative abuses and the power dynamics at play undermines the very essence of democracy.

Full Show Notes & Links Used

Chapters

• 0:57 Running For Office In A One Party State
• 13:48 The Murder Of Renee Good And Other Gestapo Tactics
• 29:47 Politics In 1776 Is Similar To The Politics Of 2026

Transcript

[0:04] If your party has had a super majority in your state since 2011, how do you run for office if all you have is the old talking points?

[0:14] Next, we talk about the Nazi-like violence against the people of Minnesota for no other reason than the president doesn't like you. Finally, as we start the 250th year of the United States, we find out the similarities between 1776 and 2026 politically. This is Secular Left with Doug Berger. An independent, religion-free, progressive viewpoint on topics of the day.

[0:59] All right. So let me set the stage for you. You are in a state that is controlled by one party and has been controlled by one party for more than 10 years. But you also have on your specific state offices, term limits that were instituted probably 20 years ago, 20, 30 years ago. So you want to rearrange the decks on the Titanic, as it were, and you want to run for one of the other state elected offices that your good buddy that's in your party is already in but has to leave also. So what do you do? How do you set yourself apart for people to get people to vote for you in the next election?

[1:53] Well, I'm guessing one of the things that you do, and this is what the MAGAs and the Trumpers here in Ohio do, is they just kind of ignore the fact that their party's been in charge for more than 10 years. And they just use the usual MAGA talking points about people stealing elections and fraud and things like that going on at the state level. And if you vote for me, I'll fix all of that, even though his buddy's the one in charge.

[2:29] So we have this gentleman, Robert Sprague. He's from my area of Ohio, Northwest Ohio, originally from Finley. He used to also be, I think, I think he used to be the basketball coach. I forget. He used to be a teacher at the high school or something like that. I forget. And he was a state rep for a while. and he decided to step up and he became the treasurer of Ohio. He's been doing that the last couple election cycles, um, eight years, I think roughly eight years. And so he's term limited. So he has to leave after two terms and he decided that he's going to run for secretary of state. And the Secretary of State here in Ohio runs the elections. They supervise the elections. The counties are the ones that actually do the elections, but all of the policies and rules and regulations emanate from Columbus, from the office of the Secretary of State. Well, the current Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, he's moving on. I think he's running for Attorney General. I really don't pay attention because I'm not going to vote for him anyway. But he's moving on to a different office.

[3:49] And so Robert Sprague has been posting on social media quite a bit about why he wants to be the secretary of state. And, of course, his mantra, his agenda that he's been talking about the most is he's going to stop election fraud. Says there's just too much election fraud. So he had a recent post on his Facebook account. It was a link to an article on The Hill, which is not an objective website, says titled DNC launches seven figure voter registration initiative ahead of midterms.

[4:34] And DNC is the Democratic National Committee. And so Robert says, will Democrats only register American citizens or also or also everyone they let over the border? This is why the self attestation for citizenship leads to fraud in Ohio. It must end now. Self attestation is on when you register to vote, you have to make several declarations. One of those is that you're a citizen and it's your resident of the state and you have to sign it. And it says that under punishment by law, these statements are correct. That's the self-attestation. You don't have to swear on a Bible or have a notary do it or anything like that, it's you. So if it turns out that you gave false statements, then you are liable to be prosecuted.

[5:36] It's pretty standard. They even do that for car insurance here because we're required to have car insurance when we get register to get new plates or to renew our plates, our car plates. But on the form, it says, do you have insurance? And if you sign this paper and you don't have insurance, you're going to get in trouble. And everybody signs it whether they have insurance or not, because that's what you do. Anyway so sprague comes out with this about leads to fraud in ohio and and when he was taught about this before uh about fraud election fraud and they never offer any proof they never offer any data it's just that the republicans just naturally assume that there's election fraud because that's what the big orange turd in D.C. Talks about, that there's always election fraud. The other thing that Sprague is promoting is he wants to go back to using just paper ballots because of fraud. But he forgets that paper ballot, the reason why we do computerized ballot marking now and tabulation is because paper ballots are one of the easiest things to be manipulated in an election.

[7:04] You know, especially if you are really amped up to do it, you can do it. And it's a lot easier when they're paper ballots. Then because then you don't have to hack a computer or or anything like that. And see, that's the other thing that these election fraud people don't realize is that, especially here in Ohio, know, the computers that tabulate the votes and mark the ballots, they're not connected to the internet. And the only way you would be able to hack it is you would have to be inside the election, uh, board of elections in that particular county. And you would have to do it in Ohio, all 88 counties, because they all don't share the same software. You know, different counties have different you know it's vendors so here in my my neck of the woods uh have a ballot marking machine that people use it's a touch screen spits out well you have a card a ballot card.

[8:14] Spits out your votes on this card and then you take it over to a machine that looks like a garbage bin with a computer on top and that's the tabulator and you stick your card in there and it reads it and tabulates the vote on a thumb drive that then is removed at the end of the night, put in a bag and secured, and transported by hand to the Board of Elections to be counted. And then they have a tabulation computer that takes all these thumb drives from every precinct and counts the votes. They still hold on to the cards in case there's a problem, and they need to manually recount, and they can do that. But people like Sprague, they want us to use, go back to using paper ballots all the time. And one of the reasons why they like that is because then that's easier to control, easier to manipulate.

[9:20] But they also don't realize that they're on this kick about having the reason why they want to get rid of mail-in balloting is because they want to know the results the day of the election. They think that it's fraud if you don't know the results of the election on election night.

[9:44] And most of the time it happens that way. But if you have a really close election where there's a difference of a couple thousand votes, you're not going to know the results on the night of election, no matter what system you use. You just won't, especially if you have to have a recount.

[10:05] And so they think that they're being smart by requiring all that. So that's how this is what kind of what Sprague is talking about. And so about this voter registration initiative and he talks about fraud in Ohio. I went back and I looked because I knew he was talking crap. And so I found this quote in this. I think it was a USA Today article from a couple of years ago. And the current secretary of state is Frank LaRose. And it says here, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced in 2022 his office had found 75 voters who allegedly cast a ballot in the state and another state in 2020. Almost 6 million ballots were cast in Ohio that year. In a statement, LaRose's office said they had referred a total of 630 cases to prosecutors over the course of multiple elections. While also noting, voter fraud continues to be exceedingly rare in the state.

[11:15] And somebody else noted that 138 non-citizens cast ballots in 2024. That is 0.000016% of the state electorate. And that's what they're trying to do is they're trying to say that there's fraud and that it's non-citizens that are voting and we need to stop it. Even though the Republicans have been in charge since 2011. And they've done all that they can to suppress the vote. They just had a recent law that went into effect that removed the grace period for mail-in ballots. Coupled with the change, the Postal Service change, that if you drop your ballot in a mailbox, it won't necessarily have that postmark for that day.

[12:11] See and that's what they're trying to do is they're trying to make it so because what they assume is that these roving gangs of non-citizens are trying to commit voter fraud and then they think about it at the very last minute and so they try to gain all these ballots these mail-in ballots and mail them in to try to affect the outcome of an election. And the other important point about election fraud, the facts, is that it is exceedingly rare and rarely affects the outcome of an election when it is found.

[12:53] But that's the kugel that they use. That's the mantra that they talk about constantly. So I just wanted to bring that up because I just think it's funny that Robert Sprague, a Republican, is saying that there's fraud and he's going to fix it when his buddy, Frank LaRose, has said that there's very little fraud, even though he's doing all he can to fix it.

[13:28] For more information on the topics in this episode and the links used, visit secularleft.us.

[13:48] If you're like me, and you try to keep up on the news to know what's going on out there, you probably are aware of the tragic incident that took place in Minneapolis last week. An agent of the federal government, an ICE agent, and in case anybody doesn't remember, ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

[14:13] And they have basically been created, they were created when the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9-11, and it's part of that whole government surveillance and anti-terror thing. But the current administration that we have now under President Trump is using it as their personal police force, doing it in a way that is pretty much illegal, unconstitutional, against established norms. You just cannot make anything about this even okay it's just not and this has been going on since uh trump took office again at the beginning of 2025 and it all stems from an aide to president trump stephen miller who is just objectively a nazi, He is a racist, anti-immigrant bigot. And for some reason, he has the ear of the president. Well, we know the president's a racist, too. He has a history of it. He also doesn't like women. We have a history of that. He doesn't like disabled people. We have a history of that.

[15:39] So Stephen Miller has this big idea that he's going to get all the illegal immigrants, the criminals, out of this country. And it was never about getting the worst of the immigrants out. It was about getting immigrants out completely.

[15:57] And so they've been terrorizing neighborhoods and arresting people at, like, their jobs and walking down the street and driving down the street. And they've been just acting like a Gestapo, a modern-day Gestapo. And this terrorizing of people, both citizens and non-citizens alike, has really caused a lot of issues. There's been a lot of protests. and believe it or not most of the protesting has been non-violent not not a riot or anything like that no matter how much the these ICE agents have been wanting to make it so so that they could get tough because a lot of these guys have I'm guessing terrible have had terrible terrible childhoods and they like to dress up as military guys. These are the guys that when they, during Trump's first term, I think it was, when they allowed them to carry rifles and they'd strut around and go to the mall wearing these long rifles and.

[17:10] You know, they were really getting the macho. Well, those are the same guys that are in ICE. They wouldn't be hired as cops because they're mentally challenged. Most of them are very heavyset and can't even pass basic physical fitness standards that ICE actually has. And so they basically like to dress up and carry around guns and terrorize people. So you've been having this confluence, and they've been doing this in.

[17:48] Areas that are typically democratically run, they're controlled by people, elected officials from the Democrat Party. And Trump has been doing this retribution tour where he goes after these, quote, blue areas, unquote, with the National Guard and ICE enforcement. So it led to this situation in Minneapolis where a—and this is what happened. And this is the facts. These are the facts. You can look it up. There's plenty of witnesses. There's plenty of video. But this is what happened. A convoy of ICE agents were going through Minneapolis. One of them got stuck in a snowbank. So the other one stopped to try to retrieve this car out of the snowbank.

[18:41] The people in this particular neighborhood thought it was an enforcement exercise that they were coming in to harass the neighborhood. And they started protesting, blowing whistles, yelling at them, telling them to get out. Then there was this other woman who had a minivan. Her name was Renee Good. And she was not blocking the road entirely, but she was letting them know that she was watching. And she had a conversation with an ICE agent who was walking around her car. Meanwhile, Renee's partner was giving him the business because that's what you do with ICE agents that are harassing your neighbors is you give them the business. And then he comes around to the other car and a couple guys from another ICE vehicle get out and try to open her driver's side door to pull her out and they say, get out of the car. Her wife tells her to drive away and she starts to drive away. And this ICE agent that her wife had been giving him the business. He pulls out his gun and he fires three shots into the driver's side and kills Renee Goode.

[20:06] And the car uncontrollably crashes into a parked car. Now, immediately, even before any investigation was done, within hours, within a couple of hours after the incident, Kristi Noem and the other Nazi affiliates in the administration were trying to make it out to be that she was a domestic terrorist trying to kill this agent and he was just defending himself. And that was a total lie. She was just an average Joe person. She had a child. She had a dog in the car. And they just happened to be in the area and they were trying to help their neighbors because they thought that they were being terrorized by these ICE agents. I do need to also point out that they were white women. And so one of the things that the administration and their buddies at Fox News have been talking about is how they were both lesbians and making that part of the story, even though that had nothing to do with the story. And so... And so you see this tragedy happen, and you're like, well, how can it happen? And then you get some people say, well, she had just complied and got out of a car.

[21:33] And I'm sorry, but that is just totally wrong.

[21:39] We've heard that argument before when the police have killed unarmed black people over the years. Like the guy that was trying to sell single cigarettes and he was murdered and then we had George Floyd he was murdered by a cop and usually the argument from the law and order people the right wingers start out well if he had just complied or she had just complied, and that's just so wrong, because I'll tell you I'll explain it to you, In the 1930s, when the Nazis, the first version of Nazis, came to power in Germany, they got control of the legislature, the Reichstag, and they came up with this law called the Nuremberg Law. And the Nuremberg Laws were anti-Semitic and racist laws introduced to Nazi Germany in 1935. And the legislation comprised two measures. The law for the protection of German blood and German honor. It prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans. Barred Jewish households from employing German women under the age of 45.

[22:57] A supplementary decree issued in November of 1935 defined who was legally considered Jewish and brought the Reich citizenship law into effect. On November the 26th, further regulations extended the measures to gypsies, Negroes, and their bastards, classifying them with Jews as enemies of the race-based state.

[23:18] To avoid international criticism, prosecutions under their laws were delayed until after the 1936 Summer Olympics. And there was other policies that were legalized, such as boycotting Jewish businesses, things like that. And so that's the problem when you start saying, well, you know, if they just listen to the cops or if they just been not obstructing justice or violating the law. That's one of the things that J.D. Vance was talking about, that Renee had violated the law. And so that's the thing, is laws are a construct, a social construct, in order to govern our society. They're not inherently good. They're not inherently bad. What happens is the outcomes of these laws. So the Nuremberg laws were used as the first step to the Holocaust. You know, you strip the rights of a class of people. Then you say that they can't be in your country. Then you ship them off to concentration camps. And then you kill them. You murder them.

[24:39] And you see bits and pieces of that here in the United States currently with the Trump administration. Now, I know there's going to be some Republicans that are going, hey, Doug, don't stop calling us Nazis. That's not going to solve anything. But a duck is a duck. If it's quack, it's quacking, it's quacking. And the Nazi vibes are seriously cracking, quacking. And it's not just anti-Semitic, it's anti-immigrant and how they're dehumanizing immigrants. Even if they're here legally, they did it the right way. That's another argument they like to talk about immigration is they need to do it the right way. Even if they did it the right way, some of these immigrants are being deported today. They're being rounded up, they're being detained, and they're being deported today. So, forgive me if I don't believe they're bullshit about law and order and if she only complied. It's bullshit.

[25:49] And if you have a police force that won't even abide by decent standards and policies that have been put in place because of people that have gone rogue and murdered people for the sake of getting rid of them, then I don't know what to tell you. I really don't. And I'm not going to debate whether or not she was trying to run him over. It looked like she was not trying to run him over, because if she was trying to run him over, she would have run him over. She did everything in her power to avoid running him over. She turned her wheel sharply to the right. She backed up to start. So she was not trying to run him over. There's also a policy that ICE is supposed to follow, where you don't stand in front of a moving car or a car that's running.

[26:49] And there was a report that came out that they did a study back before 2020 where 67% of ICE officer-involved shootings happened because they stood in front of the car to give them a justification for shooting the driver or shooting at the car. Most professional police departments have policies about shooting at moving cars. That you just don't do it. There's no reason to do it. Especially if they're driving away, you don't do it.

[27:25] The only reason that that guy should have shot at her at all was if she had a gun and she was shooting at him. And that didn't happen.

[27:36] And so then they fall back on this crappy, well, she weaponized her car. And that is just ridiculous. If you look at the videos, even the stuff that they released that supposedly showed that he was justified, which he wasn't, the fact that they released that video and at the end he called her an effing bitch, that's all you need to know. This guy should be in jail. But I'm going to tell you, I don't want to hear any, any opposition to this administration talking about, well, we'll have to investigate things fully. We'll have to do this or we'll have to do this. ICE needs to be shut down. These guys need to be stripped of their police power. And they don't even have police power, but they should be stripped of their guns, their masks. They should be jailed. They should be out of a job so that stuff like this will stop happening. And so that's what happened in Minneapolis this past week. If you consider yourself an American, and it's ironic that it's the 250th anniversary of our revolution.

[28:56] And this shit is going on where we have a wannabe dictator, racist dictator, who's using his own private police force to terrorize people just because he doesn't like them.

[29:10] There's no legal justification for doing it. So I expect that once this administration goes away, if we're still around when this administration goes away, that there's going to be a lot of perp walks as we send a lot of these people to prison because a lot of them deserve to be in prison for a long time.

[29:47] 2026 marks, ironically, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, where we officially, as the United States, severed our relationship with Great Britain and the king at the time, King George III. And that then led to, well, it was ongoing, a war, a revolutionary war. And I remember as a kid during the 200th anniversary, during the bicentennial in 1976, joyous and energy and celebrating America. And, you know, we had these different things like painting the fire hydrants and, uh, with, uh, making them into like Minutemen and things like that and parades. And, uh, we had the Bicentennial Minute on TV and, and, uh, programs, special programs during the year and everything.

[30:56] But this year, with President Trump in office and his authoritarianism and borderline fascism, I don't feel joyous at this time about the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And like I said, it's ironic that when we have probably the most, the worst president of the United States ever, even worse than Richard Nixon, and people thought Richard Nixon was bad at the time.

[31:37] But we have the worst president of the United States we've ever had in the history, even worse than Andrew Johnson, who looked the other way and allowed the Confederacy to not be held accountable for the Civil War. And that is how then we got Jim Crow laws and such.

[32:02] But Donald J. Trump is a tyrant. He is a bigot, a racist, and a wannabe king, a wannabe strongman in a really bad-looking suit. And so it's just a height of irony that he is president as we are celebrating our 250th anniversary of chalking off the royal family and striking out on our own. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to read the Declaration of Independence, because not only is the time and place we are currently in kind of ironic with a fascist dictator would want to be dictator in office. And when you hear a lot of these reasons that they gave for breaking away from the United Kingdom 250 years ago, there's a lot of commonality there with today. So let me do that. So this was signed in the Continental Congress on July the 4th, 1776.

[33:19] And it was a unanimous vote. And it starts out, it says, When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, requires that we should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.

[34:36] Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

[34:57] But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing inevitably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute deputism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, And such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their forms of systems of government The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations All having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states To prove this, let's facts be submitted to a candid world.

[35:48] He has refused his assent to laws He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right estimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

[36:36] He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers incapable of annihilation have returned to the people at large for their exercise. The state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.

[36:57] He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tender tenure of their offices and the amount in payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has effected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretend legislation. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders Which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world For imposing taxes on us without our consent For depriving us in many cases of the benefit of trial by jury.

[38:25] For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretend offenses, for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies, for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, for suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, dissolution, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfinity scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and wholly and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

[39:45] He has excited domestic insurrectionists among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of the oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

[40:14] Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our immigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow usurpedations, which would invariably interrupt our connections and correspondence. they too have been deaf to the voice of justice. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends.

[40:55] We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America and General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states, and that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free independent states they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, and establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right due. And for the support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

[41:52] And then they had all the 13 colonies at the time sign. And so they voted on July the 2nd, 1776, to adopt it. They ratified the text on July the 4th, and it reached the King of England six months later. But what I wanted to point out is there's several things, several facts that they point out here that seem very similar to what's going on today. It says he has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people. He's tried to make, had the sole purpose of fatiguing people into compliance with his measures. Yeah.

[42:45] He's interfered with the elections. He's endeavored to obstruct the laws of naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others and encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions. He's obstructed the administration of justice by messing with the courts. We know President Trump's done that. He's erected a multitude of new offices And sent hither swarms of officers To harass our people And eat out their substance, And that could perfectly describe What he's doing with his Gestapo His ICE Gestapo, He has kept among us in times of peace Standing armies without consent of our legislature That's the National Guard, He is effected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power. Well, not just superior to the civil power, but to make them dependent on Trump himself. Um...

[43:59] Says, protecting armed troops by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they could commit on the inhabitants of these states. And we have that recently with the Department of Justice deciding not to investigate the ice shooting that happened in Minneapolis. Imposing taxes on us without our consent. The tariffs. The tariffs are a tax that the people pay. And so those are just some of the ironic similarities between what was going on here in the United States in 1776 and what's going on 250 years later. To set aside, you know, people are saying, well, it says that you have that all men are created equal and that governments are constant institute among men. Well, these words were written in 1776. Back then, men were the only people that had any rights. In particular, landowners were the only men who had particular rights.

[45:10] So, I mean, we could do that. We could do that original concept that some of the Supreme Court justices want to do with the Constitution, but we don't even have to do that. We don't have to debate that. But it's just that governments, the important part that I want to point out, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, which means they violate your rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government. Now, the good thing is that we don't have, well, technically we don't have a king ruling over us. We have a wannabe dictator, but there's still the sort of infrastructure for a democratic...

[46:00] State, a democratic government. So we can alter and abolish government we don't like through the ballot box, hopefully. Cross our fingers. So this can be changed. And it looks like as we move on, I mean, it's just starting the second year of Trump's second administration, and they're already having spontaneous demonstrations all across this country. And his approval ratings in the polls are underwater, completely underwater. And so he is doing some wild things to try to change the narrative, especially when it comes to the Epstein files. So basically what I wanted to do is just express the fact that I am not enthusiastic with this anniversary coming up, especially with little Hitler being in charge and the crap that I'm going to have to listen to as he takes credit for, because he will, he'll take credit for the revolution. And even though his family did not come to the United States until much, much later.

[47:23] And again, I just wanted to point out some of the ironies and some of the commonalities between what was going on in 1776 and what's going on in today.

[47:42] Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using the Amplify Studio. For more information on the topics in this episode, and the links used, visit secularleft.us. If you want to support the show, share it with your friends or visit our merch store at secularleft.us.shop. Thank you.