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The O. Zone: Getting old(er) doesn’t mean bending knee to kings
The cast of “Hamilton” at the Victoria Palace Theater in London on April 22.
LONDON – Last Tuesday evening, I had the pleasure of attending for the first time, with one of my sons and my wife, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant musical “Hamilton” at the Victoria Palace Theatre just south of Buckingham Palace.
To see this revolutionary production for the first time amongst a mostly British audience at a time when our breakaway democracy is teetering on the precipice of autocracy was particularly unnerving and simultaneously energizing.
If a put-upon band of colonists could come together then to throw off the yoke of King George III, then the institutions Alexander Hamilton and his fellow founding fathers built back then can surely stand today in the face of a wannabe king like Donald Trump. That is, of course, if enough of us are willing to fight ferociously for our self-determinant form of government.
Those institutions – from the U.S. Constitution Hamilton helped draft to the financial system he helped build to higher education pillars such as Columbia University (where he once studied) to independent science, press and federal agencies – are all being crushed by a 78-year-ol convicted felon who has declared bankruptcy six times and is driving our economy into recession.
President Trump, who will be 79 in June, has turned over government funding decisions – previously the constitutional responsibility of Congress – to a tech oligarch, Elon Musk, who is the richest man in the world and built that wealth on government contracts and subsidies after overstaying a student visa. Trump and Musk are now targeting both students and subsidies.
But the most frightening and infuriating action of the Trump-Musk presidency is their attempt to normalize the kidnapping of people who are in the country legally or who are in fact U.S. citizens and whisk them away to prisons in other countries, including torture camps El Salvador. This is a clear test run for expanding these extra-judicial, now anti-judicial, actions to include all U.S. citizens who oppose the Trump-Musk autocracy.
While we were in London this week, attending Easter Service at Westminster Abbey, marveling at the spoils of colonialism in the British Museum, contemplating the meaning of Stonehenge, gawking at the riches of the monarchy in the Tower of London, Pope Francis died at the Vatican.
Even Francis was impressed with what Hamilton helped build as the right-hand revolutionary man of George Washington and the author of the majority of the Federalist Papers:
“The Declaration of Independence stated that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that governments exist to protect and defend those rights. Those ringing words continue to inspire us today, even as they have inspired peoples throughout the world to fight for the freedom to live in accordance with their dignity …,” Pope Francis said during a 2015 visit to Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
To be clear, Hamilton did not draft or sign the Declaration, but more importantly he helped draft and pushed hard for the ratification of the Constitution, which Trump now violates with virtually every overreaching executive order and his growing defiance of court orders – even those of the Supreme Court he stacked in his favor during his first term.
I do not want to hear from candidates for public office in the United States today, be they Independents, Republicans, Democrats or some other party, if they don’t believe in the rule of law and the basic tenets of our constitutional republic. They must commit to not just resisting Trumpism but also the legal Trump-proofing of our institutions should we elect them.
I’m also not particularly interested in hearing from older moderates who still believe in the niceties of U.S. Senate, that long-established “norms” can still rule the day, and that bipartisanship is some badge of honor that will heal our historic wounds. Look how well that worked out under President Joe Biden, who clearly should have committed to being a one-term bridge to a younger generation of politicians who see that norms now exist only to be violated.
That’s why, when Colorado U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper – at an event in Eagle to listen to concerns about Musk staffing and budget cuts from public lands managers, local elected officials, first responders and business officials — said he is “best friends these days with Utah U.S. Sen. Mike Lee,” I had to go off script in the post-event presser.
I know Hickenlooper was trying to say Dems currently have no power in Congress and so making nice with Lee, a raving right-wing MAGA who makes the rest of Utah’s GOP delegation look moderate (they’re not), is the smart play if Coloradans want to see things like the CORE Act passed. But guess what, that legislation doesn’t have a shot in hell anyway.
Coloradans want combat in the halls of Congress (figuratively, not literally), not politicians pretending there’s any veneer of normalcy to what Trump and his henchmen have wrought. When I asked Hickenlooper about the outrage of the day – Trump’s comments about deporting “homegrown” criminals to El Salvador – Hickenlooper said he didn’t think getting rid of citizens was what Trump meant.
Of course that’s what he means, and Trump gets to decide who the criminals are, just as Trump very much meant he would be a “dictator for a day” during the election and now, from the Oval Office, is proving he intends to be a dictator for many more days – quite possibly far beyond the constitutional boundaries of his second and final term. The man has mused about the possibility. Believe he’ll try to do anything in his power to make it happen, just as he did on Jan. 6.
Old-school Senate traditionalists like Biden got us into this disaster, refusing to step aside early enough to effectively empower a candidate to counter Trump, and I’m not sure well-meaning career public servants like Hickenlooper are the right politicians to get us out of this jam.
Hick’s “oh shucks” disdain for modern attack-dog politics has served him (and all of us) well over the decades, from his time as Denver mayor to Colorado governor to the U.S. Senate. A former oil and gas geologist, brewer and restaurateur, Hickenlooper has done a great deal for the state he loves. But he’s 73 and will be 74 as he seeks another six-year Senate term in 2026.
I was heartened by Hickenlooper’s eventual response to my questioning – his urging of the U.S. Supreme Court to find Trump in contempt and levy sanctions if the president continues to ignore the judiciary and his plea that American citizens stand up for their rights.
But his instinct to avoid political fisticuffs (again, figuratively) is not what’s needed right now. Democrats, and I think to a lesser degree a majority of Independents and a minority of Republicans, want blatant, no-holds-barred, Mitch McConnell-esque obstruction of the entirety of Trump’s bid to forever destroy our 250-year-old form of government.
Hickenlooper and Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet have in some ways given in to politics as usual when what’s happening in Washington requires a strategy that’s being framed by Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Hickenlooper, who asked me if he should break out his pitchfork (yes, senator, you should … figuratively speaking), may be looking at some younger primary opponents if he doesn’t learn to at least appear to be pushing back against Trump and his unqualified and in some cases unelected minions.
If this seems a bit ageist on my part, bear in mind that I turned 60 today (London was my birthday hurrah), and therefore am now infinitely qualified to comment on my growing irrelevance. Meanwhile, get out there and “make good trouble”, and look for more on how age, anti-Trumpism and all of this is playing out in the Colorado political arena in an upcoming episode of The O. Zone.
Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. Please read how you can help support this site by considering a donation or signing up for news alerts … or both.
David O. Williams
