American Deconstruction Era begins

   Freedom of speech - but you can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater. Right to bear arms - but murder is a crime. A government can pass laws - but people are free to break them. Ultimately, we are governed by our own morality and common sense - but it is commendable when those who govern - our elected representatives - act with high mind and noble purpose.
   America is in crisis. If you share my concerns I urge you to contribute to causes you believe in, make phone calls, write letters, visit city council meetings - and examine the efficacy of your opposition to the retrograde trend of the Deconstruction - use your valuable time and energies in the most effective way possible.
    Internet search engines give us access to a compendium of information unprecedented in human history. I use DuckDuckGo for search (since Scroogle was quenched) and Avast firewall "do not track." I realize my Yahoo email has been run through a NSA splitter and is being scanned for keywords. I have been on an FBI watch list since subscribing to the Berkeley Barb in the late sixties - registered with Peace and Freedom Party since 1968 when the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy shocked me out of a dull lock-step with the "two party" system.
    As a young man I was expelled from high school after publishing a protest newspaper (The Iconoclast) in December 1960. Of 14 participants (2 remain undiscovered) I was the only one who would not recant my views. My valid concerns were brushed away by a kangaroo court in high school district headquarters. This cost me a college scholarship and introduced me to a number of realities concerning the defensiveness and vindictiveness of those who wield power.
    In that regard, I warn you there is no such thing as "free speech." You will be held responsible (fairly or unfairly!) for your ideas. This is human nature, it is not confined to despotic dictatorships. If you offer a threat to established ideas you'll be subjected to difficulties. I do not recommend silence - I recommend caution.
    Pick your battles carefully, love your enemies even while their ignorance brings you to tears of frustration and thoughts of violent reprisal. Think deeply about a way forward - the simplistic, destructive policies of retrograde thinking are having their day. Sadly, the threads of federalism and white supremacy, the dogma of exclusive religion and zero-sum gaming (in order to "win" the "enemy" must be crushed) - these are all with us still, and can only be debunked through education and an honest study of history.
    Good luck, dear people of planet Earth! Here are a few links:
Sedition Act of 1918
The Return of Seditious Libel
Alien and Sedition Acts
Worst Presidents Ever...
    Witness the Dakota Access Pipeline: America's new administration is continuing in the worst tradition of US treaty breaking, borne of the original sins of our country: Indigenous genocide and human slavery.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
    Water protectors need our support to pay legal fees. They are predominately people of limited means and they have sacrificed greatly to prevent eventual fouling of their water supply. In a greater sense, they are the first victims of an ill-advised rollback of protections against corporate greed - an attack on scientific method - denying principles of the Enlightment that created our "nation of laws." And laws remain only as good as those who observe, enforce or amend them.