A Time for Patriots

A Time for Patriots
by David Eugene Perry

When I was a boy, I would give tours of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. I sat in front of the TV with my cassette player and recorded the audio to Walter Cronkite’s “Bicentennial Minutes” in 1976. My mother and grandmother fed my wide eyes and horizons by traipsing through enough Revolutionary and Civil War and Native American sites in the Commonwealth to generate blisters and a bookshelf groaning with books and curators’ addresses. As a child, I was a precocious patriot.

My first letter to the editor was in defense of Betty Ford’s 60 Minutes interview in August 1975 in which she candidly discussed topics such as premarital sex, marijuana use, abortion rights, and her own breast cancer battle. I called those who opposed her openness as “shallow minded.” The editor of the Richmond Times Dispatch called my mother (who didn’t know I had submitted something to the paper) to inquire: “Are you sure a 13 year old wrote this?”

“Yes.”

I’m what is referred to in The South as a “Yella’ Dog Democrat”: someone who’d vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican. And yet, although they didn’t earn my vote, Ronald Reagan, Bush I & II earned my respect for the way in which they represented the United States of America on the international stage, albeit with many more opeds and protest marches along the way against their policies.

I have always been first an American; secondly a Democrat.  — until today.

I was mercilessly teased during grade school — “Fairy Perry” — so I know a bully when I see one. Watching Donald Trump systematically — and to great effect — turn U.S. foreign policy into a bully’s exercise of extortion, malfeasance and misinformation — has made me firstly a citizen of the world in opposition and sickening horror to the demeanor and meanness of the 47th President of the United States and his minions. He is not a Republican. He’s mafioso in search of a Medieval court and crown. The court, he has. The crown: not yet.

Is there merit in some of Donald Trump’s policies? Likely. Is there merit in single handedly dismantling in less than 100 days the world order for which my father, uncle and brother fought? No. To quote Patrick Henry: “Forbid it Almighty God.”

I am a citizen of the world. I am a US Citizen. I am a Democrat. 

I am a member of The Resistance. 

I urge all Americans to mark two dates: November 3, 2026 and November 7, 2028.

Until then, we need to keep on keeping on to make sure we can safely cast a vote on those dates. Sadly, in this instance, FDR’s advice does not serve. There is much, much more to fear than fear itself.

David Eugene Perry was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia: a graduate of St. Paul’s Parochial and Benedictine Military Institute. He now lives in California with his husband. Working internationally, he has visited more than 70 countries.