Many of my trusted advisers in all things political have been raving about this woman’s work — writing and speaking daily about the Trump phenomenon in America — for some time.

My inbox receives a Substack post every weekday from Heather Cox Richardson. Recently, I heard one of her calm, thorough and convincing presentations, when a son sent me a YouTube of her hour-long talk on Feb. 24, her own “state of the union” address, that mercifully took me away from watching the Mad King uttering his lies on broadcast TV.

The author of seven books on such topics as the American Civil War and the history of the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, she demonstrates the scale, scope, and volume of her writing output. It is prodigious. As the scribbler of a mere 650 words a week, I can only gasp in admiration.

It was, as she noted that day, both the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a day during the year of the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, a foundational document written by Thomas Jefferson and approved by 56 delegates from 13 colonies (the founding fathers).

The big day was, of course, July 4, 1776, that ushered in many glory days of America, now in such sharp and dangerous decline.

What are we to make of America today? We are shocked Canadians, having been abused and confused by the regime in place there now?

Born in Chicago in 1962 and raised in Maine where she still lives, Cox Richardson has three daughters, teaches political science and history at Boston College, and has earned her PhD at Harvard. 

I took a course at BC myself in the summer of 1992, under the leadership of an Australian nun who was given to showing cartoons as a way of making a point; something like Stephen Colbert does. I enjoyed the experience, which included going with classmates to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.

Cox Richardson’s talks are quietly competent, given in plain language without notes, and in an unadorned setting without gimmicks. She is down-to-earth. “I am embarrassed he is president, or even a citizen,” she says, as she outlines the offences Trump has piled up, especially during this second term.

He has been in office a year. My favourite CBC TV host, smart and affable Newfoundlander David Cochrane, has the remaining days and even hours counted. What permanent damage Trump and his cronies have done is yet to be measured.

“I can feel myself getting smarter the more I listen to you,” writes one admirer of Cox Richardson. She has 2.6 million followers on Substack. These are the serious and conscientious Americans who have staying power and clear-sightedness. I keep company with them a lot. They know what has been lost and what is at stake for their own country and for the world.

Cox Richardson says that America was founded on two contradictory ideas: liberty and equality versus slavery and hierarchy. The gap has never been closed.

“The U.S. has fallen off as a democracy since he took office,” she says. And haven’t we seen an extraordinary amount of corruption? For-profit prisons; for-profit health care. Meddling in other countries’ business, even to the extent of invading them. An overweening sense of entitlement; a “we-run-things” mentality. Globally.

The president’s neurotic and limitless need for praise and affirmation have him filling his public speeches with hollow self-congratulations, a tiresome repetition that has a very great number of people tuning him out entirely.

But self-delusion is not leadership. One also must look at the enablers, who stand to benefit from their loyalty, the JD Vances and Robert Kennedys and Kristi Noems and Kash Patels.

Cox Richardson sees all this and calls it out. The Guardian newspaper calls her “the most important progressive pundit.” She has 3.2 million Facebook followers worldwide.

These are signs of hope that the tide of history is turning. May it be so.

© Peterborough Examiner