The Kennedy Center Takedown Reminds Us That Rebuilding America Takes a Village

There are a million ways to do it, but you'll need to grab a brick (or book) and lay it down for the next person

The Chelsea “book brigade” — locals helping Serendipity Books make the move to a bigger place; Instagram photo by Burrill Strong

In April 2025, Serendipity Books in Chelsea, Michigan, was enjoying the growing trend toward the joy of brick-and-mortar independent booksellers.

Michelle Tuplin, Serendipity’s owner, gazed upon the popularity of her bookstore and realized she needed to expand. But her bookstore was so beloved in her community that she didn’t want to shut it down during the move into a bigger place just down the street.

A lightbulb appeared over her head with a crazy but, maybe, wonderful idea. What if she asked her devoted customers for help?

The response was overwhelming. More than 300 people showed up to form a line from the old place to the new place. They passed each book from one person to the next in line, all the way to the new spot in the new building, down to the shelf location.

The 300 didn’t ask for anything in return. They understood what they were doing. They grasped the significance of building their community through the simple act of passing a book through a long line of fellow book lovers.

That’s where we are today as a nation.

We’re exhausted, yes. Some of us are barely holding on to our wits, our patience, our hope. For some of us, our spiritual whole has been slowly eaten away by a malevolent force nobody quite understands. We’re tired of asking questions. We’re tired of asking why. We’re tired of the overnight posts from a president whose mind has joined his spirit in a barren tomb of grievance, despair, and anger.

Many of us are simply waiting for him to die so we can just move on with our lives. Some of us are praying for it. Almost all of us maintain a sliver of hope each morning when we wake up that today will be that special phone alert day, the one we’ll always remember, the one where we ask ten years from now, “Where were you when?”

Many of us have built friendships here on Substack and other online forums with a bond glued by our hatred, which, let’s be honest, is not the healthiest of bonds. But because our minds are not twisted by grievance, but by love, hope, and goodwill, the glue of that bond has reformulated into kindness and determination and grit.

Through it all, despite the mental exhaustion and anguish and, sometimes, grief, born from the actions of this despicable regime, we have been chipping away at the wall of hate, letter by letter, word by word, brick by brick.

I’m not a video guy. I don’t watch Substack videos, I don’t watch much YouTube, and I’ve probably never spent more than a full hour of my life, cumulatively, on TikTok. I like video for other things: A good movie or streaming television show, and watching sports. And the occasional standup comic (Hi, Josh Johnson!). But not for what we do here.

But I made it a point to watch a portion of the Kennedy Center Take Down. It felt symbolic because the first step in rebuilding this country is taking down this regime, even if it’s one letter at a time.

The takedown happened because you made it happen:

You Removed the Name — and the Curse — of Donald

ICE was driven out of Chicago and Minneapolis because of people like you in those cities. I realize that the stormtroopers are still there. They are still among us. And they’re still terrorizing immigrants. But they’ve been forced into stealth mode.

Our victories come one letter at a time. One brick removed from the wall.

Now that they have their $70 billion in funding, we can expect more hate.

We’re ready for them. They’ve declared war on American citizens, but it’s a war they can’t win. No matter where you are spiritually, you know in your gut that love always defeats hate. This is a universal truth. If you don’t agree with that, well, hang in there, and remember ten years from now that I said so.

Everything you do helps the cause.

I know. It’s exhausting. My body reacted with extreme violence to the election of this man by stroking me out on the eve of the election. It was as if my body knew before the rest of us what was about to happen.

I watched on my ICU bed, aghast, as CNN’s John King waved his arms around his big video map and destroyed my spirit for one night. An ICU nurse comforted me with a gentle kiss on the forehead and the words, “We shall overcome.”

I woke up the next morning determined to fight on.

A hemorrhagic stroke patient’s chance of surviving the first year is around 25% or so, depending on what medical article you read.

The way I figured it, if I was going to go down, I was going to go down loudly. With my fist raised. With no care, none, if somehow my words stretched far enough to gain enough attention from an insidious regime to put my life in danger, because guess what? It already is in danger.

So is yours. The regime has made it so.

We don’t get to choose how we die, unless we force the issue, and fighting back isn’t that.

This is saying that even if I perish, the quality of your life matters. The quality of other lives matters.

Fighting back is saying, “No, I’m going to push forward and add my one small brick to the cause of rebuilding this country.”

I’m going to start by taking down this regime one letter at a time, just like they did on the Kennedy Center. Then one word at a time. Then one paragraph. After that, an entire book. Whatever it takes.

Whether you know it or not, you are doing the same thing every time you reluctantly read yet another Substack article about yet another insult from a regime that is at war with America.

Make no mistake. We are at war. We have already seen lives lost. This is real. We will see more lives lost, even as this regime finally realizes that it’s near its end. And especially now that they’ve pocketed $70 billion to build more concentration camps and pack out-of-shape, vacant-minded ICE stormtroopers with military grade weapons.

The regime won’t go down softly. Even as it sinks into its own toxic sludge, the soulless creatures who inhabit its haunted domains will scream in anger and blindly fire volleys from their guns at anything that moves.

All we need to do is be prepared as it happens. Let nothing surprise us.

The Kennedy Center Takedown was symbolic. It wouldn’t have happened, though, without you adding to the echosphere of restacks and reposts and comments. We think none of that matters when we, tired and frustrated, hit the repost button. We hit that button because we’re exasperated, not because we really think it will do any good.

Until it does.

It does do good. So does calling your congress critter and all the other things you are doing to help take down this regime one letter at a time.

Our engagement is more important now than ever. This is the part of the marathon where we ask for that extra bit of strength from whatever our personal source is to get us to the end, so that we can begin the process of rebuilding this nation.

How we rebuild will be a big, interesting set of questions. But I’m looking forward to asking them instead of wondering when he will finally die.

We just tore his name off one wall.

Let’s finish the job.

Happy Sunday.

Notes

Speaking of taking a village, here’s an old post I wrote about Hillary back in 2024:

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Thanks for reading!

Restack this if you want to add a letter to our rebuilding process.