Hyten is co-executive director of Essential Partners.
During his 40-year career in the military, my father served under seven presidential administrations through countless policy decisions, three wars, innumerable budget votes and huge changes at every level of society. He says that what makes this country special is the fact that he swore an oath to serve not a person, a party or even the state, but to the Constitution of the United States — an oath to uphold the rights and institutions of democracy.
A strong democracy, though, needs more than free elections and enshrined civil rights. As the great American thinker John Dewey argued, democracy is not merely a political institution. It is a way of life. It’s a way of living with one another, being able to agree and disagree, embracing our different perspectives and individual histories.
“Unless democratic habits of thought and action are part of the fiber of a people,” he wrote, “political democracy is insecure. It can not stand in isolation. It must be buttressed by the presence of democratic methods in all social relationships.”
The violent insurrection that took place on Jan. 6, one year ago, was not just an attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power. It represented a collective failure in the practice of our democracy, a warning that we have failed to keep alive those fundamental democratic methods in our social relationships.
And we know that Jan. 6 was not an isolated incident. Over a third of young people in America believe they’ll witness civil conflict in their lifetimes. That is astonishingly tragic. We need to make sure it is not a prediction. It shouldn’t be controversial to say we should work like hell to turn back the tide, repair our social fabric, heal our communities and snuff out the threat of political violence on a larger scale.
At Essential Partners, we equip communities, schools, congregations and institutions to build a more perfect union, one founded on trust and belonging. We envision an America where we can belong no matter our identities or beliefs, where we can be heard even if we’re in the minority, where we can vigorously disagree without violence.
If you want to be a part of real and lasting change for our country, we need to invest in the health of the communities where we live and work. We need to heal the broken relationships and mend the frayed trust. Here are three things you can do right away:
- Talk to the people you love about the issues that matter most with honesty, curiosity and compassion. Politics, religion and social issues can no longer be off limits. Extremism takes root in isolation and loneliness. Work within your trusted communities to make space for difficult conversations. Practice disagreeing with people you love and care for. Practice holding onto those relationships even when you differ. If you need support and tools, browse our resources, join us for a workshop or schedule a free consultation.
- Foster a culture around you of collective discernment and collaborative decision-making. In your workplaces, schools, congregations and institutions, invite people to think about what they need to be a lone voice, to share a minority view, to offer a perspective that may be hard for others to hear. Find out what people need to be resilient together, to care for themselves, and to disagree in ways that do not diminish a people’s experiences and identities. Our lives are intertwined. We share responsibility for the health of the whole community.
- Search for seeds of hope in your community. You cannot do the hard work of hope when your heart is depleted. Hope is vital. You can find it when neighbors of different faiths share food on a holiday. It’s there when people on opposite sides of the political divide enjoy a high school basketball game together. And when you lose hope, let someone else come forward, someone who can carry on while you replenish yourself.
You are not alone in this work. There are thousands of people around the country who are changing the way we talk about politics, shared values and identities. I am convinced that the bonds we forge in compassion will be stronger than the forces tearing this country apart.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.