Paterno, a former quarterbacks coach for Penn State University, ran for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 and consults on a variety of issues.
Wednesday morning in Happy Valley, through the open windows of my home office, I heard the chirping of a cardinal at the bird feeder, the voices of children walking to the neighborhood elementary school and the sound of a school bus slowing to a halt. Up and down the street mothers or fathers stood at the bus stop, holding a small child’s hand.
The simple things that happen every day in America are among the best. The excitement that comes with the new hope that rises with each day’s dawn.
But Wednesday morning we woke from another national nightmare, just days after another national nightmare that was just days after another national nightmare. No place is safe from America’s violent terror cycle that strikes homes, schools, stores, movie theaters, street corners and houses of worship.
And each time these mass shootings happen, opposing parties line up and fight with one side obstinately defending the status quo and the other looking to make sense of what happened, trying to lessen the violence in this country. Not much happens.
If we are to become the exceptional nation we claim to be, at some point, when more blood is spilled and more children are lowered into the ground, we have to act to correct a hard truth. From homicides to suicides, in cities and towns all over America, guns take the lives of too many children and adults every day.
The grief becomes frustration, and we are left to ask: “What is the soul of America?”
We are soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy. We are firefighters running into the twin towers on 9/11 to save others. We are the woman in Buffalo shopping every Saturday for food she took to a food pantry for others. We are the countless unseen simple acts of generosity, kindness and courage done for our fellow human beings.
We can proudly put the best of this country against the best of any other country.
But we are also a nation where a heavily armed 18-year-old man can walk into a store or a school holding the too-easily-obtained power to violently end the lives of others. We are a nation where some preach hatred and baseless theories to scare and intimidate people. We are a nation where many feel isolated and alone. We are a nation where charlatans twist religion and yell from the pulpit to cast condemnation on others who do not look or love or worship the way they deem acceptable. We are a nation founded in freedom’s cause that allowed slavery and a constitution that counted some people as fractional human beings.
So, dispense with the lecture about the founders’ infallibility. Like the Bible and nearly every religious text, the Constitution has passages we can pull to justify pretty much anything we want.
It is neither politically expedient nor acceptable to admit that our history and our soul are complex. In fact, some would have us erase our complexities from the history we teach our children. The truth is rarely ever wildly popular among all people. But the fact remains that by the very nature of our humanity, we are imperfect.
Are we so arrogant as to believe that, we, of all people who’ve lived across the ages, somehow we have slipped the bonds of human imperfection that many far wiser could not escape?
If we are honest as Americans, we must accept that part of our soul is violent. Part of us has always believed that might makes right. The source of that might has often been the weaponry of war, weaponry that is readily accessible to the best and worst of us.
At our best, the eloquence and leadership of great leaders repeatedly moved our nation towards a more perfect union. They pointed the way towards our ideals. But to move towards a more perfect union, to solve the violence in America, the bully and the bullet must not be mightier than the voices of millions calling for a more just nation. The money and power of entrenched interests must not destroy the dreams and rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Tuesday in a small corner of Texas, the inalienable human rights and dreams of children still new on their life’s journey were shattered. The best of our soul met the worst of our soul, and the worst marked those families, that community and our nation once again. Sadly, the most basic rights of children and people are taken by violence every day in America.
The time for rhetoric has passed. The time of politicians and lobbyists awash in money staking out intractable and uncompromising extreme positions to remain in power must end. Because, so too, the blood sport of power-play politics is part of our soul.
And sadly, so too are the anguished families waiting late into the night in Uvalde, Texas, clinging to the fading hope that their child would come home. Our soul includes the people who survived that carnage, their lives, minds and dreams forever changed. The most horrific end to a day had come to a place and a day that probably began much like the day of hope right outside my window.
The cries of their pain, the pain of their loss must shake our collective soul. If once again we can ignore the pain of unspeakable loss, what does that say about us?
The hard question persists. Even harder answers must emerge.
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.