From Diplomat to Dissenter: Why I Protest Trump’s America

I love our country. I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa in the 1970s. I served as a Foreign Service Officer (diplomat) for the State Department in assignments in the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Morocco, Lebanon, and Canada in the 1980s and 1990s. Because of that love and my sense of service to this country, I have now become an anti-government rebel. I take to the streets every weekend to protest the cruel and incompetent actions of the Trump administration. I don’t even recognize my country now. A government that is sloppy in rounding up supposed immigrants and entrapping American citizens in dark vans that transport them to hidden locations by masked men is not one I can honor today. A country that targets people because they “look like immigrants” is not one I can serve today.

How does this happen? How does patriotism and love for a country translate into a call to action to fight what is happening to our nation? Here’s my story.

My ancestors immigrated to this country in the early 20th century from Hungary and Italy. My Dad’s father was a gravedigger who never really mastered English. Fortunately, gravediggers don’t need to speak much. As the grandson of an illiterate gravedigger, I know how fortunate I have been to rise to become an official representative of this country abroad in American embassies. I loved that job. Diplomats do tough jobs in some dangerous corners of the world. Many Americans understand little of what diplomats do, but if you travel and lose your passport or get arrested, you will soon discover how vital the services of an American embassy officer are.

But our country has fired—without cause—thousands of American diplomats in a DOGE-inspired hacking away at the federal workforce under some misguided notion of rooting out waste. Robbing embassies of adequate personnel opens the door for China—already investing more in its foreign policy professionals than we do—to continue its move toward world domination. Do we really want to live in a world where China decides everything on the world stage? That’s where we are headed.

Foreign policy has always been crafted in our country by professionals who adhered to strict notions of being apolitical. Today, the State Department is full of Republican-approved diplomats who have to pledge allegiance, not to our Constitution, not to our country, but to the 47th president. The politicization of diplomacy reduces policy choices to only those approved with an eye to a certain groupthink ideology. This does not serve the national interest, as it shuts out other ways of sizing up a problem and deciding how best to preserve what is best for our country’s future.

In order to flatter Trump, diplomats are choosing what he deems best. This 79-year-old president shows daily how ill-informed he is about our country’s history. We are being led now by someone whose “maybe the people want a dictator” is undermining the very principles established by our Founders. Principles of three equal branches of government with a system of checks and balances to prevent the rise of a monarch. The attacks on judges who disagree with the president are likely to lead to more political violence. After the assassination of Democrat politicians in Minnesota and Charlie Kirk, do we really want this?

photo courtesy of Michael Varga.

The deference Republican politicians show toward Trump’s decisions is setting up our nation as a pariah on the world stage, now apparently allied with Russia and North Korea, and some of the despots ruling in the Middle East. The State Department’s decision to no longer report fully on human rights abuses means that people around the world who are suffering under autocratic regimes are likely to get much worse. Is this the profile we want for America in 2025?

This moment has compelled me to take to the streets to raise my voice against what I see as a dangerous attempt to remake our country according to the Project 2025 blueprint. For me, resistance means showing up, standing firm, and saying NO. But each American must decide for themselves how best to respond. Some may choose the ballot box, others may write, organize, or speak out in their communities.

Whatever your conscience calls you to do more, I honor that. Love of country requires each of us, in our own way, to defend the core democratic values that have guided our nation for 250 years.