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Our President stands before of a wall of names of people who have died anonymously for the nation and says, “I’m smart.” He preens before that wall and claims he had the largest adoring crowds in history for his swearing-in.

The photographs on TV that night show it wasn’t true. So his minion comes in front of the assembled press and threatens them for showing pictures of the President’s hollow boasts. The minion berates them for not repeating the Big Lie. Then he openly threatens them: “Who do you think you are? He is THE PRESIDENT – show some respect! Or you will regret it.”

The President is surrounded by moral eunuchs and Congress is in the hands of enablers. The Senate is led by an opportunist and the Speaker of the House looks to his own.

Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” But in the era of social media and mass broadcasting, when entertainment mascarades as reality, when rumor goes unchecked and money can buy air time, you can fool far too many and keep on fooling them for far too long. Democracy works only if the voters, all the voters, can critically assess accurate information.

So who will protect us? The answer, if there is one, is a free press, only the fearless press. It is the unintimidated New York Times. And the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald. It is ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS, hopefully even FoxNews. And in our Hawaii, it is Civil Beat.

Once Hawaii sent to Washington a man with grace and dignity. Now we are governed by a man with no public qualities. Now we must look to you and to your colleagues on the mainland.

You must be the real lions. The only lions left.