Chapter 39                                                                                                        THE OVERTURE                                                                                 (Excerpt from A PERFECT PRESIDENCY)

Richardson wasted no time. He was acutely aware that the Cook administration had only four years. Either his scheme was to succeed within those four years or never. He had the advantage of being ahead of his opponents. He took his cellular phone out and touched the numbers.

“Sergei, can we talk?”

“Daniel? Of course.”

“I have just got the authority to centralize our intelligence and security apparatus.”

“What do you mean? You would violate too many of your laws if you tried to do so.”

“I know. First thing first. Before nominating a secretary or head of an agency, we will make sure that they pledge allegiance to the president. They normally file regular reports to the supervising ministry but now they will also submit a copy to the White House. We will be working with Congress to enact a law to allow the White House to absorb the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The FBI reports directly to the Attorney General who is a loyalist and reports directly to me.”

“Congratulations.” Semenov could not refrain from making a sarcastic remark, “You are coming close to us here Daniel.”

Richardson deadpanned, “Yes, we have learned something from you. I always believe the president must have absolute power over national intelligence and national security.”

He changed the subject, “We have been working together for some time. Now, I want the European Union to get involved. I can only touch on the general subjects, those we have to deal with as soon as possible. I ask that you bring our proposal to President Komarov and get back to me in three days with his answer.”

“What proposal?”

“President Cook wants Russia to join NATO.”

Semenov was stunned, “Are you….”

Richardson raised his hand as if to stop Semenov at the other end of the line. “Let me continue – with the condition that you will withdraw your divisions from your borders with the Baltic and East European countries.”

It took Semenov quite a long time to stop staring at the phone and found his words, “And you just command the European Union and NATO to go along with your proposal?”

“It’s hard work. But we will be there. Right now, we have work to do in the U.S.”

“You have an ambitious agenda, but you are time constrained.”

Richardson did not seem to hear what Semenov said, “I am about to have total control over the security apparatus. I need your advice, discreetly of course, how to organize it into a coherent and effective agency.”

“I think you already have very good agencies to fight crimes or espionage. I doubt that our agencies are better than yours.”

“You are right.” He paused for ten seconds before continuing, “What I need is your expertise in dealing with internal unrest, political opposition…”

Semenov tried to hide his surprise, “Isn’t it an inherent element of your political system?”

Richardson’s voice hardened, “I don’t think it should be. Opposition is counter-productive and hinders progress. The country needs to be governed by the elites and the people need to be guided by wiser, better men.”

“Do you have a second thought about popular vote and a government by representatives?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Are your friends and President Cook of the same mind?”

Semenov detected Richardson’s imperceptible hesitation, “Of course. They approved my proposal to give total control of all security and intelligence operations to my office.”

“Are you going to abolish the FBI, the CIA, the Office of National Intelligence?”

“No, I don’t because of the hurdle of going through Congress, something I don’t want to bother for now. I just need the power to collect information and direct security operations. Now I want to use my power to reverse course.”

Semenov asked, slowly, “Reverse course as in abolishing Democracy and going back …, going back to what?”

Like a prophet being asked to explain his vision, Richardson suddenly found his euphoria, “Democracy does not work, at least in the direction that we thought it should. You can see that with so many efforts, it does not work anywhere in the world except in the U.S. Even here, we have seen abuses, and the system can’t seem to cure or prevent them from getting out of control.”

“Are you talking about immigrants and the so-called damages they have done to your traditional Christian values?”

“Nothing ‘so-called’ about the damages, which are real, huge, and deep. At the pace that things have changed during the last few decades, we must act now. You, I also mean your president and your country, agree with us that the world is no longer divided along the ideological fault line but inexorably moves toward regrouping its countries and population into large spheres of influence. We must acknowledge that race is the foundation of our choices: The white people in Europe, Russia, and North America, the Asians led by China, the Blacks in Africa, the Arabs in the middle East, and the rest will ally themselves with whoever happen to be their friends of the moment. It is now that Russia acknowledges this fact and allies itself with the European Union and joins NATO.  You make the overture, and we will push them behind the scenes.”

Semenov was intrigued, “You don’t say it, but does that mean Russia will inevitably withdraw from its alliance with China, North Korea, even the ‘stan’ countries?”

“Not necessarily. But you jump the gun here, Sergei. One step at a time. A white block does not mean purely white. Even you and I are no pure blood. We are discussing dominance, not pure blood. That is the focal point. If we don’t take steps now to position our white power, the dynamics of world affairs may drift away from our grasp and control.”

“I see your point. I am sure we will have a robust debate at the Kremlin.”

True to his nature. Richardson cut Semenov off as if he were his underling, “Nothing more to discuss. I don’t think you and president Komarov should bring the issue to the Duma to be discussed or even among his advisors. We must start now and start preparing what to do next.”

Semenov cursed under his breath, damned Yankee arrogance, but kept his voice calm, “If nothing else, please on President Komarov’s and my behalf, say hi to Willie and the people we know.”

“Sure. I will be in touch.”

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                               (This excerpt can be read on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournl.com)

 

That is the current state of American politics: A party competes for power against an association. Just by that short sentence, the reader can venture a guess as to who wins and will win in the next few election cycles, if America will still have political election.

The Democratic Party is nowadays, or probably has been for some time, a non-profit association rather than a party. It has no absolute, meaning focused, power and therefore lacks discipline and control. Its members are free to debate and disagree. Many members, after enjoying and exploiting the support of the party, nonchalantly jump ship to the other side for fame and/or financial gains without any consequences. Many of them ostentatiously declare themselves to be independent as if they were working for a nobler cause. Democrats seem more friendly, gregarious, inclusive, and benign. That probably is the main reason why their party attracts more diverse constituencies and opinions, the root cause of being inefficient and ineffective. The party does not seem to be a party but more like a philosophy or an ideology. After the election losses in 2024, they bickered among themselves to the near death of their party. They are still bickering at the DNC.

The MAGA Republican Party is a completely different political animal, and the contrast can easily be noticed during the last few decades in the real sense of a political party (as in Communist Party): strictly disciplined, top-down orderly. Speaking at the White House on June 24, 2025, the President said “They (the Israelis and the Iranians) don’t know what the fuck they are doing.” A bombshell! But no bickering among MAGA. Only a few hours later, the Vice President showed his middle finger and kept it up there in the air long enough for the world’s cameras to unmistakably record it. That was the teamwork spirit!

The discipline is ruthless, but it focuses and concentrates its energy like a laser. Every statement of any official of the Administration always consists of two indispensable parts: the first part praising the president and the second stressing how idiotic and incompetent the Biden administration (by implication, the Democrats) was. But that is not enough. MAGA blends politics with a twist of modern day’s capitalism, combining politics with financial gains and pursuing it unabashedly, a practice adopted by Vladimir Putin and is now copied by MAGA. It is meant to monopolize political power and win at all costs that includes the destruction of the democratic institutions within which it has existed and thrived for centuries, and Democracy itself. That was how they bulldozed the Democrats like corn stalks in 2024.

The Democrats and many others believe that the vote would cure the malaise suffered by Democracy. They trust that the voters would cast their votes rationally and with their understanding that Democracy is meant for them.

For a long time, MAGA has moved sometimes subtly with some trial balloons but more often decisively and relentlessly to consolidate their power and expand their grip on the country’s federal, state, and local political structures. Their grip permeates all political levels, and like under a communist regime, bullying pressure helps them take control of the voters. MAGA has already run the country like a monarchy with the president acting as a benign king treating his government and Congress like a patriarch treating his family members tolerating even the most incompetent and unruly. In return, he gets their absolute loyalty.

The telling sign is the way MAGA treats its opponents, arresting judges, indicting or openly threatening political opponents with arrest, usurping state power using military forces. Democratic institutions and rules of democratic politics are already out the window.

In totally dominating American politics, MAGA has found the formula to gain absolute power and move the country toward a dictatorship or a monarchy, which is the doctrine of “Us versus Them”. It had been put into practice before by hardline Republican politicians but why it didn’t stick until now? The answer is the white population’s sentiment. Not that their material life has not improved (it has robustly, thanks to China’s production) but the sense that their dominance, and therefore their security, is being threatened, and their control of things getting out of hand. The rise of China whose people were formerly considered by white Americans as no good at anything or even worth owning a little tiny bit of land in America, except for providing inexhaustible coolies, and the influx of immigrants are symptomatic of the changes that they perceived negatively affect their life. That is when they find MAGA’s propaganda not to be rude, coarse, uncivilized, and against human nature or even nature, but making sense.

There lurches the danger, not to MAGA or the Oligarchs or billionaires but to common people.

MAGA has no intention of gaining power just for cleaning up immigration and other social issues they dislike, and going through the democratic election cycles and, if they lose, relinquishing it as dictated by the democratic process. They want permanent power so that they can reshape the country into a white only, simple, and isolated nation, as simple as the old regimes in feudal Europe, more easily governed and controlled: The king and his family on top, coexisting with and supported by the billionaires who will lord over the functionaries such as executives, technicians, government workers including cabinet secretaries. The current U.S. government has already had that makeup with members of Congress and the courts are being treated no differently than subjects of the king’s court and they, willingly or under pressure, remain passive and alarmingly silent.

The caste system has worked beautifully for thousands of years in India. Even though it has constitutionally been outlawed, it is still alive and well in its society. Why not adopting a thing that has worked successfully for so long, MAGA asked themselves, and in a moment of Eureka, gleefully applied the system to the American society after modifying it to show a veneer of humaneness: Immigrants, the modern-day Shudras, cannot be citizens but only be guest workers. The esteemed Arabs have perfected their guest worker system that allows the “guests” to work for minimum wage without ever being naturalized or given basic human rights let alone the right to vote.  It is a solid and desirable system to keep the social order with the billionaires being the Brahmins.

The common men, regardless of their skin color, will realize, hopefully not too late, that they are being swallowed into the system like the submarine being swallowed by Karl Stromberg’s humongous tanker Liparus. If they don’t make their choice with their votes carefully now, they would all be Shudras with no right to their name and no power over their lives and their children and grandchildren’s lives. They would have no say except moaning “we are sorry”.

In a Democracy, one party fights another party as an adversary or opposition, but they cooperate and even consult each other in governing. They always treat each other with respect. So far, MAGA has treated the Democrats like pariahs calling them “idiotic” or deliberately smirking, disdainfully calling him “Jose Padilla” because U.S. Senator ALEX Padilla is a Mexican American, (JOSE Padilla is a convicted terrorist still serving time in federal prison). The fact that they can be petty, obscene, and laughing about it in public give them a pervert satisfaction that they are powerful and untouchable.

It is not just a strategy to sideline the Democrats to get an advantage for the next election cycle. It is an assault on an opposite party, the democratic institutions, and the very foundation of Democracy. MAGA treats the Democrats with outright disdain, the ENEMIES to be eradicated. It puts down or threatens the Democrats whatever way it can, relentlessly, ceaselessly, never stops even when national tragedies happen.

The case in point was its reaction to the assassination of a Minnesotan Democratic state representative and her husband, and an assassination attempt on a state senator. Don’t let off, don’t apologize, don’t sympathize, criticize the Democrats even if it’s a lie, is their motto. The president at first rightfully condemned the assassination. But he changed his tune a few days later as if he had got an earful from MAGA. Many other MAGA figures started loudly and in coordination accusing and criticizing ad nauseam the Democrats even though there is evidence that the shooter is a MAGA supporter.

Such MO is consistent with MAGA’s plan to clear the political landscape so that in three and a half years, America won’t have an inauguration of a new president but the coronation of a king. With a quick and steady pace as we have seen, four years would be long enough for MAGA to find ways to intimidate the courts and Congress to bend to its will to amend or even abolish the Constitution. The next step would be the establishing of a monarchy, or an oligarchy depending on who among MAGA would then have the upper hand.

If Democracy were lost, the common men would lose big. The Democratic legacy fought hard and sacrificed dearly for centuries by the people who had suffered under monarchs and dictators, would be gone. And then, the common men would have to fight and sacrifice again for the freedom and the rights they have possessed up to this point, if they would still remember how these rights, freedom, and happiness were intertwined.

It sounds dramatic, but not farfetched if the common men are distracted by other factors and fail to protect the most precious things they have ever possessed: their Freedom and their Rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Don’t your children, grandchildren, and descendants deserve the same things?

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                (This article is posted on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

“The nearer your destination, the more you are slip slidin’ away”. Paul Simon’s words were prescient as if he were singing about the Democrats’ politics.

The rights of common people were respected and protected. Social support was in place. The world was moving toward Democracy. Even diehard communist countries had turned democratic. Russia, the cradle of Communism had tentatively tried Democracy. The world was coming near the Utopia of a happy world society with open borders in Europe and liberal immigration policies in America.

With Professor Francis Fukuyama rhapsodizing Democracy as the end of history, Democrats had prematurely celebrated their illusionary victory, embarrassingly claiming, “We have arrived”. They lost their vigilance and Democracy’s opponents have seized the day and now are on top.

Since Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the opponents of emancipation and racial equality have never ceased trying with a grim face to undo his revolutionary achievement. Over centuries, such effort was limited to the South until now, with MAGA being the latest wave of White Supremacism, which is no longer localized or pocketed but nationwide.

What makes the difference? -The participation and the support of the billionaires, the Mercers, the Kochs, and their brethren. Unlike previous efforts by White Extremists such as Black Codes, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” George Wallace, the modern day extremists don’t just have money, they have powerful brain.

They formed brain trust, did deep research, designed plans, organized and coordinated their executions. They have set out to undo Democracy and Equality of Men (big and smaller) and Women like planning and executing the Manhattan Project. It’s not a coincidence that the Republican Senate secured a 6/9 (not 5/4) majority in the Supreme Court. And it is not out of a sense of civic duty to obey the law that MAGA has not violated any law in deporting immigrants (even citizens), arresting an elected mayor, prosecuting judges and a U.S. Representative, wresting a U.S. Senator to the ground in public. It is MAGA’s well-executed discipline, so as to achieve the ultimate goal without side effects affecting or sidelining the outcome. If any inadvertent or even willful violation of the law happens, here comes the Supreme Court, whose saying IS the law.

In other words, MAGA has tried to stay within the law as much as necessary to subvert the law and ultimately the Constitution. Their march to obliterate Democracy has been relentless, well thought out, and seemingly unstoppable.

The Democrats, heretofore happy go lucky fellows, must now look for ways not just to be relevant but to survive.

Two alternatives come to mind.

First recourse: the help of Democratic billionaires. The two blockbuster billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, seem to be out of reach. For a man who could only find happiness by turning his wedding into the most expensive one in the history of mankind, in a place where no one welcomes his wedding, is way out of touch with ordinary people. The MAGA phenomenon is, first and foremost, an ordinary people’s problem. For them, happiness can be found easily and simply by holding hands with their beloved walking down the cobblestoned Bank Street in the West Village or watching the sun setting on the beach in Isla Vista, Santa Barbara. So, there is no connection there.

Mr. Zuckerberg once said that he wanted to wear casual clothes instead of formal attire, to reduce “decision fatigue” so that he could focus his energy on more important decisions. Now, Mr. Zuckerberg has turned about-faced and has been paying excessive attention to upgrading his stylish wardrobe, timepieces and jewelry. The Democrats may be wary of his long-termed commitment to their cause. These two billionaires don’t have the priorities or passion of a Democracy’s defender.

Theoretically, Elon Musk could be a nice recruitment as he has fallen out with the MAGA crowd. But ideologically, the Democrats don’t feel comfortable with him. Besides, the President has warned Mr. Musk not to support the Democrats. Chutzpah and unpredictable as he is, Mr. Musk nevertheless will certainly pay particular heed to the warning as no matter how rich he is, “serious consequences” are not something he should ignore.

So, the task lies with the billionaires who feel that Democracy’s stake is theirs as well, a Bill Gates or a Steven Spielberg for example. Or some cool billionaires still unnoticed by the public or by MAGA.

If no capable rescuer comes along, the Democrats still have a Second Recourse, not in a human but an idea: “Truth, Goodness, and Beauty”, which is in fact not just mere idea but a central triad in classical philosophy and Christian beliefs that these transcendentals are built into the fabric of existence of mankind.

MAGA has gone against the Truth for so long and not reaped any consequences. Now they simultaneously violate the other Two: Goodness and Beauty.

Remember “America First”? It has turned out, to MAGA, that America means billionaires not common folks. Sky high tariffs, tremendous tax cuts for the rich leading inexorably to an expected $4.2 TRILLION Deficit, a national debt of 150% of the U.S.’s GDP, DOGE’s federal employee “massacre”, Medicaid huge cut, does any of them serve common folks first? So, not just the Truth but the Goodness has clearly been trampled on.

Now, MAGA has defamed Beauty, the third leg of the interconnected Transcendentals. It kicked a lonely man out of the country who has pushed his ice cream cart in Los Aneles for 20 years, like kicking a dog while MAGA is promenading along the same street, for no reason other than its being ugly and rude. His existence in America would not increase criminality in the streets but definitely provide happiness to children – or even corporate executives coming down from their high towers for a break. It deported a seamstress with a child. How does that serve the declared policy of “Take the Country Back” or “America First” or clearing the street of criminal elements?

Symbolic of the Ugliness is the Secretary of Homeland Security showing off her honcho image and, for lack of a better word, macho personality posing in front of a prison with shaved and tattooed prisoners in the background, rolling up her sleeves to show her slender arms wearing a Rolex, her brunette hair flying in the wind. Then, the incidents of MAGA treating its Democratic opponents as described above, probably legal or should be legal if the case goes to the Supreme Court, are clear evidence of a serious violation of Beauty.

The lack of all these Transcendentals should be cause for MAGA to be indicted by Christianity unless Americans don’t call themselves Christians anymore.

It sounds unrealistic. But Democrats are desperate. They should grasp anything and try everything to survive.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                    (This article is posted in Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

That is the current state of American politics: A party competes for power against an association. Just by that short sentence, the reader can venture a guess as to who wins and will win in the next few election cycles, if America will still have political election.

The Democratic Party is nowadays, or probably has been for some time, a non-profit association rather than a party. It has no absolute, meaning focused, power and therefore lacks discipline and control. Its members are free to debate and disagree. Many members, after enjoying and exploiting the support of the party, nonchalantly jump ship to the other side for fame and/or financial gains without any consequences. Many of them ostentatiously declare themselves to be independent as if they were working for a nobler cause. Democrats seem more friendly, gregarious, inclusive, and benign. That probably is the main reason why their party attracts more diverse constituencies and opinions, the root cause of being inefficient and ineffective. The party does not seem to be a party but more like a philosophy or an ideology. After the election losses in 2024, they bickered among themselves to the near death of their party. They are still bickering at the DNC.

The MAGA Republican Party is a completely different political animal, and the contrast can easily be noticed during the last few decades in the real sense of a political party (as in Communist Party): strictly disciplined, top-down orderly. Speaking at the White House on June 24, 2025, the President said “They (the Israelis and the Iranians) don’t know what the fuck they are doing.” A bombshell! But no bickering among MAGA. Only a few hours later, the Vice President showed his middle finger and kept it up there in the air long enough for the world’s cameras to unmistakably record it. That was the teamwork spirit!

The discipline is ruthless, but it focuses and concentrates its energy like a laser. Every statement of any official of the Administration always consists of two indispensable parts: the first part praising the president and the second stressing how idiotic and incompetent the Biden administration (by implication, the Democrats) was. But that is not enough. MAGA blends politics with a twist of modern day’s capitalism, combining politics with financial gains and pursuing it unabashedly, a practice adopted by Vladimir Putin and is now copied by MAGA. It is meant to monopolize political power and win at all costs that includes the destruction of the democratic institutions within which it has existed and thrived for centuries, and Democracy itself. That was how they bulldozed the Democrats like corn stalks in 2024.

The Democrats and many others believe that the vote would cure the malaise suffered by Democracy. They trust that the voters would cast their votes rationally and with their understanding that Democracy is meant for them.

For a long time, MAGA has moved sometimes subtly with some trial balloons but more often decisively and relentlessly to consolidate their power and expand their grip on the country’s federal, state, and local political structures. Their grip permeates all political levels, and like under a communist regime, bullying pressure helps them take control of the voters. MAGA has already run the country like a monarchy with the president acting as a benign king treating his government and Congress like a patriarch treating his family members tolerating even the most incompetent and unruly. In return, he gets their absolute loyalty.

The telling sign is the way MAGA treats its opponents, arresting judges, indicting or openly threatening political opponents with arrest, usurping state power using military forces. Democratic institutions and rules of democratic politics are already out the window.

In totally dominating American politics, MAGA has found the formula to gain absolute power and move the country toward a dictatorship or a monarchy, which is the doctrine of “Us versus Them”. It had been put into practice before by hardline Republican politicians but why it didn’t stick until now? The answer is the white population’s sentiment. Not that their material life has not improved (it has robustly, thanks to China’s production) but the sense that their dominance, and therefore their security, is being threatened, and their control of things getting out of hand. The rise of China whose people were formerly considered by white Americans as no good at anything or even worth owning a little tiny bit of land in America, except for providing inexhaustible coolies, and the influx of immigrants are symptomatic of the changes that they perceived negatively affect their life. That is when they find MAGA’s propaganda not to be rude, coarse, uncivilized, and against human nature or even nature, but making sense.

There lurches the danger, not to MAGA or the Oligarchs or billionaires but to common people.

MAGA has no intention of gaining power just for cleaning up immigration and other social issues they dislike, and going through the democratic election cycles and, if they lose, relinquishing it as dictated by the democratic process. They want permanent power so that they can reshape the country into a white only, simple, and isolated nation, as simple as the old regimes in feudal Europe, more easily governed and controlled: The king and his family on top, coexisting with and supported by the billionaires who will lord over the functionaries such as executives, technicians, government workers including cabinet secretaries. The current U.S. government has already had that makeup with members of Congress and the courts are being treated no differently than subjects of the king’s court and they, willingly or under pressure, remain passive and alarmingly silent.

The caste system has worked beautifully for thousands of years in India. Even though it has constitutionally been outlawed, it is still alive and well in its society. Why not adopting a thing that has worked successfully for so long, MAGA asked themselves, and in a moment of Eureka, gleefully applied the system to the American society after modifying it to show a veneer of humaneness: Immigrants, the modern-day Shudras, cannot be citizens but only be guest workers. The esteemed Arabs have perfected their guest worker system that allows the “guests” to work for minimum wage without ever being naturalized or given basic human rights let alone the right to vote.  It is a solid and desirable system to keep the social order with the billionaires being the Brahmins.

The common men, regardless of their skin color, will realize, hopefully not too late, that they are being swallowed into the system like the submarine being swallowed by Karl Stromberg’s humongous tanker Liparus. If they don’t make their choice with their votes carefully now, they would all be Shudras with no right to their name and no power over their lives and their children and grandchildren’s lives. They would have no say except moaning “we are sorry”.

In a Democracy, one party fights another party as an adversary or opposition, but they cooperate and even consult each other in governing. They always treat each other with respect. So far, MAGA has treated the Democrats like pariahs calling them “idiotic” or deliberately smirking, disdainfully calling him “Jose Padilla” because U.S. Senator ALEX Padilla is a Mexican American, (JOSE Padilla is a convicted terrorist still serving time in federal prison). The fact that they can be petty, obscene, and laughing about it in public give them a pervert satisfaction that they are powerful and untouchable.

It is not just a strategy to sideline the Democrats to get an advantage for the next election cycle. It is an assault on an opposite party, the democratic institutions, and the very foundation of Democracy. MAGA treats the Democrats with outright disdain, the ENEMIES to be eradicated. It puts down or threatens the Democrats whatever way it can, relentlessly, ceaselessly, never stops even when national tragedies happen.

The case in point was its reaction to the assassination of a Minnesotan Democratic state representative and her husband, and an assassination attempt on a state senator. Don’t let off, don’t apologize, don’t sympathize, criticize the Democrats even if it’s a lie, is their motto. The president at first rightfully condemned the assassination. But he changed his tune a few days later as if he had got an earful from MAGA. Many other MAGA figures started loudly and in coordination accusing and criticizing ad nauseam the Democrats even though there is evidence that the shooter is a MAGA supporter.

Such MO is consistent with MAGA’s plan to clear the political landscape so that in three and a half years, America won’t have an inauguration of a new president but the coronation of a king. With a quick and steady pace as we have seen, four years would be long enough for MAGA to find ways to intimidate the courts and Congress to bend to its will to amend or even abolish the Constitution. The next step would be the establishing of a monarchy, or an oligarchy depending on who among MAGA would then have the upper hand.

If Democracy were lost, the common men would lose big. The Democratic legacy fought hard and sacrificed dearly for centuries by the people who had suffered under monarchs and dictators, would be gone. And then, the common men would have to fight and sacrifice again for the freedom and the rights they have possessed up to this point, if they would still remember how these rights, freedom, and happiness were intertwined.

It sounds dramatic, but not farfetched if the common men are distracted by other factors and fail to protect the most precious things they have ever possessed: their Freedom and their Rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Don’t your children, grandchildren, and descendants deserve the same things?

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article is posted on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

Billionaire Elon Musk was riding high: the richest man in the world and confirmed First Buddy of the President of the United States. But most importantly for an immigrant from South Africa, he was included in the inner circle that makes decisions on the most important issues of America, and the world – a circle of two, himself and Donald J. Trump, he believed.

His exceptional antennae may have picked up some signal, before the super nova exploded in the White House, that things did not seem to be as he thought or anticipated. But the super nova confirmed his suspicion. In front of staff members, a cabinet secretary who is supposed to fawn all over him – First Buddy holds the same status as the One he is buddy with – shouted to his face “fuck you” – not once, not twice but three times. He was awakened to the stark-naked fact that he had never been accepted. He was a foreigner. Worse, he has never belonged to the Trump orbit, let alone the Circle-of-Two.

He feels he has been played, used. For a man who single-handedly and ACCURATELY sent rockets and space crafts into space, a feat not even the venerable Boeing can do, a man who looked down on everyone including the president of the United States, his ego is torn big time. Maybe he is angry at himself, too. The genius engineer suddenly becomes aware that he is, politically, a novice.

That, figuratively speaking, kills him, not Tesla losing subsidies or the disgusting abomination Big Beautiful Bill.

He must have been feeling that he had joined a political Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch in a wild chaotic journey, a slow-motion traverse into darkness that he willingly and wholeheartedly devoted a huge portion of his fortune and his invaluable personal time in order to be a part of its mission to restore the White Supremacy that he knew as a young boy in South Africa. Presumably, the admission of White South African immigrants into the U.S. had something to do with Mr. Musk. If in fact it was, at the end of June 2025, a grand total of 68 White South Africans having been admitted is undoubtedly a great insult to the man who was used to huge numbers.

That was the root cause of his recent outbursts.

One should never take anything said, or done, by a man of Mr. Musk’s caliber

(in terms of brain power as well as fortune) lightly. As the owner of a social media outlet and hi-tech companies which routinely collect data, and leader of DOGE, his ability to gather information is immense and deep. The posts by Mr. Musk about the Epstein File and that “without me Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51/49 in the Senate” is eerie as the 51/49 is so particular.

It may not be a rant. What did he do, and how, to help Mr. Trump and the Republicans to win the races beside contribution of money to MAGA’s PACs? What facts does he have to support his allegation of the potential losses of TWO Republican Senators to the Democrats without his help? Was his assertion that the president was in the Epstein file true? How does he know that?

Different but related questions: Does the president’s warning to Mr. Musk not to “defect” to the DP carry any real threat to the billionaire and how such threat can be carried out? If so, does it aim at nipping in the bud any attempt to reveal any hidden secrets?

The Trump era has introduced into in American politics and society all kinds of anomaly, but this must be a first that a former employee (albeit temporary) of the President of the United States seemingly publicly blackmails him. But considering his emotional state, his outburst was most likely not blackmailing but shooting from the hip, a Pike Bishop charging into a courtyard in Mexico blazing guns for revenge, in blind rage, unthinking.

What is the next move for Mr. Musk? The president has inadvertently given him ideas. He warns Mr.  Musk not to defect to the other side, meaning the Democratic Party. That actually is not a bad choice. The Republic has stood on two legs and maintained its stability since its founding with that reliable makeup. Presently, one leg is crippled and the other is like the proverbial bull in a China (cups and dishes) shop. Repairing and propping the crippled one up is a crucial undertaking, worthy of the talent of someone like Mr. Musk. Switching his help to the Democratic Party is not only recommended and commendable but could turn out to be one of the best achievements coming from his genius brain and fortune.

The government must pay close attention to the extent of Mr. Musk’s control and fielding of space technology before making threats of consequences against him or his companies. SpaceX is the only American company currently providing America with space ability while waiting for the old traditional money guzzling space companies to figure out how to shoot a rocket into space without burning it up in mid air or flying a spacecraft to the space station and returning it back to earth without fatal leaking fuel.

Since President Trump was voted back into power, unpredictability seems to have followed him into the White House, and the country has not had a dull moment during the 140 days into his four-year presidency.

There may be too much excitement for the good health of the country.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                (This article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

When Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to reform the Soviet Union led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a young Russian harbored a resentment of what he called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. He seethed with deep anger and was determined to restore the power and prestige of the old Soviet Union. It is not farfetched to imagine that he would, shirtless and shoeless, ride a saddle-less horse all the way to Ukraine to plant the Russian flag in Kyiv. It does not seem easy to soothe his psyche until Ukraine will again become a Russian vassal.

Undoubtedly, President Trump is the one American politician that Mr. Putin feels friendly and comfortable enough to talk to without requiring him to seat at the other end of a 100-foot-long table. Political hyperbole aside, any thinking that Mr. Putin will be persuaded to stop the war soon and let even half of Ukraine join the Western alliance is imprudent, especially if the thinking comes from the European Union and NATO.

Since the end of WWII, Europe has behaved like a second child in a family of Western Civilized Democracy, enjoying life to the fullest but doing almost nothing in terms of defending the territory. All responsibility rests on the shoulder of Big Sam – a brother living afar on the other side of an ocean. For all those years protected by Big Sam, the European Union has built a few, very few defense, industrial, or hardware companies, but several billion-dollar fashion and fast-fashion companies. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the American’s detachment are a wake-up call for Europe to take their destiny back into their own hands.

The European Union and NATO were not created so that Europeans could enjoy, and now is enjoying, 35 hour-work week, 14 holidays a year, and 11 official work months a year. In reality, they work fewer than 11 months a year if you count their 25 paid vacation days.

In 1990, the U.S.’s GDP was $6 Trillion versus EU.’s $6.2T. In 2000, the U.S. surpassed the RU $10.3T v. $8.7T. But in 2010, the EU’s GDP was again bigger than the U.S.’s, $16.3T v. $15T. But in 2024, the U.S. surged ahead with $28T versus $19T for the EU.

It was possible that Brother Sam told them not to play with guns, so they poured their energy and enthusiasm into fashion. But these numbers tell them that if they wanted, they could be as strong as the Americans.

Now is the time to do so.

The Russians have been smirking at the EU. Without the U.S. nuclear bombs threatening to rain down on Russian cities from above, the EU to them is a paper tiger. Now the U.S. cannot make any clearer that the EU is on its own, Russia has no reason not to swallow Ukraine and threaten other EU’s members such as the Baltic countries and Poland. Only a powerful nuclear-capable EU could deter such scenario from happening. During WWII, just one European country, Germany, could shake the Soviet Union empire in its boots. The EU is many times bigger than Germany and many times more resourceful.

One great concern is the European tradition of bickering among themselves and their habit of getting into a military duel easily, triggered by relatively unimportant events such as the death of an Archduke.

Political leaders and heads of states of the EU have paid tribute to Washington. They show respect but also the need for the support of America. Such tribute also serves to prove the maturity of European leaders overcoming their customary pride, especially the Germanic pride, one of the causes triggering the catastrophic WWII.  They obviously want the American participation in their foreign affairs.

But they must resist the American Republican MAGA’s insidious effort to mess with their internal affairs. The good news is the Democracy Defenders in Europe are still strong and have the upper hand over the racists and extremists such as the follower s of AfD and Die Heimat in Germany, and the Rassemblement National in France.

Europe, England and France in particular, is the cradle of Democracy and has a long history defending it. It should not let the power of a dictatorship or the illusion of the renewal of a bygone monarchy force it to stray from the path of Democracy. It must develop its own defense forces to stay independent from foreign powers and to protect its democratic institutions and traditions. The world has admired and wholeheartedly adopted its ideals. It seems like the world needs it again to steer it through a time dominated by reactionary, selfish, and sadistic Jungian Shadow.

America Democratic force for the time being has gone underground, preferring incognito for fear of MAGA’s punishment. MAGA has for years studied and learned a few tactics to punish its opponents. They don’t kill you – too crude. They just threaten you with nightmares or in fact create nightmares for you and family.

The thought that waking up one day finding himself walking down the step of a truck into the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador is enough to sweat a Democrat into clamming shut his mouth. Or ICE swoops on campuses to arrest an alleged “illegal” who is not illegal. Oops, we make a mistake but a life as their parents have worked hard and hoped for is gone – forever. A hint of pulling the purse string literally (grants) or figuratively (strict regulations) could force a university to kowtow or persuade billionaire CEOs clasping their hands in front of their crotch meekly getting in line to be granted an audience with the king.

Thus, Europe, which has the bravery in the face of fierce and violent onslaught by the racists and extremists, and the power to marginalize the French Zealots and classify the AfD German right-sing extremists in spite of the American government’s open support for AfD.

It’s not easy to understand the Russian psychology, wanting the whole planet earth but unable to digest what they have got. They occupy one third of the landmass of Asia and Europe combined but have always been in fear of being unsecured and unsafe against its little neighbors. They need to liberate themselves by reading more of the works of Neo-Freudian psychoanalysts.

In only four years, the German Nazi built a formidable fighting machine not just enough to defend itself but so strong that it swept through Europe and reached Moscow to the East. It is not unreasonable to expect that Modern Europe does not need four years but probably two to build a defense credible enough for Moscow to think twice before moving their tanks across the border of any of its neighbors in Eastern Europe like they did in Ukraine.

After WWII, it has taken the Americans a long time to get over the thought that giving the Germans the nuclear bomb is like giving Al Capone a bazooka. But the way Putin stares at Europe from the East licking his lips, it is about time to change that. Even the Poles want the bomb too.

Time has changed. Europe must change too. It should invest less in sex, fashion lady bags, and gourmet food, and more in defense hardware to protect itself and probably the world.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article can be read on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

 

Commoners fought with blood, sweat, and tears for Equality and Freedom against the oppression of Monarchies. They sacrificed themselves for the cause, and hundreds of thousands had died over the centuries to get rid of the brutal, abusive, and oppressive regime, namely the Monarchy, to create and build a political regime that have served and protected everyone. It is called Democracy.

During World War II, we commoners died in the millions to fight dictatorships to protect Democracy.

The Unites States of America was founded on those democratic ideas and principles and firmly committed itself to them by adopting the Declaration of Independence and ratifying the Constitution. It has developed a most humane and enlightened body of law. It has shown itself to be the best political system humankind has known and lived in. It may not mean much for billionaires as they own ranch land half the size of Montana, or many skyscrapers in Chicago, or a few coal mines, or many manufacturing facilities, or assets spanning the country. They don’t even know how to spell Democracy, which may in fact interfere with their idiosyncrasies.

White folks have sought solutions for immediate short-term problems (that could have definitely been solved in a democratic, more enlightened way), and voted MAGA into office based on their aggressive promises to provide solutions. Now, it has been shown that MAGA, with the supports of billionaires, has a different agenda that could destroy their ancestors’ centuries of effort to build a long-lasting system guaranteeing freedom and happiness for their offspring – and for mankind.

MAGA and the billionaires are, amazingly, enamored and obsessed with two outmoded and condemned political systems: the dictatorship in Russia and North Korea, and the modern-day slavery policy practiced by the Arabs, the so-called guest workers system of getting foreigners (immigrants) working for them for subsistence pay without any political rights or social protection. Europeans, Canadians, Chinese, and Mexicans be damned. MAGA has made new very good friends.

The Constitution has given Americans, white or non-white, an effective mechanism to protect themselves and their descendants: the vote. In about one and a half years, that vote will decide if MAGA would still be in power, the Potomac River crowded with 700-foot yachts, Burji Khalifar II rising above the Washington Monument, private clubs and associations off limit to commoners growing like mushrooms all over the country, Russians eating caviar, drinking Vodka, and sunbathing on the Capitol Grounds. American common folks would not dare to travel abroad for fear of being stuck at the borders, would pay $3000 for a cell phone and send their children to city colleges as universities, which are being punished for being woke, lose subsidies and foreign students, and will be forced to charge exorbitant tuition to survive.

Voting right was the country’s Founding Fathers’ precious gift to the American common folks as a shield and a sword to protect a safe and fostering environment, which is a free democratic society.

MAGA has openly adopted strategies anathema to Democracy. It pursues and punishes real and perceived enemies whether they are immigrants, objectors, or bastions of high education. They have tried to get rid of immigrants as many and as fast as can be done to create a fait accompli, before the American conscience can intervene. The white majority is now 75% of the U.S.’s total population. After MAGA is done, and with the first wave of white South Africans opening the door for more white immigrants to enter the U.S., the white majority will easily reach 90% or more, soon.

MAGA’s mindset is not just making America isolated but smaller, as little connection and interaction with the outside world as possible.

When my wife and I were in Italy not long ago, we were having dinner at the Machiavelli Restaurant (or a restaurant on the Machiavelli Estate) in Florence, the entertainers of the evening was a young Italian couple. During a break, they approached our table of six or eight patrons, two Vietnamese, us, and the rest being white. They asked, “Are you Americans,” then smiled at us, the Vietnamese. They were controlled in manner and expression but obviously enthusiastic and impressed by the fact that an Asian looking couple WAS American. My wife was very happy to confirm. The rest of the evening, they performed American songs. At the end of the evening, they took pictures with us.

That is the America we want to preserve and promote. Wherever we Americans go, people welcome us with affection and admiration. The world has seen America as an embodiment of goodness, strength, and generosity, NOT of the race.

Do you think the world will now behave the same way when they see us? Does MAGA’s America seemingly look, to them, small-minded, petty, withdrawn, and scared?

This is our country, and Democracy is our legacy. Use your vote to restore, preserve and promote the EXCEPTIONALISM of America.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                (This article can be read on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

Methodically. Methodically.

MAGA won’t take the low road of Lenin. Mao, and Ho’s strategy by exhorting the multitude to rise up and storm the palace.  But exhort them they did, only to win elections. It did try the low road on January 6, 2021, and failed. It has since learned the lesson (or more likely the hot-headed ceded the lead to the thinking billionaires) and has taken the high road, first to take power while steadfastly adhering to the democratic rules.

MAGA took the risky step of exploiting racism to win power. Now in power, it will resort to a more audacious and extremely risky strategy to maintain and preserve its power: bringing down Democracy.

How will it do it? -By working from within, a marvelously cunning scheme.

The calculation is that for the next four years, MAGA’s base in the electorate will still fervently believe in its crusade to take the country back for the white race, or at least for the white race to have total control even if that means a smaller country in terms of people and more isolated in international relations. Then, during these four years, MAGA will not focus on governing but MAGAnize the country, meaning to clear up every trace of any perceived woke personnel in the government and replace them with people with two required qualifications: absolute loyalty and the ability to carry out orders without asking questions. Once it is done, the country will be a de facto Monarchy or Dictatorship.

That has already happened with the periodical “Praising the Leader” sessions where cabinet members take turn to praise the president with one said, “Since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills – 3400 kilos of fentanyl…which saved – are you ready for this MEDIA? – 258 MILLION LIVES”. That makes the citizen in the story “the emperor has no clothes”, who proclaimed that the naked emperor was wearing clothes, seem tame.

Many years back, a news network showed a North Korean woman who, upon seeing for the first time after many years in the dark when the bandage was removed from her eyes, immediately knelt down, hysterically praising and thanking the Dear Leader for curing her blindness, never mind that the curing had been performed by a Western doctor. The irrationality and the blind obedience are strikingly similar. The difference, and most scary, is the cabinet has a lot of power.

Today the cabinet, tomorrow the country.

Politics is a People Game, but the Democrats have emphasized and paid attention more on ideology than people. When they lost a sizable chunk of demography by Nixon’s Southern Strategy, that should have been a wake-up call to adjust their pursuit to wait for the Southerners to understand and catch up. Instead, they have gleefully advocated and executed policies, which are objectionable to a huge number of people they wanted to lead and to vote for them.

Now they are on the sideline hoping for the Supreme Court to come to the rescue. Joseph Stalin (Russian again!) once asked, “The Pope? How many divisions he has?” Indeed, what power does the Supreme Court have? Where is Kilmar Abrego Garcia after the Court ruled that he must be returned to the U.S?

Little by little, methodically, MAGA has moved forth with actions or thrown out trial balloons to determine the next moves. Ironically, MAGA masters the democratic game thoroughly and has played it WITHIN the democratic system dexterously while the Democrats are still feeling their way around trying to find, probably too late, countermoves. Many billionaires and best and brightest minds, previously their allies, have either moved to the other side or kept quiet.

It is not too difficult to see that in a year and a half, MAGA will even more ardently exhort racism to mobilize its base to send more MAGA faithful to Congress and State Houses of Representatives to make its majority reach the two third level. The next step is easy to predict: changing the laws and changing the Federal and State Constitutions.

Why should MAGA and its allies care if such a result would be a catastrophe? The prospect that it could be achieved is enthralling and irresistible to billionaires and game players.

But to the common men and women, Democracy is not a game. In no other political system but only in American Democracy that our rights to live a decent life as a free common man are protected.

Our fate is not in our stars – it is in ourselves.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                   (This article can be read on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

The course MAGA has taken to obtain absolute power is methodical.

To get rid of the foreign elements represented by immigrants and to “take the country back”, Democracy must be undone because Democracy is a “woke” idea, which advocates, promotes, and defends the freedom and equality of everyone that do not fit in with MAGA’s scheme of things.

It started with gaining political power WITHIN the democratic framework to avoid being crushed in the embryo. They did not look far to find the answer to the question of how to do it. MAGA is not just rednecks. Billionaires and many brightest minds are in their rank, who do not like Democracy and prefer Oligarchy or even dictatorship. They are endowed with exceptional talent and intelligence, so they are naturally arrogant, feel superior, and have little tolerance for slower or less intelligent people.  They hate being talked back. When they say do “this” they expect others to do exactly “this” no question asked. Clearly, Democracy has no good use for them.

MAGA’s brightest minds readily found the experiences of the Soviet Union and China’s proletariat revolutions useful. Mao said during the Korean War that you (the Americans) have the atomic bomb, but we (the Chinese) have the people. That sums up Lenin’s and Mao’s insight that from the people, political and even military power would be created. It is profound but simple: in the U.S. that power would come from the voters.

Because of their ideology, MAGA obviously did not expect a majority of American voters would support it especially non-white Americans, who felt themselves to be the scorn of MAGA. But white voters still held the majority. MAGA was therefore presented with the question of how to get their vote, or to be exact, the majority of their votes.

To call upon the white folks to line up behind them was difficult and complicated not only because of political correctness but also white forks did like and had had feelings and respect for other people too. They had been married into other races all over the country and had voted for woke Democrats. The hurdle MAGA had to overcome was tremendous requiring drastic and risky strategy, which had to be potentially so powerful that it would bully through political correctness and pull most if not all white into MAGA’s camp.

They found it: racism.

The clannish mentality seems normal in America. Yale versus Harvard, UCLA versus USC, it is artificial but useful. When it comes to races, competitiveness becomes extremely ferocious because the emotion is more basic and animalistic. Education and law could only help to keep it under a thin layer. With a little prodding, especially from one main political party, the beast would readily wake up. If the country was being invaded, immigrants flooded society with foreign wicked ideas and customs, another country of a different race was competing neck and neck with the white race, white people would stand up in unison to fight for their tradition and values, or more easily felt and understood by the white, or to be truthful by any multitude, for their race. That would trump any feeling white have for other racial relationships including spousal relationship, regardless of how warm it was.

Winning political races is only the means to reach the next goal. For years, MAGA worked doggedly to eradicate the legacy of a black president, so they fully expected that a woke administration would try to bring down any creation by MAGA. So, the next goal would be to stay in power for a long period of time long enough to solidify MAGA grip on the country. To do so, MAGA needed to invoke the mentality of “us” against “them” as long as possible and cause a feeling in the people of uneasiness and uncertain by creating chaos.

But sooner or later, white people would get tired of demagoguery and extremism, realize the phoniness of the race issue, and vote MAGA out. To prevent that from happening is their next goal, which is the dismantling of Democracy and replacing it with an Oligarchy or Dictatorship in the form of the Putin or Kim Jong Un regime. Or even better, an Aristocracy.

The scary thing is the Democrats and the Republicans who love and respect Democracy suddenly disappear from the American political map, withdrawing into the far side of the moon and putting all their hope in the Supreme Court – the same court with six extremely conservative members who voted for everything MAGA, including discarding a sixty-year precedent that protected women’s rights and the expansion of presidential immunity and power.

How to dismantle Democracy?

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(You can read this article on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

In the Nineteen Century, France sent gunships to Viet Nam. The royal court debated frantically how to deal with the situation. The mandarins wanted to negotiate with France, but the generals led by Nguyen Tri Phuong fiercely objected. They disliked foreigners and they were patriotic. Unlike the Japanese and the Siamese who chose to talk to the Westerners, General Nguyen and his colleagues were heroic, willing to fight to the death. General Nguyen threatened to commit suicide if the king capitulated to the French’s demands.
How could the king ignore his entreaty, a patriot and his most loyal subject? The general got his wish.
In a battle in Hanoi, the general was captured by the French. Heroic to the end, he refused medical treatment by the French and starved himself to death.
His misunderstanding of the military capability of the two countries, and the situation in general, led to not only his demise but Viet Nam for 67 years ceased to exist and was chopped into three little pieces with strange names: Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. This traumatic history has taught a lesson, a relevant and very important lesson for our time: heroism sometimes is selfish and disastrous.
MAGA is no doubt patriotic. That they may just want the country for themselves does not make them less patriotic. They have been angry seeing that the country has been “exploited” by foreigners, “hollowed out” by China in the words of one of its more fierce loyalists. They have loudly asserted that the U.S. has been cheated by its trading counterparts, especially China. The president, prompted by their advice, declared that the U.S. and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years. Using this self-serving “information”, MAGA has worked hard to push for the imposition of tariffs. They raised the banner “Make America Great Again” (that in hindsight did not make much sense as mentioned below). They have heroically led the charge against foreigners and foreign countries. And the president was persuaded and declared the tariffs war on the world, with China of course receiving the hammer, 125%. That means the common men, the consumers of everyday products will pay double for any item coming from China. If you ever happen to turn a product upside down to look at the bottom, from a teacup to a computer, more often than not you see the three words “Made in China”.
The numbers tell a different story, strikingly different.
During the last three decades, the United States has surged ahead of all major competitors. In 2008, the U.S. economy was about the same size as the Eurozone. By 2023, it was nearly twice that size. U.S. average wages were about 20 percent greater than the average of the advanced industrial world in 1990. They are now around 40 percent higher. The average Japanese person was 50 percent richer than an American in 1995 in terms of GDP per capita. Today, an American is about 150 percent richer than a Japanese person. In fact, the poorest American state, Mississippi, has a higher per capita GDP than Britain or France or Japan, (Source: the Fareed Zakaria GPS).
Now, MAGA, like General Nguyen, does not comprehend the situation clearly, misunderstand the balance of forces and underestimates its trading counterparts. With only 14.7% of its total export goes to the U.S., China can afford to go toe to toe with the U.S. and did raise its tariff against American goods also to 125%.
Thank Heavens that we do not lose a country but only a new iPhone, or a good vacations. And who actually will lose them? Us, humble common men yearning all year long for either one of them. We pay for MAGA’s ego and dark intentions.
The country does not need another department, but a small office located somewhere in the West Wing and employing some of the DOGE’s geniuses and their computers to evaluate, each quarter, the president’s appointees to determine their ability to understand the world as it is, not the world they dream it to be.
If they kept making mistakes, the next one would probably cost us not just an iPhone, or a computer, or a good vacation.

JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, Facebook, and X).