“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
Luke 19:40
Did You Vote for This? is now live on Kindle.
Why should you read a book written by an obscure author?
Perhaps that is precisely the point.
I spent most of my professional life in information technology, retiring from IBM in 2025 after nearly five decades in the field. I am not a political commentator, journalist, historian, or public figure. I have no special access, no insider connections, and no political career to advance.
Yet the events of recent years compelled me to pay attention.
The relentless stream of falsehoods, the erosion of long-standing democratic norms, the decline of basic civility, the self-dealing, the patronage, the attacks on institutions, and the increasing willingness to place loyalty above principle reached a point where even those of us who normally remained outside the political arena could no longer look away.
Most of what’s in this book won’t be new to anyone who has followed the news. My purpose isn’t to expose hidden facts. The facts are already known.
My contribution is something different.
This book organizes, classifies, and connects those events into a pattern. Any single incident can be dismissed as an anomaly. But when hundreds of incidents are viewed together, a larger story emerges.
This is not the story of one event. It is the story told by all of them.
What’s inside
Six chapters, each tracing a different arena where the distance between what was promised in 2024 and what has been delivered since is most visible and best documented:
• The physical and symbolic remaking of the nation’s capital
• The transfer of legislative authority into the executive branch
• The use of immigration enforcement to demonstrate the limits of accountability
• The conversion of political access into personal profit
• The use of the pardon power as a reward for loyalty
• The use of prosecution and protection as instruments to punish critics and shield allies
Each chapter stands on its own. Read together, they trace a single argument: that this is not the accumulation of isolated decisions. It is the product of a governing philosophy — one that treats public power as private property, to be used, rewarded, and withheld as its holder sees fit.
Every factual claim is sourced, with a full source appendix organized by chapter. Where the evidence is contested, or the interpretation is mine rather than the record’s, I’ve tried to say so plainly.
(AI assisted with research, drafting, rephrasing, and presentation)
Did You Vote for This? is available now on Kindle: [LINK]
If you’ve read the chapter series here on Substack, this is that argument in full, in one place. If you’re new — this is where it starts.
This is not a series written in anger, though anger is a reasonable response to some of what follows. It is written on the belief that a democracy survives only for as long as its citizens keep checking the premise against the results.