It is not humanly possible for one person to keep up with more than a fraction of the bad things that have happened this week to the American way of life. I have blogged the last two days about the demise of freedom of speech under the Trump Administration.

I will just mention three other items of concern from the last seven days.

NATO, tariffs, Russia

Trump went on a rant on social media on Saturday morning in which he laid out how he is going to blackmail all the other NATO countries into not buying any oil from Russia. He said when they all agree to that, he will in turn place sanctions on Russia.

What a lame way to announce he has no intentions of sanctioning Russia! Any former U.S. President would not have had to wait on all other NATO nations to act before he could put tariffs on Russia.

U.S. Department of Education

One of the main things Trump ran on last year was the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education. It is ironic that the more department employees they fire, the more new ideas they come up with for new programs.

The illustrious U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced a new idea this week. Since her background is in the wrestling industry, I really doubt it was her idea. I think any thinking person can figure out the source of the new plans she announced on Wednesday.

McMahon said not enough young Americans love America because they don’t have any knowledge of America. (That’s a paraphrase, but you get the point.) To remedy this, the U.S. Department of Education (I guess until it no longer exists, if we can trust Trump to eliminate it) is partnering with 40 conservative organizations to create The America 250 Civics Education Coalition.

Someone apparently slipped up and told McMahon that 2026 will be the 250^th birthday of the United States of America. Who knew! She is scrambling as 2025 comes to an end to teach every American student some civics next year.

The Administration that has pledged to root out all vestiges of wokeness and all vestiges of indoctrination is now partnering with the most politically and religiously conservative organizations in the country (including Turning Point USA, Turning Point Education, Hillsdale College, the America First Policy Institute, and The Heritage Foundation) to “encourage” all students in the United States from elementary school through higher education to learn about “American history, values, and geography with an unbiased approach.”

I’m trying to get my head around how one would teach geography in a biased way. I thought geography was factual. Oh, I just smacked my forehead. I just remember that I was told for 72 years that the Gulf of Mexico was the Gulf of Mexico, but President Trump renamed it this year to the Gulf of America. I guess teaching children and college students that it is the Gulf of Mexico is now considered “biased.”

I don’t want to beat a dead horse over this, so I will just leave you with a quote from Linda McMahon. Keep in mind that she is the U.S. Secretary of Education. She said the following on Wednesday in an interview with Marisa Schultz, news editor for the Washington Examiner:

          “”I mean, when you have high school students that don’t know you know what those three departments of our government are for heaven sakes, they don’t know what even that you have to register to vote in different states. I mean, it is appalling the lack of knowledge that many of our students have. And so one of my initiatives is to make sure that patriotic education, even though the Department of Education does not control curriculum, we don’t hire teachers, we don’t buy books, we don’t do any of that. But let’s encourage, if we can.”

          Two things jumped out at me from that quote: (1) The U.S. Secretary of Education thinks we have three “departments” in the U.S. Government and (2) The U.S. Secretary of Education has trouble forming a complete sentence.

          We are doomed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the teaching of civics in our schools, but I’m not in favor of a lopsided, skewed right-wing white Christian view of government, history, and geography being taught.

          There is no courage, bravery, or integrity in our corporate institutions. There is no courage, bravery, or integrity in our three branches of government.

          By the way, Secretary McMahon, we have three branches of government, not three departments of government. Maybe you aren’t the best person to be in charge of the teaching of civics in our country. Just sayin’.

Trump and his entourage are royally treated by the King Charles

There were more cringe-worthy photographs and quotes from Trump’s trip to London this week. I cringed to see how inappropriately the First Lady and the White House Press Secretary were dressed for dinner on Wednesday night, but I also cringed to see how King Charles kowtowed to Trump.

The British Royal Family sets the bar high for decorum, and Trump trips over that bar every time he goes across the pond.

With the demise of free speech in America this week, I admit I did not pay much attention to Trump’s trip, but I understand that he announced in front of God and everybody that he was the first United States President to be invited to Great Britain.

Does he not remember that he was invited there in 2018? Is he so ignorant of history that he does not know that numerous United States Presidents have been invited to Great Britain over the centuries?

It is just one more in a long line of indications that everything is all about him. I’m hard pressed to think of anyone in the history of the world who had a bigger or more fragile ego than Donald John Trump, Sr.

What struck me this week above everything else about Trump’s trip to England was that not only do citizens of Great Britain have more freedom than American citizens to protest the U.S. President, but the press there has more freedom to ask the U.S. President pointed questions than American reporters and journalists. That alone should be what Americans are taking away from the trip.

Let that sink in.

Janet