Tag: Confederate statues

Trump just keeps stepping in it deeper and deeper

President Trump just can’t help himself, and I’m going to keep talking about it on my blog as long as I can. The day may come when I don’t have the freedom to do that.

This week has been brutal!

Let’s stop training mental health counselors

Photo of a fence on which three signs hang: Don't give up, You are not alone, and You matter.
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Even though every time there is a “lone wolf” terrorist attack or mass shooting in the U.S., there is an outcry for more mental health facilities and more mental health counselling.

So why did Trump stop a $10 million grant program to train mental health counselors?

Trump says he won’t run for a third term

Section 1 of the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution seems straightforward to me: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

Trump announced on Tuesday that he does not plan to run for a third term as U.S. President.

That’s big of him!

It isn’t known whether he plans to move out of the White House at the end of his second term, or whether he plans to just never leave office.

Anti-Science Trump

Trump has ordered NASA to destroy two satellites that provide detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. Just because Trump thinks climate change is a hoax does not make it so.

Farmers, scientists, oil and gas companies, among others, depend on the data gathered by those two satellites.

The American taxpayers paid $750 million for those satellites.

Trump on human biology

Photo of several people gathering produce in a field
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Trump was truly on a roll Tuesday. He appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box and talked about how he believes undocumented immigrants are naturally made for farm work and people who live in inner cities can’t do it.

You can’t make this stuff up!

Here’s a quote from the show:

“We can’t let our farmers not have anybody,” Trump added of undocumented farm laborers, primarily of Hispanic origin, who are being targeted for deportation by his Department of Homeland Security. “These [are] people that you can’t replace them very easily – you know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They’re just not doing that work. And they’ve tried – we’ve tried, everybody tried. They don’t do it. These people do it naturally, naturally.” 

I love how Rolling Stone summed up the incident: “It should go without saying that no group of people feels an intrinsic urge to cultivate the land for sub-livable wages and at constant risk of detainment and deportation, but the president doubled down.” 

mRNA vaccine research cancelled

Photo of a person's gloved hands filling a hypodermic needle with clear liquid from a bottle
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced on Wednesday that the Trump Administration is cancelling $500 million in mRNA vaccine research. Kennedy, a lifelong vaccine-denier, claims there is a more high-tech way to develop vaccines. He also said there is no proof that mRNA vaccines work against respiratory viruses. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) beg to differ, saying the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine saved an estimated 14.4 million lives.

Twenty-two different research projects are being halted, including those studying the possibility of using mRNA vaccines in the treatment of cystic fibrosis and pancreatic cancer.

Who put RFKjr in charge of vaccines? Oh yeah… Donald Trump and the United States Senate.

This decision could wreak havoc with our health and our economy.

Trump pulls United States out of UNESCO

The White House announced yesterday that Trump is withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Trump considers UNESCO to have a “woke” and politically divisive agenda.

This outrageous!

When I wrote The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for Arcadia Publishing in 2014, I proudly included the following: “The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization named Grandfather Mountain a member of the international network of Biosphere Reserves in 1992 because it supported 42 rare and endangered species.”

If Trump thinks by pulling the United States out of UNESCO he can erase that, he is wrong. My book stands as is, and I will not edit Grandfather Mountain’s UNESCO designation out of it!

How can one person encapsulate such a level of hatred for the beauty and wonder of the world?

ICE having trouble with recruitment?

Photo by Logan Weaver
|on Unsplash

It warms my heart to learn that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is having trouble recruiting people to be Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, but Secretary Kristi Noem has come up with a solution. She announced the lifting of the maximum age cap and the lowering of the minimum age to 18.

Until this week a person could be no older than 40 years old to apply for the job. According to Noem, there is now no age limit and she welcomes teenagers to apply.

What could possibly go wrong with 18- and 80-year-old ICE agents?

Ex-Acting FBI Director Fired

Brian Driscoll was Acting Director of the FBI at the beginning of Trump’s second term, but Driscoll refused to give Trump a list of the FBI agents who worked on the January 6, 2021 attempted coup.

Photo of the seal of the FBI
Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash

Kash Patel was eventually named FBI Director, but Driscoll had returned to serve in the agency in another position. That was until yesterday when Trump fired him.

All federal employees take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. But Trump demands loyalty to Donald J. Trump alone. If you remain loyal to the U.S. Constitution, he will fire you.

This is not the way things are supposed to be. Will Americans wake up before it is too late?

Breaking the Constitution to have another census

To add a measure of legitimacy to the rigging of the 2026 mid-term elections, Trump is calling for a federal census to be taken this year in which only U.S. citizens will be counted.

Under the law, the census has been taken every 10 years since 1790 and everyone has been counted – not just U.S. citizens.

I guess I need to dust off my passport application and get it submitted as soon as possible, in case my birth certificate does not prove I’m a citizen.

You see, in Texas the Republicans are trying to redraw the U.S. House Districts before the 2026 Congressional election and gerrymander the map to take away five predominantly Democratic districts and convert them into predominantly Republican districts. The bottom line is that Trump does not want to lose the Republican majority currently in the U.S. House.

There has been quite a stir over this very issue in Texas this week, and the U.S. House of Representatives hangs in the balance.

Photo by Enayet Raheem on Unsplash

I will quote from https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about/census-constitution.html, because it states the whys and wherefores of the census and the U.S. Constitution better than I could:

“Why Jefferson, Madison and the Founders Enshrined the Census in our Constitution”

“The U.S. Constitution empowers the Congress to carry out the census in “such manner as they shall by Law direct” (Article I, Section 2). The Founders of our fledgling nation had a bold and ambitious plan to empower the people over their new government. The plan was to count every person living in the newly created United States of America, and to use that count to determine representation in the Congress.

“Enshrining this invention in our Constitution marked a turning point in world history. Previously censuses had been used mainly to tax or confiscate property or to conscript youth into military service. The genius of the Founders was taking a tool of government and making it a tool of political empowerment for the governed over their government.

“They accomplished that goal in 1790 and our country has every 10 years since then. In 1954, Congress codified earlier census acts and all other statutes authorizing the decennial census as Title 13, U.S. Code. Title 13, U.S. Code, does not specify which subjects or questions are to be included in the decennial census. However, it does require the Census Bureau to notify Congress of general census subjects to be addressed 3 years before the decennial census and the actual questions to be asked 2 years before the decennial census.”

Also: “Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that an apportionment of representatives among the states must be carried out every 10 years. Therefore, apportionment is the original legal purpose of the decennial census, as intended by our Nation’s Founders. Apportionment is the process of dividing the 435 memberships, or seats, in the U.S. House of Representatives among the 50 states, based on the state population counts that result from each decennial census.  The apportionment results will be the first data published from the 2020 Census, and those results will determine the amount of political representation each state will have in Congress for the next 10 years.”

That’s a long explanation, but it is really rather simple that the census be taken every ten years. If Trump thinks it will be simple for every U.S. citizen to produce documented proof of citizenship, he is woefully mistaken.

Someone needs to tell him that the U.S. Congress controls the taking of the U.S. Census – not the temporary occupant of the White House.

Resurrection of Confederate statues

Americans will never be able to move on from it’s 1861-1865 civil war as long as people like Donald Trump keep stoking the fire.

The National Park Service, which is operating with a skeleton crew after Trump eliminated thousands of park staff this year, apparently has enough employees left to reinstall the statue of a member of the Ku Klux Klan on the grounds of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department.

There had been requests made to Congress since 1992 to have the 11-foot statue of Confederate Army Gen. Albert Pike removed, but it stayed in place until the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Pike once wrote about the white race, “white race, and that race alone, shall govern this country. It is the only one that is fit to govern, and it is the only one that shall.”

It sends a chilling message that the Trump Administration is having Pike’s statue put back in place. It sends a strong message to all people of color: Racism is alive and well in the White House.

But that’s not all…

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in response to Trump’s “Executive Order On Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” is having a 32-foot bronze “Confederate Memorial” rebuilt and reinstalled in Arlington National Cemetery.

Sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the statue was installed in 1914 and depicts slaves supporting Confederate soldiers. The statue perpetuates the myth that slaves supported the Confederacy during the Civil War.

But Hegseth didn’t stop by just quietly having the Confederate Memorial reinstalled in Arlington National Cemetery. Apparently not knowing when to stop talking, Hegseth said, “It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history—we honor it.” 

That’s rich, coming the week after Trump’s two impeachments were removed from the Presidential Impeachments exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.

You can’t make this stuff up!

Price of prescription drugs

Photo of white percent symbols in all directions against a pastel green background
Photo by Ali Rezaei on Unsplash

If someone in my family or circle of friends said that the price of drugs will decrease by 1,500%, I would assume that person had either had a stroke or had some form of dementia.

So why is it that the President of the United States can say that he is decreasing the price of prescription drugs by 1,500% and no one blinks an eye? He has said this several times.

I fear we have become so accustomed to Trump’s lies and nonsensical proclamations and rantings that we just accept it as, “That’s just the way he is.”

This is not something an adult with any level of intelligence or mental capabilities would say. Any fourth grader knows a 1,500% drop in the cost of a candy bar is a mathematical impossibility.

In conclusion

That’s just eleven things the Trump Administration did this week that I thought you might not have heard about.

I’m sorry this post is so long. Don’t blame the messenger.

Have a great weekend!

Janet

“Defeated cultures behave strangely.”

(I set out to blog about a paragraph I liked from The Quantum Spy, a novel by David Ignatius. My thoughts, as usual, took me in some unexpected directions.)

As I write this on Sunday evening, the one-year anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia is being remembered across the United States and marked by demonstrations in Washington, DC. Heather Heyer was killed while peacefully protesting against the white supremacists who were marching and spewing vile racist chants at the base of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville last year.

Our nation’s president said, “Very fine people on both sides.”

No, Mr. Trump. Nazis and white supremacists are not fine people. Fine people are not Nazis and white supremacists.

A quote from a novel

I have come to understand that fiction can be used to shine a light on reality. Ideally, a history book presents documented facts. A work of fiction allows an author to present differing opinions on an issue in a creative way. In a novel, a character can voice an opinion or a truth in a way we usually don’t find in a history book.

The Quantum Spy
The Quantum Spy, by David Ignatius

As I thought about the protests in Washington, DC this weekend, I was reminded of a paragraph from The Quantum Spy, by David Ignatius, quoted below. It is written in the point-of-view of a character named Chang. A statue of a Confederate soldier moves Chang to a clearer understanding of the American Civil War.

“There was a curious statue in the middle of the intersection…. It portrayed a Confederate soldier, hat in hand, head down, shoulders slouched as he looked south. It was called ‘Appomattox.’ An inscription under the figure said:  ‘They died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed.’ It was a monument to defeat. Chang had never admired the Confederacy, but in that moment, he empathized. Defeated cultures behave strangely.” ~ from page 265 of The Quantum Spy, by David Ignatius.

Letting go of the US Civil War

It seems like Americans will forever fight the Civil War, which officially ended in 1865 with the surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to United States Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia.

We as a people need to learn from the Civil War and not repeat the mistakes of the past. We need to stop using the Civil War as an excuse to hate. The Confederate flags and swastika-emblazoned arm bands belong in museums, not on our streets.

Putting away the symbols of division and hate will not solve the problem, though. Taking down Civil War monuments won’t solve the problem. Only honest conversation and empathy can solve this problem.

I am a Southerner. I was born in The South and have lived here all my life. All four of my great-grandfathers and one of my great-great-grandfathers fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Each of them must have felt like they were doing the right thing.

I cannot get into their heads to know or understand their thinking. They were products of their times, and they were prisoners of their times. They did not have the advantage of hindsight.

Defeat is a difficult thing to take and pride is a difficult thing to swallow, but I have to wonder if most of those Confederate veterans even came to believe that it was a good thing the Union won the Civil War.

Distrust and Fear: A national problem

There is a problem within America. A facet of it is racism, but it goes beyond racism. There is distrust between many people of different races, religions, and political views.

For reasons I don’t understand, a lot of people in the United States distrust and fear people who don’t look like them, worship like them, dress like them, vote like them, or talk like them.

Although the United States has been called a “melting pot,” that process has been fraught with strife and misunderstandings. As each new group of immigrants entered the country, they faced discrimination and ridicule; however, eventually, they found acceptance. The following words inscribed at the Statue of Liberty meant something.

“Give me your tired, your poor,                                                                                                   Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;                                                                     The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The Statue of Liberty vertical photo
The Statue of Liberty, New York, New York

(Photo by Juan Mayobre on Unsplash)

For reasons I don’t understand, some people can’t get past the Civil War. Some people no longer accept the words of this poem as the embodiment of the American philosophy.

Let the conversation in America begin so the hatred, distrust, and fear can end.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading several books, none of which is compelling me to read to the point that I’m skipping meals or losing sleep. Rule #1:  You don’t have to finish reading a book. I’m still trying to embrace that rule.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time.

Thank you for reading my blog. You could have spent the last few minutes doing something else, but you chose to read my blog. I appreciate it! I welcome your comments.

Have you had an honest conversation about race, hatred, or distrust with someone of a racial background, religious beliefs, or political stance different from yours?

Let the conversation in America begin so the hatred, distrust, and fear can end.

Janet