A WEEK OF THOUGHTS ABOUT DEMOCRACY’S STRUGGLES

By Ruth A. Sheets

July 14, 2025

In response to a poll on Robert Reich’s Substack thread I chose Victor Orban as the dictator Donald Trump is trying hardest to emulate.  Victor Orban came into power in Hungary under false pretenses just as Trump did.  He was popular because of nothing in particular he had done, but made massive promises the people bought and swallowed whole.  Now he rules an entire country that at one time actually stood up to the Soviet Union.  A difference is that Hungary had a history of dictatorship over many years and the United States does not, which might bring us a bit of hope. 

 

Some people have noted that Trump's welcome is starting to wear off, and for a significant number, it has already worn thin.  The Republican Party or Trumplandia as I like to think of the GOP, beyond giving Trump, their leader, everything he wants is useless if anyone thinks they will stand for or with our democracy.  For years, they have done nothing to help anyone but rich mostly white men who need no help.  In 8 years, W. Bush for example did one positive thing I could recall, create and develop an HIV/AIDS program for people suffering in Africa, which I suspect is disbanded with Trump’s illegal executive order shutting down any programs that actually help people in other nations, OK, in this nation too. 

 

I think there was one positive action in Trump’s first term, well it started out that way.  He pushed the final phases of the COVID vaccine.  Unfortunately, he promoted drugs that were not helpful for people suffering with COVID, hinted people should take bleach internally because if it works to kill germs outside the body . . . .  Even though he was a victim of COVID, he didn’t understand the efforts the medical staff at the hospital went through to save him, while he pretended he wasn’t really very sick; he lied.

 

This term, Trump is trying to hold court over a Trump-created selfish nation that has little to offer anyone.  Who wants to come here to college when if their skin is not pure as the driven they will not be welcome?  Who wants to travel here to visit when they could be arrested and thrown into a concentration camp by masked goons just for existing?  Who will want to trade with a country that puts enormous taxes on all their products so people in the US won't be able to afford them?

 

Trump and his cadre of sycophants don’t really care about any of this because the folks they are doing this destruction for are super rich and expect to jump in to pick up the pieces, taking over the nation for their benefit while they work to take over the rest of the world too so they and their super rich friends can rape the planet even more horribly than they have already done.  They think they will survive global warming because of their wealth, but like most people who do not think past the moment, they don’t consider the extreme wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and other disasters inevitable with global warming.  They only want science involved when it lets them become more wealthy.   

 

This may end up a paradise for the very rich, but not for anyone else.  Therefore, a step we must take if we do not want this dystopia is for anyone who has a platform and a mouth that can speak should be telling folks that right now, they are being pushed around by a toddler pool of white men and a few sycophantic white women who care nothing for them, only the money they can wring out of the people to enrich themselves even further, in short, endless wanting, like whiny toddlers.  We need in a variety of ways, to inform people of how we are being used, and that Trump is one of the biggest users around and loves that honor.  We have to learn and help each other to learn how to defy rather than to comply  with what is going on.  We need to help folks drop their racism, even though it may be a cherished family tradition.  It is keeping them from seeing what is really going on so they can say “no.”  The same is with stopping misogyny, xenophobia, and homo/transphobia.  Those are all hatreds fanned by people who want to control others, to control us for their own purposes.  No one should want to be owned and that is what the rich folks want to do to us.

 

I heard Trump's pathetic speech in Texas when he was trying to pretend he cared about the people lost to the flood, but it came off as disinterest, then a rant against someone who asked about the late response from FEMA and the government because Homeland Security Secretary Noem couldn't be bothered.  Trump’s over the top reaction was par for Trump's course because that is the way he always responds to people who challenge him.  He wants to be the bully in charge who accepts no questions of his motives or decisions, not much of a leader, but with the ?Supreme Court six cons supporting him as well as his entire political party, it is going to be hard to dislodge him from his position of power.  We can do it, though if we have the will and the unity it will require.  OK, it is going to require strength, courage, knowledge, persistence, and more too, but together we have that. 

RUMINATIONS ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

By Ruth A. Sheets

July 5, 2025

 On this July 4th I sit here thinking how depressing it is that over and over again throughout our history, a bunch of white men have worked to change this nation, not really caring or even thinking about the impact on the rest of the people.  In 1776, it was breaking away from Britain.  During the westward movement, it was to steal land from indigenous peoples to acquire more wealth and prestige for the investors and to take as much gold as possible.  In 1861 it was white men wanting to protect the 200+ year economy of enslavement from which they gained a lot and the enslaved, little to nothing.  Then, there were the labor and anti-labor movements, the wars, the Great Depression, all orchestrated by white men often at others' expense to gain more wealth and power.  And, here we go again.  White men are now an even smaller minority, yet we continue to pretend they are better, smarter, more innovative, more everything than anyone else.  The anti-DEIers claim without actually saying the words that the only reason any woman or person of color holds an important position was that a "better-qualified" white man was passed over in favor of THAT less competent person.  Lying is now the medium of exchange for this current group of white men who believe they are better than anyone else, and they don't have to have evidence of their superiority, just their mouths moving.  On this Independence Day, we who are not rich white men trying to control everyone else need to declare our independence of their rule, lies, abuse, incivility, desperation to hurt anyone they can.  We can make a better nation and world, but we are going to have to set those particular whiny white men, down a few pegs.  Teaching young white boys they are not better than the rest of the kids will be a challenge, but it is essential to help them grow into responsible adults who can work and play with others without trying to dominate them. 

 

All of this is not to say that white men have done nothing.  After all, we are an independent nation for nearly 250 years.  We have a labor movement that is still alive more than a century later.  We have tech that allows us to do a lot, often due to white male inventors and developers.  However, it is clear that white men have always had a cadre of women, young people, and people of color to help with and often advance the invention and development, sometimes the actual inventor. 

 

On this July 4th, we need to remember that it was We the People the Constitution was designed to support, only a few years after our war for independence.  The Constitution may have been a document written by and for white men, but that is not the language used, which means the rest of us have become included over time.  The "originalists" whine that they have to read the Constitution as it was written and rule that way, but they are lying to the American people and to themselves.  There is no such thing as originalism in reality because the founders did not envision that.  For them, our Constitution was to be a living document that was fleshed out over time through use and adaptation.  And, the white boys now                     in power are certainly trying hard to warp our document to make it support the evils they are doing to our nation and the world, while claiming some kind of originalism.  We the People need to stop this sacrilege.   

 

As I ruminated, I responded to a comment by Susanna on Heather Cox Richardson’s thread, July 3, 2025 about people needing a purpose or cause for our lives. 

Susanna, yes, we all do need a purpose.  It is just so sad that many people's purpose is to control, conquer, or do harm in general to others, sometimes marked or targeted for them, sometimes not.  I am sorry the internet which was set up to be a good connecter has turned out for many to be a divider, a source for developing the hate, distrust, and other negativities that can lead to what this nation is experiencing and perpetrating right now.  Get a bunch of rich white mostly men and their wannabees together in one place to ruminate and what they come up with is often not something good for humanity, just as the Heritage Foundation and similar richly funded organizations have proven.  It  would be great if we could redirect some of this inhumanity toward actually helping people by raising wages and salaries, building quality affordable housing for people, encouraging more cooperation, cutting the hate speech, particularly the lying, even from our "leaders."  I am not sure how we do this, but maybe instead of competition to see who can be the richest man in the world, ignore that BS and make a huge deal of the number of homes a corporation has built and donated, the number of non-white citizens a person or corporation has sponsored, companies that offer discounts for people who are struggling to make ends meet, opening, staffing, and supporting free clinics in struggling neighborhoods, donations to global organizations to stop HIV and other diseases, all with no strings attached.  We could have giant billboards praising those individuals and corporations with proof that they have done what they claim and maybe have billboards too that name and describe the Representatives and Senators that voted to defund resources the people need like Planned Parenthood, PBS/NPR, Medicaid, SNAP, etc., using phrases, try for a change, voting instead  for someone who actually cares that you have what you need.  OK, I am still a bit of an idealist, but I do think we didn't believe the evil would settle here again, so ignored most of the bad behavior of conservatives/Republicans for the past half century, occasionally trying to fight it, but still thinking Republicans had the interests of at least most of the people at heart and still believed in our democracy.  We were wrong!

 

So, now we move into the 250^th year of our nation with no certainty that we will continue as a democracy, even until next July 4^th.  We must never lose hope, though because the forces of evil count onus doing that as has happened elsewhere.  Thomas Paine reminds us that like 249 years ago, “These are the times that try men’s (our) souls . . . Those who stand it now deserve the thanks of men and women.”  So we must be the ones who stand it now and work with and for reason, persistence, and truth. 

249 YEARS AND STILL COUNTING?

By Ruth A. Sheets

July 3, 2025

 

July 4^th is nearly here and I can’t help but remember past Independence Days with fireworks, crowds, music, and so much more. 

 

My first July 4^th memory was in 1959 when we welcomed Alaska and Hawaii into the union.  I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but I heard a lot of people yelling for Alaska and Hawaii and saying there were now 50 states.  That was special because Shredded Wheat, the breakfast cereal I loved had little metal flags my sisters and I could collect in each box.  Somehow we didn’t get too many over time, but it was fun looking for them.

 

In 1964, my dad, my sisters, and I went to Elmwood Park for a band concert.  The temperature was over 100 degrees but we stayed as long as the band played, then walked home.  After that, I measured each 4^th of July temperature by that 103 number and saw it as a kind of badge of dedication, maybe love of music too.

 

The best Celebration was in 1976 when my sisters and I went to Valley Forge.  A wagon train had parked there after its weeks long journey from the west.  On the 4^th, despite the heavy fog, President Ford’s helicopter landed and he signed the order to make Valley Forge a National Park.  We met people from all over the country and had so much fun as we walked around in Colonial-style clothing.  We had just gotten past a case of presidential corruption and resignation and thought our nation was rising out of the muck of that time.

 

Here we are 49 years later and We the People are in a crisis.  That crisis was set in motion by a bunch of men and a couple of women who don’t like democracy, where people can think for ourselves, speak freely, vote because we are 18 years of age or older.  They want those privileges only for themselves and those who look and believe as they do.  The intent seems to be to crown a fool moving into dementia as king of America and all his minions crowned princes and princesses who will bow to him whenever he demands it and of course, he will demand it often.  That king, of course, is Donald Trump, and his jester, JD Vance who isn’t even the least bit funny and neither has anything positive to offer anyone.

 

By July 4^th, that man who wants to be king demands that Republicans in Congress pass an appalling bill that has nothing good to offer anyone but the already-far-far-too-rich millionaires and billionaires.  It seems Republicans are about to do that because their king is threatening or bribing them (both illegal) with “offers they can’t refuse.”  If the bill passes in its current form, many Americans and immigrant residents here will suffer and king Donnie (Toddler-Trump) will gloat that he owns them and they are useless anyway, spoken by a man who has not actually worked a day in his life.

 

So folks, back in 1976 I would never have guessed we would be facing a fascist takeover 49 years later, but that is where we are.  We need to ask ourselves and each other, “is that where we want this nation to go?”  Do we trust Trump and his minions to do right by anyone but rich mostly white men?”  I say “no.”  I say, “billionaires and millionaires are rich enough; our kids are precious and deserve better than going to bed hungry and getting a poor education because funds are cut; immigrants are immensely valuable to this nation while ICE is not; no one should be losing health care.” 

 

Let us celebrate Independence Day and remember what people have sacrificed that we have a nation that can grow, learn, develop, and become more inclusive and welcoming.  We do not have to settle for the Toddler-Trump formula of threats, lies, gaslighting, fearmongering, hatreds, resentments, targeting groups for violence and dismissal.  We can do better.  We can plan, rally, protest, march, strike, vote, demand our elections are held fairly, demand better of our courts, vote out senators and representatives who have decided they don’t care what We the People want.  Let’s stand together for the sake of our children, our nation, our dreams, immigrants who help make us who we are, and principles that matter.  We can make this better!

POLLUTION PERMISSION!

By Ruth A. Sheets

This is a note I sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to their intention to drop the pollution regulations on coal-burning power plants.  The impetus for this response was from “Moms Clean Air Force” (www.momscleanairforce.org ).

Dear EPA Director;

What is going on with you at EPA?  Why are we the people having to beg, I mean BEG you to do your job to protect our children and the rest of our population?  Where is your humanity?  As a teacher and human being concerned with children’s health, I’m writing to  strongly oppose EPA’s efforts to roll back the recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. Now, let's see, why would you even think of doing that?  Are you thinking it won't impact your family since you are rich, so who cares; it won’t get us!  Is there no moral code of value among Trump's appointees to our critical agencies?  Where did you leave your moral compass and why won't you go and pick it back up and use it?  Are you scared of Trump?

If you were truly a scientist worthy of the office you hold, you would know that no amount of mercury exposure is safe for a child’s brain, NONE! We must keep mercury and other dangerous pollutants from spewing out of coal-fired power plants and ending up in our air, water, soil, and food.  In fact, we need no coal-powered plants, despite what coal miners supposedly want, according to Donald Trump (but that’s probably not true).  We will all suffer for your ignorance and unwillingness to do the right thing!  Why would you choose to do that to yourselves and the rest of us too?

Over the last decade, mercury protections have had significant public health benefits.  You would know that if you cared one wit! Last year, the EPA under President Biden strengthened these safeguards even further to address gaps that were allowing coal plants to continue to emit dangerous quantities of hazardous air pollution, which has been illegal for some time, but, ah well, if the polluters were not caught, no problem, right?  Now you want to just let them go back and pollute to their heart's content.  Who does that, what kind of person would put kids at risk that way?  If you looked, you would see that the recently strengthened regulation improvements offer serious benefits:

- 70% reduction in the emissions limit for mercury from existing lignite-fired plants,

- the strengthening of protections from non-mercury toxics such as lead, arsenic, and chromium, 

- the reduction in emissions from other health-harming air pollutants, including fine particle pollution, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon dioxide

- the requirement that coal plants continually monitor their emissions.  

(from the Mom’s Clean Air Force report)

These safeguards are critical for everyone, but particularly for the communities most impacted by pollution from coal plants, and I wonder who those vulnerable people are.  Oh yes, mostly Black and Indigenous people and other poor folks of all races who generally get no voice with rich folks like you all who just can't manage to care. Those communities  for example, rely on fishing as a primary food source, for cultural identity, and for local economics, and that fish is often contaminated with those pollutants.  This contamination impacts many vulnerable people, particularly children.

So, as you can see, regulating power plant pollution of all kinds  is critical for infants and children, whose developing brains can be permanently impacted by mercury exposure, leading to developmental delays, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and birth defects.  Are you OK with that?  Is that what you are hoping will happen so there will be an impacted class of workers you and your rich buddies can exploit? That is EVIL!  Are you?

So, I say to you, do not roll back the recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.  Instead, expand the regulations to include other toxic waste that none of us should be breathing, eating, or drinking.  That is the right thing to do in case you didn't know.  There are real scientists out here who can help you understand this pollution danger, but I bet you will not consult them or do anything to stop this backsliding on pollution because money and executive threats are more important than the health of your fellow Americans and the climate crisis that stalks all of us.  Terribly sad!  R.Sheets

WHITE MALE HISTORY SUPREMACY! NOT HERE!

 By Ruth A. Sheets

June 19, 2025

 

The organization “Free Speech for People” asked folks to sign a petition to reps and senators about the attempts of Trump and his cronies to erase famous people (not white men) from our history, our libraries, schools, monuments, and museums.  This was my contribution.  I think it pretty much sums up my feeling about scared white men trying to erase the history of everyone else.

 

OK, scared white people, isn't it about time you all grow up!  I am specifically addressing the MAGAs because white folks with confidence and courage don't need the history of non-white people, women, LGBTQ+ persons, and immigrants' histories erased because we know how important diversity is to this nation.  White folks in power who know they don't deserve to be there are the ones who have decided only their history, you know, white males, “the only actors in American history who have done anything that counts. 

 

Well, they are wrong and they need to grow up and start acting like adults for a change.  No one wants their/your jobs, nor your animals to eat, nor your homes.  People want a fair deal in America, the right to vote if they are a citizen over age 18 as the Constitution requires, and not to live in fear of the thugs of ICE and others that scared white people choose to sick on us.

 

So, I’m writing to my senators as a concerned constituent. I’ve learned that over the past few months, the Trump administration has been trying to scrub the records of Black, Native, and queer American heroes. People like Jackie Robinson, Harriet Tubman, Marsha P. Johnson, and the Navajo code talkers, all of them as brave as or braver than the white folks acting at those times in history.  Why are white men so scared of everyone?  They whine about DEI and those “non-whites who are being honored too much as though no one  else’s history matters.  Cowardice seems to be the correct explanation.  Well, grow up and see that a whole lot of great people of all backgrounds  contributed to this nation's development as well as some real jerks, (often white men) ones who have committed insurrection to protect slavery, killed Native people just because they thought it made them look manly or something, folks who lied about the need for wars that a whole lot of people were killed in, many of them not white men (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and in the past, Cuba, Mexico, and the Philippines to name a few.  

As one who believes that we should know our country’s full history this deeply troubles me because it is clearly another Republican lie of the many thousands we have been fed in the past say, half-century or so.

 

White Americans must understand, we are not going silent into that stupidity.  We will do everything we can to keep our history alive as so many in the past have done here and abroad to pass down our cultures and history.  Trump's ridiculous crusade will not last because too many families have more than white males in them, including J.D. Vance's, and despite what whiny toddler-men want, they are playing a losing game and should drop it and try to learn about the breadth of our history and our continuing attempt to "form a more-perfect union."

 

I would ask that white men commit to teaching and sharing our country’s full history by standing up for it and not allowing the Trump Administration to continue erasing our history, but if one is a MAGA, I know that is a foolish request, so I will just say, “I hope you white MAGAs will grow up soon and come to appreciate our real history, not just what you pretend is yours, and in your actions, claim should be ours too.”

 

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND

 By Ruth A. Sheets

I have wondered most of my life where and how one acquires the hatred that permits things like slavery; concentration, internment, and death camps; beating up people trying to cross a bridge to march for rights those with the clubs and weapons refuse to permit them; Destroying whole villages because one can (It’s war you know); killing protesters; kneeling on the neck of a man on the ground for more than 9 minutes and no one intervening; stopping food from getting to people in desperate need, even killing people as they move to collect the needed supplies; separating children from their parents with no record of who those children’s parents are; throwing to the ground and handcuffing a US senator for properly asking a question of a public official; attempting to erase the history of everyone but those currently in charge. 

The excuses for the bad behavior, the various levels of atrocity have come down to us over time including such favorites as:  they aren’t really human and don’t feel pain the way WE do; they don't deserve any better  because they are cheats, takers  (today's Republicans in Congress); they killed Christ (a Christian cry through the ages which is false because it was Rome, according to Christian scriptures); they are a threat so we need to keep them out or where we can see what they are doing (this one is frequent from Japanese internment during WWII to Gaza, to torture prisons to police surveillance and more); they don't belong in a nice neighborhood like ours, it will bring property value down. 

Yes, we have seen it all our lives.  The excuses keep on coming and somehow we buy them.  There are folks whose job it is to  come up with acceptable excuses as to why the deed was necessary or couldn’t be helped or one bad apple or an accident or something.  The goal seems to be to normalize or make the act acceptable or to control those, you know, the ones not like us or who would change our way of life.  I am guessing those who believe those excuses need a way to understand what is going on and to think they are not responsible for the cruelties, the evil that is perpetrated against folks they know are human beings, often in their name.

I see 4 emotions that move human beings into committing atrocities:  anger, resentment, fear, and hatred.  There are others like greed, feelings of superiority, indifference, and contempt, all enhanced and encouraged by the four emotions, hatred being the most potent, generally necessary for most of the cruelty.  

We need to find ways of stopping the hate before it festers into something deadly and destructive.  People do a lot of hating.  It is a kind of wall that keeps us from even trying to understand people and situations different from our own, a kind of comfort food.  It can let us “know” who is out to get us or who deserves to be a target of our hate.  The folks who push the hatred have their own reasons/needs:  taking over their land, keeping communities free of their kind, keeping people poor so wealth can accumulate for the already-too-rich, fear that they may be as good as I am even though they are different from me, competition.  There are an untold number of reasons emotions can lead to hatred, stoked by others or home-grown within ourselves.

Is there a way to reach through the screens often deliberately set up between us and them?  I think so, but it is going to have to be done at many levels at the same time. 

• Our media need to present all kinds of people working successfully together at simple as well as complex tasks.
• - History classes and courses need to show the atrocities as well as those who stood against them at the times they were occurring.  There have always been protesters, just often their acts were covered up.  In recent years, many books have been written to describe the work of the many resistance groups in Europe during the Nazi regime through the Holocaust.  Americans protested the removals of Indigenous people here, but their acts of courage were dismissed because they didn’t fit the mission.
• - People opposed slavery even from the early years.  Those protesters, abolitionists were often imprisoned, killed, and villainized by the slavery industry, with government assistance.
• Americans have protested every war and the war machine that promotes war while the supporters of the wars were claiming it is necessary in all instances.  Some of the conflicts/wars did help to protect this nation and our allies, but others protected private interests of industry and other entities.
• - People have stood with immigrants throughout our history, noting their massive contributions to every aspect of our lives, trying to stop the lies “stealing American jobs” (only the immigrants of color, of course).

We have seen the pain, destruction and death lies have caused over time around the world:  Ruanda, Nazism, government-sanctioned torture, police brutality, made-up excuses for war as in Iraq, are only a few of the horrors generated by people who should have known better, but drummed up the anger, fear of the other, resentment, leading to hatred that are responsible for millions of deaths just in the past few decades, and hundreds of millions in the 20th century.  

It is difficult to set hatred toward others aside when the presidents of the United States and other nations are pumping out hatred for their own purposes and people are picking it up and running with it like a football, hoping to make a touchdown.  We the People here and elsewhere could stop a lot of this by considering what the accusations against others really are and who is making and benefiting from them.

• We can examine our religion/faith to see if the hatreds being spewed match our faith – if one is Christian, hatred is not a Christlike act no matter how one colors that hatred.
• - Stop watching, scrolling, listening to hatred being pumped out by folks who clearly have a resentment toward others.
• - Think before speaking something that accuses others of crimes it is not likely they could or would have committed (running a pedophile ring in the basement of a Pizza shop).
• - Stop hating people you don’t understand:  LGBTQ persons, women who make family decisions different from your own, people who don’t share your color or ethnicity or gender, as a start.

Dropping the instant knee-jerk hate response can be a whole lot healthier for us all then clutching hate and the other negative emotions to one’s breast as though they are sacred and godsent; they’re not.  We can do this if we have the desire to shut down our willingness to buy into the hate feast that is constantly being dished out to us by despicable people in power as well as ordinary people who forgot that hatred is like a cancer that can metastasize and eventually kill or destroy.  We can do this if we do it in solidarity with others, each doing our part!

A GATHERING OF EVIL

By Ruth A. Sheets

My birthday has rolled around again.  This year my age is a square times a cube, one of the few ages that can happen without using the #1.

Recently, as I note my age and the coming years, I have been contemplating evil and what it does to people.  I have read a lot of books and articles about the Holocaust, a horrific manifestation of evil, wondering if there were points at which it could have been stopped.  The people in Germany in the early 1930s were suffering under a depression as was most of the world.  Someone came along and told them he could solve their problems, make Germany great again, and they bought it sight unseen.  The man took over the government, surrounded himself with people who would do his bidding, men who got off on doing harm to others, particularly those they were jealous of (or that is how it seems).  The new leader identified people the Germans could blame for all their suffering:  the political opposition, Communists, and worst of all, Jews.  The people rallied and jumped on board with the hatred, at least enough of them did that they didn’t mind concentration camps being set up to imprison those awful people.  If some of them were killed, well, they must have deserved it.  If their neighbors they had thought they liked disappeared, “ah well, they must have run away or done something to anger the new leader.”

Why were the people so willing to hop abord the train powered by anger, fear, resentment, and hatred?  That’s a question that has haunted me since I first learned about the Holocaust in 8^th grade when I read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.  The people in hiding with her were rather annoying at times, but worthy of being dragged away and killed?  I learned only Anne’s father survived.  It has made me wonder what kind of nation Germany would have been had Hitler stuck to remaking just his own country and not been defeated.  What would have happened when/if the Jewish people had all been killed or kicked out?  What about the disabled persons killed in nursing homes, hospitals, and mental institutions?  What would have happened when the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma people, and homosexuals were extinguished?  Could that crew of sadists have stopped there?  Who would have been next?  Was invading Germany’s neighbors critical to the evil enterprise?

There are a lot of folks now comparing what is going on in this nation to Nazi Germany, and with good reason.  Evil has raised its head here and has been welcomed by Americans who are not doing well, or rather are not doing well in relation to the people they envy.  They listen to hatred being spewed over their radios, TVs, and internet and are angry that they are missing the wealth, the American dream that is supposed to be theirs.   They vote for candidates who promise them some kind of magical relief from their “suffering” but have never shown evidence of willingness to work to make that magic happen.  Those candidates have a cadre of folks to blame for the suffering of their constituents (not those elected officials, of course) and make sure those groups are vilified at every turn.  People of color in general are at the top of the list because, they always have been on that list in this nation.  They add women who are too uppity and LGBTQ+ persons for “living in sin” or whatever else they come up with.  Women who choose abortion are now called murderers and states are trying to put laws on their books to charge them.  Recently, immigrants take the place at the front of the line, well not the white ones, of course.  They are called gang members, criminals, immoral, and whatever the guys in power decide will rouse their “supporters” to OK immigrants being deported without due process, a right since Magna Carta (1215 AD).” 

A rich white businessman came along who had no moral compass, no concern for anyone but himself beyond wanting vengeance on anyone who didn’t agree with him, got in his way, or didn’t see him as a genius.  A group of really rich white men saw Trump as an opportunity to take over this nation for their own benefit and began influencing the media, even buying media platforms to groom the “suffering masses” into believing this man would fix things for them and “make America great again.”  Of course, his intention was to make himself “great” so he could enrich himself as much as possible from his time in power.  He collected around himself a host of mostly white men and some female surrogates who would go along with the project to wreck this nation so the superrich white men could rule, eventually taking over the world because they are just so brilliant (in their own minds), but in reality, addicted to money and power.  They’re also racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, antisemitic, xenophobic when it suits their purposes.

Hitler wanted power and comfort and the ability to hurt anyone he didn’t like.  Trump wants money and the servitude of everyone else.  His handlers want to use him, their orange fool to do as much harm to the American people and nation as possible.  We know what happened in 1930s Germany when evil took over.  The question now for us is, Will we allow the evil that is brewing in this nation to destroy us or will We the People stop it?  I hope it’s the latter. 

My birthday candle wish would be that the enthralled MAGA folks would wake up and decide they want more in their lives than anger, resentment, fear, and hatred and don’t want a king, a dictator, a tyrant as president of this country, ever.  I hope the MAGAs or near-MAGAs won’t want rich white folks who have been elected to nothing acting as puppeteers directing a man who will do their bidding at everyone else’s expense, until they can take over.  I hope we as Americans will act together to stop evil that has already infected state legislatures, our Congress, and some courts, before it grows in volume and scope and people feel the pain more than they already do.

WHO IS QUALIFIED?  ANYONE?

By Ruth A. Sheets

A member of Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack thread asked on May 20^th if anyone in Trump’s cabinet were qualified.  I had to take a crack at an answer.  This was my response. 

As you and most of us know, the answer to cabinet members being qualified is none are qualified, which is why they were shoved through our Senate with little to no honest thought.  Trump may have recommended a couple of them, but the Project 2025ers came up with the slate.  I am sure Kristi Noem was considered when the 2025ers heard she had killed her dog and thrown her into a quarry, proud of it enough to write about it.  That is the temperament for Homeland Security, of course. 

Then, RFK,Jr.'s brain worm made him the perfect nominee for HHS because, well, he knew he had a brain somewhere and it had a dead worm in it and . . .   And, there's Hegseth, he could do crappy interviews for Fox whose only standards involve their "hosts" being ignorant, basically incompetent and somewhat attractive so they could repeat lies and do gaslighting without questioning it, the perfect set of skills to head our Department of Defense!  The rest of the team is just like that, each in their own way pathetic and unqualified but somehow, worthy of Republican support. 

Even some Democrats went along with the BS, all of them voting for Marco Rubio with no evidence that he could really fairly represent this nation abroad (he is a white wannabee who despises anyone not white and will buy into the BS of any country that will give him and Baby Donnie some kind of money, promise, or something which Rubio should know is illegal according to our Constitution.  Oh yes, I forgot to mention that Rubio and the rest of the cabinet don't care about our ?Constitution either.  Amazing! 

So, I responded the best I could in a short readable paragraph, but it does not really begin to address the challenges we will be facing, possibly indefinitely.  Republicans have saddled us with an incredibly incompetent crew and a House of Representatives and Senate that will do Donald Trump’s bidding and that of folks like Musk, Vought, Theil, and the rest of the superrich because they are being threatened with something really powerful or promised something unbelievable for their efforts, no matter how illegal or improper.  

When questioned about any of their positions or what is happening in their department, they do one or more of 3 things.  These were offered by a member of Prof. Robert Reich’s thread on May 22^{nd and also presented by Jay Kuo in his column}.  They are the Three C method of avoiding answering truthfully, “gaslighting.”

#1...Cluelessness: "I don't know... I wasn't aware of that...I only just heard about this... I don't have the numbers, etc. and so on and so forth. They do this ALL THE TIME and it's infuriating, also usually a lie.

#2...Chaos: the deliberately created chaos within their departments cause those people they are supposed to be helping or serving to get frustrated with the mistakes wait times, etc. the end result is people just end up giving up and accepting the absence of real help and then the Republicans can claim that the department should be eradicated since it isn't doing what it is supposed to.  This is an old fall-back trick for the Republicans in power who want to see the government destroyed.

#3...Contempt: This is a tactic of answering with arrogance or twisting the answer and using it to attack the questioner. Again a frequent tactic of Republicans, it was particularly evident in Rubio's arrogant answer to Senator Van Hollen, "If you regret your confirmation of me, I must be doing my job..." said with contemptuous twist, arrogant and rude, but certainly just what Trump expects of his minions."  The members of the committees, Democrats alone if Republicans won’t participate must at the very least, continue to ask good relevant questions, When the questioned person talks over the questioner, that persons should say, “Mr. (Ms.) Chair Person, stop my time here until he/she is finished bamboozling us, then I will resume my time at this point.”  If the chair won’t agree, then the questioner must stand up and tell the questioned person to shut up and just answer the question yes or no unless asked for  clarification. 

We all need to review our Constitution and start calling out the current insanity for what it is, an insurrection by the rich and powerful with Trump as the figurehead for a bunch of scared greedy privileged white boys and their female surrogates with the task of wrecking our democracy, our government so they will just HAVE to take over.  We must find every way possible to stop them.  They are trampling our rights, denying the services we are entitled to, and throwing their money into elections they have no right to influence, despite what Johnny Roberts and his Supreme Court cons said about 15 years ago, their decision made out of their own greed and desire to do harm to the American people, well, at least the middle and working classes.  We don’t have to take it and should not!  We must stay involved!

Mother’s Day 2025

Mother’s Day 2025

By Ruth A. Sheets

Today, Mother’s Day, Joyce Vance, lawyer, commentator, mother wrote about her mother and grandmother who were independent activist women at a time when that was not only not appreciated but discouraged.  The following is my response to her Substack piece, also, a tribute to my own mother.

Joyce, your mother and grandmother were of that group of women who were standing against the insanity of male domination when few women had the ability to say anything. Their courage and that of the other women who chose to act has made it possible for so many spectacular women to now be in the leadership of the people who are keeping our world going: researchers, teachers, mothers, medical workers, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, athletes, clergy, lawyers, judges, legislators, activists, scientists, often holding more than one of those roles, who care about our world and are determined to make it a better place for everyone.

I honor all women today and will push us to do even more to serve our world: raise up all children, call out men and women who abuse positions of authority, and keep right on standing and fighting for what is right for all, not just for the few men and fewer women who live by or because of vengeance, anger, resentments, and hatreds, the way of death and destruction.  

My own mother was a remarkable woman who was extremely talented at many things.  I believe she saw herself as a less than excellent mother even though she enabled her 5 children to excel at nearly everything we tried.  She was definitely not a helicopter mom or anything close to it, (and probably could have kept better track of some of us).  I honestly don’t know how she managed five independent, mouthy children/teens. 

Some of my best memories of my mom include her playing the organ after dinner while we, the whole family sang and harmonized.  I also remember Mom singing in our church choir next to me and realizing what a good singer she was, an alto always on the right notes and harmonizing with my soprano line.  I also remember her coming to Nashville while I was in college, to be with me after I had eye surgery and that she went to classes with my roommate and loved it.  She was in the group of women who were relegated to the roles of secretary, teacher, or nurse, the latter two only if one could afford college; she couldn’t.  She was a skilled knitter, crocheter, embroiderer, and general craftswoman.  We often wore the clothes she made for us.

Here's to our mothers, women who do their best then learn to do better, women who have given birth to us and set us on a path toward adulthood.  Those paths are not always positive, caring, joyful, but it is our choice whether we will walk good paths or take routs that are harmful to ourselves or others. 

I thank my mother for sharing her talent with the world:  her competence, her music, her trust that my sisters and I could make it, and we have.  Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers and other women in our lives who have helped shape who we are and will choose to become.

COMMENTS ON SOME CURRENT HAPPENINGS

By Ruth A. Sheets

In response to several comments on threads I follow on Substack, I wrote the following and thought I would share:

It is becoming more clear over time that Donald Trump is not a person of intellectual prowess.  He is totally self-absorbed something he has perfected over time.  He cares little for what happens to this nation as long as he is comfortable, can do whatever he wants without challenge, will never be held accountable for anything harmful he does, and given credit for anything positive other people have done.  He has turned out to be a whiny toddler who has adult weapons.  That is a dangerous combination. 

Now he has dementia, so it seems, his billionaire and billionaire wannabee handlers know they have to keep Trump corralled and satisfied with their heavy attentions, ego-tending, and information presented to Trump in a way he can understand.  The Steves are among the more appalling, pushing immigrant removal, for example.  There are plenty of others, hypocritically, some of them actual immigrants or children of immigrants who have been coddled because they have money, but want immigrants, even citizens removed (I guess they are the exceptions who will be allowed to stay)! 

Our media's cowardice in so many instances is beyond disgraceful.  So many of those media are operated by rich white men who have been privileged all their lives to the point they have no clue they are privileged, seeing themselves as brilliant, stronger, more clever than anyone else and their posts and content supporting or dismissing Trump’s anti-democratic actions as acceptable.  However, it is probably more likely that inheritance and luck are more critical factors as well as people's foolish belief in the superiority of rich folks that account for their prominence and positions.  They run their platforms for the benefit of themselves and their fellow oligarchs. 

The Bezos, Musk, Theil, Fox, Heritage Foundation wealthy, and others are smart enough to know that Trump and most Republicans in office can be easily manipulated and bent to their will with enough cash.  It looks like Trump is their mascot at this point, the guy who has to be covered without his realizing it.  The purpose, so the work of the destruction and take-over can continue. 

We need our state governments to rise up.  They could start arresting anyone who tries to kidnap immigrants or anyone else without due process or anyone running around grabbing people while wearing masks, hoods, or other identity-concealing clothing.  They can stop anyone trying to take over the federal buildings in their states, or try to sell the properties.  We all need to remember those buildings do not belong to Trump and his cronies; they belong to We the People.    

What we all should know is that we have to keep protesting, keep challenging, keep pointing out what is being done that is illegal, even pushing our courts to stand with us and our Constitution rather than with a man who is making pronouncements written by others whose motives are not for the benefit of the American people or anyone but themselves.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS?

By Ruth A. Sheets

I attended one of the best online conferences I have ever been to on Monday, April 7, 2025, presented by the organization, Patriotic Millionaires.  It covered the current economic and political situation here and abroad and what we can do about it.  The symposium was called “Stopping the Brologarchy.”  It is nearly all men who are involved in the attempted destruction of our government and our economy, men groomed to believe in their superiority displaying masculinity that is toxic to everyone but themselves, probably to themselves too. 

Powerful speakers from all over presented a clear, comprehensible picture of what is going on, a sense of how desperate the situation is, and that we must do something to stop this and work toward a world, nation, and communities that are more equitable.

The presenters gave us the reality of our situation from tariffs designed to do as much harm around the world as possible (even putting tariffs on islands with only penguins), to firing thousands possibly millions of government workers, to undermining health and research that impact the world.  They described a Trumpian goal as wrecking the world economy so the very rich can take over and subdue everyone and have an open season on people’s rights, even survival, based on whether the people capitulate to the “master’s” will, and they do mean masters, those men who revel in what the rest of us see as toxic masculinity.  Abigail Disney, for example,  informed us that the violence against women has not decreased over time even though only a small fraction of men participate in it, but is acceptable to those men in charge. 

The presenters then left us with a few important considerations as we work to make essential change:

1. You can’t change anything you don’t understand or acknowledge.  When we have knowledge, we have ability to act, our power.
2. We must commit to do something we are not already involved in doing, something new to us.  If we can, we should, make a commitment to do one more thing.  Ask, what do I need to learn to do that one new thing?
3. We need to fix the disease that is eating us alive.  It is a mathematical cancer that involves wages that are too low and a corrupt inequitable tax code and so much more.  If we don’t deal with the disease, nothing will improve sufficiently to make a positive difference.  Taxing the wealthy at high levels is critical. 
4. Focus  on the money and deal with it on local and state levels, who has it, how it is being used, and the lies being told about it.
5. !Demand a positive opposition, not one that is just a bit better than the other side.  We need to focus on actions that will actually work for the positive.  It is time to be done with what the Director of Patriotic Millionaires calls the throttlebottoms (folks that are bottom-feeders driving everyone else down).  They need to be countered at every opportunity because they have nothing good to offer anyone.
6. Find a small group of committed people to connect then work with.  There are many great organizations working on these challenges.  Help make small groups larger with the aim of making things better. 

Director of “Patriotic Millionaires” Erica Payne, reminded participants of the clarity of this reality, those involved with the current destruction process are evil.  We all must be the light that shines through the darkness and gives us hope that we can make things even better for all of us than before this crisis.

THE CABINET OF INCOMPETENTS

By Ruth A. Sheets

On April 2, 2025, Robert Reich presented his weekly poll, this time about the presidential cabinet , put into place since January 20^th.  OMG!  It was a hard poll.  The question, “Which of Trump’s cabinet officers is the worst?  His choices:  Pete Hegseth of Defense, RFK,Jr. of Health and Human Services, Pam Bondi the Attorney General, and Marco Rubio Secretary of State. 

There is another cruel incompetent who should be included, the new director of Homeland Security (a cabinet-level position that should not even exist, has far less reason than the Department of Education which actually does positive things to help our children and young people).  Kristi Noem The head is a dog murderer who feels about the rest of us the way she seems to have felt about her dog before she killed it and dumped it into a quarry. 

Among the poll members, there's Rubio whose family were "refugees" from Cuba.  They and their cohort came here and did a lot of disrupting over the years, particularly in Florida and few "long-time American citizens” demanded they be deported and that their children, like "Little Marco" are not citizens.  What an evil hypocrite! 

There is nothing positive to say for either RFK,Jr. or Hegseth.  Neither of them should ever be in charge of anything since they can't even take care of themselves properly.  They are both ignorant of not only the departments they were foolishly approved by our Senators to run but ignorant of just about everything else too; they prove it every single day, putting us all at risk.  I chose RFK,Jr. in the poll because he is undermining the already precarious health of this nation with his lies and disinformation, putting us and the rest of the world at risk. 

Pam Bondi’s  law school should erase her from their records of graduates or rather should never have graduated her in the first place; she is a person of no moral compass who knows nothing of our Constitution and cares less than that about it or this nation, only her infatuation with Donald Trump, adult-toddler-in-chief.  She like the rest of the Trumpers and Trumpettes just makes things up as she goes along just to see what she can get away with, and she is getting away with a lot, or thinks she is. 

They are all despicable, the whole crew, like McMahon in Education and the rest of the ignoramuses our Senate Republicans and a few Democrats chose to sick on us.  None of them has a clue, but tries to pretend they are working for their god and will follow his wishes even though dementia has clearly taken hold.  They were chosen since they play the role of sycophant quite well and together represent the worst of America, not one of them worthy of any positive recognition.  Thank you Senate Republicans for proving your judgment is just as poor as Trump and his handlers and fan club hoped it would be.  Justice would be that every single Senate member who voted for these destroyers and incompetents would be voted out.  Not likely, but one can dream! 

MARCH GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

By Ruth A. Sheets

Today is the last day of Women’s History Month which overlaps one day with “Trans Day of Visibility.”  I am a family member of trans persons, a friend of more, and a supporter of trans persons everywhere.  Despite what people like Donald Trump, and his warped administration believe, transgender persons have been part of the human community probably from the beginning of our species. 

Over time, trans persons’ degree of acceptance in groups and societies has varied.  It is only in the past century or so that science has been able to help facilitate a match between a person’s gender identity and physical body and hormones.  However, it seems over time, trans people have found ways to live their correct gender despite having non-matching physical characteristics, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. 

What is going on now?   As far as I can tell, it is about control.  Anti-trans persons want to have sufficient control to say, “you are illegal and I am going to hurt you if you don’t agree with what I believe and you don’t live as your birth sex.”  There is no honest reason for this white “straight” male stance, but they don’t care; it’s about control.  For Trump and friends, their public stance is that white “straight” male is the basic human form and everyone else is inferior and in need of control by those white “straight” men whose money or something else magically adds to their intelligence and puts them in power, supposedly letting them determine who is acceptable and who is not.  So let’s see who is acceptable to them:

• - “Trad (traditional) Wives” who stay at home, demand nothing, pump out lots of white babies, and care for hubby as though he were another of her brood
• - Men who are willing to work hard for crap wages so the rich white men, magically in charge can bring in huge salaries for minimal work 
• -people of color, invisible except as servants, house cleaners, hotel “maids,” custodians of golf clubs and other hang-outs for the rich white men and their accepted buddies
• - International leaders who will bow and scrape in subservience to the American autocracy and give “good deals” for everything the rich white American men demand
• - People who look, talk, think, and act just like themselves, but not too much

The unacceptable includes the rest of us:

• - Smart, clever, creative women who are independent, even choosing not to have a hubby or to bear children
• - White men who dare to challenge the white male status quo, writing and speaking about just how stupid such a world view really is
• - Researchers who have known for some time that female is the basic human form; males need extra hormones injected in the womb to become male,
• - Scientists who work to understand and will share the truth, demonstrating just what fools’ men who choose conspiracy theories and bad science, like RFK, Jr. and friends are
• - LGBTQ+ persons because they don’t fit the “acceptable” male-female behaviors
• - Judges who rule honestly, can’t be bribed, and hold to their oath to our Constitution
• - Protesters of the dictatorial nature of the current government, folks who want Black History, women’s history, Asian-American history, Hispanic History, Native American history and more, respected, taught, and shared

You get it, the rich white “straight” men and the tiny fraction of “allies” they permit into their sphere, resent everyone who is not a perfect minion.  They want to defeat and subdue anyone who is not willing to accept enslavement and is not OK with abuse and denial of rights.  These rich white “straight” men are scared of the rest of us and are putting forth massive efforts to control us all so they can do whatever they wish unfettered with no regulation, no oversight.  They assume their wealth and power will keep them from suffering from the smoggy air, bad water, unwilling workforce.  They are now recruiting the minions whom they will use to control us, if we permit it. 

Trans persons and LGBTQ+ persons in general are not the ones who are doing damage to our society.  Having trans girls on girls’ teams will not destroy a sport that men have ignored forever.  It is not trans people using their appropriate bathrooms that put anyone at risk; it is white males and some other men who think it is their right to prey on other people who pose a threat, though minimal at best.  Let’s fight the rich white “straight” male desire to control everything and everyone, and to do harm to anyone who does not succumb.  There are more of us than there are of them, a lot more!

So, let’s celebrate!  Be glad that many people are working to make it possible for all people to live their lives as they choose.  Happy Day of Trans Visibility!