REWRITING AMERICAN HISTORY WITH REPUBLICAN CONSENT

By Ruth A. Sheets

Trump proves daily that he is an ignorant would-be tyrant, and he is well on the way to achieving that goal.  He knows nothing of history, yet wants to dictate what it should include.

Russell Vought of “Project 2025” fame, knows nothing of history either.  He’s just  a whiny white boy who is too rich for anyone's good and who has been sponsored and coddled by a bunch of racist, misogynistic cowards at the Heritage Foundation who are too scared of anyone who is not rich white and male.  OK, they are terrified of them too; they could turn on him and his kind in an instant.  It has happened throughout history.  So, Vought, Miller, Bessent, and a collected crowd of scared white men and the women who love them want to get their Baby Donnie to  make history less scary, less filled with ways white men have oppressed and abused people, less information about outstanding women, and people of color, and white men who don't buy the scared white male BS.  The Trumpers are not a large group, but want everyone to think they are all-powerful, so we will be cowed into submission. 

Trump’s next target is the Smithsonian Institution, often fondly referred to as “our nation’s attic.”  Trump and his buddies who know nothing of history, science, art, and this nation, want to have oversight for all exhibitions, displays, etc.  What!  They would be lost in the jargon of science, history, art, and the rest.  Those whiny rich boys would bring nothing positive to the museums or anywhere else they plan to try to control, just lies, inaccuracies, and their personal fears, resentments, and ignorance, none of which anyone in this country needs or wants on display in an honored institution. 

Smithsonian Secretary Bunch and the rest of the amazing people you work with, don't give in!  Ask the American people to help to support your work more now that Trump and his fascist crew are trying so hard to rewrite American history, and thus a part of the history of the world. 

When I worked for the Smithsonian, I loved working with the designers of exhibitions and giving tours of their fine work.  I can't imagine what a tour of Trump's history would sound like, a lot of lies, disinformation, and would not be worth the effort.  I am trying to imagine Trump as a tour guide of his brand of history and realize he wouldn't get past the first display because he wouldn't have a clue what was there.  He and his buddies like to whine about whites being discriminated against when that is so rare as to be nearly invisible, but Trump wants that insignificance to be more than visible, actually prominent, even if they have to make it up. 

The Smithsonian crew are going to have to be very creative to get around the ignoramuses of Trumplandia.  The residents of Trumplandia, toddler men and a few women know so little it is embarrassing.  Their ignorance is the reason only fools and the incompetent, serve as secretaries and department heads in our current government.  For Trump, ignorance is bliss.

However, Republicans in Congress, mostly white men, like the Trump takeover of our national entities like the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian, and say "sure, Mr. Sir, whatever you want, we care nothing for this nation, our oath of office,  and the people who elected us, just the money we can collect in gifts (bribes) and we are getting a lot right now, so, it’s all good,  whatever you want, we’re behind you, can you feel our presence back there?" 

THE EPA HAS DECIDED CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT REAL. WHAT!

By Ruth A. Sheets

Yo!  Lee Zeldin,  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, wake up!  Your future also depends on the decisions you make now.  At this moment, you are not on a good track in the decision-making department.  Check this out and maybe you’ll decide to do better.

Let's face it, no matter what those like you, who are ignorant of a subject, put into positions you know nothing about think, science is real and so is global warming/climate change.  I do wonder why so many Trump/Republican appointees have decided lying about reality is a good thing; it isn't, it is just ignorance made manifest!  

I communicate with you as a concerned citizen to implore you to uphold your Agency's Endangerment Findings and maintain vital climate standards.  That's the intelligent thing to do, but it is not clear where in the current EPA leadership intelligence lies if it is present there at all.  What do you think?

The Endangerment Finding is an assessment of the challenges faced by the people and environment caused by human activity:  fossil fuel burning, power plant emissions, harmful chemicals, and more.  Revoking the Endangerment Finding would ignore overwhelming science and endanger public health. In addition, this set of proposals you are championing undoes the vehicle emissions standards. Transportation is the largest source of climate pollution and these standards are critical to limiting dangerous heat-trapping emissions.  Is there someone intelligent there to understand this?  I am not sure.  Either way, do you care!

From the beginning in the early 1970s, the EPA’s duty has been to base decisions on science and to protect the public from dangerous pollution, just as Nixon and his scientists expected.  What you are proposing now advances polluter interests, not the EPA’s mission.  Why would you permit this? 

Have you considered that this means the polluters are also lacking in  basic thinking skills (I guess greed does that to you). They will be physically impacted by the extra pollution, just like we, the  expendable peons, even if they/you can't see it.  Greenhouse and other gases are invisible, but they allow for heating of our world.  The visible pollution is also dangerous because it can cause cancer and other lovely medical conditions and you rich folks get those too.

I am hoping there is a spark of intelligence left at EPA that will cause you to uphold the Endangerment Finding and keep strong climate protections in place.  Stop listening to the demands of the folks who will want you all to take the blame when storms, floods, wildfires get worse and start killing even more people, not to mention the wildlife. 

Do the right thing for a change.  Get the word out that the rules will stay in place for now until you "study" the situation, then keep “studying” over and over until people in the white house forget.  Do you have the courage to do that or are you just a lacky whose intelligence was left behind when coming to work for an administration for whom intelligence is a liability? 

DEI, NOT A BLOW AGAINST WHITE MEN

By Ruth A. Sheets

It seems Donald Trump and his handlers are obsessed with DEI.  They toss the letters out as though cursing in anger.  Trump would have no idea what the letters he is blurting out mean if asked by a member of the White House press corps, which is why none of them ever ask him when he tosses the swear word at them.

DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is the term used to identify efforts to make businesses, workplaces, education, and other entities more inclusive of the variety of people living in this country.  It used to be called “Affirmative Action” until the Supreme Court said educational entities could no longer accept students through Affirmative Action, even though it was not clear the justices even understood it beyond their thinking that it meant letting Black students in.  Their wrong understanding was that white students would be kept out and replaced by Black students of lesser ability.  That was not Affirmative Action, but it didn’t matter because the word of the Supreme Court is law, right?

 

Colleges and Universities were looking for a positive way to make their student bodies, faculties, and programs more inclusive, but it seems the majority white Supreme Court conservative justices (including Thomas the white wannabee) just couldn’t have that, a white man who might not get in where he wanted to attend because an inferior woman or Black man got in instead.  So Affirmative Action was labeled by right-wingers as baaaad!

 

Women and people of color were not going to be stopped, so a new title for such inclusive education and institutions was needed.  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) was the name settled on.  This title has served to recruit and keep thousands of students so student bodies could be more diverse not only by race and gender, but also by experience, talents/skills, and region. 

 

The new right-wing trope from white men is that they are being excluded by those less-educated, less qualified inferiors.  It is true that white males will no longer automatically be accepted over everyone else, but competition is good if without prejudice. Whether the cry of male exclusion is untrue doesn’t matter because it sounds good to groups like the MAGAs.  They take as gospel whatever is tossed out to them either by their Toddler-Trump or that shows up on Fox Not Nearly News, mostly white men, with a few white women hired to be the female faces of male aggression and claimed superiority.  Viewers came to believe that what the right-wing media presented must be true, no evidence required. 

 

I was commenting on a Substack thread this morning and one of the participants tried to say that DEI discriminates against white men.  I had to reread that one several times to get the gist of his words.  I challenged him saying that he as a white man has privilege just for being white and male.  He claims he does not have any such privilege because his life has been hard.  He couldn’t get the idea that it is likely that had he been a woman or person of color, his life would most likely have been even more difficult. 

 

I am amazed at the inability of some white men to get it that they are consider the default human in many parts of the world, including here.  They seem to want to wallow in the injustices done to themselves and their white male buddies.  They believe they have never discriminated against anyone and that every single job or opportunity that came to them was due to their own personal abilities, skills, and superior thinking and education.  That may be true, but it may equally be due to their male whiteness.  They will never know because white privilege means people will always see them first. 

 

One important thing to remember is that this is not really the fault of white men in general.  Those living now didn’t set up the system, devise ways to be sure that everyone not white and male would be kept in place below men.  Today’s white males didn’t skew laws to favor white men and nor did they institute slavery and the other systems that kept white men on top.  However, it is white men with some support that keep those practices in place.

 

That being said, today’s white men of privilege can learn to understand their privilege and can move toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion if they choose. 

• They can take time to look at their situation and that of other white men they know and see how the system has worked for them. 
• - They can listen to women and people of color and note the critique that could change the ways white men relate to the people around them. 
• - They can ask questions of themselves:  do I objectify women by their looks; do I assume everyone else is less qualified or coming after what I have; do I vote for white men even if I have doubts because I can’t envision a woman or person of color in that job/position; do I treat a white male boss differently from any other boss?  These are just a few of the questions white men can ask themselves.  They are questions all of us can ask ourselves too because white men did not get their privileged position on their own.  Women provided the early education that promoted that stance.  People of color just as white men and women, have hierarchies of who they see as superior and inferior.

 

DEI is just a tool to help us appreciate the diversity of humanity on this planet and to realize that each individual and group has something important to offer the whole and that no group is better than the rest in everything.  DEI gives a framework for business, education, the workplace, communities and nations to start to notice others and the gifts they bring to the table.  It helps us to develop those gifts for the benefit of all. 

 

trump and his white male cadre of sycophants do not want self-examination.  They want things the way they were at some mythical time in the past when straight white men ruled in every sphere of life.  That time will not come again, so it is up to all of us, including white males to embrace DEI (whatever it ends up being called), and demand its use everywhere for the benefit of all.  Then challenge when Trump or anyone else tosses out the term DEI as a slur or curse.  Such contempt proves they have no clue.