WE MUST DO BETTER!

By Ruth A. Sheets

September 30, 2025

 It seems to me our Democratic leadership is not even playing on the same field as Republicans.  Perhaps, Democratic leaders are too much of the past to even imagine the EVIL that is the childish Donald Trump and the way he is being "helped along" by his sycophantic toddler pool, led by Steve Miller, Russell Vought, John Roberts, and some other ghouls hiding in the shadows.  The toddler pool has no guardrails on their behavior or their desire for supreme power.  They want to be victorious comic book bad guys while pretending they are the "saviors of mankind" and I do mean MANKIND. 

 This crew is delighted with its good fortune, having taken over most of our nation’s institutions after 5 decades of preparation and sometimes narrow escapes from detection.  They ran an insurrection on January 6, 2021, called by the incompetent president, and literally got  away with it.  Donald Trump was the perfect figurehead for their aims: 

• Trump is ignorant of most things unless specifically pertaining to himself
• He is well-known for being a “great businessman” when he was nothing of the kind
• he was a reality TV “star” whose acting was pathetic, but won the hearts of people who want to believe in fantasy, and love bullies
• he learned from an unscrupulous man, Roy Cohn, to bamboozle enough of the crowd they won’t notice what is really going on
• he has money, not nearly the amount he claims, but is desperate for more

 

The cadre of anti-Americans tried several names for their movement, the best-known to me were “The Tea party” and MAGA.  They saw their time had arrived when the United States elected Barack Obama, the first Black president.  They knew the level of racism in this country and were aware that they could rustle up even more support among their lily-white members, families, and friends. 

 They knew they couldn’t get power without someone like Donald Trump, a blow-hard who could bit by bit be shaped into just the kind of guy they could use while letting him continue to believe that he was the one running things.  They are obsessed with their ability to control so much of this nation, Donald Trump too, and so far, with minimal interference. Why, they even got him elected a second time, OMG! 

 The Democratic Party has been trying hard to play by the rules of our Constitution and our laws and mostly did a commendable job.  Then, some Democrats were taken in by the same oligarchs who commandeered Trump and have bought Senate and House as well as state legislative seats.  It becomes harder and harder to see where one’s loyalties lie when elections are purchased for them with enormous donations that are “perfectly legal,” thanks to Johnny Roberts and his cons in Citizens United.  The "old Dem leaders are too willing to capitulate and pretend it is bipartisanship; it isn't. 

 I, like many others understand it is time for new Democratic leadership.  We need younger, more progressive voices.  When polled, it is issues the progressives champion that are most popular with the American people:  universal healthcare, affordable housing for all, bodily autonomy for everyone, massive moves to stop climate change and make renewable energy available everywhere, sensible gun control, DEI for all, etc. 

 A great thing, we do have Democratic leaders ready to move into top positions.  I am thinking of:  Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), Jamie Raskin, Jasmine Crockett, Tim Walls, Pete Buttigieg, Gov. Pritzker, Katie Porter, Wes Moor, John Osoff, and many more.  They will need the guidance of Bernie Sanders and others who are excellent mentors too.  All of the above are fighters who know the truth and are willing to stand up against the Trump toddler pool to get things done. 

 Democrats need solid planks that every single rally or protest will include and every candidate will pledge to stand on.  In addition to the popular items listed above, we must have:   a strong emphasis on freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and protest (the First Amendment rights); equal justice under law (the words above the Supreme Court building but ignored by the Roberts 6) and due process; forbidding our military to be used against people living in this country, right nopw, Portland,, OR, a progressive Democratic city; climate justice and renewable energy; a fair tax code where the wealthy pay at least as high a percentage as other Americans or higher; an easier path to citizenship; a high-quality public education priority for all students, uninfected with religious or political propaganda requirements and no banning of books; improved farming practices and sufficient food for all; improved international aid wherever it is needed; tariffs dumped.  You get the idea. 

 I think a 10 to 12-point set of platform planks would work and number them so the crowds will get it and know that they are the major issues for ALL Democrats with specifics for each state and district.  This will work if we are in it together. 

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH WORDS?

By Ruth A. Sheets

September 22, 2025

Language and how it is used is really important.  Lately, we are dealing with a bunch of folks who understand the power of words and their value for themselves.  Because the very rich own so much of our media at all levels, they have been spreading negativities about people they despise and attach their hate to particular words so their followers will know who to hate and what to call them.

  The first big word was “woke.”  It was used at one time, as I understand it, in the black community to mean people coming awake to the challenges they face and how they can deal with them.  The “conservatives” (or ultra-right), attached “woke” to anyone left of themselves who is educated and believes in human rights for all people.  (I am guessing right-wingers don’t believe in those rights for anyone else.) 

The “woke” are being identified as “Communists, socialists, unpatriotic, etc., reprehensible to all Americans.  Those calling names have no clue what Communism and Socialism are, but they know they have negative connotations maybe from history.  For them, unpatriotic means the “woke” don’t wrap themselves in the flag and practically worship it as the Ult-right does.   

I remember the insult a person who cared about the environment got from the right-wingers a couple of decades ago, “tree-huggers.”  Many adopted the term and still smile when someone dredges up that title and flings it at them.  Some on the Left have been calling themselves “Democratic-Socialists,” embracing the term “socialist,”  while others own the term “woke.”  The “word” used now most frequently by Trump is ANTIFA which is not really a word but a movement for rights and against Fascism.

Our current government is trying to make certain words seem disgusting, like “educated and elite.”  That’s ironic and hypocritical when one realizes that most of them attended and graduated from Ivy League and other “elite” colleges and universities, afforded with their wealth.  They tell us they are for working people.  Uh-huh!

The Trumpers have told park rangers, for example, not to use the term biodiversity, too difficult a word for the Ult-right?  Science has become a bad word and vaccines kill people.  Refugees, asylum-seekers, immigrants, and Venezuelan gangs now mean to them, pretty much the same thing.  In addition to dumping certain words, they want us to take on their concept of which words to use and which to drop, hoping to put word and thought police wherever they can.

DEI has for the ult-right become the boogyman and they are determined to stamp it out.  They know it refers to Black people and other people of color, women, disabled persons, LGBTQ folks, and a few other groups.  They can’t imagine white people being in DEI, because white men have privilege in this society that the right claim white men don’t have.  Those  white men are trying hard to “get back” that privilege they of course, don’t have, and are sure they can’t do it if DEI is around.

We are not supposed to use words like Latine, feminist, indigenous persons, etc.  However, our Constitution provides for “free speech” in the 1^st Amendment.  The limits on that “free speech” are extreme threats, yelling fire in a crowded place, and similar very dangerous language.  Yet, the right-wing that should know better with their elite education, is trying to silence use of words they don’t like, any criticism of their “dear leader, and whatever else comes to their narrow minds. 

That is why we must all defy them at every turn, call out their fear of terminology they can't define, identify for them their fear of everyone they don't understand, tell them we know when they are lying.  We must make up chants, rhymes, and slogans to use in protests and rallies to let them know we will not be defeated.  We must together point out to people on the Right we see their racism, their hatred of women, and their fear of immigrants, activists, and LGBTQ persons (even drag performers), refusing to use the words those groups prefer for themselves.  In short, we must say to MAGAs “we see you and what you are doing to this country and we won’t have it.”  We want them with us in this struggle because they are impacted too, and this language insanity isn't helping them.  it is primarily the work of the guy in the white house and his minions, perhaps some of them even standing for things against their faith, their patriotism, their communities, and this nation.  We can do this if we don’t give up or give in!

WHAT LITTLE TYRANTS CAN GET AWAY WITH

By Ruth A. Sheets

The genocide being conducted by Israel in Gaza is beyond appalling, but it seems our leadership is doing little to nothing to stop it.  Israel is our ally perpetrating these murderous actions.  Though we are much larger and the major provider of war material for Israel, somehow, we can’t/won’t stop their barbarism. 

I recently read a comment that mentioned similarities between what is being done to Gaza by Israel and the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.  It is important to me that others have come to see this connection too.  I noticed it nearly from the beginning when the people were shuffled around Gaza for no logical reason other than so Israel could bomb the areas the people were being forced to leave, being enclosed in smaller and smaller areas.  The Israeli "guards" became like the Ghetto and concentration camp guards, killing at will, laughing at the horrors.  There seems little difference between what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza and what the Nazis did to Jewish and other people during the Holocaust.  It is on a smaller scale as there are fewer Gazans, but the basic excuses for the horrific behavior are the same:  those people are just animals; they are a threat to us; they are vermin and need to be destroyed.  Essentially, Gaza is a large ghetto and the prisons where Palestinians are being held are concentration camps where violence, torture, starvation, and more are the sadistic tools of guards who have lost any semblance of decency they might once have had.  Sound familiar?

Netanyahu has made pathetic excuses for what Israel is doing in Gaza, and Trump wants to build a resort there when the Palestinians are gone. It is clear Netanyahu ordered the genocide, supposedly to destroy Hamas.  The Israeli soldiers have gone along with it, Now, readying for a gigantic invasion using military reserves and weapons supplied by the US. 

As an American, I am ashamed that again we are participating in genocide. It seems when a nation commits genocide once (against indigenous Americans), it is easier the next time.

It also seems "never again" means only Jewish people not facing another holocaust, not that Israel couldn’t perpetrate one on its neighbors. Netanyahu is also OK permitting illegal settlers in the West Bank to steal land, homes, and possessions from the Palestinian people.  Murder of Palestinians is a pretty regular event there too. 

Palestinians as everyone should know have been in the land that is now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank as long as the Jewish people have been there, so, it should be time Israel and Palestine find ways to work together instead of committing atrocities. 

Out of a feeling of guilt or just to make money, over the years, The US has given Israel free rein to do as much harm to Palestinians and others as it chooses.  I just read of an incident I had forgotten about.  Israel attacked an American ship during Israel’s “6-Day-War” in June 1967, killing at least 34 sailors and injuring many more.  The US declared itself neutral in Israel’s “war,” and the ship was well-marked as American, flying our flag clearly and moving slowly through the international waters of the Mediterranean.  The American survivors were informed they would be imprisoned if they told the truth of Israel’s unprovoked assault, so it took more than 20 years for information about the attack to get out. 

The USS Liberty should not have been attacked from the air and on the sea and it is not clear why Israel chose to do it and why the US under President Johnson didn’t respond.  We were supposedly their ally and we gave them a pass, just as we are doing right now.  

For the sake of the whole Middle East, the killing and famine in Gaza must stop, blaming Hamas for acts of Israeli violence must also end. Getting food and medicines to the people of Gaza is critical, and in sufficient quantities to actually make a difference, not the tiny trickle Netanyahu and his cronies have permitted so far, while Israeli soldiers shot down people who came to collect food for their starving families.

What Israel is doing and has been doing for years is EVIL! There is no other word that comes close to describing it, except Holocaust. The insanity must stop and the Israeli people be fully informed as to what their own government is doing in Gaza and the West Bank.  It must be called genocide done in the name of the Israeli people. 

I am still wondering when people will publicly ask how it was that Israel/Netanyahu was so completely caught off-guard on October 7^th when they had been warned that Hamas was planning a major attack, a year ahead.  How fortunate for Hamas that Israel’s intelligence was “off-line” that particular day.  One might think that Netanyahu had known the time of the attack and wanted something big to happen so he could go all-out against Gaza and the Palestinians in general, now, 64,000 dead and counting.  Like many, I have noted what has happened in the past couple of years.  It is pretty obvious something was up when Israel got no warning while there is surveillance everywhere in Gaza.  I am thinking the reason “no one knows what really happened” is that Israeli citizens might not be OK with the idea of sacrificing their loved ones for the Gaza takeover plans of Netanyahu. 

The United States needs to withdraw from support of Israel, knowing Israel will do whatever they wish to whomever they wish if they think it will send their message.”  We do not need that in our lives, so there must be a lot more pressure from the American people to stop the genocide and our donations of weapons to Israel.  If more of us realized we are being used by a would-be dictator of a little country, to boost the influence of our own would-be dictator, more people might step up to demand Congress stop the insanity.  It could happen.