by Ruth A. Sheets
Yesterday was World AIDS Day. You probably didn’t know that and were not reminded because Donald Trump decided the United States was not going to commemorate it, as though it doesn’t exist. I was surprised Trump even knew there was such a thing as World AIDS Day (he probably didn’t). The cadre of hateful folks around him, Trump’s Toddler Pool spends their time finding ways to get their “boss” to demonstrate their hatreds and his. Folks like Steve Miller, Russell Vought, JD Vance, mostly rich white men want us to think of AIDS as the gay disease that was around in the 1980s and nothing more.
Donald Trump and the Pool also want to rewrite American history, science, and medicine to place white men at the center of everything, to dismiss everyone else as just burdens white men have to bear. They decide which laws they will follow and ignore the rest. They threaten to “hang” Democrats who remind our military and intelligence communities they are required not to follow illegal orders. They blast small boats out of the water in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific supposedly because they are transporting drugs (with no proof), even killing survivors, all of which are against American and international law. The Pool and its “leader” desperately want to be seen as powerful enough to dictate everything to the people of this nation, even what is truth.
Their super rich “friends” like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and a few others have bought up our media, online, in print, and on air and have been working hard to shape it to whatever story Trump and the Pool want told and with the language they will approve. Clearly these media owners are getting something for sacrificing their integrity (if they ever had any). I think it is being “in the room where it happens,” or rather making sure they have a hand in what happens in that room. For that “presence, they will cover only what Trump (and the Pool want covered, a win-win for them and a lose-lose for the rest of the American people.
They have dictated that climate change (global warming) is a hoax and threatened Republican members of Congress that they must vote for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” even though there is nothing positive in it for their constituents. They told Republicans in Congress to cut funding for public broadcasting, libraries, museums, infrastructure programs, mitigation of climate change, and more, whose funding congress had already approved. In short, I can’t think of a single thing Trump and the Toddler Pool have done since gaining office nearly a year ago.
We the People are not helpless. We can communicate our opposition to our representatives at all levels and vote for those who have our interests in mind. We have participated in significant protests, the most recent “No Kings” event brought 7 million people out to say “no” to the dictator would-be-king. Conservative school boards around the country have been replaced with boards that do not want their curricula and practices dictated by people who are ignorant of nearly everything. The uninvolved have stepped up to protest cuts in SNAP, Medicaid, unaffordable healthcare, issues which have touched them personally.
People in our cities have been standing in the way of ICE as the illegal law-enforcement troop drags people from their homes, cars, and off the street and disappears them into appalling prisons and concentration camps. People are standing with and for neighbors they didn’t know before.
Workers are demanding unions and not accepting the treatment that current bosses are dishing out. Young people are demanding better on the job and off.
People of many faiths, ages, and backgrounds voted for a young mayor, Mamdani, for NYC, and plan to work for the issues he stands on. The idea that there could be housing, child care, and public transportation for everyone is spreading.
We must find ways to reach out to people who see the world differently from us and hear about their needs, their dreams, and what keeps them supporting a group of folks who care nothing for them and prove it on a daily basis. We can’t impact the world view of people if we don’t understand them, and with understanding, we can encourage them to fight with us for things we have in common, our nation for example!
