WHERE DID THIS MESS COME FROM – A BRIEF HISTORY

By Ruth A. Sheets

We the People are living with a sizable political and social mess which didn’t begin with Donald Trump.  It is true he is incompetent, but he, alone, did not create this destructive anti-American cadre of incompetence, although he did release them on the people and institutions of this nation.

As I see it, so much of it began with Gerald Ford's pardoning of Richard Nixon, claiming pardoning a criminal for his actions while president would help to heal America.  The pardon told political operatives that a president, if properly groomed and paid off, can pardon anyone from Federal crimes.  Folks can complain but, pardons can’t be challenged.  In the wrong hands, as we have seen, a president can pardon insurrectionists if he can call them “patriots” or “heroes,” just don’t call them traitors.

Ronald Reagan seemed like such a "good guy," an actor, you know,” but he had little positive experience of governing.  He was a crappy governor of California, having law enforcement attack college student protesters.  He claimed illegal drug use and poverty as excuses to harm his fellow citizens and to give rich white men more power, a chunk at a time.  While in office, his efforts ended a lot of the support for California’s public universities, and cut property taxes for the very rich.  As president he encouraged big business to move into nearly every facet of life, giving them big tax cuts and the warped idea of “trickle-down economics,” if the rich got more money it would drip down to everyone else; it didn’t.”  He blamed people for needing welfare, claiming they were stealing from the American people (welfare queens).  Under Reagan, wages were cut and cost of living raises were not maintained.  Unions were “discouraged.”    

Bush Sr. went right along with the big business good program, even getting us into a war many thought was just great, giving lots of business to large corporations who would produce the weaponry needed for the war.  Racism got a boost too with the “Willie Horton” ad that “hinted” that Black men are unredeemable criminals.  Future president Donald ?Trump used that “theory” to take out an ad in the “New York Times” demanding the innocent Black men accused of the infamous Central Park murder, be put to death.  

Bush,Jr. was not actually "elected" by the popular vote, but with the electoral college, his brother in charge in Florida, and cheating just part of the way things are done in Florida,he became president, again no real experience of governing beyond signing death warrants in Texas.  Bush,Jr. got us into two wars and a major economic crisis (the Great Recession) that Democrats were required to clean up after, just as they had to do after his dad left office. 

The whole time, Republican presidents and members of Congress were being manipulated to blame all the ills of the world on Democrats, poor people of color in particular and immigrants whenever they could work it in.  They ran McCain in 2008, but his age and his pick of Palen as his running mate were marks against him.  The “Great Recession” didn't help him either. 

President Obama and VP Biden, inaugurated in 2009, got about 50 days to get the mess cleaned up.  That couldn’t happen because the crisis was deep and they had next to no support from Republicans.  Instead of giving the “bail-out” money to the homeowners, they paid the banks who had helped bring about the crisis and millions of people lost their homes.  Many are still trying to recover completely, 17 years later. 

Rich conservatives desperately looked for someone who could "relate" to the Republican base and would buy and spread the BS Republicans and the oligarchs were pushing.  They found their guy in Donald Trump, an incompetent rich white businessman who was manipulatable, hateful, resentful of everyone who had things he wanted and would do anything to acquire, in short, a child-man.  A show “The Apprentice” was built around him, an entire fraud.  It was sold as "reality TV," but it definitely was not reality.  Trump was a loose canon, but workable.   While campaigning in 2016, Trump would mouth the lies fed to him by the last guy to talk to him out of his collection of sycophants or from the voices on “Fox News.”  He didn't win the popular vote either, but the electoral college negated 3 million votes and he took office. 

Democrats were shut out of most of what was going on until 2019 when they took the House.  They did keep Trump and his crazies from doing more damage, but what Republicans had done was enormous:  cutting taxes massively for the very rich, allowing immigrant children to be separated from parents and thrown into cages on behalf of scared white guys who can't stand immigrants who are smarter, harder-working, and just all-'round “better” than they are.  Their Supreme Court picks were sycophants who would do what they were told, most of the time.  They mismanaged a pandemic and left the economy in shambles.  Lying was and still is the order of the day for Republicans in power. There seems nothing they won’t lie about!

Russell Vought, a rich nobody, and his whiny white friends at the Heritage Foundation wrote an anti-American white supremacist 900+ page diatribe called "Project 2025" during Biden's term to undermine our government, and turn Americans against each other solely for the benefit of the very rich, mostly white men with far too much money.  Then, I do believe that during the 4 years when Biden was working to make significant advances, particularly related to climate change, international relations, and transportation and general infrastructure, you know, the things America needs, The project 2025ers went to work to get a system in place for “stealing” the election in 2024, and keeping power permanently,  possibly practicing on certain races in 2022.  There is some evidence related to AI interference in "swing state" voting in 2024.  Democrats, fearing to be seen as just like Republicans whining over the 2020 election which Trump definitely lost, didn't challenge the results and allowed the project 2025ers into office to put their nefarious plans in place.  They should have been arrested the night they entered our departments claiming to be the DOGE, a non-existent government entity that was designed by Musk and friends to steal Americans' private information for his own benefit.  The lying, cheating, militarization, etc. continue. 

We are not helpless, despite Trump’s desire that we should be.  There are things we can do to clean up this mess!

1. Get everyone we know and even don't know to be sure they are registered to vote, signing them up NOW and encouraging them to vote in every election.

2. Pressure our media to report the truth.  For example, Ms. Good and Mr. Petty, in Minneapolis were murdered by an ICE operative and Border Patrol officers!  There is no real controversy, no mistake about that, despite Noem’s and Trump’s lies.   The liars need to be called out on their actions and lies, all the time on every social media platform, newspaper, NPR/PBS, and traditional network, as creatively and by as many people as possible.

3. Continue to protest the ICE and Border Patrol killings and abuse, in Minneapolis and in all our communities.  Report on the  bad treatment in the concentration camp prisons, so people will know that this evil is going on in our name and with our tax money. 

4. Write letters, make calls and sign petitions to lawmakers at all levels demanding they follow their oath of office and stop this Trumpian anti-Americanism.  

5. Do not lose hope, give up, or allow ourselves to think that Trump and his crazies are worthy of any respect beyond that of being human beings; they do not care what they are doing except that it will hurt people their boss Baby Donnie doesn't like.

6. Encourage a lot of people to read our Constitution over and over so we can knowledgeably demand our Congress start following and living by it and the oaths they swore.

 

Those are just a few things, each doing our little or big part to stop this Trumplican mess.  Trump has dementia and needs to be gone from office, but so do Vance and Trump’s handlers whose plot is to destroy this nation so their rich buddies can take over.  We don't have to allow it, so let’s not!

FACING OUR HISTORY

By Ruth A. Sheets

February 6, 2026

 As I listen to and contemplate current news briefs, I am reminded that doing harm to people white men don’t like, as ICE is being permitted to do, has been part of the American experience nearly from the beginning. 

 Slavery happened and Black people were the victims no matter how much white folks want to believe that enslavement saved Black people from ignorance and savagery and want to cut slavery from American history; it won’t happen!  After the Civil War and supposed freedom, in our south and in some northern locations too, Black men and women and their allies were lynched for wanting something better, more fair, more equal.  Those white perpetrators were extremely rarely held accountable.  White women and children came to sites of lynchings and cheered, jeered, and showed themselves and their white male perpetrators to be worse than anything those being lynched could possibly have done. 

People were killed for their faith at least as long as there have been “Christians” in this nation.  There have been reports of possible killings of Irish Catholics working on railroads in the middle 1800s.  KKKers targeted Catholics as well as Black Americans in the south and Chinese and Japanese were attacked for just being who they are, mostly in the West.  Then, there are the many Native Americans who were killed just because white men wanted their land and them gone.  The one thing these events have in common, white people, most of them men.   

 

Trump, Miller, and the rest of the white house white toddler pool have grabbed onto that "right" to be white and hateful, even murderous if they choose.  America until January 20, 2025 was better, but the strains of that old white male destruction are being revived and heard, even in the ICE recruitment ads.  I would bet those ICErs would be delighted to hang a few people and commit the same horrors their ancestors did to those who wanted their right to a piece of the pie.  They’ve already dragged innocent people face-down along the street, including a pregnant woman, smashed car windows, broken into homes, kidnapped people and sent them, even children and old people, into appalling prisons far from home and any legal defense.  They committed murder on several occasions while Donald Trump implies only 2 out of thousands is no big deal. 

Trump and his sycophants forget their heroes:  Trump, Miller, Musk, and a bunch of others have recent immigrant ties, Trump’s mother was not a citizen when he was born and his father a second generation American.  Miller’s Lineage in America is not long, neither is Musk’s (overstayed his visa).  The hypocrisy is astounding!  Those white men don’t care because, well, they’re just so special, you know! 

This country needs to face the reality of who we have been and what we want to become.  I know we don’t want to be what we were, particularly many white Americans don’t.  We have a responsibility to work hard to make things better for more than just the super rich white guys who want to rule.  We do need to be protesting in every way we can, doing our best to stop the violence against women and people of color, citizens and immigrants alike.  That's what we are called to do.

In our protests, we must do everything possible to keep our elections free and untrumped,  and ICE off our streets.  Our Congress needs to be held accountable, anyone in either party who supports ICE and the other things DHS is doing need to be unelected ASAP, every single one!  Some things we can do include:  watching for ICE in our streets, giving warnings, filming, and getting in the way whenever we can show this Trump regime we are done with their hate, anger, fear and resentments that lead to revenge.  We are not in a schoolyard with a bunch of toddleresque bullies; we are ordinary Americans and our allies who are tired of the Trumpian toxic garbage!  We are looking for quality adult leadership!

 

 

HOPE IN THE NEW YEAR

 By Ruth A. Sheets

The first month of the new year has passed and the political upheaval that began just over a year ago continues at an alarming pace.  We are not helpless!  Here are a few of my ideas to direct some of our efforts to stop this tyrannical takeover.  The Substacks I connect with regularly present actions we can take.  Here are a few of my responses, slightly modified in some cases to include more recent events.

  

Lilla, I like your idea of finding ways to educate the American people about the truth. We could do it

• through supposed innocuous advertisements by decent corporations and agencies, mentioning kindnesses people have done as part of their ads, giving a fact about our constitution and its amendments at the beginning or end of each ad, “did you know that . . .” 
• presenting cartoons with positive themes about immigrants and others who do good works to help the people of this nation and the world and make it "cool" to watch them and share them among young people.
• Introduce local scholarships for people who do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly, but not too humbly in this world.

We have to be creative now in what we do because the creeps have had a half-century+ to do their dirty work against our nation and the world.

 

David, I heard Eli Wiesel speak once and wondered how he, Victor Frankel, and so many others maintained hope in the face of what they had experienced in the Holocaust.  It makes me see that we have within us individually and in groups, the ability to not only sow hope, but also to live it ourselves, making connections with people to keep us/them from losing hart and falling into the chasm of hatred, fear, unchecked anger, and utter cruelty that feed the fascists and other authoritarians who want only power to keep people under their thumb to get whatever they want with impunity.  We need to become the actors, as Bernie Sanders, AOC, and so many progressives have done, speaking, writing, drawing, composing works that can break through the walls that fascists and others build.   Hiding our heads and pretending none of this matters and there is nothing we can do is not acceptable. 

 

Joseph the challenge is that we don't all have the same idea of what it means to be "a good person" or virtuous.  For Trump and his toddler pool, it is to get as rich as possible, stepping on whoever happens to be in the way of their accumulation of money and power.  People who want to just be rich as their life's goal think a good person is one who can do whatever it takes and not look back.  I think we can put out some portraits of what it means to be a person of virtue, "a good person" through children’s books, articles, posters, Tee-shirts, and social media directed toward young people.  We can include civics education in our schools from Kindergarten through college, incorporating it through reading, science, and social studies, even math with material at each child’s learning level, making lessons fun and compelling.  We can emphasize, in our news and entertainment programs, people who have done positive things that matter, large or small (skipping quickly over those who are not people of virtue instead of dwelling on them).  We could do this through a campaign , pushing networks, social media platforms, and even NPR/PBS to stop putting Trump’s various actions and his name as the first thing on all of their news reports; he isn't worthy of the honor, particularly when he has done something illegal, like bombing boats in international waters, kidnapping the president of Venezuela, and threatening to invade other nations.  Cover these, but only with facts, reminding people that these are wrong actions. 

 

Marc, It can be pretty dark now, but we will come out on the other side of this as a different nation, hopefully for the good. Again neighbors are helping neighbors and many on our courts are working to stop the insanities of this regime. It is giving us a good look at those who do not value this nation, our constitution, and our laws. We need to focus on them to see who they are, what they are doing, and how they can be redirected. The oligarchs need to be addressed directly with higher taxes on all their wealth as well as their corporations. Having too much, as they do is bad for everyone. We could make a big difference on how this insanity is moved out.  We all need to stay vigilant and peaceful, protesting whenever we can and encourage others to protest with us no matter the obstacles. Courage, our values,  and our Constitution should be our guides.  Hope should give us what we need to keep moving forward.

 

It’s time more effort is placed on covering the actual courage being displayed in our nation, and it isn’t in the white house or among ICE or the Border Patrol.  Kudos to the people of Minneapolis for weathering the bitter cold to stand up to Trump’s paramilitary thugs.  Thanks to people all  over the country who are finding their voice and courage to protest in the face of this Trumpian regime.  Keep in mind the next “No Kings” event is set for March 28^th.  I hope to see you there in person or in spirit!