I received an email from a highly accomplished, highly qualified mid-level civilian employee of the Dept of the Air Force. He really doesn't like Trump, as can be intuited from the subject of his email: Quote from Trump’s OMB (Office of Management and Budget) director nominee about me and my fellow civil service employees: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. " That's a pretty harsh statement and the question is, "Are bureaucrats and civil service employees the same thing?" Being a retired civil service employee, I think- and hope- the answer is no. Below is my response to his concern.
Left: a cartoon suggesting that Congress has largely ceded its responsibility to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats who make decrees that are viewed as law. Right: many government employees- civil servants- have important functions, and overall they are generously compensated.
Admittedly I am neither a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School nor a policy wonk for the Brookings Institution. In other words, none of the great policy makers are ever going to seek my thoughts or recommendations on immigration or related issues. I could argue that living in Central America for 5+ years would offer me some kind of credentials, but in general people who make policy, control funding, and exert power- sometimes referred to as the Establishment- are not concerned with actual, real-life experience, but with academic pedigrees. It’s kind of like the real world of the Establishment is the pretend world, and those who make decisions that can effect millions of people tend to dismiss, and even disdain, lessons from the actual real world: it’s less hassle to live and advance in the pretend real world than in the real real world. At some level pretend real world people are envious of the real real world people. In the recent presidential election, for example, millions were apparently impressed that the Democrat candidate might have once worked briefly at a MacDonald's decades ago, which in their minds gave her real real world credentials.
Photos from our project in the village of El Cacao, Honduras
Of the 5+ years in Central America the majority of the time was in Honduras, with a little less than 6 months in Guatemala in 2001-2002, where I was involved in 2 or 3 volunteer efforts. Beginning around 2005 my wife and I developed a children’s charity project in a small, rural village in Honduras, and opened in May 2007, a place where kids could come and have wholesome fun- arts and crafts, story-time, play and sports- and receive breakfast, lunch, and snacks; it proved to be very successful. Living in a village as the rare gringos contrasts to what is called living as an expat, a perfectly fine life choice but it tends to keep one insulated among fellow English speaking expats with limited exposure to the culture and people. Many expats don’t have the need to learn other than basic Spanish, but we had to become pretty functional in Spanish in order to do what we did.
Picture yourself at a generic social gathering where someone you just met blurts out, “Don’t you thank God everyday for sacrificing His Son to pay for our sins!” If you are a fellow believer you might respond with “Praise the Lord,” or, if you are an anti-Christian progressive activist type who craves being offended, you might say, “Don’t force your beliefs and your fascist pretend god on me!” Or, if you are a reasonably mature and sensitive person, you might think “That’s kind of an inappropriate thing to say to someone you don’t know” and try to politely redirect the conversation.
In terms of the person making the statement, what are their motivations? It’s certainly possible they assume everyone believes as they do, which is kind of arrogant. Maybe it's a kind of religious virtue signaling. More likely, it’s simply something very important to them to and they just can’t filter their words from their thoughts. It’s extremely doubtful that a non-believer would have an epiphany and cry out “Save me Jesus!” What’s more likely is their audience would think, “That really doesn’t do much to advance their cause.”
by Reid Fitzsimons (note this is a very long article of approx 5,300 words, the first 3,500 being mine and the remainder those of a then pro-life Jesse Jackson from 1977)
Around 45 years-ago I was visiting in-laws deep in Mississippi, this being in the waning days of what we call “Jim Crow.” The in-laws were relatively wealthy, as defined by being two million in debt due to ill-conceived business ventures. They had employees, many of them black, and I befriended a young black man about my age. We had been given an excess amount of pecans and I offered him a bag to take back to his family, which he appreciated. As he was walking away, one of the in-laws, a generation older than me, exclaimed “He’s stealing the pecans!” Knowing this could have an unfortunate outcome, I quickly explained I had given him the bag. The response, in a genteel Southern accent (me being a Yankee) was, “We don’t do that kind of thing down here.”
The political structure of Jim Crow was pretty typical of oppressive societies throughout history, meaning the oppressors needed the oppressed to maintain power. In Jim Crow, there was dangled before the white masses the perpetual threat of “nigras not knowing their place and being uppity.” This had broad and powerful appeal to many of the white masses, who from childhood had been taught that blacks were, simply, inferior. They- blacks- could be dutiful and affectionate pets and treated accordingly, but there was always the fear they would turn on their masters, and the whites holding the power knew how to exploit this fear: one can picture the ugly man, George Wallace, with his ugly promise of “...segregation forever!”
A scene in the excellent comedy My Cousin Vinny involved a young man who, when asked by a cop “when did you shoot the clerk?,” responded with an astonished “I shot the clerk??” He, of course, didn’t shoot the clerk, but his “statement” was treated as a confession.
Left: the scene from My Cousin Vinny where Bill Gambini's (Ralph Macchio) words are misinterpreted by the police and (right) claimed to be a confession
On Labor Day weekend I visited someone I’ve known all my life but never spent much time with; I should add he’s a truly decent guy. I never bring up politics in social situations such as this and had no idea of his leanings, but he mentioned he detested Trump to the point he thinks he should be executed. I asked him why he felt this way and he vigorously mentioned atrocious things Trump has been to reported to say, stating emphatically in some cases, “I heard him say it!” The following discusses some of the egregious and hideous statements attributed to Trump, including those the person “heard” that led to his extreme hatred of Trump, and what the truth actually is.
Two sides of the same coin: white supremacists and masked left wing fascists (curiously calling themselves "antifascists") in Charlottesville, VA August 2017
Charlottesville,VA. In August 2017 there was a “Unite the Right” rally which quickly devolved into violence between protesters and counter-protesters. Several days later Trump was asked about this during a news conference. Included in his response to the loaded question, “Mr. President, are you putting what you're calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?” was a mention, “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” This was immediately reported as Trump claiming Neo-Nazis and white supremacists were very fine people, and elicited outrage among the usual suspects, including the Democrat party leadership and the media. Joe Biden has repeatedly stated this was a major factor in his seeking the presidency, and is to this moment being used by the Democrat nominee, Kamala Harris, as an example of the hateful nature of Trump. Of course, Trump specifically condemned the Neo-Nazis and white supremacists a few sentences later: “I'm not talking about the Neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally,” yet this total lie was and is being propagated by those who so passionately seem to hate Trump. And, like so many lies, intentional misrepresentations, and fabrications, have proven very effective.
Once in a while you’ll see an older guy in a store wearing a hat the says Vietnam Veteran. If you do consider this for a moment, you’ll probably assume he is, indeed, a Vietnam vet. If you pause a little longer, you might imagine what a profound impact this experience must have had on him over a half century ago when he was a young man, perhaps just out of high school. I fear the significance of serving in a war is being lost on us as a society overall, relegated more to a video game mindset: The share of the U.S. population with military experience has declined, according to data from the US Census Bureau. In 1980, about 18% of U.S. adults were veterans, but that share fell to 6% in 2022.
Tim Walz photo from Army basic training 1981; wow: on the right the corresponding photo of me from1976
There is a person named Tim Walz, the current governor of MN who was recently declared to be the Democrat’s candidate for Vice President. While Waltz is among the most extreme leftists in the Democrat party, he fits the bill for a slightly older non-homosexual white guy, designed to balance the ticket headed by a lady who is pretty much white but portrays herself as black, and is an equally extreme leftist. This article, however, is not to discuss the extremism of this duo and the party they represent, but to explore a specific fraud they hope will be ignored or successfully glossed over, that being Walz’s military service. It should be acknowledged without reservation that he was a member of the Army National Guard for 24 years. He retired in May 2005, and came darn close to having served honorably.
by Reid Fitzsimons (Preface: The word “culture” is used frequently; perhaps overused. We have cultural icons, cultural appropriation, and culture wars; a privileged person might view his or herself as being highly cultured for listening to NPR or patronizing expensive sushi bars, and we have cultures associated with black, white and every skin tone in between. In reality it’s difficult to define the word, but I recall the professor from my Cultural Anthropology 101 class at the University of Wyoming in 1977, who succinctly stated culture is “learned behavior.”
Inordertomakethepoint of this article I need to be a little autobiographical. I was raised in the almost exclusively white Maryland suburbs outside of Washington, DC. While wealth is always relative, we were certainly well off, not country club/private school rich (there were plenty of those households around), but we had a spacious house, two cars, membership in a community swimming club with tennis courts, and took family vacations. The typical and expected trajectory was to complete high school, graduate from college, perhaps go to grad school to become a lawyer, accountant, or obtain an MBA, get a well paying job, start a family in a nice house in the suburbs, and repeat the cycle.
by Reid Fitzsimons (this article was written as a Letter to the Editor of a small local paper, the Susquehanna Transcript, as a response to an earlier anti-Trump letter)
Sometimes we love too much, and sometimes we hate too much, to the point the object of our love is perfect and flawless and the object of our hate is vilified in totality. These feelings can be personal, and not infrequently political. Extremes in love and hate might feel satisfying, but too often feelings overcome reality, and make us believe and do stupid things. The June 12thissue of the Transcript contained a letter from a nonagenarian residing in Uniondale entitled Assimilate 201. It was a little difficult for me to follow, but it was clear the writer is no fan of Donald Trump, and her inaccuracies and falsehoods presented as fact, both small and significant, suggests she hates Trump a little too much.
Hitler is the go-to comparison for people Democrats don't like
She claims Trump called immigrants “vermin,” then segued into a predictable comparison to Hitler, mentioning that, “In case you didn't know, Hitler killed 8 million mostly educated Jewish people in large gas ovens.” It’s not a huge point, but I don’t think Hitler really cared about the educational level of the Jews he had exterminated, and for historical accuracy, the accepted Holocaust figure is 6 million. The mention of killing so many people in “large gas ovens” likewise is inaccurate: the Nazis used a variety of methods to kill Jews and other demographic groups- large ovens were typically used in concentration camps to efficiently incinerate the bodies (and perhaps hide evidence of their atrocities) after they were slaughtered. This may seem a petty point, but if someone is using historical comparison to make a political point it should be reasonably correct.
I’m fairly confident I made it through the years of adolescence and young adulthood with just the average amount of obnoxiousness, and that whatever stupidity I committed did did not include “gay bashing.” Perhaps I should be proud of this, but I’m not sure not being a jerk is deserving of pride. Then again, at the time (this being the 1970s) homosexuality wasn’t really The Thing: back then, if you wanted to garner attention and stick it to the MAN, radical hippie chic was more in vogue than “coming out.” Paradoxically, eventually the anti-establishment hippie radical largely became establishment, as did “coming out.”
Groovy man! Confusing self-indulgence with altruismI didn't realize there was a "coming out" day until I did research for this article
That’s not to say there wasn’t “gay bashing". People I became friends with decades later admitted they said odious things to homosexuals, and came to regret their behavior. One was (at the time) a young pastor who, with like-minded idiot Christians, drove about the known homosexual areas of Dallas and hurled insults. He quickly realized there was nothing Christian about this activism and, besides being appalling, was counterproductive- the success of convincing a homosexual to say, "Yes, I will now become a heterosexual” upon hearing someone yell, “Queers are going to burn in hell” was about 0%. By the time I met this pastor he was perhaps the most sincere “walk the walk” Christian I ever knew, who dedicated his life to providing a home for abandoned and abused children in Honduras. He was very conservative, with beliefs that would make him an object of scorn among the diversity and inclusion crowd: his theology was God loves the sinner but not the sin, as compared to God loves the sinner and especially loves the sin, with carnal sins being extra sanctified. The latter is the theology of the progressive collection of pretend Christians, often referred to as “mainstream.” To them, self-gratification is the highest calling.
Every once in a while some hapless Republican is excoriated for suggesting some version of, “Well, Hitler did some good things,” a statement often quoted without context. With the exception of a handful of neo-Nazi morons and a frighteningly larger number of anti-Jew extreme leftists (who do their anti-Jew things with tacit support from establishment leftists), pretty much nobody thinks Hitler did anything overall “good,” but from a historical perspective, it’s not unreasonable to ask, “Did he do anything that could have been perceived as “good” that rallied millions upon millions of people to support his ascendancy and policies?” This is an important question for this moment in time, as there are worrisome indications the world is once again turning to authoritarianism.
So...how did Hitler obtain absolute power in Germany? Undoubtedly there have been innumerable papers and books on this subject, but ultimately the answer is as old as history and is in play to this very moment. For brief background, Germany was in shambles following its utter defeat in WW1. The victorious allies, acting on understandable emotion but with little wisdom, forced upon Germany a repressive and retributive agreement called the Treaty of Versailles (www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Versailles-1919), designed to prevent Germany from ever again becoming a military power. It demanded huge reparations and allotted heretofore chunks of Germany to other nations. Not surprisingly there were wannabe left wing and right wing revolutionary movements and all the chaos they entailed, so the reasonable solution was some form of democracy that came to be called the Weimar Republic (www.britannica.com/place/Weimar-Republic). Nevertheless, great discontent continued and there were vacuums to be filled, and Hitler had the skill to fill the void, and the patience.
Adolph Hitler in 1924 at the age of 35Before becoming a bloodthirsty dictator, Hitler was an artist
