Category: History

America’s 21st-century Know Nothing Party

In the 1850s, an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, xenophobic movement burst on the political scene in the United States. At first a secret society, the Native American Party required its initiates to present proof of a Protestant pedigree, support mandatory Bible reading in public schools and a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants, use hand signals and passwords, and promise to respond to questions from outsiders by saying, “I know nothing.” Before it flamed out, the Know Nothing Party sent hundreds of its members to the U.S. Congress and state legislatures.

Their eyes wide shut, fingers stuck in their ears, Congressional Republicans are certain all they need to know is which way the wind is blowing – and that they shouldn’t do anything about the pandemic, the economy, voting rights or immigration because it might help Democrats.

Many Republicans support Donald Trump’s contention that he won the election. The Biden inauguration was based fraudulent counts. The January 6 insurrection was just a friendly group visiting the capitol. There was no riot.

What does it say about us that America’s 21st-century Know Nothing Party is unlikely to flame out as quickly as its 1850s ancestor?

Honoring Civil War Leaders Has Not Changed

A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee stands in Market Street Park in Charlottesville Virginia. The city plans to remove it and a nearby statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson on July 10.

It never made sense to me.  The leaders of the Confederate States of America were traitors to the United States.  It was an unrecognized breakaway state (country) that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865, and that fought against the United States of America during the American Civil War.  Despite that, members of the leadership of the Confederacy were honored with statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol.

On June 29th, the House of Representatives voted to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol building.

Are we sustaining Southerners hatred for Yankees by removing the statues?

The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

This is all about keeping Americans in the dark about America’s history of bad behavior of things our leaders don’t want us to know about.

My education was in public schools. Philadelphia, Inglewood California, and Los Angeles.  I wasn’t the smartest student but I wasn’t the dumbest.  History and geography were the subjects I liked most but teachers provided scant facts.

We learned there was slavery but no one explained what that meant.  One person owning another person.  Counting slaves as 3/5 of a person in the census but the reason was never explained.  Jim Crow laws were never even mentioned in school.

In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America and in some others, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, in which the U.S. Supreme Court laid out its “separate but equal” legal doctrine for facilities for African Americans. Moreover, public education had essentially been segregated since its establishment in most of the South after the Civil War in 1861–65.

Black Wall Street, former byname of the Greenwood neighbourhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where in the early 20th century African Americans had created a self-sufficient prosperous business district. The entire community was burned to the ground in 1921.  I never learned of this until this year.

I was taught that American Indians were savages and they had no right to anything. Custer’s Last Stand was part of the fight against those savages. the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears. President Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called “Indian removal.”

The group of settlers known as the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism while snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains, for the winter of 1846–1847.  Schools I attended never spoke one word of the event.  When I learned of this there was one line in Britannica Encyclopedia, “cannibalism, necessity of” but no explanation.  Britannica Encyclopedia has corrected that error.

There are people who deny the Holocaust ever happened despite the stories and photographs.

Today we have members of the Republican Party claiming that the January 6 insurrection at our Capitol never happened.     

The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth? Probably not going to happen.

Cult National Leaders

Donald Trump is not the first cult leader and he won’t be the last.

Juan Perón was a populist and authoritarian president of Argentina and founder of the Peronist movement. He set the country on a course of industrialization and state intervention in the economy in order to bring greater economic and social benefits to the growing working class, but he also suppressed opposition.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazilian politician who served as president of Brazil from 2003 to 2011.  In 2006, as the end of his first term approached, the economy was growing, and Brazil’s poverty rate had fallen significantly. In July 2017, Lula was convicted on charges of money laundering and corruption in a controversial trial, and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison.

“Long live our teacher, our father, our leader, Comrade Stalin!” (1946 poster, Soviet Union). Stalin was the leader about whom the expression “cult of personality” was devised in 1956 by Nikita Khrushchev.

The People’s Republic of China under Chairman Mao Zedong also developed a cult of personality, the most obvious symbol of which is his massive portrait situated on the north end of Tiananmen Square. The culture of the People’s Republic of China before 1978 was highly influenced by the personality cult of Mao Zedong[] which reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution.

A cult of personality devoted to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi existed in Libya during his rule. His face appeared on a wide variety of items, including postage stamps, watches, and school satchels. Quotations from The Green Book appeared on a wide variety of places, from street walls to airports and even on pens, and they were also put to pop music for public release.

Donald Trump, past president of the United States, denies he lost the election in November 2020 and claims that thousands of ballots will be found in the states he lost will be found proving that he won the election. “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!” Trump said on Monday May 3, 2021. If anything the former President wields even more control of his party now as Republicans gather at rallies supporting his views.  

Republican officials who once had the courage to condemn Trump’s insurrectionist rhetoric are now seeking to ingratiate themselves with his supporters — especially those who may run for President in future, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Kevin GOP House leader, who at first said Trump bore responsibility for the January 6 riot, quickly visited the former President at his Mar-a-Lago resort and is anchoring his effort to win back the House for Republicans next year on the former President and his movement.

Some say Trump is destroying the American democracy as they pledge their support but in their hearts they know he has nothing to offer regarding the future.

The United States will survive the cult. As Ronald Reagan said in his farewell address, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

California ‘sundown’ laws Still Reflect Our True Beliefs

Glendale confronts its racist past, apologizing for ‘sundown’ laws as reported in the Los Angeles Times on October 15.

Glendale now in essence saying ‘Oops, we are sorry we had those laws but you know we were frightened by the color of your skin and we feared there would be intermarriage.  Oh, by the way we still believe in the superiority of White Christians over all other people.  That includes Jews, Mexicans and any other group that that doesn’t look like us don’t and speak our language.  We finally accepted Armenians when we noticed they do look rather White and they are Christians.’

Precinct Reporter Group, an African American news organization listed these cities as “sundown” cities.

California cities classified as “surely” sundown towns include Chico, Culver City, El Segundo, Fresno, Glendale, Hawthorne, La Jolla, Palmdale, San Marino and Taft. Cities that are now majority Black and Brown, including Compton and Inglewood in Southern California, previously barred Black residents. The list also includes some entire counties as surely sundown in the past.

Congressman Adam Schiff represents all of Glendale and surrounding areas.  I wonder how many residents know he is Jewish. A delicious revenge.

Independence Day

The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration explained why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule.

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”