Today, Katie Benner of the New York Times broke the story that former president Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Five emails provided to Congress show Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, asking the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, in December, to investigate rumors of voter fraud. One of the fantastical stories Meadows wanted investigated was the story that “people in Italy had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States and switch votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.”
A couple minor corrections about the D-Day material (since this happens to be the kind of history I am a recognized Subject Matter Expert on). Eisenhower is visiting the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne, who would be the first Allied soldiers to land in France. The ships carrying the troops had departed England on June 4, since D-Day was supposed to be June 5. However, the weather intervened. The invasion hung in the balance - if they were recalled there was a good chance momentum would be lost to try a do-over and the forecast for the rest of June was worse. The ships were milling around in the English Channel and there was every chance the Germans would spot them. Finally, Eisenhower's weatherman, Colonel Stagg, detected what he thought might be a momentary break in the weather - he figured the odds were 60% in his favor. So a few hours before Eisenhower visited the Screaming Eagles, he OKed the invasion for June 6. As it was, there was a 36 hour break in the bad weather, after which it was worse, as forecast. But the initial invasion had made it. The greatest invasion in history was on a knife edge of failure all the way.
Today is also the 79th anniversary of the victory at the Battle of Midway. Following the destruction of the four Japanese carriers at the heart of the Mobile Fleet on June 4, Admiral Yamamoto ordered the fleet to turn around that night.
I had the privilege of knowing the guy who won the battle, Dick Best, whose almost single-handed attack on the Akagi turned the tide from what had been an American defeat to what would be victory. He always thought, though, that he served his country better than that day over the Japanese fleet, when he was the Librarian at RAND Corp, and "turned a blind eye" to Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo's smuggling of the Pentagon Papers out of RAND. "The American people deserved to know what had been done in their name."
They really were The Greatest Generation. Being able to know them and write about them has been the privilege of my life.
It is an hour before Sunday, and I wondered why Heather wrote as much as she did, until I read it. Good and evil came off the page.
I looked at the photo of General Eisenhower with the soldiers. My husband, Mark, was one of 73,000 American soldiers that landed in Normandy. He and a few of his war buddies went back a couple of times after the war.
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
When the Attorney General of Texas publicly admits to tampering with ballots to change the outcome of an election, I can only wonder what they’re not telling us. This is so bazar it’s difficult to believe. Where are the indictments?
Until some of these anti-democracy conspirators are punished, they will continue their assault. Not only are they getting more aggressive by the day, they also are no longer shy about expressing their motives. How Manchin and Sinema can continue to oppose the For the People Act is breathtaking.
I love Oregon, wish constantly that I could afford to move back to the state I was born in and grew up in, and raised my children in. It is, as far as I'm concerned, the most beautiful state in the country. I am impressed by its growing social and cultural awareness, and the diversity it has.
But over the last few decades, there have been too many people in elected positions or other positions of influence who do not recognize the responsibility they also carry to behave responsibly. They seem most dedicated to obstruction. In spite of those few, the Oregon legislature has initiated some excellent social programs, faced some difficult truths head on, and created a vision for the state's future that has already begun to be implemented.
I am disappointed and disgusted by people like Nearman and a few others in both houses. Dallas Heard, Senate republican is a man who seems to have no compass and seems to have difficulty grasping even simple concepts. These people are most intent, not on bettering the lives of Oregonians, but creating a schism and distorting the narrative about what is happening in the Capitol, and in many communities. The media has not always been helpful in countering those mis-truths, focusing cameras and print instead on the distracting noise.
I watch good people in both parties work hard to rebuild the kind of Oregon we once were on a steady path toward. That path is still there, and though rocky, I think achievable. I have been deeply troubled to watch legislators, grown adults, behave in childish ways, to the point of tantrums, within the chambers. At the same time, I am deeply moved by the efforts of other legislators whose dedication has kept them working long hours, Dem and Repub alike, to make it possible to keep on track. And the staff: an amazing group of dedicated people who somehow serve as glue to hold things together.
It was strange and disturbing to watch Nearman, who has a clear sense of how the legislature works but a poor sense of *why* it works the way it does, teach his audience how to bypass the safety measures meant to keep both legislators and the public safe. His willingness to serve as servant to people known to be violent is criminal. That he fails to see that is why he needs to resign.
This is outrageous! "But that was not the only news of the day. We also learned that the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, told Trump advisor Steven Bannon on a public show that had he not been able to block a great deal of mail-in voting in 2020, Biden would have won Texas." I hope every voter in Texas particularly in the large metropolitan areas hear this and act on it. This should hearten and energize Texans that Texas is turning purple and ultimately blue. We need to overcome the barriers to voting in all legal, non-violent ways possible. The more People participate in democracy the stronger we'll all be. We need to make voting the social and responsible and safe thing to do.
Good morning all! And a special good morning to HCR, who decided to post a letter when she could have been giving herself a real weekend. I know: summer is a little less stressful for those of us in the Ed Biz (as Tom Lehrer used to say), but I still admire HCR's fortitude to keep on providing us with this interesting and informative mix of historical assessment and current events. This also gives all of us a forum to communicate, one for which I am very grateful, as I would never have met any of you--whom I count as friends, not just fellow-substackers--had I not happened upon HCR's letters 18 months ago.
Which leads me, briefly, to today: isn't it interesting that Texas didn't even need voter suppression laws in order to suppress the vote? I have to assume that the intention was to enshrine the double-dealing and the racist neo-Jim Crow restrictions so that future attorneys general don't have to expend even an ounce of energy in order to ensure that Dems and Center-Left independents cannot vote. So those of us who see the future of the USA slipping into autocracy, run by petty and ignorant dictators whose army of hooligans "enforce" the "law," have minimal resources to stem this tide because the Dems have basically ignored it all, favoring the pretense that they are going to tap into some airy-fairy wellspring of support and overrun the powers of evil. This fantasy has been in place for 50 years. This fantasy is the reason why we have no decent grassroots organizations in most of the USA. This is the reason why Stacey Abrams is tired--and that her organization, carefully constructed over a 10-year span, cannot work in other states as hastily thrown-together, last-minute attempts to stem the tidal wave of autocracy.
The only way out of this morass--and it is a tough one--is to vote and to challenge all the voter suppression laws, as they plod their way through the courts which are the only venues for blocking them, since the obstructionists Manchin and Cinema refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes, by deliberately flouting them. That means driving people to the polls, going into neighborhoods and working on getting everyone the picture IDs most states now require (this has to happen at least six months before Election Day in 2022), and having armies of poll watchers to counter those on the right. And there will be violence. And we will get arrested. And we will go to jail.
So who is up for this? I fear that most Dems are not.
My father-in-law was on one of those ships and was one of four men from his battalion to survive. He came home a different person than the one who left home to serve his country. Here we are, 77 years later, and the republic he went to war to defend is on the ropes. It's hard to be hopeful.
Just Wow <snip> The video, which shows Nearman winking and nodding at setting up the invasion, has raised questions about whether other Republicans worked with insurrectionists in other settings. <unsnip>
And once again I have to ask why people are so puzzled as to why I’m down on the future of the country. The Republicans are just going to cheat their way to power (where they haven’t already done so) and then once they have it, game the system so that they have it permanently.
Dawn comes early in England during the summer. At 0200, June 6, 1944, the rumble of 48 Pratt and Whitney R-2800s reverberated over the quiet English countryside surrounding the former RAF base of Beaulieau Roads between Southampton and Bournemouth that was now home to the 9th Air Force’s 365th Fighter Group.
On the taxiway, the big P-47s – resplendent in the black and white identification stripes hurriedly applied with mops and brooms by the ground crews two nights before – S-turned heavily under their loads of two 500-lb bombs on the wing shackles and a 110-gallon drop tank on the centerline mount, as they took their turn to fly off into the rising sun.
At the runway, the flagman checked each pair as they moved into position; the engines roared as the pilots advanced their throttles to takeoff power, then began their roll as they were waved off. In the middle of the sixteen P-47s of the 388th Fighter Squadron, 21-year old 2nd Lieutenant Archie Maltby ran his hands over his wool pants to dry his sweating palms, then pulled on his flying gloves. Today was the second mission he would fly since joining the group at the end of April.
The next two airplanes moved into position and took off. The ground crew signaled Maltby and his leader to move forward. He checked the engine instruments, worked the controls quickly in a last-minute check, and pushed the throttle forward. Halfway down the runway, the heavy Thunderbolt’s tail came up, and then he was airborne with the main gear thumping into the wells. A right turn brought the two Thunderbolts over the Isle of Wight in a matter of moments; they joined the rest of the formation, heading east across the English Channel toward the coast of Normandy in the partly-cloudy skies.
“I’ll never forget what it was like that day. There were so many airplanes in the sky that there was a serious risk of collision, and there were so many ships in the Channel it seemed that you could have walked from ship to ship from England to France.”
The assignment for the 365th F.G. that day was to patrol the Cotentin Peninsula, to insure the Germans were unable to reinforce their units facing the invading Americans at Omaha and Utah Beaches. After an hour, the Thunderbolts were free of their bombs and most of their ammunition. Returning to base, the pilots told the excited ground crews what they had seen. After a quick meal, they were back in their planes for a second sweep of the beachhead. “We thought that was it for the day when we got back from the second mission, but all of a sudden there was a call that radar had picked up the Luftwaffe heading toward the beaches, and all the airplanes that had been fueled were scrambled.” In fact, the only two members of the Luftwaffe to make an appearance over the Normandy beaches on D-Day were Oberst Josef “Pips” Priller, Geschwader Kommodore of JG26, and his wingman. “By the time we got there, Priller had already made his famous run over the beaches and gotten out of there.”
When they returned, night had fallen on England. “It really was the longest day I can ever remember.”
And 11 months later, 22-year old Major Maltby was preparing the orders for the squadron's next mission, when he received the message to halt all air operations. "I put down the phone, and I looked over at the pilot board, and of the 48 men I had flown with on D-Day, there were six of us still there. Ten had gone home on completing their tours and 15 were known to be POWs. The rest had been blown out of the sky somewhere between Normandy and our base in western Germany."
Cleary the most pressing business of the Senate is to pass some voting legislation if democracy is to live past 2022. That it all revolves around Joe Manchin dictates what needs to be done. He's insisting on bipartisan agreement on all of the proposed bills but there clearly is none to be found at this time.
So how can/should Democrats move forward on voting?
Dana Millbank has offered the best strategy I've read so far.
1. Have the votes and let Republicans prove to Manchin there is no hope of bipartisanship
2. Have votes on each of the items in the voting bills and force Republicans to vote down each one. Here's some examples of what the votes would be:
* Restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act
* Require 100% of the votes be backed up by paper
* Abolish gerrymandering
* End dark money contributions
* Require states to alert each other when voters apply for a driver’s license in a new state, to avoid duplicate voter registrations.
* Forbid Administration officials to lobby for 2 years and tighten lobbyist disclosure requirements
Would Republicans be willing to make public their stand on all or some of the above. If they proved they support none of the above would that force Manchin to change his position on the filibuster?
Every June 6th, I think about D-Day. As a young kid growing up in NJ in the 1950s I was raised by the men and women who served during WWII. They never talked about it. Life for them in the here and now was what mattered and by extension to all of us, too. Baseball, helping around our homes and yards, going to school, going to church, visiting relatives and hearing the adults talk and laugh together … that was my life. I knew nothing of privation. My parents had known about privation, endured the Depression and then, when enraged by the attack on Pearl Harbor they served their country. They used whatever the government gave them in the way of training and equipment and then they did what was expected. When the movie the Longest Day, came out we went to see it as a family. My parents didn’t say that much about it but I knew that it was right up there for them among the most important events in their lives and in the lives of all the adults who I knew… my friends parents, teachers, coaches even the doctors we visited. It was, very clearly, a shared experience among people who saw the threat for what it was and accepted their role to help defeat it. As I got older and read more and saw more films and presentations about D-Day and the events that led up to it, I began to realize how complicated and difficult an undertaking it was… how many died and suffered in the fighting and what a relief it was for people in France and around the world to know that Hitler and Nazi Germany could be pushed back. It’s hard for me to believe that so many of the trump insurrectionists are my age. Some will go to jail for their actions on January 6. These people, like me, had parents who served during WWII. It profoundly baffles me but ultimately doesn’t trouble me that much that they are such kooks. We’ve always had kooks in America; they don’t get to be in charge…except in those rare moments when they somehow grab the microphone like what happened with trump. That time is over for now. The great ship of America is, once again, steaming in the right direction. Like those who fought and died in WWII, I have deep confidence in our system of government because it’s whole purpose is to serve the will of the people. What a great idea. It’s a huge risk that it could fail… like D-Day was… but it won’t fail, as long as we all keep doing all that we can to do our part … and most of us will like the GA Secy of State did after the 2020 election and the Texas state legislatures just did to push back against the authoritarians who want to weaken our democracy for their misguided and truly kooky purposes. The battle goes on because it must if we want to keep improving our lives and protecting our democracy. So, remember D-Day, yeah…but keep your eye on the fastball that just got thrown your way and hit it hard….I know you will.
A couple minor corrections about the D-Day material (since this happens to be the kind of history I am a recognized Subject Matter Expert on). Eisenhower is visiting the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne, who would be the first Allied soldiers to land in France. The ships carrying the troops had departed England on June 4, since D-Day was supposed to be June 5. However, the weather intervened. The invasion hung in the balance - if they were recalled there was a good chance momentum would be lost to try a do-over and the forecast for the rest of June was worse. The ships were milling around in the English Channel and there was every chance the Germans would spot them. Finally, Eisenhower's weatherman, Colonel Stagg, detected what he thought might be a momentary break in the weather - he figured the odds were 60% in his favor. So a few hours before Eisenhower visited the Screaming Eagles, he OKed the invasion for June 6. As it was, there was a 36 hour break in the bad weather, after which it was worse, as forecast. But the initial invasion had made it. The greatest invasion in history was on a knife edge of failure all the way.
Today is also the 79th anniversary of the victory at the Battle of Midway. Following the destruction of the four Japanese carriers at the heart of the Mobile Fleet on June 4, Admiral Yamamoto ordered the fleet to turn around that night.
I had the privilege of knowing the guy who won the battle, Dick Best, whose almost single-handed attack on the Akagi turned the tide from what had been an American defeat to what would be victory. He always thought, though, that he served his country better than that day over the Japanese fleet, when he was the Librarian at RAND Corp, and "turned a blind eye" to Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo's smuggling of the Pentagon Papers out of RAND. "The American people deserved to know what had been done in their name."
They really were The Greatest Generation. Being able to know them and write about them has been the privilege of my life.
It is an hour before Sunday, and I wondered why Heather wrote as much as she did, until I read it. Good and evil came off the page.
I looked at the photo of General Eisenhower with the soldiers. My husband, Mark, was one of 73,000 American soldiers that landed in Normandy. He and a few of his war buddies went back a couple of times after the war.
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
Heather took me to church early.
Thank you, Heather
When the Attorney General of Texas publicly admits to tampering with ballots to change the outcome of an election, I can only wonder what they’re not telling us. This is so bazar it’s difficult to believe. Where are the indictments?
I don't know why I'm so shocked by this news after everything else that has come to light, but I am. And I am furious and disgusted.
Thanks, Heather. Rest well and enjoy your evening.
Until some of these anti-democracy conspirators are punished, they will continue their assault. Not only are they getting more aggressive by the day, they also are no longer shy about expressing their motives. How Manchin and Sinema can continue to oppose the For the People Act is breathtaking.
I love Oregon, wish constantly that I could afford to move back to the state I was born in and grew up in, and raised my children in. It is, as far as I'm concerned, the most beautiful state in the country. I am impressed by its growing social and cultural awareness, and the diversity it has.
But over the last few decades, there have been too many people in elected positions or other positions of influence who do not recognize the responsibility they also carry to behave responsibly. They seem most dedicated to obstruction. In spite of those few, the Oregon legislature has initiated some excellent social programs, faced some difficult truths head on, and created a vision for the state's future that has already begun to be implemented.
I am disappointed and disgusted by people like Nearman and a few others in both houses. Dallas Heard, Senate republican is a man who seems to have no compass and seems to have difficulty grasping even simple concepts. These people are most intent, not on bettering the lives of Oregonians, but creating a schism and distorting the narrative about what is happening in the Capitol, and in many communities. The media has not always been helpful in countering those mis-truths, focusing cameras and print instead on the distracting noise.
I watch good people in both parties work hard to rebuild the kind of Oregon we once were on a steady path toward. That path is still there, and though rocky, I think achievable. I have been deeply troubled to watch legislators, grown adults, behave in childish ways, to the point of tantrums, within the chambers. At the same time, I am deeply moved by the efforts of other legislators whose dedication has kept them working long hours, Dem and Repub alike, to make it possible to keep on track. And the staff: an amazing group of dedicated people who somehow serve as glue to hold things together.
It was strange and disturbing to watch Nearman, who has a clear sense of how the legislature works but a poor sense of *why* it works the way it does, teach his audience how to bypass the safety measures meant to keep both legislators and the public safe. His willingness to serve as servant to people known to be violent is criminal. That he fails to see that is why he needs to resign.
This is outrageous! "But that was not the only news of the day. We also learned that the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, told Trump advisor Steven Bannon on a public show that had he not been able to block a great deal of mail-in voting in 2020, Biden would have won Texas." I hope every voter in Texas particularly in the large metropolitan areas hear this and act on it. This should hearten and energize Texans that Texas is turning purple and ultimately blue. We need to overcome the barriers to voting in all legal, non-violent ways possible. The more People participate in democracy the stronger we'll all be. We need to make voting the social and responsible and safe thing to do.
Good morning all! And a special good morning to HCR, who decided to post a letter when she could have been giving herself a real weekend. I know: summer is a little less stressful for those of us in the Ed Biz (as Tom Lehrer used to say), but I still admire HCR's fortitude to keep on providing us with this interesting and informative mix of historical assessment and current events. This also gives all of us a forum to communicate, one for which I am very grateful, as I would never have met any of you--whom I count as friends, not just fellow-substackers--had I not happened upon HCR's letters 18 months ago.
Which leads me, briefly, to today: isn't it interesting that Texas didn't even need voter suppression laws in order to suppress the vote? I have to assume that the intention was to enshrine the double-dealing and the racist neo-Jim Crow restrictions so that future attorneys general don't have to expend even an ounce of energy in order to ensure that Dems and Center-Left independents cannot vote. So those of us who see the future of the USA slipping into autocracy, run by petty and ignorant dictators whose army of hooligans "enforce" the "law," have minimal resources to stem this tide because the Dems have basically ignored it all, favoring the pretense that they are going to tap into some airy-fairy wellspring of support and overrun the powers of evil. This fantasy has been in place for 50 years. This fantasy is the reason why we have no decent grassroots organizations in most of the USA. This is the reason why Stacey Abrams is tired--and that her organization, carefully constructed over a 10-year span, cannot work in other states as hastily thrown-together, last-minute attempts to stem the tidal wave of autocracy.
The only way out of this morass--and it is a tough one--is to vote and to challenge all the voter suppression laws, as they plod their way through the courts which are the only venues for blocking them, since the obstructionists Manchin and Cinema refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes, by deliberately flouting them. That means driving people to the polls, going into neighborhoods and working on getting everyone the picture IDs most states now require (this has to happen at least six months before Election Day in 2022), and having armies of poll watchers to counter those on the right. And there will be violence. And we will get arrested. And we will go to jail.
So who is up for this? I fear that most Dems are not.
My father-in-law was on one of those ships and was one of four men from his battalion to survive. He came home a different person than the one who left home to serve his country. Here we are, 77 years later, and the republic he went to war to defend is on the ropes. It's hard to be hopeful.
Just Wow <snip> The video, which shows Nearman winking and nodding at setting up the invasion, has raised questions about whether other Republicans worked with insurrectionists in other settings. <unsnip>
And once again I have to ask why people are so puzzled as to why I’m down on the future of the country. The Republicans are just going to cheat their way to power (where they haven’t already done so) and then once they have it, game the system so that they have it permanently.
Here's a story I wrote 20 years ago:
Dawn comes early in England during the summer. At 0200, June 6, 1944, the rumble of 48 Pratt and Whitney R-2800s reverberated over the quiet English countryside surrounding the former RAF base of Beaulieau Roads between Southampton and Bournemouth that was now home to the 9th Air Force’s 365th Fighter Group.
On the taxiway, the big P-47s – resplendent in the black and white identification stripes hurriedly applied with mops and brooms by the ground crews two nights before – S-turned heavily under their loads of two 500-lb bombs on the wing shackles and a 110-gallon drop tank on the centerline mount, as they took their turn to fly off into the rising sun.
At the runway, the flagman checked each pair as they moved into position; the engines roared as the pilots advanced their throttles to takeoff power, then began their roll as they were waved off. In the middle of the sixteen P-47s of the 388th Fighter Squadron, 21-year old 2nd Lieutenant Archie Maltby ran his hands over his wool pants to dry his sweating palms, then pulled on his flying gloves. Today was the second mission he would fly since joining the group at the end of April.
The next two airplanes moved into position and took off. The ground crew signaled Maltby and his leader to move forward. He checked the engine instruments, worked the controls quickly in a last-minute check, and pushed the throttle forward. Halfway down the runway, the heavy Thunderbolt’s tail came up, and then he was airborne with the main gear thumping into the wells. A right turn brought the two Thunderbolts over the Isle of Wight in a matter of moments; they joined the rest of the formation, heading east across the English Channel toward the coast of Normandy in the partly-cloudy skies.
“I’ll never forget what it was like that day. There were so many airplanes in the sky that there was a serious risk of collision, and there were so many ships in the Channel it seemed that you could have walked from ship to ship from England to France.”
The assignment for the 365th F.G. that day was to patrol the Cotentin Peninsula, to insure the Germans were unable to reinforce their units facing the invading Americans at Omaha and Utah Beaches. After an hour, the Thunderbolts were free of their bombs and most of their ammunition. Returning to base, the pilots told the excited ground crews what they had seen. After a quick meal, they were back in their planes for a second sweep of the beachhead. “We thought that was it for the day when we got back from the second mission, but all of a sudden there was a call that radar had picked up the Luftwaffe heading toward the beaches, and all the airplanes that had been fueled were scrambled.” In fact, the only two members of the Luftwaffe to make an appearance over the Normandy beaches on D-Day were Oberst Josef “Pips” Priller, Geschwader Kommodore of JG26, and his wingman. “By the time we got there, Priller had already made his famous run over the beaches and gotten out of there.”
When they returned, night had fallen on England. “It really was the longest day I can ever remember.”
And 11 months later, 22-year old Major Maltby was preparing the orders for the squadron's next mission, when he received the message to halt all air operations. "I put down the phone, and I looked over at the pilot board, and of the 48 men I had flown with on D-Day, there were six of us still there. Ten had gone home on completing their tours and 15 were known to be POWs. The rest had been blown out of the sky somewhere between Normandy and our base in western Germany."
Cleary the most pressing business of the Senate is to pass some voting legislation if democracy is to live past 2022. That it all revolves around Joe Manchin dictates what needs to be done. He's insisting on bipartisan agreement on all of the proposed bills but there clearly is none to be found at this time.
So how can/should Democrats move forward on voting?
Dana Millbank has offered the best strategy I've read so far.
1. Have the votes and let Republicans prove to Manchin there is no hope of bipartisanship
2. Have votes on each of the items in the voting bills and force Republicans to vote down each one. Here's some examples of what the votes would be:
* Restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act
* Require 100% of the votes be backed up by paper
* Abolish gerrymandering
* End dark money contributions
* Require states to alert each other when voters apply for a driver’s license in a new state, to avoid duplicate voter registrations.
* Forbid Administration officials to lobby for 2 years and tighten lobbyist disclosure requirements
Would Republicans be willing to make public their stand on all or some of the above. If they proved they support none of the above would that force Manchin to change his position on the filibuster?
Is there a better way? I haven't seen one yet.
Remember our Greatest Generation who saved the world while one party of our current generation work to destroy it!
Every June 6th, I think about D-Day. As a young kid growing up in NJ in the 1950s I was raised by the men and women who served during WWII. They never talked about it. Life for them in the here and now was what mattered and by extension to all of us, too. Baseball, helping around our homes and yards, going to school, going to church, visiting relatives and hearing the adults talk and laugh together … that was my life. I knew nothing of privation. My parents had known about privation, endured the Depression and then, when enraged by the attack on Pearl Harbor they served their country. They used whatever the government gave them in the way of training and equipment and then they did what was expected. When the movie the Longest Day, came out we went to see it as a family. My parents didn’t say that much about it but I knew that it was right up there for them among the most important events in their lives and in the lives of all the adults who I knew… my friends parents, teachers, coaches even the doctors we visited. It was, very clearly, a shared experience among people who saw the threat for what it was and accepted their role to help defeat it. As I got older and read more and saw more films and presentations about D-Day and the events that led up to it, I began to realize how complicated and difficult an undertaking it was… how many died and suffered in the fighting and what a relief it was for people in France and around the world to know that Hitler and Nazi Germany could be pushed back. It’s hard for me to believe that so many of the trump insurrectionists are my age. Some will go to jail for their actions on January 6. These people, like me, had parents who served during WWII. It profoundly baffles me but ultimately doesn’t trouble me that much that they are such kooks. We’ve always had kooks in America; they don’t get to be in charge…except in those rare moments when they somehow grab the microphone like what happened with trump. That time is over for now. The great ship of America is, once again, steaming in the right direction. Like those who fought and died in WWII, I have deep confidence in our system of government because it’s whole purpose is to serve the will of the people. What a great idea. It’s a huge risk that it could fail… like D-Day was… but it won’t fail, as long as we all keep doing all that we can to do our part … and most of us will like the GA Secy of State did after the 2020 election and the Texas state legislatures just did to push back against the authoritarians who want to weaken our democracy for their misguided and truly kooky purposes. The battle goes on because it must if we want to keep improving our lives and protecting our democracy. So, remember D-Day, yeah…but keep your eye on the fastball that just got thrown your way and hit it hard….I know you will.
In a just world, or perhaps in an earlier world the former President would be in prison , as would his cohorts.