CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS: Stay or Go...

Another subject that I feel needs some clarification because it is so divisive among us is the issue of Confederate Monuments, why they were erected and why some people say they should be taken down.

One of the arguments against taking them down is that these statues are part of history and should be left alone. As a history lover and lifelong student of history, I am all for preserving history but this is not the issue here.

I was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi in the 60s. I grew to admire the South and its people and its way of life. As a young, Catholic Polish-American boy from the city of Detroit, I was introduced to a part of America I did not know; I learned a lot and have fond memories of my time there.

But history is history and we cannot white wash it or re-write it or sanitize it; it is what it was.

The Civil War was a terrible and costly war. Many books have been written about it and I have read many of them as a college student studying American history. Many factors led up to the war but the true goals of the Confederacy as stated by its vice president Alexander Stephens, were all about maintaining slavery and white supremacy.

So why did the people who lost the war put up monuments to defeated military leaders and to a defeated cause after the war.

These statues were put up after the war to show Americans and especially African-Americans that the South was still in business; racist as ever and that nothing has really changed; the Jim Crow era had begun.

Racism, of course, was not limited to the South as we all know but in the South, in those years, it was entrenched as part of normal life.

The monuments belong to the “old” South of history and served as warnings. The “new” South is of course much different but the monuments, remnants of the old South, serve as constant reminders of the history of those days; the lynching, the burning, the beating, the murder and general suppression of countless human beings.

I just read about the opening of a National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. It is the first monument to the 4,400 black lynching victims living in the South during 80 years of terror.

Yes this too is history; a history just starting to be told and remembered which needs to happen for reconciliation in America to occur.

So if people like the mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu decided to take down Confederate monuments as a show of reconciliation, I cannot object knowing what I know.

THE 2ND AMENDMENT; let's cut the bullshit!

Recently, in the face of more frequent mass shootings and especially school shootings, people are once again screaming at each other. On the one hand, we have adults and students demanding stricter gun control measures which they feel will help prevent or at least slow down mass shooting incidents. On the other hand, we have adults that view ANY gun control measures as denying them their 2^nd Amendment right to own any gun or rifle they want.

As someone who is a history junkie and who values historical FACTS in a country where currently “fake facts” seem all the rage, I would like to explain to those who still believe in truth and would like to be on the side of truth, the truth about the 2^nd Amendment.

I would like to preface my argument by saying that I am not discussing whether individuals in this country can or cannot own guns or weapons or should have the right to do so. I am merely addressing the issue of the 2^nd Amendment to our Constitution and how it is being used as a Constitutional guarantee of the right to own a gun.

The 2^nd Amendment to our Constitution reads:

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

That seemingly simple, single sentence has been interpreted for 218 years as authorizing states to form militias, what we now call the National Guard. I say “single” sentence because most people do not quote the WHOLE sentence when using the Amendment to defend their “right” to “keep and bear arms”; they only use the words they feel are relevant to their argument which is obviously taking the amendment out of context.

Many conservative judges consider themselves as “originalists” or “strict constructionists” when it comes to reading and interpreting our Constitution. This means that they try to understand the “original” intent of the authors of the Constitution instead of interpreting the Constitution as it applies to current conditions in the country.

In 1792, the thirteen (13) states or colonies ratified the first ten (10) amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These amendments were deemed necessary by the people to help insure their rights since the people did not fully trust a strong central government at that time.

The original thirteen (13) colonies or states all had state militias composed of every white male between the ages of 16 and 60 living in the state. These men in the state militia were “required” to own a military weapon and to bring it with them when “called up” by the state governor or other state authority, to defend the state and its people.

Just to be clear, ALL men of specified age, living in the state were enrolled in the state militia and under penalty, had to possess a military type weapon and ammunition.

As the Constitution of the United States was establishing a strong CENTRAL / FEDERAL government, the states worried that the central government may at some point want to disarm a state militia and thus the 2^nd Amendment came to be which gives each state the right to have a “well regulated” militia.

The original intent of the authors of the amendment is abundantly clear and has been abundantly clear for over 200 years so what happened?

Well a number of things happened including the NRA (National Rifle Association) and Justice Antonin Scalia; the self-described Constitutional originalist.

The NRA was created by a group of militia and army veterans in 1871. The purpose of the group was to train American men how to shoot safely and accurately. The organization grew through the years and catered mostly to hunters. It did not object to any gun regulations that were enacted throughout the years.

This all started changing in 1977 with the “Revolt in Cincinnati” when Right Wing activists took over the organization and made it into what it is today.

The NRA began to sponsor attempts, including pseudo scholarship, to convince the nation that the 2nd Amendment did indeed guarantee an individual’s right to bear arms even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it did no such thing.

During those years, Chief Justice Warren Burger of the US Supreme Court (1969-1986) was quoted as saying that the NRA is perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

In 2008, Judge Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court, ended hundreds of years of judicial precedent by inventing a false reading of the 2^nd Amendment in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. Scalia simply re-wrote the amendment by ignoring the first, important half of the sentence and this from an ardent “originalist”.

Scalia, a dedicated hunter, chose to re-write history and make up his own “facts” to suite what he wanted to be true but was not true. Obviously he did then what our president does on a regular basis.

Judge John Paul Stevens who wrote in opposition to the Scalia argument in 2008 has now, as a retired Supreme Court judge age 98, urged the country to “repeal” the 2^nd Amendment and end this insanity. Repeal an amendment that has no standing in today’s world but died many years ago.

If Americans want the right to bear arms, they should tell Congress to pass laws giving them that right. They should not rely on a blatant misreading of the 2^nd Amendment that makes us all look like idiots for allowing this lie to stand.

Recommended reading: THE SECOND AMENDMENT; A BIOGRAPHY by Michael Waldman.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM NEEDS TO BE REVISED WITHOUT A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT...

The ELECTORAL COLLEGE of the United States met and voted on the next president and vice-president of the United States; Trump won.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about our election system and its fairness and whether each vote actual counts during the election; I feel the system is not fair and needs to be changed.

Last night, I was skyping with a friend in Poland and he asked about our system and if the “electors” did not vote for Trump would a civil war begin.

Obviously, many people do not understand our system, why it was formed in that particular way and what our options are.

The Founding Fathers did not trust “the people” and feared (rightly so) that the people could be manipulated by a smooth talking tyrant; this is a masses are asses belief system. They also wanted ALL the states to have a say in who is elected and not only the states with the largest population; their concerns were legitimate.

In their system, each state had the number of “electors” which equaled the number of representatives in Congress (allotted by population) and two senators so even a state like Montana which has few people would have at least 3 electors.

Currently there are 538 electors and 270 is the number needed to win the election.

In the original idea, the Founding Fathers envisioned these electors as upstanding and educated people that would actually consider the suitability of each candidate in the election and in certain circumstances, despite the votes cast by citizens, could vote for who they felt was more suitable. The idea here was that these electors could and would prevent a tyrant from being elected if they felt the candidate or some other power unduly and unfairly tainted the popular vote through deceit, etc.

The original idea behind our system is not in play today. The electors are chosen by the political party in each state and we, the public, have no idea who these electors are or anything about their background. In fact, being an elector is basically a ceremonial post as each elector has no decision to make except to vote for the person that was elected in their state.

This is unfortunate because specifically in THIS election, information has started to be uncovered about how Russia interfered in our election process on the side of Trump and this is exactly what the original intent of the electors was; that they would acknowledge what had happened and disavow that person from becoming president since it was a tainted election.

This is why you saw a number of protests by people who understand the original intent of our electoral process asking the electors to vote their conscience but our current system does not allow that.

The problem as I see it is that the system no longer works as originally intended and the fact that most states have the winner-take-all electoral system in place (which is not mandated by our Constitution) means that each vote cast does not have equal weight in the election. Hillary Clinton had 3 million more popular votes than Trump yet lost the election.

I am not advocating scraping the electoral system which would take a Constitutional Amendment which would be practically impossible to accomplish when there is such division in the country BUT the Constitution does not say anything about allocating electoral votes based on the state’s popular vote.

Maine and Nebraska already have this system in place. In those states the electoral votes are allocated according to the percentage of votes cast for EACH candidate so if one candidate won 25% of the popular vote in that specific state, he or she would get 25% of the electors allocated to that specific state. In this way ALL votes would count for something.

Just to show how our current system is just not fair imagine a state that has 100 electors and one candidate wins the state by one vote; he or she gets ALL the electors that state has and how in the hell is that fair.

The system has to be changed state by state and will take years because like here in Michigan, our legislature is controlled by the Republicans who will not want to rock the boat since they won.

 Each state needs to have a referendum on the issue and allow the voters to choose if they want their votes to be used in a proportional manner instead of a winner-take-all manner. This is the only way each one of our votes will actually count.

Watching Trump...

I watched Donald Trump being interviewed on 60 Minutes to get a better idea of who he really is and what we can expect from him in the next four years.

The one big thing that I came away with after watching the show was that neither he nor his family EVER expected to win. They believed the polls just like everyone else in America and were certain they would lose just like the polls predicted; they were genuinely shocked that they won.

The other impression that I came away with after the interview and which I have always believed was that Trump said on the campaign trail anything and everything that his followers wanted to hear no matter if what he was saying was absolutely unrealistic or flat out lies.

During the primary campaign Trump said he could shoot somebody on Main Street and the people would still love him and follow him and he was right. Once he learned what these people wanted to hear, he was off to the races and there was no stopping him; he just didn’t realize how many supporters he really had. He knew he had the white trash but he did not realize the many educated and well to do people were also in his camp.

It also became clear (to me) that the campaign rhetoric he used and the things he promised may not actually be how he really thinks and may not even be how he will act. I feel he realizes that he had to say certain things in a certain way to get elected and now that he has been elected, reality has to be considered.

Now this does not mean he will not try to do the things he promised but maybe in a “different” way.

He has already said that he will not appoint a special prosecutor to put Hillary in jail. He has also said that he may not repeal Obamacare but maybe just fix it. Same goes for NAFTA; he will renegotiate some aspects of the deal.

Saturday Night Live has been spoofing Trump on its show every week and I think some of those spoofs are right on. Yesterday they had him googling ISIS and talking to a general wanting to know his secret plan to defeat ISIS which he obviously knows nothing about. The spoof continued with Trump reversing himself on all his promises.

Trump does not know much about any specific issue but it will be interesting to see if he will make an effort to learn. As a businessman he delegated much of the work needed to run his businesses. As president he will have to rely on the people he appoints to run the government and that is why everyone is watching who he appoints.

His children are playing a major role in his transition team and may continue to play keys roles in the government which will be interesting. He is having trouble divorcing himself from his businesses and this may prove to be problematic as conflicts of interests arise and the Constitution is violated. His charitable organization has already admitted to using donated money for their own benefit.

The most interesting part about Trump (to me) is his continuous use of Twitter at all hours of the day and his childish temperament especially when criticized. This in itself will make him the most un-presidential president in our history.

BUT on a positive note; maybe the country needed a good kick in the ass to shake things up or at least to show all of us how divided we really are and that politics as usual will no longer work and should not work; we need a new approach to politics.

Still Trying To Understand Trump Voters...

I have been trying to understand why certain people are supporting Donald Trump no matter how outrageous his pronouncements and his antics. Many others have also been trying to understand this phenomenon because it defies understanding using basic logic.

The original understanding was of white, middle aged men who were uneducated or under-educated with low employment skills that are just mad that they are no longer considered the cream of American society and believe, with all their hearts, that Donald Trump will somehow restore them to their perceived, former greatness.

This turns out to be not the case even thou some of those mentioned above are definitely in the Trump camp. We now know that many Trump supporters are relatively educated with employment skills that earn them a decent wage. They are still basically all white.

I have to make a note about the education factor. I erroneously thought that a college education conferred some sort of ability to reason rationally about issues as well as distinguish facts from fiction. In other words, I felt college educated people could not be duped as easily as non-college educated people; and I was wrong.

I was thinking of college education in the past where students were supposed to get a well-rounded education whereas now the education is much narrower in scope; concentrating on the skills needed for gainful employment. Nothing wrong with that but it does explain some of my confusion as to how can an educated person support Trump.

In defense of “some” educated Trump supporters who originally saw him as someone outside the current dysfunctional political structure in Washington that could break through the party politics and get something done; I think you now realize that that was a pipe dream as this man has no idea how our government even works.

Also for those that base their Trump support on who he would appoint to the Supreme Court; you now realize that you cannot depend on him to do your bidding because he is unpredictable and swings very widely on most issues including abortion.

Another huge factor emerging is the involvement of emotion in this Trump support. Reports from Trump rallies show people, male and female, beside themselves with rage against Hillary threatening to assassinate her and her supporters using the most vial language. They also attack the media because the media is anti-Trump and spreading lies about him and his record. They conveniently forget that Trump’s own recorded pronouncements are proof of his tendency to lie about almost everything; with no regrets.

Obviously Trump and FOX News are contributing to this rage by supplying non-facts about Hillary that fuel this anger. The constant chant of “she should be in jail” is puzzling because no one has explained why she should be in jail; what has she done that is illegal? A psychiatrist on CNN explained that their brains are programmed to believe what they “feel” is the truth or what they “want” the truth to be and because this is a subconscious thought process, they cannot be open to the truth or actual facts.

It comes down to what I have been saying from the beginning, these are people that make up their own facts, their own reality because that is what they want reality to look like even though it is absolutely does not.

I think we have a case of mass hysteria which has examples in history; nothing else makes sense. These white people have been harboring their racism, sexism and xenophobia for way too long. Trump made it ok to be what they have always been inside. Current political correctness trends in our society have made these people feel marginalized; they long for the days when white meant might and everybody else knew their place in relation to the white class.

I always knew that this racism and bigotry was just under the skin of a lot of whites but I just did not know how many of these types actually existed in this country; now I know.

I have blamed Trump and FOX News for fueling these people’s delusions but their parents and peer groups must all take a lot of the blame. People are not born racists or bigots, they are raised that way.

Many overcome being raised in a racist household through a good liberal education but because our education system is so bad, or so narrowly focused, their learned bigotry remains and in most cases, is passed on to their children.

The only hope is that these Trump supporters are part of a dying breed and that is probably the case because that is what fuels this group to action; their declining numbers and growing irrelevance in our society and in the modern world.

PS. I have to say one more thing about education and this has been brought up many times. We used to have a “civics” class to teach students how our government works and our roles in that government. Now immigrants know more about our nation than people that were born and educated here. Trump is a good example of this atrocious ignorance and yet many want him to lead this nation based on that ignorance. Sad.

More on Trump supporters...in our area

My local paper called THE CANTON OBSERVER ran an article on Thursday October 6^th titled: TRUMP FANFARE: Profiles of supporters at rally in Novi by Susan Bromley.

The author went to the Trump rally in Novi and picked 7 people at the rally to ask a few questions. I found the answers to those questions very telling.

There were 3 males and 4 females ranging in age from 19 to 71. Some had masters and bachelor degrees, one was a student and the rest had some college.

What initially jumped out at me were the answers to the question: What are your sources where you obtain most of your information about the candidates. All the responders said FOX NEWS was their primary source…because it was balanced? Also included were Yahoo News, Trump Facebook Page, Bill O’Reilly, Internet, YouTube, Google, Drudge Report.

As a point of reference, I read the Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and have a ton of other news sources on my IPad (Time, Politico, The Daily Beast, CNN, USA Today, etc.) as well as many other sources on-line. Yes I admit I go a little overboard in my news sources but I do want a balanced look at issues, a real balanced look. Saying FOX NEWS is fair and balanced makes you into a real ignorant and unbalanced person.

I have stated in the past that people that rely on Fox News exclusively are people that like how Fox presents the news (not the facts) but the news the way they like to hear it or, put another way, the news they can believe in and want to believe in and damn the truth.

These are people that are extremely biased, cannot be persuaded by a logical argument or by the presentation of actual facts; Fox and Trump give them all the facts that they want to hear.

As for the question of why are you voting for Trump, the answers varied somewhat but basically stayed within the circle of misinformation that Trump has been promoting. They think he is a good businessman even though most of his companies tanked. Another answer is that we are no longer number 1 as a nation and we need to be just that. He is pro-life and a good Christian…total bullshit. Get the wall built and keep us safe. He is no Hillary and my vote is against her. Etc.

So what did I get out of all this? Well these people are not open to actually learning the facts about issues. Trump has not revealed any details about any issues; he just spouts off populist slogans and phrases like I will make things great, you just wait and see. So these people seem to have formulated specifics about issues that he has never revealed.

They firmly believe that he will address THEIR main concerns even though he has said nothing about THEIR main concerns.

I think this phenomenon of total delusion in such a great many people will be studied for years by professionals of every scientific discipline. Obviously history has many examples of this type of behavior including Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, just some that pop into mind.

The danger here is that these so called deplorables are extremely emotionally involved with Trump and the message they think he is sending to them, to the point of total blindness to the reality on the ground and I have seen this up close and personal and it is personally very disturbing.

Banning burkinis will not help anyone...

Yesterday the French High Court overruled a town’s ban on burkinis at the beach.

A “burkini” is what Muslim women wear to the beach. Yes it does cover their bodies and is meant to be swum in.

The French contingent of my family believes that banning the burkini is a means of liberating the women from such oppressive rules of dress and I respect that view but what is really the result of such a ban on burkinis is keeping Muslim women from the beach which they have a right to enjoy just like everyone else.

I understand that the French are trying to bring these Muslims into their society; to assimilate them and have them enjoy the enlightenment that comes with joining a modern, western style culture. This is a great goal but the problem is that to join this French society, they are expected to give up some of their traditions like Muslim dress traditions; when French Muslims refuse to do that they are segregated from the greater French population.

This segregation leads to communities that seethe with anger due to lack of opportunities for advancement and this invariably leads to social unrest and riots or even worst, young people joining radical groups like ISIS.

Here in the United States we do not care how people dress for the beach. Yes, you cannot cover your face when getting a license photo or testify in court, etc. but we do not object to what they choose to wear in public.

This has worked out quite well for us through the ages as immigrants usually blend into our American society quite well especially after a few generations.

I think France would do well to emulate our system of assimilation which is a natural system as opposed to a forced system.

The subject of why men want to tell women how to dress and have for ages, is a subject for another time.