Who is pro cons in the People’s House?
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, April 18, 2025 – When conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate twice failed to convict Trump during his first term, they made his second term inevitable.
When conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, they doomed the League of Nations to failure, and made the second world war inevitable.
The first 100 days of MAGA Redux have done more harm to American unity than 250 years of British, Russian, and Chinese espionage have.
The U.S.A. achieved the fullness of purpose for which the Revolutionary War was begun 250 years ago tomorrow, during the presidency of Harry S. Truman. He was a man whose humble origins were more akin to Abraham Lincoln’s than to any other president’s. It’s been a steep fall ever since. As Lincoln was essential to the fusion of the States and the preservation of the nation, Truman was essential to the fusion of the world’s nations and the preservation of civilization.
A cursory comparison of the family backgrounds and upbringings of Truman and Trump is all it takes for the question to shout itself: “How could the American people have made such a grievous mistake?” The answer is found in the fogginess that lingered after the war ended in 1945. When Germany, Japan and their allies ceased being sworn enemies of the United States and all freedom-loving peoples of the world, communism flowed in to fill the void.
Trump didn’t run toward anything; he declared the diverse, equitable, and inclusive present to be a nightmare and promised to yank America back to a greatness that never was anything more than a marketing scheme. He made MAGA the communism he ran against. (The second MAGA campaign, of course, was a race away from the penitentiary.)
The only problem with declaring an ideology to be your enemy is that ideologies are as invisible and oderless as carbon monoxide, and every bit as poisonous. Trump himself emits a poison gas of personal loyalty to his hateful, vengeful agenda, and the results are as heartbreaking as they are lethal.
In the pages of the New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly and on PBS, David Brooks struggles to convince the American people that our crisis is the result of decisions made by university admissions officers a generation ago. He couldn’t be more wrong; only the Republican party can be blamed for putting Trump on the ballot.
I promise you that the number of Trump voters who are products of the colleges and universities that make up Mr. Brooks’ red herring would not amount to as many electoral college votes as democratic Gov. Strom Thurmond got when he ran against Truman in 1948.
Strom Thurmond, what’s he got to do with today’s political nightmare? In 1964, the passage and signing into law of civil rights legislation under the forceful leadership of LBJ, made Thurmond, the nation’s leading segregationist, bolt the democratic party to make common cause with republicans.
The republican party didn’t adopt Thurmond’s racism overnight, that would take decades to accomplish. But they got the benefit of all those in the south who shared Thurmond’s views on equality when they adopted the Southern Strategy that elected Nixon, and all subsequent republican presidents.
Evidence of lingering liberalism among the party of Lincoln is proved by the evidence of the civil rights case for systemic violations of the Fair Housing Act of 1968: United States v. Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump, and Trump Management, Inc.
The case was filed in October, 1973, in the second term of Nixon’s aborted republican presidency. Anybody who doesn’t think Trump today is doing anything besides exact revenge against the American people for yanking him and his father into court is blind, or naive, or both.
Two years before bringing suit against Trump, father and son, Nixon commissioned the Powell Memorandum, which led to the establishment of the Heritage Foundation, which produced much of our eagle-eyed judiciary that looks for ways to benefit Trump and company. Oh yeah, another product of the Heritage Foundation is Project 2025.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father
What does all this have to do with the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father who was kidnapped on Trump’s orders and traded, for undisclosed favors, to a brutal Salvadoran dictator? Maryland is where Trump’s father was arrested in 1976 for failure to comply with a court order to repair housing code violations.
There is no question that the administration of America’s elementary and secondary schools plays a crucial role in political and governmental affairs. But such things as honesty, integrity, and good character will always be the primary responsibility and job of parents – nature’s non-tenured teachers.
After all, Trump has a degree from one of the nation’s most respected universities, a place that employs many of America’s best and most respected professional teachers. Harry S. Truman never attended college – he worked and read his way to greatness.
Harry S. Truman learned honesty, integrity, and good character at home, just as their opposites are Trump’s inheritance, and his legacy.