Dr. Bruce Smith ([url="https://inkwellhearthandplow.blogspot.com/"]Inkwell, Hearth and Plow[/url]) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from [url="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=93188"]Indiana University Press[/url].
Many months ago a scion of the political left posted this copy over a picture of a smiling Trump at a rally:
How sad it must be – believing that scientists, scholars, historians, economists, and journalists have devoted their lives to deceiving you, while a reality TV star with decades of fraud and exhaustively documented lying is your only beacon of truth and honesty.
In October, 2019, the US Supreme Court heard arguments about "whether the definition of sex in U.S. law includes sexual orientation and gender identity." (Elizabeth Slattery in The Daily Signal, October 8, 2019)
Here's a hint: no, it doesn't.
In the interest of clarity, here are some definitions and observations.
It has been an appalling spectacle to see rabidly partisan Democrats on Capitol Hill run a sham “impeachment” inquiry for the last few weeks. Day after day I heard them repeat their somber concerns about offenses never actually committed by the president. We have to protect our democracy, they intoned. We have to be sure that no one is above the law. We have to make sure that public officials who enrich themselves at public expense are held to account and punished. We had no choice, they whined, but to impeach the president for what he did.
Oh, what a remarkable era we are experiencing today! We will all look back on these days and say “Wow! I never thought I’d live to see a fight like that!” This fight is colossal. It’s Olympian. It’s brutal. It reminds me of a cartoon fight drawn to look like a dust cloud with fists and clubs and rocks mixed in with yelling and cursing and broken bones and gouged eyes and crutches flying about.
On September 2, 1945, aboard USS Missouri, Allied military brass accepted the formal surrender of the Japanese Empire. The Japanese surrendered in the shadow of their capital, on the water, aboard an American battleship. All of these features were significant. At terrible cost the Japanese had been driven back to their home islands, then battered and burned into submission. The sea had been the means of Japanese sustenance, then the justification for its mighty navy, and that navy had transported its troops all over East Asia and the Pacific.
I can see clearly now. For many years, the left worked an elaborate shell game, pushing socialist ideas while denying any affection for socialism or its prophet, Karl Marx. The American public had rightfully been suspicious of socialism, having seen thug socialist regimes in the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Cuba, and other places take power, then turn to regimentation, oppression, and, ultimately, mass murder. They are the grisly legacy of the 20th Century, the Century of Socialist Warfare.
