Our United States of shame
Someone ought to wrest that black Sharpie from President Trump before he signs away anymore of our rights with his draconian campaign promises. How are we to keep up with the level of chaos he has sown since Inauguration Day?
We aren’t meant to.
And that’s the point.
The pace of Trump’s rubber stamping provides political theater for the world to watch in “shock and awe” as he signs hundreds of executive orders beginning on Day One — orders pre-packaged from Project 2025 by his exhausted minions, and stacked neatly on the presidential desk, constitution be hanged. How can the “Deep State” survive such a rate of collateral damage?
And isn’t it ironic that Trump’s executive-ordered mass deportation of illegal immigrants began on International Holocaust Remembrance Day? Probably just a coincidence, to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian army.
According to Fox News, the “Right” is getting weary of the “Left” comparing Trump to Hitler. Too bad. Project 2025 reeks of fascist overtones as “undesirables” of color are profiled for deportation — including Native Americans, who were on these shores long before Columbus “discovered” America.
Unless halted by the rule of law, the Trump administration will continue to mindlessly hammer at the American people with Project 2025’s bigotry under the guise of policy. Division, Equity, and Inclusion will continue to be disallowed, and the varied tapestry of America’s people will no longer be celebrated as our strength, but relegated to the administrative trash can as an existential threat. No longer will the “huddled masses” receive asylum from a nation supported by the rule of constitutional law. Then, the beacon of Lady Liberty will dim over our united state of shame.
And that will make America great again?
Lisa Kliger
Moscow
An ideal situation
I recently remembered that those who said “this land is yours” also said “love your neighbor as yourself.” I honestly do wonder if a reminder to “love your neighbor” was given at the time they declared “this land is yours.” Imagine how wonderful it will become when this instruction is finally followed.
Tod Merley
Pullman
Hats off to Nick Gier
Prof. Emeritus Nick Gier, whose columns appear regularly on the Opinion page, wrote a piece Thursday (Jan. 23) with which I mostly agree. I usually read this man’s stuff only cursorily. Gier’s opinions on most issues he addresses give me mild indigestion. But he hit the bull’s-eye on this one and I give him credit.
In this column, Gier takes a few well-deserved pokes at the Jewish apartheid state of Israel. Further on, I will take a few shots at my own Roman Catholic church as well. So don’t get the notion that I’m hunkered down in a triumphant attitude of religious self-righteousness.
But the professor nails it. In two stunningly worded sentences, he says it all: “The hypocrisy of condemning Palestinian violence in view of the history of Zionist terrorism is contemptible. This (i.e. the Irgun militia attack on the King David Hotel in 1946) was just one of many Israeli attacks and targeted assassinations over the next 78 years.”
Gier’s language here falls right in line with the views of an unfortunately tiny minority of some well-known Jewish commentators whose work I follow. I refer to folks like Max Blumenthal, whose own father was a senior adviser in the Clinton administration. I think of the renowned American economist Jeffrey Sachs, who recently adverted to PM Netanyahu as a “dark son of a b****.” There are certainly other Jews who express sentiments critical of Israel’s murderous behavior, though not many.
My own church does not do too well in this regard either. I believe the Catholic Church to be the one true church, established by Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. In fact, I believe the church to have replaced the old Mosaic Covenant altogether, and to have become the new “Israel of God.” (Galatians 6:16)
That said, one can not avoid remarking that the present hierarchy of the church, including the putative pope, seem to care little for the Palestinian Arabs. Pope Bergoglio seems far more obsessed with issues of climate change, blessing same sex couples and defining the meaning of antisemitism than he is with Palestinian genocide.
Timothy Moore
Potlatch
Another culture war idiocy
The Idaho Legislature is promulgating another wrong-headed and unnecessary educational initiative, and after having taught middle school civics for 26 years, I’d like to weigh in on their newest abomination.
The Republicans’ current bill making the rounds would make all teachers remove flags that are “political.” The American flag would be exempt, as would military service flags and, perhaps, some others.
My neighbors fly many different flags: one is a half-and-half stars and stripes and stars and bars of the Confederacy; another is a thin blue line flag that approximates a United States flag, but has the wrong colors; one is an American flag with the phrase “2nd Amendment” imposed over the stripes.
While these might be flown over earnest, well-meaning households, according to the U.S. Flag Code, these are all unacceptable alterations of the flag. With their consistent and long-term example of ignorance and mean-spirited legislation, I don’t trust the Idaho Legislature to get this new flag controversy right. They rarely do.
Our state is a house with many rooms, and we can trust educators to adorn their classrooms in ways that make them safe places for all of their students. I urge Idaho citizens who care about our country and our children’s education to speak to legislators to vote against another one of these culture war idiocies that they seem to excel in creating.
If they truly want fewer flags, ban them all. Because there is nothing more political than our national banner.
Michael Riley
Potlatch
This isn’t governance
To our elected representatives in the state of Idaho:
I am dismayed that the Legislature’s attention has been on political “gotchas” instead of actual governance for the people of Idaho. We do NOT need legislation about marriage or flags in schools. We DO need robust public health and education. We DO need affordable housing. We DO need a sustainable transportation and energy infrastructure.
Please stop wasting time on the culture wars — it’s neglectful and lazy, and it’s certainly not governance. You were elected to govern. Please do so.
Ellen Peterson
Moscow
Deafening silence from Baumgartner
The Spokesman-Review’s Feb. 2 lead article described the deafening silence from congressional Republicans, true of our new U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, in their response to Donald Trump’s unprecedented destructive and dangerous executive orders during his first two weeks in office.
This silence was especially evident in Baumgartner’s long Jan. 31 email message, his first to constituents since Trump’s orders commenced.
So is Baumgartner closely following in the steps of his predecessor, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who he calls his mentor? She exemplified the conspicuous cowardice of congressional Republicans in not standing up to Trump during the last half of her legislatively inconsequential 20 years in Congress. Also, she always favored the wealthy.
No longer needing votes, might McMorris Rodgers now redeem herself with long-awaited courage by standing up to Trump to help save our democracy? I doubt it but hope I’m wrong.
As Republican conservatives, Baumgartner and McMorris Rodgers both believe in limited government.
Barry Goldwater, Everett Dirksen, Howard Baker, Mitt Romney, and Liz Cheney personified talented Republican conservative lawmakers during their stints in Congress. All believed in limited government.
But Donald Trump is no Republican conservative — a dizzying flurry of disastrous mandates in pursuit of dictatorship is not limited government.
Norm Luther
Spokane
No help from Idaho Legislature
Republicans in the Idaho Legislature, along with the state’s Department of Education, are promoting Biblical curriculum in public schools. Many members of the Legislature tout their Christian affiliation. At the same time, legislators want to cut Medicaid coverage for over 85,000 working poor residents. They oppose accepting education dollars for pre-school and reject funding for a summer meal program for low-income families. Several years’ discussions on repeal of the grocery tax has brought no relief to Idahoans.
Will the “savings” from un-doing taxpayer-approved Medicaid expansion be spent on vouchers for private schools, which will be attended by mostly affluent families’ children already in private school? We are told families can choose their schools, but cannot have access to many books the legislators oppose.
Jesus said we should welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, help the sick. (paraphrased from Matthew 25:37-45).
Can you hear Fred Rogers’ voice asking, “Can you say hypocrisy?”
L.J. Ross
Deary
No surprises from Trump
Not that they have earned such consideration, but common sense and basic decency suggest withholding judgment of a new presidential administration for a reasonable interval of time before condemning it for failures of policy, oversight, or character. Or all three, in this case.
No voter should be in the least surprised that Donald Trump would begin his second term with the usual poisonous mix of bullying, cowardly lies, scapegoating of the weak and categorical refusal to take responsibility for any of his own errors or failures, ever. This is not “being a man,” and this is not leadership, nor is it evidence of good moral or ethical character. Other than insulting our war dead, I cannot think of any more despicable and dishonorable act than for a commander in chief to blame a military disaster — in which the entire manifest of a civilian airliner was killed — on “DEI,” or diversity, equity, and inclusion.
He’s busy installing incompetents in cabinet positions to accelerate his sabotage of government, yet Trump insists we must somehow lay the blame on a woman, or a nonwhite, gay, or disabled person, or maybe an immigrant or some disabled guy. And the buck stops where?
Chris Norden
Moscow
Sorry, Canada
OH CANADA! We are so sorry for the OUTRAGEOUS treatment you are getting from Trump and his minions.
We are grateful you are pushing back against his “51st state” nonsense, his ignorance about tariffs and the bullying tone which he mistakes for negotiating skill.
Not all of us voted for this guy and we are aghast at what is happening. We regret that you are getting caught in the crossfire. We appreciate the friendship and support you have shown us in the past.
Sincerely, your embarrassed and humiliated neighbors, Steve and Karen Swoope.
Steve Swoope
Colfax
