At our founding, we were not a perfect country. Our constitution was not a perfect document, but it and its writers were profoundly ahead of their time and set the foundation of the country we have become. We have made progress toward becoming a more perfect union, but we still have some distance to go to achieve that goal. The arc to justice that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about is not bending with the smoothness for which we could hope. Progress is always difficult and there are those along the way who want to not only impede progress but to turn the clock back. Such is the time we now face. Rewriting and denying history is a path often chosen by authoritarian leaders such as Donald Trump and his cast of silent serfs in Congress and the Cabinet. George Orwell’s book “1984” can serve as a primer here. Trump and his supporting cast of bigots have attempted to deny and water down the history of racism and segregation in this country. The history of slavery is one of brutality. Segregation denied citizens of color their most basic rights and led to poverty for many. We as a nation committed genocide against Native Americans. We moved in and massacred them so we could steal their land. We put Japanese Americans in prison camps simply because they were of Japanese descent. While we have made great progress, we still have some ways to go. Our neighbors from the south and Chinese immigrants have not been spared from our bigotry. Every woman should fully recognize the prejudice and limitations she has faced in the past and in some cases still faces. Recognizing and learning about these legacies of our country is not a sign of weakness, but of strength. How can we move forward without recognizing and learning from the past? Trump and his serfs are trying to deny and eliminate a full and accurate history of our country. They have attempted to take down signs in our historic parks to hide the truth. They have scrubbed countless pages from government websites. Now he is attacking the Smithsonian Institution. There will always be another attack on truth and evidence by this clearly prejudiced and ignorant man. Changing history books for school children to those that don’t honestly tell our history is a dangerous toxin. Prejudice and ignorance are a poisonous combination. Standing up and taking on the fight against this evil is certainly an act of patriotism. We each have a duty to act. The first step is to look at ourselves. The simple fact is that we all have prejudices. We must recognize that dealing with our own prejudices is a difficult task. How we view those who might be different is the core of consideration. People can be different in so many ways. It is almost incomprehensible all the hate that has been inspired just by the amount of pigment in people’s skin. The list is almost endless, but consider ethnicity, nationality, age, sex, sexual orientation and religion as starting points. Prejudice can be a two-way street, but this is not a justification for our own. How we vote is a measure of our stance on the growth of our country. If your congressman has fully supported this administration, then he or she doesn’t deserve reelection. I don’t know a time that my spineless, serf of a congressman has ever had the guts to oppose anything Trump has proposed and done. He must think Trump has had a perfect presidency. I can assure you that GlennThompson will not be getting my vote.
Jack D. Miller, Lewisburg.