America First Redux
Something we didn’t learn while studying American heroes: Charles Lindberg was a prime spokesperson for America First, a pre-WW II movement. This movement had eerie similarities to the current America First movement, championed by Donald Trump.
Lindberg admired Adolf Hitler and didn’t want the U.S. to militarily support or even provide supplies to our European allies as Hitler’s Nazi regime invaded country after country, slaughtering Jews along the way. In a November, 1939 Readers Digest piece Lindberg wrote of “the infiltration of inferior blood” and praised aviation’s development for giving the ability to “the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black and Brown.” A spin-off group, the Christian Mobilizers, intended to keep Jews, refugees from the pillaged Europe, from entering the United States and, more broadly in the words of journalist Andrew Lapin, restore America to the militant national Christian.
Trump openly admires the authoritarian Putin, and has threatened to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” in Europe. Present-day America First supporters oppose aid to Ukraine as Putin’s army commits war crimes in Ukraine. On the racial front, Trump said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and that “They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country.” Just recently, a group calling itself God’s Army formed a convoy to stop an “invasion” of immigrants.
One glaring difference between then and now: Lindberg wasn’t campaigning for the presidency.
Ross Adams, Boalsburg
Yet Another Reason Not to Vote for Trump
As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to vote against DJT, here’s another one.
The man is accumulating personal expenses at a frightening pace. First it was legal fees to his defense attorneys for representing him in multiple court cases. Then came the $88 million judgment he was ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll. Now the $355 million fine, plus interest, he owes the state of New York. In addition, there are several pending civil cases in the District of Columbia, brought by the Capitol Police and various members of Congress.
Eventually, he may be looking at debts in the range of two billion dollars. How are these to be paid?
The man hates parting with his own money, so has relentlessly pursued contributions from the public, and the RNC, to pay his legal bills.
Surely the public and the RNC have limits on their largesse. Where will the billions come from, if he’s elected POTUS again? Who has that kind of ready cash?
The answer might very well be Russia, or possibly Saudi Arabia. It’s easy to imagine Putin offering help in exchange for, say, DJT’s pledge to pull America out of NATO. Almost certainly Putin would demand an end to our military support for Ukraine.
Crushing debt poses serious national security risks. Would we want to risk our President making foreign policy decisions as a way to make his personal financial obligations disappear?
We absolutely must keep the man out of the White House!
Linda Barton, State College
Do-Nothing Republicans
Republicans continue to prove that they simply have no interest in governing and solving problems for the American people. However, they do put a great deal of effort into political theatre and sustaining problems that can be misrepresented and weaponized by Trump, MAGA Republicans, and conservative media.
The bipartisan immigration bill recently shot down by congressional and senate Republicans is just one glaring example. Largely crafted by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) who was hand-picked for his tough stance on immigration, that bill was strongly endorsed by the very conservative National Border Patrol Council.
It gave Republicans virtually everything they ever wanted including: 1,500 additional border patrol agents; increased detention facility for 50,000 illegal border crossers; add additional judges and immigration officials to root out dubious asylum claims and reduce processing time to 90 days. The current years-long asylum process is a huge driver of illegal immigration.
This bill also included emergency authorization for shutting down the border to immigrants arriving in large numbers, going well beyond the Title 42 authority utilized by Trump and Biden, effectively ending migrant caravans.
Sadly as always, Trump was interested only in Trump. Solving our border problem would have denied this twice impeached, four time indicted, narcissistic presidential candidate of a much needed campaign issue.
Apparently, it just took a phone call from Trump to MAGA House Speaker Mike Johnson to kill this extraordinary bipartisan effort to address a very serious national crisis.
If this is Trump’s idea of putting “America First” who needs it?
George Polycranos, Port Matilda
