Enough!
To the editor:
Telling the truth about American history is considered “woke” by the president and his MAGA acolytes and they believe all they need do is use this ridiculous word to persuade us their efforts to rewrite history are valid. Here in Florida, we have already seen concerted efforts by our governor and his allies at revisionist history and textbook companies and have been ready and willing to assist them. For example, according to one textbook, Rosa Parks was not protesting racial injustice when she refused to give up her seat on the city bus; she was merely upset at the discourtesy. Furthermore, the civil rights movement was not about systemic racism in America; it was a self-help crusade by people like MLK, encouraging African Americans to simply be better. And of course, the Civil War was not really about slavery.
In his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell states that one of the abiding truths for the ruling fascist government is: “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.” Trump and his minions, such as our Florida governor, believe they control the present and therefore, they can rewrite the past to conform with their myth of American exceptionalism and the idea that racial injustice is an insignificant aspect of our history, hardly worth talking about. Ours is a great country and we certainly need to celebrate our many achievements as a nation, but the truth is there are dark stains on our history and the way forward ought to be owning our mistakes, not minimizing them, not consigning them to footnotes.
Trump wants an America where students sing patriotic songs all the time and read in their history books that the 2020 election was stolen from him, only for him to be re-elected in 2024 to save the nation from woke politicians and educators who hate the country they work so hard to improve. As Orwell points out, it’s all about power. Trump’s edict to the Smithsonian Institute which, in essence, commands them to revise their depiction of American history, is quite possibly the most dangerous of his initiatives and should be fiercely resisted.
The president’s goal is clearly to distract us from the very real problems facing the country. He has been promising for well over a decade to introduce a health care plan that is far better and more affordable than Obamacare, but instead of giving us better health care, his “big, beautiful bill” cuts $1 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years. Instead of more affordable health care, millions of Americans stand to lose their insurance, and it is estimated that thousands will die each year as a direct result of these cuts. Universal healthcare seems a dream that will never be realized.
If we are such an exceptional people, why has poverty not been eliminated here, as it has been in numerous other nations? Millions of American children suffer from hunger each day. About 60 percent of our families live paycheck to paycheck. Where are the president’s initiatives to end poverty? Instead of protecting working families, the president chooses to give a whooping tax cut to the wealthiest Americans. Instead of fighting for a living wage for all our working people, the president thinks he deserves lavish praise for eliminating the income tax on the tips some of our lowest-paid workers receive.
One of Trump’s most effective campaign strategies was to pose the question: Is your life better under Joe Biden? Many voters responded in the negative; food prices were up, interest rates high; housing was far less affordable, etc. Trump promised us lower grocery prices, but those prices continue to rise. First-time buyers still can’t afford house prices. Where are the Trump administration initiatives to ease the pressure on working families? Tariffs? Does anyone seriously believe Trump’s chaotic tariff policy will make our lives better? And how will our economy survive Trump’s mass deportation scheme? The strength of our economy depends upon the labor of millions of workers who are being deported or have self-deported out of fear of ICE.
No president in our history has been more obsessed with settling political scores or visiting suffering upon groups such as immigrants and Medicaid and other welfare recipients. No president in our history has been more anti-science. Many scientists consider vaccines the greatest advance in the history of medicine, having saved untold millions of lives, yet Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK, Jr., is doing everything he can to sow doubt upon the efficacy of vaccines. At the NIH, grants worth billions of dollars have been cancelled, ending research into fighting disease and improving our overall health. Foreign aid programs to help AIDS victims in Africa have been cancelled. Clean water initiatives, both here in the U.S. and abroad, have been gutted.
Many Americans are now repenting of their votes for Trump; his approval rating is plummeting, yet he still believes he has a mandate from the people to impose authoritarian rule and end democracy as we have understood it for 250 years. The MAGA agenda, as outlined in Project 2025, is fundamentally a Christian nationalist, white supremacist initiative. Most Americans don’t want this, but we have allowed a faction of vocal, well-funded hucksters to get their hands on the levers of power. It’s time to say ENOUGH!
Ray Clasen
North Fort Myers