Category Archives: World War One

A Fanciful Tale

PEER REVIEW

The stage lights rise. Two wingback chairs sit

aside a table center stage. The sounds of voices

are heard off stage as two men, The President,

and his chief of staff step onstage. The President

appears unhappy, the chief of staff paces

alongside, shoulder to shoulder.

THE PRESIDENT

Lawsuits, nothing but lawsuits! Tariffs, my arch, my fund for my January 6th supporters!

And ethics complaints about my DOJ, and they won’t shut up about Epstein! I’m

President, and these liberals won’t stop me, EVER! I want this done Stephen, no bullshit.

Noem is from South Dakota, right? You tell Kristi no is not an answer, I’ll make her life

more hell than it already is. (Mumbles) A husband who wears fake boobs.

STEPHEN MILLER

The liberals fear you, Sir. You are the greatest Chief Executive of all time and they know

it. Consider it done. Your face will be carved on Mt Rushmore.

Miller begins to walk off stage and the President

calls out.

THE PRESIDENT

And I want it painted gold!

Watches Miller walk off stage, shakes his head

and speaks.

People are right, Miller does look like he sleeps in a crypt.

A clutch of tourists appear looking about,

pointing toward “walls,

” taking pictures, selfies

and chatting quietly. The president straightens

his tie, and touches his hair.

THE PRESIDENT

Welcome to my White House. Bet you wanna a picture with your greatest President.

The tourists murmur quietly, indifferently

looking around. They turn and wander offstage.

The president follows a few steps.2.

2.

You people deaf? What is wrong with you? This is disgraceful. I’m President of the

United States!

A man, Theodore Roosevelt appears on stage

left. He wears a top hat, mustache, pince-nez

spectacles and cutaway jacket with tails. He

carries a cane. The man approaches the

President from behind. He speaks in an

aristocratic voice.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Am I to understand that you are a New Yorker?

The President startles.

THE PRESIDENT

Checks his hair.

What the hell! (Pauses) Um, hello. Are you here with a tour group? Bet you want a

picture with me, your favorite president.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I ask a simple question, and you reply with a question. I understand you are a New

Yorker. Is that so?

Annoyed, the President attempts to leave, but

cannot move. The man approaches the president

standing uncomfortably close.

THE PRESIDENT

Looking around

I can’t move! What the hell have you done! Where is my security detail! Help! Where are

my Marines?

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

We have all been watching you, and even Mr. Nixon is appalled. Once again, I ask are

you a New Yorker? Speak up when I’m addressing you.

THE PRESIDENT

Mr. Nixon? How the hell did you get in here?

The muted sound of tourists continues off stage.3.

3.

Yes. Yes. Everybody knows me. I made my fortune in New York real estate, if you must

know. I’ve heard many people say I’m the best businessman ever . . .

Roosevelt begins to pace and speak at the same

time.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

From my understanding you are nothing beyond a scoundrel from the wealthy criminal

class. I made a career of exposing popinjays such as yourself.

THE PRESIDENT

Well, you’re a nasty piece of work. No one talks to me like that. I am the President of the

United States. I won the election by the biggest margin in American hist . . .

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Poppycock! We have come to find that result came about through skullduggery, billions

in dark money, and a mere tilt in the electoral count through foreign interference. From

Russia no less.

THE PRESIDENT

Wrong. Another liberal lie.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Hush you foolish pip. Meeting with Putin in Helsinki, and proclaiming you believe him

over our own intelligence agencies? Closed door summit in Alaska? Unacceptable! Never

should foreign adversaries be permitted to undermine American policy. Nor condoning

those villains who pillaged the Capitol. Pardons? Payments to perpetrators? Mr. Lincoln

will have more to say on that travesty.

The President appears shocked. He mouths

“Lincoln.

”

You have besmirched the nation before the people and the world. I would say you are a

compromised pawn of billionaires, foreign meddlers, and their sinister purposes.

THE PRESIDENT

You’re a nasty piece of work, and you can’t talk to me like that. My security is coming

and you’ll be thrown out.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Sergey Witte.

THE PRESIDENT

What? Who? Get the hell out!4.

4.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Hold your tongue! When you are in the presence of a gentlemen, behave accordingly.

Witte was a Russian, so you will approve. The Japanese had defeated the Tsar’s navy on

the far side of the Pacific. America had no quarrel with either Japan or Russia, and I was

asked to chair peace negotiations. My view of Russians changed with Witte. What a

crude, unmannered man, a contrast to the well-mannered Japanese delegation. This so-

called “diplomat” grew increasingly belligerent during sessions insisting Russia be

awarded more territory, though they had lost the war!

Roosevelt removes his top hat and sets it on a

table, and checks his pocket watch.

Good I have time.

THE PRESIDENT

Time? Don’t stay on my account. I’m a busy man. Law suits, attacking opponents,

tweeting.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Sit down this instant.

The president instantly sits. Looks alarmed.

Witte is the point! The Russians only look out for Russia, not you, a bankrupt fool who

fell backward into the presidency.

THE PRESIDENT

You’re setting me up. Some a-hole is filming this. Where is the camera? I hate pranks.

(calls out) Miller!

The muffled sound of passersby continues. The

president sits uncomfortably, and shuts his eyes.

I’m dreaming. That’s it, I’m asleep. Jesus, I hope I’m not in a meeting. It’s so unfair when

they take my picture sleeping.

To the man.

I’m opening my eyes now and you better not be here.

The man leans over the sitting president. He

opens his eyes face to face with the man. The

president startles again.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I am not finished.5.

5.

The man again paces and speaks.

The emoluments clause is in place for a purpose. We show strength through integrity–not

by manipulating the stock market for personal gain. The Chief Executive is meant to

serve the people not himself.

THE PRESIDENT

Stop right there! I don’t take a salary. People love me for that.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

All the while racking up billions through shady dealings.

The man turns toward an imaginary window.

The president attempts to stand, but only

succeeds in moving the chair a little. He utters a

grunt.

THE PRESIDENT

My people don’t care about that. They want to win because we don’t win anymore. We’re

going to win big now. Barack Hussein Obama gave in to Iran. Not me. I’m bombing the

shit out of them, and Venezuela too. Cuba is next!

Roosevelt shakes his head in disbelief, and

shifts his gaze to the “Room.

”

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Napoleon’s foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand once remarked that though President

Thomas Jefferson loved France, and he did, Jefferson was still an American first. In

speeches you echo Talleyrand’s words, but you mean something else.

THE PRESIDENT

TalleyWho? Let me out of this chair!

The President tries to free himself as he speaks.

Everyone knows I am the greatest Americ. . .

Roosevelt sighs, and with a turn of his hand

silences the President.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

It appears you have no pets. Quite revealing that-regarding the character of a man. We

moved into this house with dogs, cats, and other pets, including a pony. How the boys

loved their animals. Our pets were considered part of the family. They and the children’s

presence made the White House feel like home.6.

6.

Roosevelt again turns his hand, and the

president speaks.

THE PRESIDENT

Kids and animals here? No thanks. (Pause) I know men who leave their businesses so

they can spend more time with their children, and I say,

‘Gimme a break!’ My children

couldn’t love me more if I spent fifteen times more with them.

Roosevelt looks doubtfully toward the audience.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

When men and women cease to regard a worthy family life, with all its duties fully

performed, and all its responsibilities, then evil days for the nation are at hand.

The president wiggle-walks his chair still stuck.

THE PRESIDENT

No one talks like that anymore. And for your information I would feel like a phony

having a dog. I don’t like dogs. And, you should know, my children love me, and my

wife, too. They are so proud of me, so proud. I’m President. It’s those Liberals that are

the problem.

Roosevelt snaps, waving his cane.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Is that why thousands of migrant children have been separated from their parents, seized

by masked thugs and detained without warrants? Why immigrants are dragged from the

streets and deported to foreign countries without due process? Liberals are not, as you

say, the problem!

Roosevelts clears his throat, and quietly

continues.

President Grant requested I touch upon the subject of military service. (Pauses) My father

did not serve in the War between the States, leaving me a confused boy. I could not

understand why. To me soldiering is the highest service a patriot can perform.

THE PRESIDENT

And now you’re going to tell me how great the military is. I really don’t care. Look, Greg

Smith from Newsmax is calling my office.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Ignoring the President.7.

7.

His decision concerned my mother. A lovely woman, my mother, she hailed from

Georgia, and her brothers were serving the Confederacy. You see, my father loved her–

simply loved her. He hired a substitute in his place, and aided President Lincoln in other

ways.

Roosevelt taps his cane and smiles.

Still. I idolized him. He believed so much in public service. He cared about children,

orphans living on the streets. Father founded the Newsboys Lodge, the Children’s Aid

Society, and the American Museum of Natural History. The last he did for me.

Roosevelt strokes his mustache lost in thought.

THE PRESIDENT

On Central Park West?

The man nods.

Been there. Your father had it built? For you? Seems like a big waste of money to me.

Bunch of bones and dead animals.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Serving the public is an obligation. My administration assured fair rail rates for farmers,

passed the Meat Inspection Act, and the Pure Food and Drug Act, to protect all

Americans consumers.

THE PRESIDENT

The president looks bewildered.

Why would you do that? There’s a lot of money to be made in big pharma.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Not listening.

As President, I never made a decision without wondering what my father would think.

THE PRESIDENT

Yeah, me too.

The president chuckles. Roosevelt frowns and

shakes his head.

THE PRESIDENT

Times have changed. Gotta get what you can when you can.8.

8.

The man whips around.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Which is why I am here.

The President’s smile disappears.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

(Wistfully) All four of my sons served in the Great War, and fulfilled their duty. We paid

the ultimate cost-our youngest, Quentin, lost in a dogfight over Germany. So difficult to

lose such a dear, sweet boy.

Roosevelt draws close to the president.

And Quentin was neither a sucker nor a loser! He believed in America, they all believed.

Quentin held fast to the tenets of our noble land and answered the call.

Roosevelt flashes disgust toward the President,

then becomes thoughtful.

In 1898, I, too, served as soon as I could. President McKinley had given me a position in

the Department of the Navy, but I resigned when war broke out with Spain. I assemble

the Rough Riders and shipped out to Cuba. Most exhilarating. My father would have

been proud, of that I’m certain.

THE PRESIDENT

My father would be proud, but the deep state is out to get me.

Roosevelt frowns, then and continues.

THE MAN

We were on foot in Cuba, a cavalry without horses. We lined up at the base of Kettle Hill,

and charged. The moment jolted electric, and my crowded hour began. Lifting my

carbine in the air, I rallied from the front, showing the men they had nothing to fear.

THE PRESIDENT

And see, that’s the problem! That is why the military is a chump’s game. Dying on some

hill for nothing, when I can live and make money.

Roosevelt gives the President an incredulous

glance.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

And as for rich, I understand your father made the fortune. Six bankruptcies I gather?9.

9.

THE PRESIDENT

Wrong. Lies. (Mutters, then smiles) And not any more.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Nouveau riche, new money. Gaudy, vulgar, pretentious, and hungry for the validation and

acceptance that you will never receive.

The president audibly snores. Roosevelt

continues to speak over the noise.

When I held office I used my “bully pulpit” in the best sense of the term. Once I believed

as you, that the natural world existed to enrich man. But that is false. The intrinsic value

of our land and resources cannot be found in stock indices or business transactions.

The president looks longingly toward the doors

of passing tourists.

Nowhere else in any civilized country is there to be found such a tract of veritable

wonderland made accessible to all visitors, not only the scenery, but wild creatures of the

parks are scrupulously preserved.

THE PRESIDENT

Well mister tree hugger I have gutted much of your precious protection and opened land

for logging, mining, and drilling. Say goodbye to the Grand Staircase in Utah, well, half

of it, anyway. Roads are being cleared as we speak, and off-road vehicles are roaring in.

And that goody two shoes, Obama created the Bears Ears National Monument. I chopped

it up for developers. Because that is profit. Profit is real.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

You are nothing new, but the only remorseless plunderer to reach the presidency. New

York City has produced a long line of blackguards such as yourself, criminals like Boss

Tweed, and Bernie Madoff. Driven by greed and power these men defraud the people and

the land.

For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.

Roosevelt walks around the chairs still looking

about. He speaks.

THE PRESIDENT

What is?

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Those words are inscribed on the arch at Yellowstone Park.

THE PRESIDENT

My Arch will be bigger and better, and even gold!10.

10.

Roosevelt strolls with his cane, and continues.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I, too lived a life of affluence. However, with that type of wealth comes an obligation to

the less fortunate. (He pauses) Doors down from our home on 57th Street the poor

suffered in wretched poverty. And much like my father I possessed a troubled conscience.

Roosevelt touches the president’s chest with his

cane, then resumes his pacing.

As Commander in Chief, our charge is to work for the people. All the people.

Withholding aid to states you did not carry is a dishonorable breach of that trust. (Pause)

My love of justice and fair play may sound naive to you. But your blatant breach of the

law, while pretending you haven’t, is shameless!

The man strikes the president’s chair with his

cane. The president sits straighter.

My administration was known as the “Square Deal,

” and we, my cabinet and I,

scrupulously kept that promise.

The man taps his cane on the floor again.

My father counseled me to look after my morals, my health, and my scholarship. And

that, I did. Because he admired my turn of mind the noted sculptor, Gutzun Borglum

added my likeness to Mount Rushmore.

Coldly

If you have your likeness carved on Rushmore, I want mine off. (Pauses) It’s time for me

to leave, the others will join you presently.

The president fixes his eyes on Roosevelt as he

puts on his top hat. Then Roosevelt gestures and

the president bursts free from his chair.

THE PRESIDENT

Others?

As the man stroll off in one direction, the

President runs off the other. The stage goes

dark.


Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

A Fabricated War

It was early August in 1964 when two American ships cruised into the Tonkin Gulf near the coastline of North Vietnam. The long narrow country facing the South China Sea had been divided following World War Two as had Germany and Korea. The demilitarized zone bisecting Vietnam lay somewhere near 17th parallel with the French controlling the South and Nationalist Chinese in the North.

From 1946 until 1954 the French and the Northern army, the Vietminh, jockeyed to unify the country, culminating with the Battle of Dien Bien Phu where the French got their clocks cleaned and arbitration in Geneva formalized the 17th parallel boundary. The US took an active interest in the fate of Vietnam because this was the Cold War Era. It was as if a global chess match shaped foreign policy with Soviet and Chinese Communism, and western democracies calculating strategic moves. As the preeminent post war power, the United States took the forefront in limiting Communist aggression, first in Korea, and then Vietnam.

By 1964 President Lyndon Johnson set his sites on Vietnam to limit the threat of Communist influence. To the President this was a backward country and people, and an overwhelming American force would easily conclude any resistance from Vietnamese Communists. After all how could people in black pajamas defeat the greatest nation in the world? President Johnson only needed a pretense, or provocation to commit American forces south of the demilitarized zone.

And that provocation cruised into the Gulf of Tonkin in early August of 1964. First the US destroyer, Maddox followed by another destroyer, the Turner Joy reported receiving fire from North Vietnamese forces. The ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ as it became known resulted with President Johnson deploying Marines to Vietnam in March of 1965.

And that my friends was how the United States blundered into a land war in Southeast Asia.

Unknown to Johnson or his Warhawk cabinet was the character of their foe. Ho Chi Minh had been a Vietnamese Nationalist from his earliest days. Educated in France, Ho Chi Minh, as a student, bought a suit in Paris and made his way to the Hall Of Mirrors in Versailles. World War One had ended and he had hoped to plead Vietnam’s desire for relief from French Colonial occupation to President Wilson. But of course racism prohibited his entrance and embittered, Ho bided his time returning to Vietnam in 1941. He and his Vietminh worked with the Americans fighting Japan believing independence would come at the hands of the United States.

That didn’t happen.

Over time Ho Chi Minh became the indispensable man in freeing Vietnam. A George Washington if you will, of the Vietnamese people. President Johnson ought to have understood that.

But no.

The American land war escalated and the bombing raids under “Operation Rolling Thunder” and Nixon’s “December Bombing” did nothing to bring the North Vietnamese to heel.

From President’s Johnson to Nixon to Gerald Ford the conflict dragged on until in 1973 all American forces came home. Over 58 thousand Americans died in Vietnam and the truth was the provocation that sparked the war never happened. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident. For real. The so-called incident had been fabricated.

Now we again are under the knuckle of a completely vacuous man who believes he can bomb a nation and culture centuries old. Ramping up force garners nothing from a proud people, in this case the Persians, to quit. Like the deadbeat he is, Trump believes he can wear down the Iranians like a window installer he’s refused to pay. But he doesn’t know who he is dealing with, and he can’t sue or counter sue or in anyway wait out Iran until they tire and give up. That will never happen, like it never happened in Vietnam.

A greedy, hateful, racist goomba from Queens cannot win this fabricated war. Reality doesn’t work like that.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

The Flats

It was mid-summer in 1932 Washington DC. A giant shanty town, popularly known as a “Hooverville” had sprouted in an open area on the Anacostia Flats. Veterans from the First World War had made their way to the Capital, bringing their desperate families to persuade Congress to pay a promised bonus for military service in the Great War.

America had hit bottom by 1932, the country devastated by the 1929 Stock Market Crash that drifted into the Great Depression. Raggedly men, women, and children somehow had traveled to the city, all desperately hoping the promised bonus could be issued at once rather than 1945, the date set by the provisions of the law. These people brought little and had nowhere to go except to throw themselves on the mercy of a Democratic House, Republican Senate, and a Republican President.

Scrapped tin, packing crates, chicken wire and other material made up the shacks on the Flats, with folks making homes that were better than nothing. The Hoover administration was not happy a bit with these scruffy people descending on Washington and opposed paying the bonus (dollar amount depending on service records) as it would unbalance the national budget. The “Bonus Marchers” as they were called, roamed around the city, many in bare feet, speaking to reporters while filmed by newsreel companies such as Pathe’ News, and Hearst Metrotone News.

Finally on June 15, 1932 the House approved paying the bonus, but the bill had to find approval in the Senate. Two days later a Republican led Senate rejected the bill, dashing the hopes of destitute veterans.

After the vote Senators exited the Capitol through the underground rail system safely avoiding the stunned marchers outside.

By July 28 President Hoover had had enough of the vagabonds. He ordered General Douglas McArthur to use his troops to expel the marchers from the Flats. At the end of that meeting the President cautioned the General to avoid violence at all costs.

McArthur directed his men, including two young Majors, Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, to fix bayonets and follow dispatched tanks into the shanty town. Briefing his troops George Patton instructed his men that “If you must fire do a good job — a few casualties become martyrs, a large number an object lesson. . . . When a mob starts to move keep it on the run. . . . Use a bayonet to encourage its retreat. If they are running, a few good wounds in the buttocks will encourage them. If they resist, they must be killed.”

Hmm.

Thinking along the same lines General McArthur ordered tear gas lobbed and setting fire to the rickety camp. In the melee two Bonus Marchers were killed and a 12-week old baby succumbed to tear gas.

The camp burned through the night and with it Herbert Hoover’s reputation. Four months later, In November Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the White House in an electoral landslide.

In America real change rises from us, the people, not from the White House. When citizens of this nation have had enough and demand justice, justice shall be done.

William Hushka of Chicago and Eric Carlson of Oakland, California perished in that long ago assault. Another casualty was infant Bernard Myers who lost his brief life from tear gas related complications. These citizens were indeed George Patton’s martyrs who still deserve to be remembered.

As do Renee Good and Alex Pretti of Minneapolis.

Stay the course my friends, We are The People and possess enormous power. Let us use it.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

Mischlinge

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. DJT, June 15, 2015

Government-sponsored horrors aimed at the vulnerable require planning. The target group is first identified, their deficiencies propagandized, then malignant operations begin to remove that group. This age old pattern is a how-to for witch-hunts from 1692 Salem, to Native American extermination, to slavery, and to Joe McCarthy in the 1950’s Red Scare. Other examples in history abound as well, most notoriously the rise of German National Socialism following World War One.

Embittered by the 1918 Armistice, former Corporal Adolf Hitler founded his National Socialist movement in Bavaria. After organizing two para-military gangs, the Brown Shirts and Black Shirts, he led a failed coup attempt in 1923 Munich. This act of revolt landed him in jail, where he penned his infamous tract “Mein Kampf.” The substance of the book raked over grievances, particularly against Jewish people and other “so-called” betrayers of Germany. Hitler was clear in his writing, only genocide would root out Germany’s traitors.

Granted an early parole by a sympathetic judge Hitler quickly resumed leadership of his growing Nazi movement. By January, 1933 he had attained power as Chancellor under German President Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler efficiently made use of his expanding influence in the Reichstag, (German Parliament) to fulfill his unholy mission. Taking incremental steps the Nazi leader began with boycotts of Jewish businesses, then removal of Jewish and other undesirables from employment as civil servants. Soon Jewish students were forced from public schools, permitting only a small quota each year to enroll. By May of 1933 Hitler ordered book burnings of Jewish authors and others he viewed as subversive.

Events accelerated.

When President von Hindenburg died in 1934, Adolf Hitler seized absolute power over Germany. And he wasted no time in dialing up the violence against people he considered vile.

At a 1935 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg the Fuhrer issued formal classifications of who was Aryan (pure German) and who was Jewish. Known as the Nuremberg Laws, marriages in particular were outlawed between Jewish and Aryan couples. The image above is one document reflecting that Nazi framework, outlining which marriages were permitted by the state and those “verboten” (forbidden).

Hitler insisted these laws were necessary to protect German blood, but the laws also served to isolate not only Jews, but Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, and others. In truth one man defined which human lives were valuable, and those that were expendable.

The ground was prepared for the genocide that would follow.

Dachau was the first extermination camp built in 1933. From that beginning until 1945 the railcars rumbled nonstop to thousands of ash-strewn death camps, while Hitler’s SS liquidated Jewish ghettos of thousands of men, women, and children. By May of 1945 somewhere around 11 million victims perished in a region historians refer to as the “Bloodlands,” including 6 million Jews.

Euphemistically referred to as Racial Hygiene, the Holocaust unfolded gradually and in relative secrecy. However, by the end of the European war and Germany’s defeat the world wondered how this horror could have happened.

We are watching how at this moment.

In Trump’s America that pattern is repeating. The founding of the United States according to Thomas Jefferson insisted that people are born with natural rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But from the George Floyd murder to Trump publicly announcing brown people traffic drugs and are rapists, that assumption has been ignored. This administration has taken racial profiling to a criminal level, as this tyrant harnesses the might of the federal government to carry out warrantless abductions.

Even if American citizens are caught up in sweeps, many insist that this is different, and that those taken deserve it. The pieces of evil are all there.

Racial exceptionalism has been the cause of mass suffering from the Armenian genocide in World War One, to Cambodia’s killing fields in the late 1970’s. The signs are all too familiar.

Trump’s makes no pretense of his intentions stating on 60 Minutes that his ICE goons haven’t gone far enough in terrorizing and kidnapping civilians. The sanctioned ongoing violation of civil and human rights has been grinding away as you’ve read this essay.

The United States was meant to be different–a land with freedom from fear, where people are secure in their places and property. This tradition does not rely on one man’s racism and deliberate cruelty. A cautionary tale is replaying, and we cannot escape that past, nor avoid the sinister outcome.

Mischlinge was used by the Nazi’s as a derogatory legal term. Literally mischlinge means mongrel, a person of mixed blood.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

A Surreal Landscape

In a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds locals are gathered in a cafe eating and chatting. An attractive blonde is on the telephone explaining that children at the local school were dive-bombed by attacking crows. An elderly lady in a beret and smoking cigarettes lectures the other diners that crows don’t behave in such an aggressive manner and that there has to be another explanation. The woman identifies herself as an ornithologist and holds forth explaining crows and even seagulls do not do such things. Immediately after her expert testimony all hell breaks loose outside the cafe window, with masses of birds swooping down on passersby. The scene is chaotic and bloody leaving no doubt these attacking birds are in fact lethal. As the nightmare scene ebbs, the camera catches the bird expert, her head bowed in grief and bewilderment, stunned everything she knew and believed no longer applied to any bird in her understanding.

That woman resembles this lifetime American history educator. I’m a fairly decent generalist in subjects ranging from PreColumbian America through today, give or take minutia. But I too, am stunned by the surreal landscape of what I believed about democracy has been easily undone by a vulgar man-child and a compromised and opportunistic Republican Party.

It feels like all my understandings of my country no longer apply. The epic and fraught-filled struggle of forging the Constitution, the furnace of Civil War, the reforms of the Progressive Age, the promise of the New Deal, and Great Society are gone, rapidly destroyed by sinister design. A totalitarian despot has seduced a once noble political party rendering the valiant patriotism of those whom came before moot. Simply writing this lament is difficult, as all I once believed and explored is no longer valid.

An online troll explained it as “no one cares about that anymore.”

That means the principled determination of General Washington to serve our nation doesn’t matter. The misguided genocide of the Five Civilized Tribes upon the Trail of Tears doesn’t matter. With nearly 700,000 deaths, the crucible of Civil War no longer matters. Those brave GI’s on Omaha Beach, (including my own grandfather) and at the Battle of The Bulge no longer matters. Those brave students who occupied lunch counter stools in the face of racial violence did so for nothing. Those boys who perished in the Vietnam War are irrelevant. In point of fact no veteran matters anymore.

American history and all the sacrifice of our forefathers and mothers doesn’t count.

That 47 can fly in a foreign “gift” aircraft with a classified budget is a good thing to do with our tax money. That he remodels a room in the White House in a golden gilt is a good thing. Who really cares if former medicaid recipients suffer.

Suck it up buttercup, these are the new rules of Trump’s America.

That he has done away with investments in the Arts and Humanities is a positive. That he has placed incompetent sycophants from Fox News in high Federal positions is good. Forget he stole top secret intelligence documents. The country elected him anyway. That he has drastically shifted the tax burden onto the middle class and off of the super wealthy is how God wants it, just ask today’s Christians.

That old white men rape girls is a good thing. 

The GOP bows at his feet and gleefully ratifies every stab-wound of domestic legislation is now to be celebrated, so pop a cork. In fact destroying America for profit is now simply wholesome and righteous. 

America’s heroes, like Sergeant Alvin York in the Argonne Forest, or Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Gettysburg endured their generations difficulties so that Trump can plow up Mrs Kennedy’s rose garden for a putting green. Suffragette Alice Paul who went on a hunger strike and endured the torture of forced feeding did so that the current president can manipulate votes is just fine. The murders of JFK, Dr King, Harvey Milk, or the murder of Minnesota State Senator Melissa Hortman is merely a part of the 24/7 news cycle.

Indeed nothing of our past story matters because Mr 47 has disqualified all of it to make money, and more money because that’s all that matters today. Plus of course he is a convicted felon and is terrified of going to jail where he belongs.

So when you see this disoriented American History educator with her forehead in her hand, much like the bird expert in the movie, please understand the gravitational pull of her entire life’s work is today rendered null and void. 

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

American Expatriates and Celebrities

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility–I welcome it.  John F Kennedy, 1961

To American expatriates abroad and celebrities remaining at home,

Armed with your fame and recognizable voice all of you hold a public leadership role whether you choose to have one or not. Brave, out-spoken spokesmen for Democracy are a bit short on the ground and America needs her sons and daughters to rise up in defense. 

No one runs us out of our home.

This is not a normal time, nothing about this administration is normal and leaving the country or remaining silent sends a message of throwing in the towel. You are abandoning the rest of us to hold the frontlines the best we can, but your face and words are needed. Too many in the press, in politics, and in the sports world are caving to accept this unacceptable lout out of fear or resignation. That behavior must end.

Charlie Chaplin, Adolph Zukor, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr  sold war bonds during the First World War, Gable and Stewart enlisted in the service to fight Nazi tyranny. Carole Lombard lost her life in a plane crash after raising $2 million dollars for the war effort. You owe it to Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner and those of The Hollywood Ten who stood fast for freedom when caught in the fear of America’s Red Scare. Lena Horne, Pete Seeger and Zero Mostel, among others, faced blacklisting through the perilous period of McCarthyism. This is exactly the same ‘once in a generation’ moment testing our commitment to our democratic principles.

Leaving the country or remaining silent sends the terrible message of surrender. And leaving is selfish. Giving up on resistance essentially says to hell with the United States. This is the time when we need you most to stand tall. Liz Cheney hasn’t cut and run, nor has Adam Kinzinger. And he hates them the most because they know he’s an absurd phony. They also know they will never give up on America and neither should you. 

Now that is a valiant example of patriotism. We can do no less.

Those of the future are depending on all of us to make this perilous moment right and to pass on an unsoiled America for generations to come. Moreover, our posterity will learn who stood fast in this momentary struggle for liberty and those who abandoned America in its time of need.

This is merely one chapter in the story of America and we are still a young nation. The United States is founded upon the will of the people and this administration is not your will or mine. Today’s corrupt collaborators who have prostituted our republic for momentary gain will fall by the wayside. These sycophants will share this wannabe dictator’s fate.

And that petty bag of stupid will fail, it is in his DNA. That’s what he’s always done. And there will be a lot of rebuilding ahead of us and your encouraging presence will be critical. No one runs us out of our country, nor do we forsake our duty in time of America’s need. We are not a servile people and do not bow down to anyone. Our rights according to Mr. Jefferson are derived by our Creator, and no one man can take them away. 

America has come so far in realizing A More Perfect Union. The expansion of the vote, black males, women, white and black, Native Americans, and for 18-year-olds. Other gains include people with disabilities, women in the military, reproductive rights, marriage equality, and the election of America’s first black President. And all of us at home have witnessed much of this affirming progress.

So come home, we really need you in our time of peril. We need your voice, your humor, music and the public demonstration of your persistence. That goes for the rest of you with a public profile. You are still here, and we need you to step up. Do not be afraid. Stand fast and speak truth to power.

Be loud. 

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two part memoir River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. She has also authored three stage plays, Clay, Wolf By The Ears, and Peer Review. Chumbley is the co-writer of Dancing On Air a screenplay based on her River books.

The Long Haul

After the 1929 Market Crash the world fell into regional, nearly feudal isolation, and international trade quickly dried up. America, too, focused inward largely due to the nation’s earlier participation in the Great War in Europe.

Across the Pacific the Japanese Empire aimed to take advantage of global disinterest promoting its own national interests. Sold to other Asian countries as the “Co-prosperity Sphere,” hyper-nationalistic Japan intended to expand across the region, especially toward vulnerable, resource rich China.

Great Britain as well, struggled alone in a financial malaise, as did the French across the channel; both nations saddled with debt to American banks from the previous war. Germany, the defeated nation struggled with their own war debt demanded by the British and French.

The shroud of economic depression hung like a millstone over Europe and the rest of the world.

As the financial, and political fallout grew wildly unstable, regimes hunkered down and hoped for better times. However the climate instead became chaotic, bringing anti-democratic demagogues to power.

The Italians were first, producing a Fascist strongman, Benito Mussolini. El Duce, as he was known suppressed political diversity, harnessed economic efficiency, and soon, like the Japanese, pursued colonial inroads into Libya, and later the conquest of Ethiopia.

Germany soon flirted with its own style of fascism, with a meaner, violent credo. In a reaction to impossible debts, and national pride, Adolf Hitler, a feckless dreamer, stood on beer hall tables, and passionately spoke of national betrayal. Hitler revealed his malicious intentions by blaming Bolsheviks, Capitalists, and Jews for the hated Armistice of 1918, and war debt owed to the Allies.

Yet America, unlike the rest of the world, clung with all their might to the national system of Constitutional norms. At the same time Germany elected Hitler in 1932, the U.S. found their champion in Franklin Roosevelt. 

A popular Roosevelt Coalition steered the country through those hard years holding America together. FDR’s New Deal and Fireside Chats broadcasts kept at bay the fears of a nation. That’s not to say there weren’t kooks, to borrow Lindsay Graham’s phrase, but Americans faced the long haul together, believing better days had to be ahead.

The current President is no Franklin Roosevelt. And his autocratic tendencies, strongly echo those in the 1930’s.

In Project 2025 Trump aims to raise tariffs, shut down borders, all done to economically and politically isolate America. Using the same playbook of past despots specific groups are targeted as the problem. The guilty include immigrants, the LGBTQ community, liberals, educators, women, and the rule of law all in the crosshairs. All done to divert and distract while he lines his pockets.

And his tactics, so far have succeeded making half of the electorate real mean.

So, here is the question. Can America survive?

Can Americans remain bound to the framework of our 238 year old republic as it did in the Great Depression? Or will this nation forsake our financial, social, and political traditions and turn to petty retribution and scapegoating?

Will we, as a nation withdraw from the world and exchange our democracy for a strong man who insists he has all the answers?

The signs are clear. When this national crisis has passed will there be enough of us left who stood resolute for our democracy? That is the question of this historic moment. 

Gail Chumbley is a writer and history educator.

Without Justice

So many students had dropped the class, the professor had us meet in his office. The course, (a 300 level?) concerned the history of Eastern Europe, and though challenging, I sucked it up and remained.

Exotic names such as Moldova, Herzegovina, and Macedonia evoked mystical places barely touched by the Renaissance or Enlightenment. The prof tossed around these names as an American would with Oklahoma or Nevada. 

He spent a great deal of time lecturing on the Balkan region. This mountainous peninsula is situated south of both Slavic Ukraine, and the Magyars of Hungary. This area, I learned, suffered an especially turbulent past, and for that matter still does today. One book on the course list, “Land Without Justice,” by Montenegrin, Milovan Djilas starkly described and reiterated that point. 

Seated around a small table, our teacher introduced the Slavic folk who embraced the Orthodox faith of Byzantium. while the Croats to the northwest remained Catholic. For good measure, the Ottoman Turks rode hard northward, flashing scimitars of enforced conversion or butchery through remote pockets of alpine settlement. 

Violence tinted the region red, scarring the inhabitants through generations of fierce reprisals.

The people of South-Central Europe appeared to have been dragged pillar to post in the religious chaos of competing Kings and Sultans.

In the wake of Turkish conquest, the youngest boys were systematically abducted from Orthodox villages up and down the rugged terrain. Raised in the Islamic faith, these children grew into fearsome warriors, eventually unleashed back on their former homes. These Janissaries coldly delivered Ottoman violence upon their own kinsmen. 

Mired in blood, rulers like Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula eliminated his many enemies by impaling victims on wooden stakes. Most were Muslim.

I don’t recall my grade in that course, but I was mesmerized. Enough remained with me to pass on to my history students. For example, as America fought their Civil War, a Medieval system still restrained Eastern European society. Blood feuds raged through the mountain terrain pitting Croats against Serbs, against Albanians, against Bulgars, and on and on. By the end of the 19th Century the Balkans acquired a new moniker, “the powder keg of Europe.”

The ignition of World War One began in Sarajevo, the center of Bosnia Herzegovina. As the Ottoman Empire eventually receded southward, the Austro-Hungarian Empire aimed to absorb Bosnia as their own. Hapsburg Emperor, Franz Joseph sent his nephew on a good will mission to picturesque Sarajevo. For the nephew, Franz Ferdinand, this would be his last royal duty. A Serb teenager waiting on the processional route shot the Hapsburg heir, and his wife, too. From that incident came “The War to End All Wars.”

This essay barely scratches the full history of Eastern Europe. Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Kosovo, all hold eons of collective history, enough to study a lifetime. 

Still much like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle with scattered and missing pieces, an incomplete picture of the region remains. World War Two, the frigid tension of the Cold War, and the Balkan Wars of the mid-1990’s all continue to pull the world in, as if a black hole.  

I stuck with that college class, in that professor’s office, and as a result understand why NATO, including US peace-keeping forces, still must remain in the “Land Without Justice.”  

Gail Chumbley is an author, and history educator. Her two books, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” both available on Kindle. In addition Gail has composed two plays, “Clay” and “Wolf By The Ears.”

Pull of the Past

The Ukraine is located north of the Black Sea

Three monarchies ruled Central and Eastern Europe in the years leading to World War One. The Hohenzollern of roughly present day Germany, the Hapsburgs of nearly all the lands between Germany and Russia, where the Romanov dynasty ruled for hundreds of years. Modern republics carved from these three long ago kingdoms still feel a dynastic pull, as if prisoners of the past.

After WWI, and the forthcoming Treaty of Versailles the major kingdoms disappeared, replaced by new countries drawn by the hands of the victors. The objective of those redrawing the face of Europe was to give each language group the dignity of self rule. With few exceptions monarchies were gone, replaced by self-governing democracies.

1919 produced a validating moment for ethnic-language groups, resurrecting national flags and reveling in their distinctive cultures. But historically speaking independence lasted only a twinkling. 

Throughout the 1930’s the Germans tried democracy, only to discard the system in favor of autocracy under Adolf Hitler. The last Hohenzollern, Wilhelm II had been deposed and lived in exile, clearing Hitler’s path of impediments. Engaged in revitalizing Germany, the Fuhrer proceeded to annex nearby lands, reversing that moment of democratic freedom. 

The German Fuhrer set his sights on reoccupying the Rhineland, a resource, and industrially rich region to the west. That the German’s were not, by treaty, permitted to seize that area, Hitler waited for the protests, but the western allies did nothing. Later Hitler sent forces to Austria, the site of his birth, and absorbed that country into his Third Reich. Crickets. Then after a pause, he made a play for the Czech region of the Sudetenland. These acquisitions were German-speaking populations, and to Hitler a part of Germany’s destiny.

This time the West did take notice.

In September, 1938, the German Fuhrer hosted England’s Neville Chamberlain, and France’s Edouard Daladier to discuss the fate of the Sudeten. The conference was a cynical sham. As the political leaders admired the Berchtesgaden view of the Tyrolian Alps, German troops amassed on the Czech border. A secret “incident” was in the works as a pretext to invade as soon as possible. Part of Hitler’s scheme included informing his guests that German nationals in western Czechoslovakia were persecuted, and his duty lay in rescuing them.

Both Chamberlain and Daladier, fearful of a new war, agreed to Hitler’s aggression, as he assured them after the Sudetenland, Nazi expansion would conclude. But of course he was lying. World War Two erupted the following year.

At this writing Vladimir Putin is playing the same game as Herr Hitler. In 2014 Putin sent forces into the Crimea, with one eye on the Western democracies. There were protests, and economic sanctions, but no ultimatums. 

As Russian soldiers amass at the border of the Ukraine, President Putin pretends none of the aggression means anything. But this Russian autocrat means plenty, and is implementing a play to return the Ukraine back to where he believes it belongs-Russia. 

 Does the west have the will or consensus to allow this modern-day dictator to lie to the world and invade Ukraine? Will the Americans, and other European Allies look the other way, as did Chamberlain and Daladier? 

I’m no expert on European History, but finding patterns has become second nature. The pull of the past is strong, and would-be dictators care nothing about national boundaries. For a tyrant like Putin entitlement to the Ukraine is much the same as breathing. So the onus falls on the NATO Alliance to hold the line. A line that President Putin is doing his best to challenge.

Gail Chumbley is the author of River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Both books are available on Kindle.

gailchumbley@gmail.com