In about two months our country has its 250th birthday.  What is your role in the future or our nation and our world?

I’ve been reflecting on how I, as an individual, fit into the 250 years of the United States of America.  I am, as we all are, individual members of this union.  Everyone has their own story.  Monday I shared a single page thought starter with a small conversation group I’m part of.  And here I share it with you: Reflection at 250 years.  It speaks for itself.   Interpret as you wish.  I’ll share my personal thoughts on May 4.  I’ll welcome yours, if/as you wish, any time.

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Sunday, April 26, I shared first thoughts in the wake of the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Capitol Hilton in Washington.  The next two days, ending this evening (Wednesday) have been highly publicized and puzzling.

I watched King Charles III speak at the Congress, and I was very impressed with how he approached the topic generally,  YouTube has numerous recordings of the speech, and I recommend that you watch and listen.

Post Saturday night at the Capitol Hilton the President seemed to use the near tragedy as a selling opportunity for his dream of a regal ballroom next to the White House, where the East Wing used to be, and intensified his campaign of retribution..

Here is another old postcard from the ND farm, from 1904, showing the White House from where the future east wing would be constructed the following year (1905), in Teddy Roosevelts term.  I think the proposed new ballroom is an outrageous decision to waste money we don’t have on this kind of frill, but who am I?

White House Postcard 1904

POSTNOTE April 30, 2026: Heather Cox Richardson on the speeches of King Charles III and DJT, here.

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Finally, I want to share a couple of individual comments generally relating to Iran.  They are opinions written at a certain point in time.  I appreciate their thoughts.  First, from Jim Klein April 9, 2026: the second, on April 20, from Jim Christie.  I’ve known both Jim’s for a lot of years.

I’d invite more such expressions of opinion, especially in the next two months as the 250th birthday approaches.

On April 8,  I sent the following to a group of people I thought might have a particular interest in the Iran situation:

“I’m sending this to only a few of you.

A year ago today we were about half way through the first 100 days of DJT’s second term.  Speaking only for myself, back then I was suspecting the worst, but in retrospect I was grossly underestimating the reality to come, and we’re only in the second year.

Cuba is on the plate, and I think this is a good time to revisit a bit of our long history with our island neighbor near Florida – a world community which  has about 10 million people, and is about the size of Tennessee.

from A History of Latin America 2d Edition by Hubert Herring 1963 p 405

For me, and perhaps for most, Cuba’s history as a known place began with Fidel Castro in 1959.  There was no particular reason for a common individual to pay much attention to the Caribbean nation.

Years ago I found a 1963 college textbook, “A History of Latin America 2d Edition” by Hubert Herring (see note at end of post).  The topic of chapter 26 was Cuba;  22 most interesting pages.  The books publication was about the time of the Revolution that brought Fidel Castro.

Here is Chapter 26 of the over 800 page book: Cuba H Herring 1963.

If nothing else, read the last sentence of the chapter.  (Also, see NOTE at end of this post).

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1898  was an important year in this history, at least insofar as Cuba is concerned: “Remember the Maine” the slogan.  Guantanamo Bay became a U.S. presence in the early 1900s, and has its own history.

Personally, I have never been to Cuba,  but I have always had curiosity about it.  Among my friends is a person who as a teenager was part of the Mariel boat lift, and has no fond feelings for Fidel Castro.

In January 1959, the year of the coup, I was a Freshman in College, and have no memories of, nor discussion about, the Cuban revolution.  Our small North Dakota college did have an “Afro-Cuban Review” lyceum program in about 1960 – Cuban dance and music performed by Cubans.  In 1961 came the Bay of Pigs debacle.  I didn’t much connect with that event either,  I likely attended the program, and the name of the Bay attracted the attention of a rural kid, but that’s about all.  I’d had no class on the subject, and thus no test to recall facts.

In 1962, my first stop after college was doing my time in the U.S. Army.  In October, 1962,  came the Cuban Missile Crisis which got everyone’s attention.  Russian missiles were set to arrive in Cuba, a short distance from our shores.  Fort Carson, where I served in Colorado. was a potential and reachable target for the missiles from Cuba.

The crisis was a major story in the Rocky Mountain News Oct 22, 1962: Cuba002.  

I was in an infantry company.  Along with a few other GI’s, I watched President Kennedy address the nation on the Mess Sergeants tiny TV.  It was a somber time.

The conflict was settled in the same week it became public knowledge in the U.S.  It was a very serious threat.  I think we soldiers mostly viewed it as a temporary inconvenience.  I was there, living in the same barracks with the others.  All we knew was that it was settled.

Then, for all the over 60 years since, Cuba has been the enemy, to be punished.

Many years after 1959, a relative of mine, a very prominent citizen of a Minnesota city, recalled the time of the revolution in a conversation.  He had made a bet with a friend at the time that the revolution would last less than six months.  “Lost that one” he said.

Let the conversation begin.

Personal Opinion: We have no reason to feel covered with glory by continuing the punishment of Cuba all these years.  We won’t by piling on again.  We should have normalized relations years ago.  Of course, we didn’t.

ENDNOTE:  The Herring volume (referenced above) is one of three I have that help illuminate Cuba before Castro.  It is available as a used book.

I also have “A Diplomatic History of the American People” 7th Edition by Thomas A. Bailey   This volume, also from the 1960s, has a number of references to earlier pre-revolution American dealings with the Spaniards and Cuba.  The inference I take from its references to Cuba is that the U.S. had an interest in Cuba, even as a potential state, but essentially as a slave state, about the time of our Civil War.

Perhaps some of the tension related to next door Haiti, whose slaves had overthrown the French in 1804, and our own slave-holding nation was not about to encourage another nation of freed slaves in North America.   Haitians have feelings, and have paid a heavy price, for their freedom in their long history, a few miles east of Cuba.

I also have the over 500 page “America’s War for Humanity” (cover photo below), about the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898.  The edition I have, apparently no longer available, is the original and focuses entirely on the Cuba campaign of 1898, with only a few pages at the very end about the Philippines and Porto [sic] Rico.  I would most like to learn of its history within my farm family, since my grandparents came to North Dakota in 1905, not long after the Spanish-American War.  And my Dad’s Dad – Grandpa Bernard – was in Manila in 1898 when the Spaniards surrendered.  He was an American soldier.

Of course, it would be interesting to learn even more, but these three books provide a lot of grist for further research.

COMMENTS (more below):

from Peter: Glancing at the first page [of the Harring chapter], I notice something that I think has remained unchanged: the notion that the original inhabitants “disappeared.”

Aside from the obvious, that they were all killed and stacked like cordwood wherever Columbus touched down, I know that the Taino people did not disappear, and remain among us. But Academe will insist that they are practically extinct.

A friend of mine from the pandemic years was an anthropologist who tracked the DNA of Caribbean peoples and verified this. However, when she attempted to report on this to universities, she was rebuffed rather disdainfully by the “experts”.

This book is no doubt a monument to such myths (not in the important sense of “myth” as a transmission of principles of life, but in the sense of a persistent lie embedded at the level of culture, which is now the primary selective process, having superseded natural selection after the last Ice Age.

As such it is extremely valuable, and thanks for sharing it!

from Brian:  I love your post.

We watched the conclusion of the Artemis II mission on April 10, 2026.  In all ways it was impressive – a perfect landing.  Only a few dilemmas.  Here was my view as the spacecraft neared touchdown.  I was most impressed with the diversity of the four person crew: a woman, an African-American, a Canadian, and a white man, all stuffed in a tiny vehicle, all eminently qualified for their duty.

Near touchdown. I like this photo since it shows how tiny the vehicle is compared with the surrounding earth.

As I was watching the conclusion of the mission I jotted down on a sheet of paper my own close calls with the space program, all of them as a spectator, but actually more occasions – 15 in all – than I had expected.

For me, first on my list was Sputnik, which I watched from my grandparents farmyard in rural Berlin North Dakota in October 1957.  There was nothing impressive about Sputnik itself – just a tumbling ball in the sky.  This was in the pre-high tech days…but the Soviet Union had won the race, and apparently we were caught unawares.

That first humble satellite which stayed around for only a short time, was very big news, and local newspapers publicized its route if its travels were in the vicinity.  In my case, it was a map in the Fargo Forum which showed the route and time across the night sky – in my memory from SSE in a completely clear but totally dark sky with stars as background.  We knew where to look, and when. and sure enough on schedule came a twinkle moving across the heavens.  It was Sputnik, and as it tumbled it reflected the sun for just an instant, over and over.  I’ll never forget it.

The next on my very short list was the moon landing of Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin July 20, 1969.  I was driving on U.S. Highway 2 near Bagley MN, when Apollo landed.  I pulled over to the shoulder.

Late in the evening came the first footsteps on the moon.  We watched it on TV, such as it was in those days.  Here is my screen shot late in the evening that day.  Yes, we had a color TV.

July 20, 1969, man on the moon ‘screen shot’ off TV in Spring Lake Park MN

That compares with the view on Saturday, also on a TV screen.

In the Pacific off San Diego April 10, 2026

I said I had 15 specific contacts with the space program.  Perhaps you’ll see these below, perhaps not.

Everyone has their own opinion about the short and long term value of these programs and their role in the competition to be first.  Personally, I feel that they do add to the considerable advances that have been made in science, but those same advances could be made without going into space.  On the other hand, satellites are helpful to us every day in many ways, such as GPS for road travel maps.

I highly doubt the utility of proposed permanent occupation and settlement of places like the moon and Mars, for just two examples.  Just my opinion.

But congratulations for some great work to NASA.

POSTNOTE, briefly:   I apparently possess a gene that almost compels me to seek out things to see – if there’s a roadside sign, I’ll probably stop and read it….

With respect to the space program,. there was Sputnik, and stopping by the side of the road, and numerous other vignettes related, including seeing the preserved (at the time) Mission Controls in both Houston and Cape Canaveral for various missions.  (The ones before really high tech kicked in, though they used whatever was available in the early days).

Out of the list of things I physically experienced was an e-mail conversation in the 1990s with Myron Tribus, probably the most high-powered intellectual I ever had the privilege to meet.

Myron was a California farm kid from modest circumstances who got his engineering degree in 1942, and early in his career as an engineer he spent time at the Minneapolis airfield as part of a military contingent testing various kinds of anti-icing strategies for aircraft.  This involved some dangerous assignments – they weren’t ever certain that this or that innovation would work, but they were kids.

Their work ultimately succeeded, as we know, and at the time they were featured in Time magazine: Tribus 1945 Time Magazine.

Myron and I got to be good distance learning friends and at some point he sent me an e-mail which I wish I kept, but didn’t.  His story was that at the time engineers worked across borders and this included between U.S. and the Soviet Union.

The American contingent had come up with some extremely complicated formula which was their intellectual property – a game changer.  At some point, Myron was communicating with a Russian engineer, who shared with him a formula which, unknown to the Russian, was the American formula, including some mistake that had been made.

Somehow or other – probably espionage – the secret was out.

Thus goes the world, as we attempt to preserve our secrets, and claim the Moon, or Mars, or whatever as our exclusive turf.  In the end analysis, we all live on the fly speck of a planet, and we live or die together.

Myron died 10 years ago, at 95.  A great guy.  I’m privileged I got to know him, and many others as life has gone on.

Jim posted a long response to the April 5 blog on Iran.  Here is his entire point of view:

“You asked for response…!  Here goes.  As usual, I suspect neither you or many (any?) of your other friends is going to agree with much of this.

Forgive the digression, but I want to start “Big Picture”.

In many ways, on many fronts, Trump has had his finger on the “nobody-will-touch-this” side of “settled” issues.  His big two have been immigration and trade.

On immigration, he has been on the side of “less” and on the side of “by strictly-enforced rules, only”, two things that Dems/Libs and GOPers/Conservatives had been able to come to agreement AGAINST, for decades, much to my astonishment.  It’s been a “Devil’s Deal”.  I’ve never had trouble understanding the GOP stance.  It has always been an immoral, beyond-“pro business” stance that feels that the abuse of low skilled foreign labor (and the laborers themselves) is OK if it’s “good for business”. And, as we are reminded pretty constantly these days, exploiting low skilled foreign labor is not only pro-business (which is how the GOP still puts it) but “necessary for our economy to operate as we have come to expect” (which is how the Dems choose to express the exact same point, alas).  The Dem stance – the Progressive stance – in my youth and yours, was always that exploiting foreign labor was immoral, and hurt not only the immigrants themselves, but also the entirety of American Labor, via the very, very obvious trickle-up effect it has on the availability of jobs and the wages jobs pay.  Academic economists have learned how to “lie with statistics” to deny this point, and much to my dismay, Progressive Dems are happy to take those lies and run with them.  It has been, and remains, shameful.

Add in the negative cultural effects.  No nation on earth save Belgium has ever performed “well” as a bi- or multi-cultural “nation” (really, “multi-cultural nation” is a contradiction in terms), and it took Belgium CENTURIES (not a few years or decades) to get to where it is.  Canada still is not, as evidenced by the Air Canada exec who had to resign after the recent crash, not because of the crash, but because his condolence message exposed that his French is weak-to-nonexistent.  Sacre Bleu!  In the US, we are on our historical third wave of immigration “downward adjustment” – All three arose from there being a historical local “high” on the curve of % Immigrants in the population vs. year.  We never seem to learn that, from the standpoint of social harmony – YES, you CAN have too many un- or under-assimilated immigrants.  We are still a “nation of immigrants”, but it works best when it does not degrade national culture or any local or regional cultures.  There is ALWAYS backlash when that starts to happen, and the phenomenon in relatively well-understood – but ignored by almost all in politics, anyway, because it is one of those “inconvenient truths”

On trade, Trump seems to have realized a number of things that run counter to Dem-GOP consensus, the most important of which being that in times of crisis, conflict, war, etc., a country has to either HAVE its own sources of critical materials and goods, OR it has to have ways of quickly ramping up capacity on a scale and at a pace that is dictated by the times.  We were ALMOST caught out in the lead-up and opening years of WWII, but we scaled up needed capacities faster and better than any earlier country had ever done.  The dominating US victory in WWII remains the only time in history that a country entered a war under-armed and momentarily unable even to produce more/better arms, and so thoroughly overcame those problems by force of national will.  Trump seems to have recognized that, with regard to China, we are literally “there again”, and that it is unlikely any country will ever succeed from such a starting point again, because pace of war has increased, while pace of industrialization has slowed.

So, on to foreign policy, war, and Iran.

Here, the irony is that Trump, this man of apparently no personal ethics or morals, has stumbled onto the moral high ground on an issue that AGAIN, both parties agreed long ago to take the other side:  The defects in the conceptual frameworks of International Law, and “The Rules of War”.

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Like you, I was raised Roman Catholic.  Super-Catholic in fact.  Catholic school, two cousins who are priests, as well as several second cousins and great-uncles.  Altar boy.  (No.  Never abused or anything like it.  You probably wouldn’t ask – non-Catholics ALWAYS do…)  Was doing the Readings at Mass at 14 years old.  Was a Eucharistic Minister at 17.  Left it all behind at 20. Took my doubts to a campus parish Jesuit (who I would much later learn was semi-famous) and he allowed me, through Socratic Discussion, once a week for half a year, to talk myself out of Catholicism and organized church Christianity in total.  In retrospect, I’m sure a part of him must have been crushed.  He never let on.  But a “whole lot o’ Catholic” still runs in my veins.

What does that have to do with Trump and war?  Well, I have never been able to come to a satisfactory understanding of how the Church’s stances on war can be seen to mesh with the realities of war, and the teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  For me, once one country has decided that it is OK to “litigate” its issues with some other country via the organized killing of numerous children of God, it is the very HEIGHT of immorality to “gamify” it with rules.  So “War Crimes” is another oxymoron that I do not understand, and apparently, Trump does not either.  War IS a crime in itself, and all emphasis should be on not doing it, or at least not doing it often, and GETTING IT OVER WITH if one determines one must do it.  There is evil in the world, and just as individual crime must be met with law and enforcement, evil on national scales can sometimes only be dealt with via war.  But in my Moral Universe, once that threshold has been crossed, the IMPERATIVE becomes to get it over with as fast and conclusively as possible.  What we did NOT do in Korea.  In Viet Nam.  In Iraq.  In Afghanistan.  His critics can rail all they want, but for all his faults, he really HAS governed, in both terms of his Presidency, from a stance of not starting wars that one cannot see the end of, helping others end their wars, and, most importantly, clearly expressing that if he STARTS a war, do not assume that he will NOT do WHATEVER it takes to end it expeditiously so we can get back to not killing each other again.  I don’t pretend to understand whether he really is in possession of a moral insight, or just a sense of expediency, or WHAT.  But the way in which he conducts foreign policy comports with my moral stance toward warfare (though not always with my sense of what’s in US interest, or any of a number of other factors).  Trump seems to understand just how awful war is, and just how “not-that-much-MORE-awful” are so-called “war crimes”.  I respect that about him.  It’s got to be extremely difficult to stand up and ACT this way on the international stage.  Courage, not cowardice.

So, Finally, the Paul Krugman piece.  <sigh>  It is really HARD not to go “ad hominem” on Paul Krugman, because the man proves almost every time he sits down to write on any topic that he is an utter, total, idiot.  He writes columns the way all too many Social Media denizens write “posts”.  He says outrageous things just to be outrageous and attract attention to himself – and almost always, the things he is saying have been said by others already, said better, and certainly supported better with some kind of evidence.  Paul Krugman is literally the worst kind of columnist.

But let me give him the credit he is in no way due, and take on what passes for his “substance” in this piece… well… substantively.  “Yet Iran won.”  Seriously?  In what universe?  Neither he nor anyone else can point to ANYTHING about the situation of the Iranian regime in which they are better off now than they were before last year’s US/Israeli short war and this year’s longer one. And there are myriad ways in which they are worse off.

“The Iranian regime has emerged far stronger than it was before, controlling the Strait of Hormuz and having demonstrated its ability to inflict damage on both its neighbors and the world economy.”  Is Krugman really UNAWARE that Iran controlled the Straits of Hormuz BEFORE the war, and has for ages, and that Israel has been fighting with Iran and its proxies for decades precisely because they have ALREADY demonstrated their ability to inflict damage on their neighbors and the world economy?  NONE of this is new, and, in fact, all of this is one REASON for the US and Israel to be fighting this war.  For crying out loud, the Oil Crisis of the ’70s was largely due to the fact that Iran controls the Straits of Hormuz.  Saying what Krugman said here is a perfect example of why I can’t get past “idiot” when assessing him.

“The U.S. has emerged far weaker, having demonstrated the limitations of its military technology, its strategic ineptitude and, when push comes to shove, its cowardice.”  OK, so at this point, I’m just kind of done, here.  We know of no new limitations on US military technology as a result of this war – at least, not as of today.  And Krugman doesn’t list any, because… as usual, Krugman “ain’t got nothin'”, so he can’t list any.   Then, since, again, it’s Krugman, I don’t really know whether when he says “strategic ineptitude”, he really means strategic, or tactical (he frequently gets them confused), but that’s OK, because at this early juncture, neither has been demonstrated in any way that will ever be discussed as a Case Study in the War College.  There may have been some poor or even inept choices.  WAY too early for experts to tell.  EONS too early for the likes of Krugman to tell.  “Cowardice”?  It’s be nice if Krugman could even tell us what, specifically, he is alluding to.  But, he likely doesn’t know.

I love the “TACO” thing from Trump’s critics.  99% of the time “TACO” is invoked, it is done so by someone who does not understand the first thing about negotiation and leverage.  Which, sadly, is true of most academic economists (“TACO” was first coined by them relating to Tariffs… and they were, and are, wrong – regardless of whether Tariffs are a good idea or bad.  What is actually TRUE is that Trump ALWAYS gets something on his wish list in exchange for “TACO’ing”.  He is REALLY good at it – “Evil Genius” level good, for better AND for worse, alas…)

“God help us.”   Well, God already has.  God has provided, up to the present moment, that Paul Krugman is not in charge of ANYTHING that truly matters in any way, and decision makers in both parties largely ignore him.  So God is good, here.”

Jim Klein

COMMENT from Dick:  Jim and I are good friends, who met working in behalf of a local Democrat candidate for office and I’ll basically leave it at that.

Re the political situation, U.S. president 47 properly read the room and we, the people, made the decision to elect him twice, and we are solely responsible and ultimately will regret the decision.  Like all humans, he will die (I’m six years his senior, so I know a bit about that!).

Re the Catholic Church, I see the church as three constituencies: the hierarchy, in this case the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops leadership; and the “rank and file”, divided into the progressive social justice branch (my branch) and the ideologue conservatives united by the rules, particularly “pro-life” bunch.

Before Jim’s comment, I had sent a 5 page letter to the local Archbishop and my Parish Pastor.

Here is a 1993 official American Catholic position on Just War, which was still in effect in 2003. Catholic on Just War 1993

Re Paul Krugman, I totally disagree with Jim.  No problem.

I have another good friend, an ideologic Democrat of my generation who, for whatever reason, doesn’t like Somali’s and specifically our Congressperson who is Somali.  That’s how he feels, and don’t and won’t try to change his mind.  He knows where I stand.  His issue is some corruption by a group of Somali’s during and after Covid-19 which resulted in, I recall, 63 convictions so far of Somali’s, which amounted to roughly 1 criminal per 1,000 Minnesota Somali’s.  This ethnic group is hardly overrun with crime, I’d say.

Finally, I actually know fewer than six who would call themselves “Iranian”.  I don’t have much agency in indicting an entire country.