Fred, reflections at our 250th
Fred, a long-time friend, and retired teacher and active historian, sent me his part of a conversation with a friend since boyhood – they grew up as schoolmates together. The two men have different points of view and retain close relationship with each other, ‘across the divide’ so to speak.
What I share here, with Fred’s permission, is his point of view at this time in history;
Fred: “[My friend] sent me a copy of the Democratic Socialist [DS] Party platform. After recent rants, he believes it is inevitable that I’ll become a DSer My response comes first. The DSers have some very interesting ideas.
Happy Fourth!
Thanks for sending along the Democratic Socialist [DS] menu for positive change. As the radical I am, I was particularly taken by their move to throw out the bums at XCel with not a penny in recompense and their creative policing concepts. But your, conflation of the entire Democratic Party with the DS, however is just a bit of a stretch. Kinda like how the terror of Antifa that wreaked havoc around the nation.
Although I have never been a party to any political party, I must admit to voting for Dems most of the time (one GOP senate candidate, one GOP gov, and one Third Party (remember John Anderson? for president were the exceptions).
Democrats produced legislation in the 1930s that rescued my father’s immigrant family from dispossession of their home. The corrupt Harding Admin followed by the feckless Coolidge and Hoover admin, (Tea Pot Dome, Smoot-Hawley tariff, rising stock market speculation etc.) brought on the Great Depression. RW [Red Wing] Potteries closed the Claybank pits where my grandfather worked as a foreman. As I’ve noted in RW histories, the city was teeming with transient young men forced to go on the road to find work. In Jan. 1925 the RW jail housed 34 transients; in Jan. 1930 it was 66; the monthly total reached 443 in March 1931. US officials estimated two million American men “on the road” and on the rails in 1932. My father might have become one of them if not for what the generous GOP termed “make work” programs. You’ve read his account about the CCCs [Civilian Conservation Corp].
Still don’t understand your support for Trump. The impeachment “rampage”??????? occurred in the wake of the attack on the capitol by mobs chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and breaking into the Capitol, its offices and the House and Senate. Talk about a rampage! Meanwhile, your Nero fiddled in the WH [White House] watching the action while cries for him to call in the National Guard, including one from his endangered VP [vice-president], went unanswered!!!
Your guy’s herculean efforts to challenge his deserved election defeat in states around the country, continue as the highest of his priorities. In state after state, Red and Blue, courts found NO tampering with the election. Yet anyone in his inner circle knows challenging this fallacy today is out of a job.
Nope, I’m not sure to shift to the Far Left. I experienced a lot of political theater while teaching on St. Paul’s Lower East Side in the 1960s to 2000. The I-94 Corridor brought tens of thousands immigrants from Chicago and its suburbs and rust belt cities all looking for better lives and better public assistance. In our school alone, we received 104 children from Chicago during one school year (that is more than four classrooms). St. Paul received the first Vietnamese influx (they soon moved to warmer climes), and the nation’s largest number of Hmong students. Within a few years ESL (English Second Language Learners) students numbered more than 60%; American Indians and Hispanic (many from seasonal worker families) were part of that number. Those kids still were required to take standardized tests that didn’t do much for our school’s grade level scores—most diligently and fruitlessly filled in the circles. The school’s Poverty Rate, as measured by those receiving free and reduced school lunches (and breakfast), reached 96% (among the highest rates in the nation).
Crime, surprisingly led by [east side] White Biker groups in the 60s and 70s, gave way to Black street gangs. Two ugly incidents are memorable: to punish a snitch living in a duplex across the street from school, a Black gang member heaved a firebomb onto the porch. Five young children died in the blaze; two were from our school. The other was the killing by their deranged mother, of six neighborhood children; one old enough to be in our school.
That said, the neighborhood’s core blue collar workers and their children, along with the power of Hmong family units, kept the school moving forward.
Now, for my coupe d’grace re your prediction I will not go hard left Commie on you. Rather, I will tantalize you with a detailed plan to deal with those who gave their lives over to drugs, alcohol, despair (children having children), I had a pregnant 11-year old in my class), 30-year old grandmothers taking over and often, but unfortunately not often enough, running an impoverished and damaged family unit.
I shared my plan with co-workers, but never put it on paper (could have been grounds for dismissal I believe). It is a humane, cost effective way to lead those in the underclass of addiction to a productive li[f]e and, at the very least, keep them off the streets if they can’t pull it off. You will hear the details on our coming walk. Please don’t “wear a wire” and rat me out to your leaders.
Your boy would actually sign on to it, I’m sure, except there’s little way to grift it. I know you will watch the DL’s speech about American greatness tonight (with perhaps a nod to his). Enjoy!
[nom de plume] James Madison”
I reiterate, the two correspondents are good friends for many years.
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