Lazy Caturday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

Alexandr Klemens The White Cat’s Slumber in the Library

Everything is going to hell in a handbasket, as everyone here knows. Trump is issuing shock executive orders at an unbelievable pace. His goal is to overwhelm us and force us to give up in despair. Of course many of his orders are illegal and/or unconstitutional and many others are simply idiotic. We’re in for four years of this–if we still have elections in the future.

I was born right after World War II, in 1947. In the aftermath of the war, there were dramatic changes in U.S. culture. The culture continued to change in many positive ways during my lifetime–until recently.

Trump managed to put the Supreme Court under right wing control, and they proceeded to overturn Roe v. Wade, making women once again second-class citizens.

The court had already weakened many of the advances in Civil Rights that took place in of 1960s and 1970s, such as voting rights. Now they are poised to continue overturning more of the rights we have gained in recent years, including the right to same sex marriage. This was happening before Trump, but he has greatly speeded up the process.

I’ve been thinking about all this, because of  a wonderful essay I read this morning by historian Heather Cox Richardson at “Letter from an American.”

She begins by describing events that took place after D-Day. U.S. troops were exhausted and were told to rest in the Ardennes region of Belgium. Then the Germans organized a massive offensive on the Ardennes that led to the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans told allied soldiers they had no choice but to surrender, but they refused.

“NUTS!”

That was the official answer Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe delivered to the four German soldiers sent on December 22, 1944, to urge him to surrender the town of Bastogne in the Belgian Ardennes….

Members of his staff were more colorful when they had to explain to their German counterparts what McAuliffe’s slang meant. “Tell them to take a flying sh*t,” one said. Another explained: “You can go to hell.”

By the time of this exchange, British forces had already swung around to stop the Germans, Eisenhower had rushed reinforcements to the region, and the Allies were counterattacking. On December 26, General George S. Patton’s Third Army relieved Bastogne. The Allied counter offensive forced back the bulge the Germans had pushed into the Allied lines. By January 25, 1945, the Allies had restored the front to where it had been before the attack and the battle was over.

The Battle of the Bulge was the deadliest battle for U.S. forces in World War II. More than 700,000 soldiers fought for the Allies during the 41-day battle. The U.S. alone suffered some 75,000 casualties that took the lives of 19,000 men. The Germans lost 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers, too many for them ever to recover.

The Allied soldiers fighting in that bitter cold winter were fighting against fascism, a system of government that rejected the equality that defined democracy, instead maintaining that some men were better than others. German fascists under leader Adolf Hitler had taken that ideology to its logical end, insisting that an elite few must lead, taking a nation forward by directing the actions of the rest. They organized the people as if they were at war, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together to consolidate their power. Logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, fascists demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate, dividing their population so they could control it.

In contrast to that system was democracy, based on the idea that all people should be treated equally before the law and should have a say in their government. That philosophy maintained that the government should work for ordinary people, rather than an elite few. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt inspired the American people to defend their democracy—however imperfectly they had constructed it in the years before the war—and when World War II was over, Americans and their allies tried to create a world that would forever secure democracy over fascism.

Winter Slumber, Shawn Braley

After we defeated the fascists, many dramatic changes took place:

The 47 allied nations who had joined together to fight fascism came together in 1945, along with other nations, to create the United Nations to enable countries to solve their differences without war. In 1949 the United States, along with Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the U.K., created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a peacetime military alliance to stand firm against aggression, deterring it by declaring that an attack on one would be considered an attack on all.

At home, the government invested in ordinary Americans. In 1944, Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, more commonly known as the G.I. Bill, to fund higher education for some 7.8 million former military personnel. The law added to the American workforce some 450,000 engineers, 180,000 medical professionals, 360,000 teachers, 150,000 scientists, 243,000 accountants, 107,000 lawyers, and 36,000 clergymen.

In 1946 the Communicable Disease Center opened its doors as part of an initiative to stop the spread of malaria across the American South. Three years later, it had accomplished that goal and turned to others, combatting rabies and polio and, by 1960, influenza and tuberculosis, as well as smallpox, measles, and rubella. In the 1970s it was renamed the Center for Disease Control and took on the dangers of smoking and lead poisoning, and in the 1980s it became the Centers for Disease Control and took on AIDS and Lyme disease. In 1992, Congress added the words “and Prevention” to the organization’s title to show its inclusion of chronic diseases, workplace hazards, and so on.

More changes: investments in infrastructure such as the interstate highway system, efforts to end racial discrimination.

After the war, President Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948, and as Black and Brown Americans claimed their right to be treated equally, Congress expanded recognition of those rights with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Shortly after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, translating FDR’s 1941 measure into the needs of the peacetime country. “It is the policy of the Government of the United States to provide equal opportunity in Federal employment for all qualified persons, to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and to promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity through a positive, continuing program in each executive department and agency.”

This democratic government was popular, but as the memory of the dangers of fascism faded, opponents began to insist that such a government was leading the United States to communism. Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, along with the deregulation of business and cuts to the social safety net, began to concentrate wealth at the top of society. As wealth moved upward, lawmakers chipped away at the postwar government that defended democracy.

And now, since the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Monday, the dismantling of that system is happening all at once…

Richardon lists the horrors we’ve seen from Trump in recent days: read about them at the link above. But she is suggesting that we don’t have to give up; we can still fight fascism when things look the darkest, as they did in the Ardennes when they faced being overwhelmed by the Nazis.

January 25, 2025, marks eighty years since the end of the Battle of the Bulge.

The Germans never did take Bastogne.

I’ve quoted a great deal, but I still hope you’ll go read the whole essay.

More reads:

NBC News: Senate confirms Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, with VP Vance breaking a tie.

The Republican-controlled Senate on Friday night confirmed Pete Hegseth as defense secretary by the narrowest of margins, with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote and delivering a victory for President Donald Trump.

The initial vote was 50-50, with three Republicans — Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — joining all 47 Democrats in voting no.

Vance then cast the 51st vote, putting Hegseth over the top and ending weeks of uncertainty over the fate of Trump’s controversial pick to lead the Pentagon.

It marked only the second time in history a vice president was needed to break a tie for a Cabinet level nominee. In 2017, then-Vice President Mike Pence broke a 50-50 tie to confirm Betsy DeVos as Education secretary in Trump’s first term….

McConnell’s vote was a stunning rebuke of Hegseth and Trump, whom the former Senate Republican leader has clashed with repeatedly over the years.

“Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests,” McConnell said in a scathing statement that suggested Hegseth had not shown he is up for the job.

“Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test,” McConnell’s statement continued. “But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.”

Shortly after the vote began, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who in recent days was still seeking answers from Hegseth, announced on X that he would vote in favor of him.

Politico: Trump fires independent inspectors general in Friday night purge.

President Donald Trump fired multiple independent federal watchdogs, known as inspectors general, in a Friday night purge, removing a significant layer of accountability as he asserts his control over the federal government in his second term, according to two people with knowledge of the dismissals, granted anonymity to share details they were not authorized to speak about publicly.

One of the two people briefed on the dismissals said the number is at least a dozen and includes inspectors general at the departments of State, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor and Defense, as well as the Small Business Administration, the U.S. Energy Corp., and the Environmental Protection Agency.

By Tatiana Rodionova

Together, those agencies make up large swaths of the federal government, with control over billions of dollars in taxpayer money and broad global reach.

The inspectors general at the Department of Justice, Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Communications Commission, the Export-Import Bank and the Department of Homeland Security remain in place, according to the person.

The inspectors general were dismissed via emails from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, with no notice sent to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have pledged bipartisan support for the watchdogs, in advance of the firings, the person said. The emails gave no substantive explanation for the dismissals, with at least one citing “changing priorities” for the move, the person added….

Hannibal Ware, the inspector general of the Small Business Administration and leader of a council that represents inspectors general across government, suggested that the removals may be invalid because they appear to violate federal law requiring a 30-day notification to Congress before any watchdogs can be removed.