PAUL GORDON
In March 2009, my wife and I were lucky enough to go to Paris. It is a beautiful city, but one of the things that really stuck in my mind was the sight of armed soldiers in the streets.
These were soldiers, not police officers. They were carrying automatic rifles and dressed in military uniforms. I assume they were French; I didn’t ask.
We saw them in several locations, including the rail station and on the grounds of the Eiffel Tower. They walked in pairs and seemed intimidating, which I’m sure was the idea.
I remember turning to Sue and remarking that it was so nice to live in a country where we didn’t have soldiers patrolling our streets.
At that time, our country had a new president and was filled with a sense of hope for the future. The economy was ailing but we believed the new Obama administration would turn it around. (Spoiler alert: It did!) It certainly wasn’t the first time a Democratic president reversed the failed economic policies of a Republican predecessor.
Today, we now have armed soldiers dressed in fatigues and trying to be intimidating patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital. And the president, a Republican who wouldn’t feel a sense of hope if it bit him on his butt, wants to deploy the National Guard in other major U.S. cities, including Chicago.
Donald Trump has another three-plus years to try to make our country a police state. The democracy and ensuing freedoms we enjoyed for nearly 250 years are in peril. Each day I believe that more.
It saddens me. I hope you feel that, as well. Mid-term elections have never seemed so important. We need to keep the Dick Durbin seat in the Senate in Democratic hands. We need to flip some GOP seats in the House, including in the 16th District where Darin LaHood is seeking a fifth term.
Returning Congress to Democratic control may be the only way to crimp Trump’s autocratic plans for the country.
Oh, the hypocrisy
I was not a fan of Ronald Reagan. He did more to harm the working and middle classes than any president before or since. His decision to fire air traffic controllers emboldened employers bent on busting unions and his ill-conceived Trickle Down Economics created more elitism than it helped most people.
He is, therefore, a hero of the Republican Party. Trump has said it, as have many others in the GOP. And yet, their feelings about immigration go so against what Reagan believed, as if they really never listened to what he said.
Take a minute to look up Reagan’s final speech as president. It’s on YouTube. The subject of that speech was immigration. He talked about how immigrants built this country and made it great and how no other country in the world can say the same. He was proud that people from any other country in the world could come to America and become an American.
He referred to the U.S. as a “beacon of freedom and opportunity” and said drawing people from around the world is vital to the future of our nation.
“If we ever close the door to new Americans our leadership in the world would soon be lost,” Reagan said.
Say what you will about Reagan, but he never tried to put himself above the law or put soldiers in the streets.