I did write something on this subject several months ago and thought of posting it to Facebook (from which after 45 minutes hard digging I permanently deleted my account on the day I retired from my job), but I didn't have the stomach for the backlash I would receive.

For years I participated in glibly finding fault with those with whom I disagreed and demolishing them as people (never to their face, mind you), never bothering to find out what they really thought. I was rather quick witted and enjoyed entertaining my friends with my quips. They loved it. It’s easy to do and makes one feel good, for the moment anyway. However, as I have matured, I’ve tried to stop doing this.

I began to see that people liked to run down people because they liked to feel superior. It took a long time for me to come to grips with this fact because I had been earnest in rising above my humble beginnings and to do so I believed I needed to think this way as well. I was wrong.

Along with this, I believed that Liberals were for the common man and Conservatives were for big business. Some of that was in fact true. But beginning with Bill Clinton it began to occur to me that the Democrats were not much different than the Republicans regarding business. It was Bill who signed us up for globalization with NAFTA and GAT, which marked the end of family farming as we once understood it. I suspect it also marked the beginning of the end for many small businesses. Instead, it created global cartels.

Politically I had been a Liberal until Bill Clinton came along. After that I could not bring myself to vote for any of the candidates. Abortion was the big issue between Democrats and Republicans, with the Democrats promoting it and Republicans paying lip service to change it. Nobody was willing to stick their neck out too far. I waited for a pro-life candidate to clearly say that they were, and do something concrete about it; waited for the Democrats to be for the common person. I waited many years. I stopped voting.

Finally, in 2008, John McCain, a man whom I admired, was nominated to run for President for the Republican party against Barak Obama; I voted. We know how that turned out.

I hate the Marxist axiom “The personal is political,” played out with one’s response to COVID-19, the environment, how many children one has, choice of car one drives, etc., ad nauseum. When people reduce everything to politics, unable to recognize such things as modesty, privacy, a conscience, or heart, nothing is left.

Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump (of all people), were the two candidates we were left with for the 2016 election. It was appalling. How in the world had we come to this? By the Democrats radical social agenda and the Republicans dragging their feet to stop it. Hilary made it crystal clear, as did the Democratic Party that abortion was one of its leading planks – the dismemberment and killing of innocent, unborn children, was a “right” that would not be denied in America and we were hell bent on tying foreign aid to the adoption of the same. Donald Trump said what he thought and didn’t care about backlash. I disliked (to put it mildly), both candidates, but I believed that the time had come that I had to vote, even though I had no one I really wanted to vote for. I could not remain silent in the face of ever stronger identity politics and the killings, now being pushed abroad.

Shaking my head in disbelief over what I was about to do, I prepared to vote for Donald Trump. How could this be; I found him so vulgar? But the alternative was to vote for someone who had no respect for us, the Deplorables, no respect for life, and who vowed to take that policy around the world and force it on smaller, weaker countries, should she be elected. Besides, she and the media were so smug. So, on election day, I held my nose and voted; not for someone, but rather against something worse.

There has been no way to discuss this with a leftist since. At one point, shortly after the election, while I was at the break table at the university for which I worked, with a group who assumed everyone there would have voted for Hilary and shared their complete disgust with anyone who had not, I suggested that perhaps there was a reason someone might have voted for Trump. I was shouted down. When I got up to leave, I was accused of not wanting to discuss the issue, but when I sat back down the hue and cry began again as everyone got up to leave. I never got a chance to say why I thought that might be the case. Only a bigoted idiot would think that, and nobody wanted to hear from her! I have no idea if anyone there agreed with me, they knew better than to say so.

That is why I voted for Trump. This year I’m voting for Trump because I am impressed with what he has done:

· Nominated Federal Judges to uphold, not dictate the constitution

· Forced China to stop taking advantage of the United States in trade

· Ended the war with ISIS

· Ended the terrible deal Obama made with Iran

· Made numerous positive Executive moves to oppose abortion

· Re-negotiated NAFTA

I am humbled by my past assumptions.

I pray for his fast and complete recovery from the COVID-19.

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Nora Koch
- Aug 5
- 2 min read

I was ignorant

Updated: Aug 25

Instead of having a variety of history classes from 1964 through 1968, because we moved from the farm in 1965, it happened that in four of the five separate schools I attended we studied South America. I did not have European History, World History or US history. When we landed in Spring Valley the Six Days war had just taken place in Israel. I ate up the current events we studied and was subsequently intrigued by history of WWII in Europe, I was fascinated, both because it was something different than South America, but also because it related to me as a German, albeit, American. I felt responsible somehow for the holocaust, which led to the creation of Israel. It haunted me and I read numerous books, among them novels: Mila 18, and Exodus by Leon Uris to understand what had happened.

Later in life, through a Palestinian man, I gained perspective about Israel from a different point of view.

Over the years I have made it my business to educate myself about the history I missed. I realize I am speaking primarily about European history, but that is my background. Much of the knowledge I gained was from Art History classes, and by reading the Story of Christianity by Justo L. González a Cuban-American Methodist historian and theologian. Though not intentional, my haphazard approach circumvented much of the history of war.

Last year I read the abridged version of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, and multi-award winning Bloodlands by Yale historian, Timothy Snyder to understand the scope of atrocities before and after WWII in Europe. I’ve read War and Peace by Tolstoy, and Les Misérables by Hugo. This past spring, I listened to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I don’t understand why being called an Uncle Tom is considered a disgrace; he was a noble man. I learned about Emit Till from my friend and co-worker, with whom I believed I could discuss anything. I finally took a systematic on-line class of American History, free through Hillsdale college. Though it was a survey class, it filled many holes in my knowledge and helped me understand our country better. It helps me understand why we are where we are right now. I want to understand the world I live in. I intend to keep learning until I die.

One thing I have learned in all this is that we are all capable of the vilest of atrocities. We are all responsible for what we do as individuals. Ignorance is not an excuse.

Gulag Archipelago

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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Peter Bougie

Nora Koch

Click here for Peter's blog (he's been here too long to move it now)

Links I Turn to for Sanity During Insane Times

Why I voted for Trump once and will again.

I was ignorant