Lake County Republicans push racist essay contest

The Lake County Republicans are sponsoring an “I Am Charlie Kirk” essay contest for students grades 9 - 12. Cash prizes will be awarded. Go to their website and check it out. Four students will be selected to give a 3 minute speech on the same subject at the community center in Beaver Bay on November 24th. Charlie Kirk, who was tragically murdered in September, was a white supremacist demagogue. If, like many of us, you knew little about him before his murder, go to https://www.snopes.com/collections/charlie-kirks-quotes-investigated/ to read his actual words, and learn about the person the Lake County Republicans want school children to emulate. 
David A Sorensen
Duluth, Minnesota

The violence in Gaza

While I do not condone violence, I can explain it. When Hamas militants killed and took hostages in Gaza on October 7, 2023, it was in the context of over 70 years of deliberate and purposeful oppressive collective punishment of Palestinians on the part of the state of Israel. Attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians did not begin with Israel’s response to October 7th. The pattern had been operative since before the founding of Israel in 1948.

Israel uses all forms of violent collective punishment to either eliminate Palestinians or drive them out by confiscating their property or destroying their olive trees. Racist colonial collective punishment also figures large in US history as in the slaughter of buffalo to force Native Americans into starvation and submission.

When collective punishment inevitably reaches the breaking point as it did on October 7, it becomes a convenient rationalization for even greater violence on the part of Israel, enabling it to ever more directly accomplish its goals. Similarly, Native American resistance to subjugation resulted in the “Indian wars” of the 19th century.

The US government underwrites the Gaza offensive because of the mutual benefit it produces: highly profitable US weapons in exchange for Israel’s management of the greater Middle East. This is the partnership of US imperialism and Israeli colonialism. It is not new. It has been going on for over 70 years.

Donald Trump is not a peace maker in the Middle East any more than he is within the US. Here at home, he is the point of the spear for arrogant white racist militarism and capitalism. He energizes the indignant wealthy in the US just as he enables settlers in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank.

I do not embrace violence because indeed violence begets violence. The systematic violence of US imperialism and Israeli colonialism also has an explanation. It is their most direct path to power and profit.
 Robert Kosuth
Duluth, Minnesota

Hiding the truth in plain sight

When Trump was elected the first time, even though Hillary Clinton had more of the popular vote, she did not contest the election and gave a gracious speech urging all her supporters to do their best to help
Trump have a successful presidency. However, after Trump’s inauguration he claimed that despite what reporters said, his inauguration had inspired the largest attendance in history. And prominent Democrats all gave him a fair chance to demonstrate what his Presidency could accomplish!
Soon after, the FBI began to notice that several Russian activists were meeting at Trump Tower and having covert discussions with his family. They also knew that Russian chatter was being used to promote Trump on social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram, etc., so the FBI began (rationally investigating Russian influences on the 2016 election, while Comey told Trump, he was not being investigated – despite that fact, that Trump claimed he was personally was being investigated, because Comey only swore to defend the Constitution, not just back policies used by Donald Trump. However FBI officials had no power to impeach Trump and Robert Mueller’s report found no collusion between Trump and Russia. He did find many illegal actions taken by Trump that he recommended Congress should investigate.

In future investigations into Clinton’s and Trump’s presidential policies were investigated, but the FBI didn’t have power to Impeach. Democratically led congressional hearings about the Jan, 2021 insurrection kept gathering facts, hoping that the Senate could also impeach Trump for all his offenses. He was impeached once, but not again. Why? Because just like all their inquiries about trump, investigators followed the law and did not make undue legal demands of him.

At times when Democrats grilled Trumpers, and their conspiratorial claims were determined to be facts, simply because Trumpers truly believed that the sun outside was giving Trump and his enemies too much credit for simply contesting evidence and numerous infractions.
So why didn’t we complain about government intrusions after Trump was elected in 2020? And, why did 6 prominent Republicans decide to openly blame Trump for what happened during January 6th riot, only to render remain silent after Dems provided the latest edits of what Republicans blamed Dems for doing?

Currently Republicans have been trapped in the corner while clearly controlled by Musk and Trump, and rejected Trump’s efforts to keep insisting that we were being fooled by Democrats using real facts!
The $65,000 objective proof question is: “Can anyone really know if there is a sun in our sky if Trump says there isn’t?
Peter W. Johnson
Superior,  Wisconsin