Time to Think

                                                                                                                            #351 Trumpism At Its Worst  By Hank Silverberg   " The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished and the downtrodden have been."  Those words from President Trump, who went on: "Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness , nothing about the Future."    That came on Trump's Truth Social post the day after he ordered an internal review of the Smithsonian Institution's exhibits. He called the museums "Woke."  I read those words and I ...

Huddled Masses                                #350 By Hank Silverberg  "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus  Commentary Those words, written in 1883, adorn the base of the Stature of Liberty in New York harbor and have been a symbol of the United States for over a century and a half.  Millions of immigrants received that welcome with joy as they landed with nothing, but went on to build solid, productive lives in America.      There have been periods in our history where the contributions of immigrants to the strength of our nation have been ignored, ridiculed or excluded, and it appears we are headed that way again.  Up until 1882, there were no immigration laws in the United States. Thousands...

Okay, MAGA. Why?                  #349 By Hank Silverberg                              Commentary I am flummoxed. I just don't get it, and I probably never will. But I would like to sit down with a MAGA and have a rational conversation on what's going on in America and why they like it.  There have been times in the past where our government has turned on immigrants, even though immigrants helped build this country. Anti-Semitism crops up its ugly head time and again even as American Jews succeed and are notable participants in the American way of life. And even as Israel, the only functioning democracy and our ally in the Middle East, continues to be attacked by the hostile countries in the region.   Racism has always been under the surface in many places in America since before there was a United States, even as people of color, from Powhattan to Barac...

History                                                    #348 By Hank Silverberg   Commentary This blog is a day late this week because I spent the weekend in the past. After living in Virginia for 30 years, my wife and I finally decided it was time to take a trip to Yorktown and Jamestown, two Virginia communities that played key roles in our country's history.  I was inspired to do so when I read that the Smithsonian had changed the display on the presidency to remove references to the two impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump.  The President has been trying to reinterpret history, to remove anything negative about the United States, in the best tradition of authoritarians like Hitler and Stalin. So I wanted to get to Yorktown and Jamestown before he had a chance to force some revisions.            ...

Aging                                                          #347 By Hank Silverberg  Commentary I'm 70 years old. Every now and then I have trouble coming up with the right word, or I forget the name of something. It's called a "senior moment," and everyone will have a few eventually. Most of us get nervous that it might be the beginning of something else, like dementia, but most of the time it's not. I joke often with young people that "I have forgotten more than you know." Yesterday I forgot the name of the company we use to protect our property from termites every summer.  But I am not the president of the United States or a United States senator. When one of them freezes up or forgets something basic, it can become an        embarrassment or an international incident. You may remember Senator Mitch McConnell...