Guest commentary: Cool the rhetoric and vote against the ones that refuse to do so

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Editor’s note: Reader Tom Regan asked The Reflector to run this guest commentary. The Reflector’s opinion pages are open to all. Requests for guest commentaries can be sent to justyna@thereflector.com. Letters to the editor, which should be limited to 500 words or less, can be sent to letters@thereflector.com.

Recently Jena Griswold, the Colorado Secretary of State, said if people vote GOP in November our country could lose the right to vote within three months. This was on top of what MSNBC adviser Kurt Bardella said comparing Republicans to “a domestic terrorist cell.”

This has all been egged on by President Joe Biden saying the biggest threat facing our country is not China, nor Russia, not even ISIS, but “white supremacy.” 

My initial thought was that he might be referring to the last three members of the KKK or perhaps some crazy website advocating racial warfare, perhaps Bull Connor has escaped the grave and has been on a rampage?  Silly me, he was of course referring to half the country that voted for Donald Trump. 

Apparently Mr. Trump lives rent free in the president’s brain 24/7 so he has to reach into his bag of rhetorical tricks and pull out some whoppers. Then the next guy has to outdo him.  Just the other day President Biden referred to conservatives as “semi-fascists.”  How did he come up with the “semi” stuff. Why not just go full fascist from the starting gate?

I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

The problem with all this rhetoric is that it inflames people.  If you had blithely referred to your political enemies during or shortly after WWII as “Nazis” you would have had a knuckle sandwich in short order.  Millions of civilians were executed by the Nazis simply for not being a Nazi. 

As a teen in 1967, I remember riding the New York City subway in August and seeing a woman in short sleeves having large, garish numbers tattooed on her forearm.  These were the days before everybody and their brother had a tattoo.   While staring at her tattooed arm, it dawned on me she was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps.  I was floored. Here was the living embodiment that the stories, newsreels and papers were correct.  Such barbarity still staggers the imagination.  P.S., the communists have had an even higher toll.



If the president and his pals want to evoke fascist comparisons,  I think it’s time we had a little stroll down memory lane.  Let’s start with the first Democratic President, Andrew Jackson. 

Ever wonder how the Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw and the Seminole ended up in Oklahoma?  Jackson’s first act as president was to sign the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

“You will move from the East side of the Mississippi to the West side or else”, into what “Vox’ called concentration camps.  There were 46,000 Native Americans forcibly removed. 

FDR thought it was such a good idea he did a repeat with Japanese Americans.  We all know what party FDR was associated with.   A few years ago, I read in the Wall Street Journal about a battle in 1864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.  The Confederate general soundly defeated the North, then he rounded up the soldiers that surrendered, of whom approximately 300 were Black.  Remember they had already surrendered.  He then shot the Black ones.  His name was Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the KKK. Mr. President, everyone knows that the KKK was a de facto arm of the Democrat party.  This is indisputable.

Another group aligned with our leftist friends.  Remember just two years ago when those “mostly peaceful” fellows from antifa were tearing down statues across the country?  Even Planned Parenthood of NYC got into the act and removed Margaret Sanger’s name from the front of the building. Why?   According to USA Today on July 23, 2020, Sanger gave a speech in 1939 to a group advocating her “negro project.” This was a scheme where she would control the Black population through eugenics and abortion “for the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction of defective stocks, those human weeds that threaten America.” Her racist views were so embarrassing that Planned Parenthood apologized for her.  Only when forced to do so.  Oh, by the way, the group she gave the speech to?  The KKK.

Mr. President, apparently you have never heard the expression “people that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” It means if you are guilty of an offense, it’s best you don’t condemn your neighbor for the same offense.  I make an appeal.  Being a conservative, (heck I even tried to send my kids to schools so they could get a degree in conservative arts), I don’t think my liberal friends and neighbors are monsters that need to be jailed or labeled.  This type of talk starting with the president can only lead to violence.  Death begets more death.  Cool the rhetoric and vote against the ones that refuse to do so, Democrat or Republican, and please no more white supremacist or Nazi references. It’s trite, stupid and more than a little worn out.

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Tom Regan was born in New York City and has lived in the Pacific Northwest for 48 years. He’s a former Southwest Washington business owner.