If you wonder how Nazis and the Holocaust happened, the American Reich is putting on a demonstration

Hitler had the Jews.  Trump has the Latinos.  Both men were supported by people who joined them in their racist manias to oppress and commit atrocities against a specific ethnic group.  Ultimately, their supporters and enablers are the ones to hold responsible.

The tendency for Americans who still value the principles that our democracy once professed is to regard Donald Trump as anomaly, an accident.  They assume that when he is no longer president, the daily news reports of malice, mendacity, stupidity, and incompetence will diminish and no longer dominate the country's attention.  They ignore the fact that the people who put Trump in power and have endorsed his fraudulent and iniquitous conduct will still be with us.  Trump is a symptom of a change and a deterioration of democratic values, not the cause.  The voters who put Trump in office and endorse him have gotten what they want and have reshaped the country.  The United States is experiencing the kind of moral and intellectual transformation that Germany did in the 1930s.  

I have written before about being a soldier in Germany shortly after the occupation.  We were coached in the attitude that the Nazis took over the country and the good people fell under their rule.  We were instructed to treat all the German people with respect and sympathy as survivors of an evil regime.  We were discouraged from asking questions about what the people thought of Hitler and what they did during the Nazi reign.   We had our doubts and our curiosity, but at the time our questions were unanswered.

A woman who read one of my blog posts on the subject responded.  She came from a military family, and her father had served in the Air Force in Germany.  She graduated from a military high school in Germany, and recalled that during exchange programs with students from German schools, the question of participation during the Nazi era came up.  She went to a U.S. college that required a thesis paper for the baccalaureate degree, and she did hers on how the German civilians reacted to the Nazi regime.  Her conclusion was that while many people were opposed to it, a majority of the people wanted the Nazi state and were in full agreement and participation with it.  This was demonstrated by their participation in the pogrom against the Jews.  The people who resisted and tried to help Jewish people were routinely betrayed by their friends and neighbors.  

Around the turn of the century, a number of books and films emerged which explored how the German people were the perpetrators of the Third Reich, not the hapless victims of it.  The younger generations of Germans have insisted on examining this aspect of their history and confronting the facts.  

The parallels of what the Germans did to the Jews and what Americans are doing to Latinos and other immigrants are striking.  A woman in Montana near the Canadian border ran into a friend in a convenience store.  She and her friend are Latina American citizens, but they were chatting to each other in Spanish and were overheard by a Custom and Border Protection agent, who detained them and asked for identification papers.  He said that speaking Spanish in that neck of the woods made them suspicious.  The women have received threatening and nasty messages, but also expressions of support.  The incident is illustrative of how some Americans have adopted the moral code of the Third Reich and how the political divisions in America are defined.

We now understand that Hitler had many collaborators in Germany and in the countries he invaded that desired the Holocaust and all the persecution of minorities that were part of it.

Trump's war against Latino immigrants parallels the early stages of the Nazi pogrom against the Jews.  Although the purported objective of the Trump wall and the suppression of immigrants is to keep the criminal and terrorist elements out of the United States, many of the people who come to the southern border are refugees looking to escape violence and oppression and to find some opportunity to make a life.  It is Trump's pretext for the persecution and confinement in concentration camps of immigrants.  His administration came up with a policy of separating migrant children from their parents.  Some 7,000 kids were shuttled into custody and provided some kind of foster care.  1,475 of the kids were lost.  

Trump has a lot of help and approval in the Nazification of America.  One of his most effective henchmen is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  McConnell has been the most perfidious but effective destroyer of democratic comity to operate in a long time.  During the presidency of Barack Obama, he famously announced, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Then this master of obstruction refused to submit legislation to end the government shutdown until he got a signal of approval from Trump.  Then when Trump issued his phony crisis emergency declaration, McConnell said it was caused by Democrat obstruction: "President Trump’s decision to announce emergency action is the predictable and understandable consequence of Democrats’ decision to put partisan obstruction ahead of the national interest." 

McConnell flaunts hypocrisy as a badge of power.  He is a dedicated enabler of Trump's destructive presidency because he understands that the chaos created sustains his own power, which he never exercises for the national good, but only for the purpose of retaining power.  

Lurking deep in McConnell is the racial history of McConnell's home state.  Kentucky has a double history regarding racism.  In some regions, it has made strides toward equality, but in others it has a record of vicious racist acts.  McConnell aligns himself with those latter regions, as his treatment of President Obama indicates.  McConnell is in fact the antithesis of democratic equality. He is a perpetrator of the neo-Nazism that has taken hold in America.  He has sold the Senate out to Trump and protects those programs of discrimination and oppression that Trump is waging against Latinos and other minorities.

Just as Hitler put Jews into concentration camps and  separated them from their children, Trump is doing the same to Latino migrants and some, such as the two women in Montana, who are, in fact, citizens.  It's the same playbook administered with the help of Americans who want to deny the rights of democracy to groups that they hate.

If you want to understand how the Holocaust happened, just look around you and see what is happening right now in America.  

Remembering a poseur who got away with it, I think

On an academic website, a professor whom I attended graduate school with mentioned the death of another graduate student we both knew.  His reference to her was somewhat guarded and ambiguous, and it raised some lingering questions I had about her.  The vast majority of people I've come across in the academic world are conscientious.  One can disagree with them on issues, but cannot accuse them of faking.  Only a very rare few elicit that suspicion, and that's because the pretenders usually get caught quickly and eliminated from the profession.

The woman attended a number of the same classes I did, which included some intense, difficult seminars.  One such seminar was at the house of a highly acclaimed scholar.  It began at suppertime and included a buffet prepared by the man's wife and ended when we finished with the agenda for that week's session, often around midnight.  I  gave my fellow student  rides home after the class.  I am not sure I could call her a friend, but we were very familiar classmates and knew each other well.  

One of the things that bothered me and others about her was that she constantly disparaged her professors.  She did not make note of their strengths and find flaws;  she totally disparaged them as scholars and human beings.  Her deprecation extended to the wife of the professor who provided the hospitality at the professor's  home.  Most of the woman's fellow students wondered why she attended graduate school if she found it so inferior.  

She had another ploy at which some of the women students were particularly miffed.  She was very good at  remembering certain phrases or statements that some of the more astute students would make in class.  She would repeat those statements as her own in other classes even if the comment was not relevant to the class discussion at the time.  She sounded intelligent and original.  Some of her classmates who shared classes with her recognized that some of her comments were, in fact, things they had said in other classes.  They had expressed their resentment to me a few times, and wondered if the professors saw through her.  I had noticed after a time that when she gave presentations in seminars, she seemed to string together what seemed like sharp insights, but with no coherent pattern.

I remember when she did that in a class I was in with her.  She said something that I could not connect with what was being covered in the class.   I was walking out of the class with the man on whose website I learned of the woman's death.  He said to me, "What was she talking about?"  I said that I couldn't figure it out either.  He said, "Can anybody?"  

Nevetheless, the woman graduated with her Ph.D. and landed a job at a Michigan school of some repute, where she worked for more than 20 years, and then moved to a Big Ten University, where she was until she died rather suddenly of cancer.   The mention of her death sent me looking for her obituary.  While she was a doctoral student, she lived with a partner with whom she had taught before they pursued their doctorate degrees together.  I got to know him rather well, and we were friends.  It was he who asked me if I would give his partner rides home from the evening seminar at the professor's house.  I looked for an obituary to see if he and she had formed a permanent relationship.

I could not find a formal obituary.  I found a laudatory tribute to the woman that was referenced on the web site where I learned of her death.  But it did not include the usual information about what family members or close associates survived or about any services in remembrance.  The obituary quoted the praise of graduate students, but contained no factual information or comments by colleagues.  As I searched, I found a rating sheet with comments by students that I would characterize as diffident.  She seemed to inspire the same dubious attitude during her working life that I witnessed during her time in graduate school.  She insinuated herself into good positions, but had a tenuous grasp on them.  

The absence of any acknowledgement by colleagues was striking.  She had been listed as the co-author of books and articles that had gained some recognition, but none of her collaborators or her departmental colleagues commented on her passing.  That fact emphasized the casualness of the reference to her death by my former classmate on his website which dealt with scholarly news.  And so, I conducted a brief look at the woman's scholarship, and found that she had allied herself with a peculiar speciality of literature within the post modern movement.  And all of her published work was done in collaboration with someone else.

The so-called post modern movement was a disaster for the field of literature.  In its name, some cogent and critical questions were raised, but many people were attracted to it because it seemed to offer the prestige and kind of complicated knowledge as quantum physics.  It produced some of the most abstruse, unintelligible academic writing ever to be published.  Many young English professors adopted the attitude that they were engaged in a theory of the universe that only a rare few had the intellectual capacity to understand.  This pretentious pose was offensive to other academic disciplines and create a backlash which contended that the movement was fraudulent.  The movement occurred at a time when universities were dealing with what should be a required curriculum and budgets were shrinking.  The study of English and other literatures lost out to science and technology as departments grappled for their share of required courses.  In many universities,  the study of English was largely reduced to the teaching of spelling, punctuation, and grammar--basic literacy--and many courses in literature were abandoned.  An ivy league university president remarked after a faculty presentation defending some English courses that no one had the vaguest idea of what the young English professors were talking about.  They put on a demonstration of their own irrelevance, he said.

As I reviewed some of the work with which the late woman professor's name was associated,  I read some sentences so clogged with academic jargon that they were impossible to paraphrase.  The former chair of a large university English department put it bluntly in regard to that kind of writing:  "No one can read that shit," he said.  I recalled what classmates had noted about the woman back in graduate school:  she used intelligent-sounding words, but no one knew what she actually said.

When the professor noted her death on his website post, he seemed to merely be expressing that she was gone.  She, and a few people like her that I've encountered (one was a journalist) are troubling.  They insinuate themselves into the work of other people and end up ruining it.  I cannot but wonder if that is reason my ex-classmate remarked upon her passing.  It occurred to me that the reason she inveighed so constantly against her graduate professors was because they were addressing her incoherence.  Her denigrations were an adverse experience for those of us who witnessed them. She's gone now.  May she rest in peace.

Don't put on a red hat, Mama.

Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, writes a column for the Aberdeen American News.  He writes one in defense of the MAGA hat.  He correctly identifies the fury directed at the Covington High School boys who taunted Nathan Phillips as a reaction to their wearing of MAGA hats.  That is true.  Although many people focused on what appeared to be an insolent leer on the face of one of the boys, the real objection was to the fact that his schoolmates around him who taunted and derided the Native American drummer were nearly all clad in red or white Trump MAGA hats.

Lowry remarks that to many people, progressives mainly, the MAGA hats brand the wearers as racist bigots and goons.  He says, that is an "uncharitable view of their fellow citizens, who voted by the tens of millions for the guy who invented the red cap."

Lowry betrays  some inane adulation in his words.  Printing a the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" on a hat is hardly an act of invention.  It is an inherent implication that America was somehow diminished because its previous president was black.  Trump has  accrued a long list of documented slights and insults against  people of color.  

One recent article says the wearing of a MAGA hat is a declaration of identity.  That is partially true, but it doesn't fully explain that the wearing of the hat is an endorsement of Donald Trump.  It declares that the wearer supports what Donald Trump says and does.  And what Trump does is deny the freedom, equality, and justice that are the goals of our

democracy.  But he also refutes the standards of decency that define an honest and just society.  He defrauds, defames, and lies incessantly.  His business resume reads like a criminal record.  He is possessed by malice.  Wearing one of his hats is a declaration of approval and support of all the insidious schemes that make up the Trump biography.  The hat is a declaration that its wearer is a disciple of Trump, and therefore an enemy of decency.

The Covington school boys ostensibly came to Washington, D.C., to participate in an anti-abortion march.  Why were so many wearing MAGA hats?  Why not clothing that identified their school?  Why this apparently coordinated effort display political support for Trump?  What exactly was the purpose of all those MAGA hats?  

When the Nazi flag is displayed, it tells us that the person who displayed it is for the things we fought against in the Second World War.  It is an endorsement of Hitler.  Therefore, it is an endorsement of the Holocaust, of genocide, white supremacy, dictatorship, and all the evil that attends those things.  It seems preposterous that they might have been individual choices.

Wearing a MAGA hat sends the same kind of message as the display of the Nazi flag.  That message is that the wearer is declaring that he/she believes in the words and deeds of Trump and will act accordingly.   A San Francisco chef has banned MAGA hat wearers from his restaurant for those reasons:  " if you come to my restaurant wearing a MAGA cap, you aren’t getting served, same as if you come in wearing a swastika, white hood, or any other symbol of intolerance and hate.  MAGA hats are like white hoods except stupider because you can see exactly who is wearing them.”

In America, we do not ban the display of the Nazi flag as a bit of political speech.  Some countries, such as France, do.  In the USA, banning it would conflict with the First Amendment.  There are those who think that freedom of speech lends an endorsement to anything they might believe or say.  They have difficulty in understanding that people also have the right to make intellectual and moral judgements on the basis of what others say and do.  And they have the right not to be bothered with speech that violates standards of truthfulness and intelligence.  That's why college students have the right to ban the deranged and corrupted from using their campus forums to spread malice.  They have the right to insist that participants in their forums meet standards of integrity and competence.

When those very young men from Covington donned hats that convey messages of malicious bigotry as part of their demonstration, people have every right to question why they were sending such a message.  Their appearance and behavior was disturbingly redolent of Nazi youth groups.  No one has as yet answered the question of why they were there demonstrating as they did.

The South Dakota Legislature: idiot(s) full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

          In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash

The Displaced Plainsman points out another one of the absurdly pointless exercises of the South Dakota legislature with the introduction of Senate Bill 55.  It requires that all public schools display the motto "In God We Trust" where it can be inescapably seen: "The display shall be located in a prominent location within each public school. The display may take the form of a mounted plaque, student artwork, or any other appropriate form as determined by the school principal."

This is the legislature that so inspired a high school student who went to Pierre on a civics class trip and wrote this account on The Dakota Free Press:

"My 9th grade civics teacher is the reason I became passionate about politics. His class made me so fascinated with how our government worked. Then, we took a trip to Pierre to see the legislature in action. I was so excited and ultimately, so disappointed. Half the members were not there. The half that remained were sleeping at their desk or reading the paper. Not one member even acknowledged our presence. A wide-eyed, idealistic 15 year old got a real education about politics that day."

This is the legislature that proposes Senate Bill 52, which requires a half credit of civics as a high school graduation requirement.   The bill's authors did not bother to check on the fact that civics receives a heavy emphasis in the state's Social Studies Content Standards, or how civics and citizenship has content throughout the curricula.

SB 55 authors did not bother to review actual curricula to see where and how the application of civics is applied in other courses.  Below are the Aberdeen high school curriculum requirements, which show courses in the Social Studies requirement, in addition to the .5 credit in U.S. Government which would obviously contain content in Civics.

Four units of Language Arts: 1.5 units of Writing 1.5 units of Literature; must include .5 unit of American Literature .5 unit of Speech or Debate .5 unit of other Language Arts Three units of Mathematics: 1.0 unit of Algebra I 1.0 unit of Algebra II* 1.0 unit of Geometry*

Three units of Lab Science: 1.0 unit of Biology 1.0 unit of any physical science 1.0 unit of Chemistry* or Physics* Three and one-half (3.5) units of Social Studies: 1.0 unit of U.S. History .5 unit of U.S. Government .5 unit of World History .5 unit of Geography .5 unit of Personal Finance or Economics .5 unit elective

One unit of the following in any combination: approved Career and Technical Education (CTE) Capstone Experience World Language 1.0 unit of Fine Arts 1.0 unit of Laboratory Computer Studies 1.0 unit of Physical Education** 1.0 unit of Health 6.5 units of elective credits

This is the legislature whose House Speaker banned a lobbyist for the South Dakota Municipal League and the state's chiefs of police, Yvonne Taylor, because in her organization's publication she noted, as did the high school student on the field trip, that the South Dakota legislature contained a number of dolts who demonstrated a lack of mental capacity. She called them "wackies," which is a very mild term for the level of meanness and stupidity that  is constantly put on a display when democracy does not work.  Here is Ms. Taylor's explanation, courtesy of the Dakota Free Press, of how the legislature sinks far below the level of competence and integrity expected of a "normal" such body:

“Normal” doesn’t mean we always agree – but The Normals are usually willing to look at issues one by one, listen to facts, and make rational decisions. Wackies, on the other hand, have come in opposed to government in general and all forms of taxation; seem to firmly believe the state and local governments are ripping them off; and often have their own particular nit to pick on some other topic. They think facts they don’t like are lies and they blanket vote based on a preconceived mindset, not on the issue at hand [Yvonne Taylor, “Director’s Notes,” South Dakota Municipalities, May 2018, p. 4].

The House Speaker said he banned Ms. Taylor because she made the legislature look like a bunch of buffoons.  It is well documented by many people who observe the legislature and by the kind of legislation with which they are obsessed, such as SB 55, that they are not merely acting like buffoons.  They try to emulate their hero Donald Trump in reveling like warped juveniles in their  diminished intellectual and moral capacity.  In unabashed defiance of the separation of church and state, they try to cover their depravity by forcing the schools to display a theistic motto that they deny by their their own doltish behavior.

As for the display of mottos and their effect on kids, it was demonstrated by my son when he was in elementary school. His school had an annual program on Veterans Day to which all parents and grandparents who were veterans were invited to be recognized.  The kids were rehearsing a song for the occasion. and my son was going around singing, "I love the USA, cause that's where the toilets are made."  We wondered where he picked up those lyrics.  Then at the Veterans Day program, I ducked into the boys restroom to use the urinal, and in very large blue lettering across the back of it was "Made in the USA."   My son made the association.

If "In God We Trust" is to be given prominent display, it could receive no more notice than emblazened on the restroom plumbing. Let the kids make their own associations,

The South Dakota legislature is dominated by the very people conservative icon Barry Goldwater thought could destroy the country.  Victorian British author Thomas Carlyle explored the possible successes and failures of democracy.  When he examined the potential for failure, he seemed to have examples like the South Dakota legislature in mind.  His remarks were prescient:

• If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.  

• Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ. 

• Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business: and gives in the long run a net result of zero. 

• I  do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

 When it comes to whom the legislature emulates and passes resolutions to support, here is Carlyle's observation:

• Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.

That revelation says much about the voters of South Dakota and who they "honor" with the offices of governance.  Various agencies are attempting to attract businesses and workers to South Dakota and to stop the out migration of talent, but the people chosen to hold office in South Dakota reflect the kind of people who live here.  Who wants the Trumps of the world as their constituency?  

Our schools are staffed for the most part by people devoted to the building of intellect and character.  For years, school boards have been infiltrated by interests who want schools to create a workforce of groveling servants.  South Dakota has earned a reputation for corrupt government, low wages, underfunded education, and little opportunity.  Students whose talents and character have developed leave in the realization that they are not what the dominant mentality in South Dakota respects or wants.

"In God We Trust" is the motto on our currency.  If the legislature truly was concerned about the souls in their state, it would provide the schools with adequate amounts of the currency that bears the motto they so cherish.

There a some intelligent and discerning people in the legislature.  Their names are not on SB 55.  They do not prevail, but they are reminders that all of humanity need not be wackies.

The relevance of Barry Goldwater

In 1964, Barry Goldwater lost the presidential election to Lyndon Johnson by a landslide.  Republicans were split back then between the conservatives led by Goldwater and moderates led by Nelson Rockefeller.  There were many factors behind the rejection of Goldwater.  He had been endorsed by the KKK, although he stridently disavowed their support.  Still, many voters feared that some of his policies would pave the way for overt racial discrimination.

The biggest fear of Goldwater was that his fierce anti-communist stance and his belligerent threats for possible military action would result in a nuclear war.  The Johnson campaign exploited his attitude to great effect.  That historical  memory obscures other aspects of Goldwater's conservatism as measures of how drastically the Republican Party has changed.  Goldwater warned the country exactly what those changes would be.  Here are some statements he made:

• Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity. 

• Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

• Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.

• Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

• I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process.

• A woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.

Those feckless f***ers

I am a bit of an expert on the f-word.  I can read and speak, haltingly, Old and Middle English, and can trace the fondness of English- speaking people for the fricative-plosive sound of that word through the ages.  Many non-English speaking people have appropriated the word even if they speak no other word in English because of the satisfactions of pronouncing that sound.  Many languages have close relatives, such as fycken in Swedish, but they lack the robustness of the English enunciation.  

 The word also has a myriad of meanings which are defined by their contexts.  The word obviously names the act of copulation.  And yes, in grammar we have copulative verbs, or linking verbs.  Technically, f**k is not a linking verb, until you've tried to explain it to a student who says "I don't care what grammarians say, it's a f**king verb."  We will let that rest, but the word evokes many other meanings than sexual intercourse, most of which deal the concept of foolish and pointless diddling around.

I received my advanced training in the use of word in the U.S. Army, which could never have operated without the use of the word.  As an instructor in a missile launching area, I sometimes had to act as a drill instructor.  We were supposed to march the men from task to task in order to emphasize order and discipline in the ranks.  When a man fell out of step, you could say something like, "Get in step, Smithers."  But that would not be nearly as effective as saying, "Smithers, I said forward march, not f**k the dog."  Smithers might not get in step, but the other men would smile, so that you could halt the detail and say, "What the f**k are you smiling at?"  And some wise ass would mutter, "At you trying to be a f**king drill instructor."  The word, as you can see, is essential to communication among the troops.

But the word has important imagery in portraying deficiencies and errors in performing the tasks of life.  Some such phrases are:

• f**k up, as in screw up
• f**k over, when oppressing and cheating people
• f**king the dog, often translated as screwing the pooch
• fiddle f**king
• f**king the air
• cluster f**k
• f**k it, to convey "the hell with it"
• f**king, the adjective, as in "who left the f**king Legos all over the f**king floor?
• mother-f**ker, designating something really demeaned and demented

New Yorkers evaluate Trump

That gets us to those feckless f**kers. I speak of U.S. Senator John Thune and former Rep. and now Gov., Kristi Noem.  Congressional staff members refer to them that way because they have earned reputations as people who don't do much but diddle around.  Both of them have two attributes:  they aren't terribly ugly and they can recite the party line as written for them or repeat it as they've heard others say it.  They are decorative items often used to pose in party leaders' photo opportunities.  And they never take issue with those leaders. Beyond that they don't do much.

In 2012, Thune was mentioned by a few people as a potential presidential candidate.  Erick Erickson, an editor of the conservative RedState.com said this about Thune:

"But the only reason people talk about him for President is because he’s a good looking guy in a city full of lesser looking people, is tall, and has an attractive wife. Other than that his greatest accomplishments are doing nothing." 

Kristi Noem does things, but mostly makes up defamatory lies about her opponents and obsesses over hate objects.  A lie that she got caught in involves the death of her father in a farm accident.  She claims that the death tax on the estate he left impoverished the family.  It turns out that he was covered by a $1 million insurance policy and the death tax was a figment of her mendacious imagination, not a reality that existed in the nation's tax laws. 

Her congressional record looks more busy than Thune's because she signs on as the co-sponsor of legislation advanced by other congress people.  But in the fact-check  department, Noem has earned a humongous Pinocchio nose.  Her lies about her opponents earn major points for their malice and explosive destruction of the facts.  She portrayed Nancy Pelosi as the evil witch of the universe and the characterized opponent Strephanie Herseth Sandlin as her hand maiden.  In fact, Herseth Sandlin was a Blue Dog Democrat that was often in disagreement with the Pelosi main stream.  In the primary for governor, she maligned GOP Attorney General Jackley with many false representations--although there was plenty factual points she could have made against him.  Then in the governor campaign against Billie Sutton, she continued her penchant for falsehoods.  Noem's rule seems to be that making stuff up or copying from someone else as you go along takes less work than trying to address facts. She prefers to lollygag.

Her state of the state speech was cobbled together from passages of Trump's repeated lies and other far right-wing sources.  It follows the outline of legislative issues posted by ALEC, the right-wing organization that dictates and provides ready-made far-right-wing propaganda to conservative state legislators.  She misdirects attention from South Dakota's problems by focusing on the financial problems in Illinois and Connecticut.  When she tackles the meth problem in South Dakota, she uses a case from Iowa to illustrate its effects.  Admittedly, like Thune, Noem is very adept at delivering the lines provided her.  While she claims to be in contact with the people of the state in forming her proposals, her conclusions come from the ultraconservative sources that promote fascism over democracy.  We know Noem's feckless performance from her dilatory record in Congress.  In her first speech to the state, she screwed the pooch before our very ears and eyes.

The most insidious part of her speech concerns economic development.  She commits to reducing regulations, creating an obedient workforce, and enhancing the ability of grifters to exercise their fraud.  In other words, she proposes steps that would make scams like the EB-5 and Gear Up scandals easier to pull off while reducing the chances of getting caught.

Her vow to increase the transparency of government is another vague one.  She says she will make government meetings more available to the people through broadcast technology.  And she wants a "commonsense" law that will shield reporters.  "Commonsense" most likely means specific loopholes that prevent reporters from obtaining embarrassing facts.  The transparency problem in South Dakota is in the loopholes in the state legal code that gives officials the power to withhold information.  When reporter Bob Mercer tried to obtain the investigative record into the death of Richard Benda during the EB-5 scandal, the State Supreme Court ruled that " state law is clear in denying public access to law enforcement investigations."  If anyone wants to increase transparency, they need to address the state legal code first.

The majority of South Dakota voters like the likes of Thune and Noem.  They don't want to hear about the facts of life that so many people turn to meth to deal with.  They don't want to face the corruption that pervades state government in South Dakota and puts it among the top three most corrupt states in the union.  The majority of voters want to see the legislature in an annual clusterf**k, feel important when they can f**k over their neighbors, and have all their fears assuaged by watching their elected leaders fiddle**k  and screw the pooch.  That's what they voted for.

Those who have schemes for getting rich by fleecing the taxpayers can rest happy that they have representatives in Pierre and Washington, D.C., protecting them.

The last gasps of fraternity

Today's newspaper announced the closing of the Eagle's club in Aberdeen.   When a large farm and fleet-type store closed and left a large building empty, the Eagles took it over and for years operated a facility much used by the community for various kinds of gatherings.  Over time, the membership of the Eagles declined and the facility was not used enough for community activities to cover its operating expenses.  The building will be put up for sale with the intention of finding a smaller facility.

The Eagles club is following a well established pattern for fraternal-type organizations in Aberdeen and across the nation.  At one time, the Elks operated a facility that was a popular gathering place,  It included a ballroom, a swimming pool, and an upscale restaurant .  The pool provided a place for the establishment of a swim club.  Declining membership make its operation untenable, and it abandoned the building for a smaller place.  The building is now used to sell used items for a non-profit organization.

The American Legion went through the same process.  It maintained  a hall in the downtown area, where it featured weekend dances and 1-pound hamburgers.  A decline in membership and fewer people attending its weekend activities, it sold the building and combined its activities with the VFW.  But then the VFW gave up its facility, and Legion moved what was left of its operation to the Eagles.  After a time, the Legion disappeared from that venue, and now the Eagles is closing.

It many smaller towns, the Legion has operated the last standing meeting place for the communities.  But old soldiers do die and fade away and take the Legion with them.

In Aberdeen, of the fraternal organizations the Moose club is still operating and the Elks still maintains its smaller facility.

The decline of fraternal organizations is a nationwide trend.  As younger people matured to the ages at which their parents joined clubs, they did not have those kind of social interests. Society is much more fragmented, and as sociologists have noted, people expend more effort trying to avoid each other than seek out any kind of brotherhood.  A sense of community is not important to them.  Churches have also noted and been affected by this trend.

The atrophy of social organizations is just one symptom of a dying community.  It is endemic throughout the nation, but is particularly lethal to smaller communities.  South Dakota has a multitude of small towns whose main streets are lined with boarded up buildings that once housed Legion halls and commercial buildings.  A few have converted a building to a senior center, but they, too, are closing.  There are many abandoned sites of towns that used to be,  places where lives were once lived, but no more.  

Concurrent with the dying out of social organizations is the ending of commercial activities.  Those abandoned buildings along the once-main streets were occupied by grocery stores, drug stores, farm implement and automobile dealers. and other retail stores serving the communities.  The competition from big box retailers and shopping malls made it impossible for small-scale merchants to compete.  Now the shopping malls are closing down, largely because customers are lost to internet commerce.  

Aberdeen is experiencing this loss of large retailers, also.  This past year, Aberdeen lost Kmart and Herberger's department store in the Aberdeen Mall.  Before that, it lost the J.C. Penney store, whose space is now occupied by Kohl"s department store.  Half of the Aberdeen Mall is empty.  The major retail centers are now Walmart, Target, and Shopko.  Shopko recently announced store closings, which included its Hometown stores in Redfield and Webster.   The Aberdeen Mall seems destined to join the many that are being abandoned.

Economists can trace the movement of retail business from Main Street to the malls and big box stores and then to the Internet.  Sociologists have noted the dying out of fraternal organizations and the decline of community gathering places in general, but the reasons for that decline have not been studied with any concerted effort.  Communities are dying, and they have lost their will to live.  Few people have observed that the factors that have caused the widening political gap in the nation began decades ago in the small communities.  People do not wish to fraternize.

The French tout their democracy as characterized by liberty, equality, and fraternity.  In America, the fraternity part is all but gone.  Try to find it in Aberdeen, South Dakota.  If you get tired of looking for places where fraternity is practiced, try shopping.

Good luck in your quest.  You are facing the future, and democracy in decline.