Easter Sunday is almost over, but any time is the right time to think about what our country should and shouldn’t be resurrecting.
As Donald Trump and his Project 2025ers chip away at the progress we’ve made over centuries, they’re pushing ideas and practices that most of us have rightfully dismissed as obsolete.
These extremists are trying to limit full-fledged citizenship and even personhood to wealthy straight white male Christian nationalists, mostly those born here. And they want to douse us with regressive propaganda in hopes that these “traditional values” will somehow become more appealing.
They’re doing all they can to restore monuments to Confederate traitors, rename public buildings after our current traitor in chief and tear down uncensored depictions of slavery.
Defense/War Secretary Pete Hegseth has shown his dedication to making the military white and male again. And his Christian nationalist sect opposes women’s right to vote. (A video he shared forced the Pentagon to do damage control.)
Meanwhile, the Trump/Project 2025 regime is fighting to hold onto power by rigging elections, oppressing any group that can’t check its boxes and starting wars for no legitimate reason.
It has the clout to bring back the worst of the past—authoritarianism, empire-building, regime-changing, racism, theocracy, bigotry and, at least in Hegseth’s case, the Crusades.
Resistance and public outrage have sometimes stopped or stalled this toxic agenda. Most recently, the Department of Homeland “Security” is reassessing its concentration camp expansion, and Trump seems to be looking for a way out of his Middle East war.
But we also can counter him and his goons by living and promoting the values that have made America great. Here are some:
* Diversity, equity and inclusion should be a matter of pride.Providing opportunities for people to develop their skills and talents only benefits society.
* The Golden Rule, a basic Christian tenet that this Christian nationalist regime has been violating here and abroad as it kills, persecutes and marginalizes large numbers of innocent people. At the very least, it’s time to bring back the concept of living and letting others live and love as they choose so long as they’re doing no harm.
* Human intelligence. As Silicon Valley thrusts artificial intelligence upon us, we must resist the temptation of letting its bots do our thinking for us. After all, AI is only as smart as its programmers.
* Harnessing renewable resources. It’s just common sense asthis regime bombs the Middle Eastandpushes energy-hogging data centers. By no stretch of the imagination do fossil fuel companies’ donations justify cutting off wind and solar projects.
* Peace through diplomacy and negotiation, which worked with the Iran nuclear agreement before Trump pulled us out of it. And he and Hegseth should have learned from the consequences of previous invasions in this century.
* Basic human decency. Trump and his allies have attacked health care on all fronts, from putting a madman in charge of that department to enabling pollution and destructive climate change to making draconian reductions to SNAP benefits, Obamacare and Medicaid. And Axios reports that GOP members of Congress are toying with more cuts to health care funding to pay for this needless war.
* Respect for knowledge. Trump has shown nothing but scorn for it, choosing to trust his gut over experts’ advice. Officials in his first administration held some of his impulses in check, but the yes-men and MAGAmaniacs in the second have turned the federal government into a bad reality show.
* Respect for truth and facts. Trump and his band of grifters have taken lying to new levels. With too many media outlets resorting to Trump/Project 2025-speak, it’s more important than ever to call out the falsehoods and support credible journalism. (If only officials elected to serve my part of Pennsylvania had pushed back when the Washington Post listed a Tremont warehouse as a possible ICE concentration camp site weeks before the sale closed.)
Since this regime took the White House, it’s brought nothing but scarcity, oppression and chaos. The best way to deal with it is to call out its so-called principles for what they are and put them where they belong—if not in a shredder, at least in a secure crypt.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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