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If Trump the Terible had any brains, he might recognize his resemblance to Ivan the Terrible.

Is the American empire still alive and well on It’s 250th birthday?
As I watched Donald Trump blow his top, bottom and sides at our Meet the Press host Kristen Welker Sunday morning, another boss in history came to mind.

It was Russia’s Ivan the Terrible. A fascinating character even when a child, he became Tsar of Russia at 16 and ruled from 1547 to 1584.

In 1564 he went bonkers, forming a state police force dressed in black and riding black horses, which terrorized the civilian population, confiscated large estates for his own use and killed anyone suspected of treason. His forces killed thousands in the city of Novgorod when he thought they were plotting against him.

In fits of rage, he once beat his own daughter until she had a miscarriage, and later killed his own son. He was not a nice guy.

It took about a century to recover from his despotic rule. That was accomplished by Peter the Great.
Donald Trump is a physical coward with his five Vietnam draft deferments from his “terrible” bone spurs in his feet. According to his doctor, he can’t march, of course, but he can walk around a golf course. He fights with his mouth, not his fists.

About 500 years later than Ivan, Donald Trump organized the ICE police, which is terrorizing people of color in America, mostly in Democratic Party-ruled cities and states.

But he is more Terrible than Ivan.

In just his fund cuts in the USAID program it’s estimated 14 million children will die, and with cuts in other foreign aid and healthcare programs, he could exceed Joe Stalin’s record of 60 million deaths established before WWII and beyond.

Donald Trump is truly “Terrible.”

The American empire is in hospice and moderate Dems are watching
We are now living in an example of democratic breakdown, we are now imprisoned in a Trumplican Party cesspool.

More than half of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, living in precarious housing, ignored by inaccessible healthcare, suffering ICE terrorizing and killing citizens, and student debt overload.

Citizens have been excluded from any political power by oligarchs and billionaires optioning and purchasing politicians, have been betrayed by a Trumplican Supreme Court, and are forced to watch the top 10 percent pillow fight for 93% of the stocks on Wall Street. Who has the biggest yacht?

And we had to watch Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, gaily waving his big chainsaw around, cutting funds from DOGE accounts that would end up killing millions in foreign and domestic lands from poverty and disease.

He also has made a name for himself by allowing his X Media to be filled with conspiracy theories and crap. He also claims a transgender daughter is dead. She is alive and hates him.

Recent polls indicate 75% of Americans believe our democracy is broken.

First presidents believed in diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI)
When George Washington was elected by White landowners a two-term president (1789-1797), he was considered to be the richest man in the colonies because he married the widow Martha who owned more than 100 Black slaves.

Before he died, he promised them they would be freed. But Martha never got around to it.

When Thomas Jefferson died after serving two terms (1801-1909), records indicated he had owned more than 600 Black slaves in his lifetime. He was considered to be the second-richest man in the colonies.

That’s why he could afford to take several Black slaves to Paris with him, including Sally Hemings and her older brother, when he served as a secretary of state.

Sally’s brother was supposed to become skilled in French cooking and Sally served other purposes and eventually mothered six children by Jefferson.

But I digress…

Jefferson had engineered the purchase of Louisiana from the French and decided in 1803 we should have a good look at the property. He appointed two Army officers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to form an expedition of about 30 skilled people to walk, ride and row their way to the Pacific Ocean.

It took a unique group of people to survive and spend one year, six months and one day to travel from St. Louis, Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River.

They battled harsh weather, mountainous terrain, very rough and powerful river currents while covering roughly 8,000 miles. From St. Louis in 1804 they rowed boats designed by Lewis on the Missouri River to Mandan, North Dakota, where they spent the winter trading “stuff” with the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes.

In the spring of 1805, the expedition had the experience of an 11-day portage of 18 miles to haul their boats around five waterfalls before crossing the Rocky Mountains and getting to the Columbia River. (To give us some idea of how Homo sapiens have “progressed” in science, John Glenn, a future Divided States of America astronaut and senator, flew a Navy jet fighter from Los Alamitos, California to New York City in 3 hours and 23 minutes.)

Did you know that Sacagawea had walked and rowed with child?
She had joined the expedition at Mandan because she was a slave purchased by a domestic violator of French-Canadian extraction who was a trader who served by being a translator to various Indian tribes in the West.

Sacagawea of the Shoshone tribe was kidnapped by the Hidatsa tribe at age 12 and raised to age 16 when she was sold into slavery and “married” to Toussaint Charbonneau, the trader. He might have won her in a bet with a competing trader. 

She walked and rowed her way from Mandan to the Columbia River mouth with her baby Pahmina in her backpack. The only woman and only Native American member of the expedition, she probably was their most valuable member.

She showed members how to make footwear that saved their lives along with other knowledge of how to survive in very cold weather. She also assisted both Lewis and Clark and her “husband” when they met other Indian tribes on the long journey.

She certainly was a strong character and a quick study by many people. She also was an important member of the expedition because she was Shoshone and Clark knew they would need to buy horses from the Shoshone tribe that lived near the base of the Rockies. She advised him on how to negotiate with the chief of the tribe. She was also very familiar with the territory and its pitfalls.

She danced with joy to learn her brother and a woman who had been abducted with her had escaped from their captors.

President Jefferson had instructed Lewis to collect botanical specimens, so Sacagawea located many plants and identified them for him.

Clark also had known Native American tribes who saw a woman with other tribes knew it was a peaceful group, so he had her always in positions of visibility when on the trail.

The Black slave who carried a firearm and was allowed to vote
When Clark was a two-year-old boy he often played with a Black slave of the Clark family named York. They were great friends.

For the long trek to the Pacific, Clark chose York as his personal cook, nurse and handyman. Other White men and Army soldiers treated York as a slave, sometimes teasing him.

But Clark gave him a gun to carry at all times for “protection.” Many Native American tribes had never seen a Black man, so York played it to the fullest with a complicated form of charisma! He enjoyed being the center of attention.

He was a very competent man who was the best swimmer, hunter, cook, guard and carpenter among the 30 men in the expedition.

When Lewis and Clark had the entire crew vote on where they would make their winter camp on the Pacific Coast, York was also allowed to vote at a government function. He may be the first Black in America to vote in a government function in 1805 since 1619 among millions of enslaved Blacks.

He was also a married man, the husband of a Black slave in another family. York asked Clark to free him when they returned to St. Louis in 1806. Maybe Clark was jealous of his talents. He refused to free him, beat him and hired him out to another very harsh slaveowner.

Most of this information came from several articles written about a book titled This Vast Enterprise by Craig Fuhrman. He had spent several years reading and studying the notes and journals written by several members of the expedition.

Trump’s “America First” White House should spend a week analyzing how the principles of DEI are imbedded in the stories of Sacagawea and York as the only Native American and Black in the composition of the Lewis and Clark expedition’s tremendous success in a very difficult task.

What has man wroth to indicate he has possibilities of surviving?
I continue to marvel at what I have learned about Homo sapiens since I was born in 1932 on a small farm in Minnesota and raised in a house without electricity and running water.

Yes, we have killed millions of each other with brutal and sometimes exhilarating abandon, but we have also accomplished miraculous progress in preserving life.

The last New Yorker had an article by Shayla Love titled “Breeding Ground” with a note: “The climate is changing. Microbes are evolving. Are we ready?” She has a paragraph in the middle of her article that is a scientific eye-opener: “What virtually all microbes have in common is that they are ubiquitous.

Everything is everywhere. A single drop of sea water, for example, can contain a million microbes, including a hundred or more species of bacteria. Microbes colonize every plant and animal, living and dead; they live on frozen mountaintops, in searing volcanoes, and at the bottoms of the deepest caves and oceans. When scientists studied the clean rooms where NASA builds spacecraft, they managed to find two hundred and fifteen bacterial strains on the doors alone. Microbes even have their own microbes. Our bodies, in turn, are constantly adapting to the trillions of microbes that surround us.”

The author reminds us that seven years ago 33 climate change scientists proved that climate change affects every living form on earth. They claimed the unseen majority of life was being transformed by rising temperatures and that all humans would have to contend with the consequences.

OK, Trumplicans and other anti-science, anti-DEI and anti-history specialists, please tell us how you are going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Empire by Making America Forever White (MAGF).

And, please, no more lies and claims of hoaxes. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just announced that the 2026 Pacific El Nino may be a record that will cause more intense storms and heavier rainfall over all the earth.