Ronald Reagan - Bettina Network's Blog

Archive for the ‘Ronald Reagan’ Category

The Solution to the U. S. Dilemma with the Republican Party!

Monday, August 15th, 2022

It is time for the United States voters to take a good, clear look at the Republican Party and what it is about,. It is also time for United States voters to take a good look at where they stand on bigotry. Racism and its related sins has been internalized and that internalization accepted as “normal” by most of us. We maintain it with denial. That denial should come into question today as our country is roiled by those who won’t deal with their racism and other forms of bigotry even though they are living in a country where the “majority in control” is becoming minority. Isn’t that what is going on here with our denials giving us cover? Aren’t those the emotions out of which all of the fear parading publicly is coming from? Isn’t the fear of no loner being “better than” what Donald Trump has tapped into to “rise” to the presidency and beyond?

Having been Republican for most of my life, I think I can speak from the “inside” a little bit. Having tried to hold up what was happening and having tried to help bring about change in the Republican Party for years – it became clear that the only thing that happened and resulted from my efforts was many within the Republican Party turning against me.

People like me – African Americans – who were Republicans – are older and knew the Party when it had a strong stand on civil rights; when the Democratic Party supported the KKK; and indeed when the Republican Party had leaders who were non-White. A cousin of mine was head of the Louisiana Republican Party way back when. (How about that history Senator John Kennedy? Gives you a queasy stomach?)

The same thing happening to the GOP is also happening to Haiti – and for much the same reasons. Haiti has become a government which has been infiltrated by people who want to see as much war, blood shed and horror as possible. These two institutions could be twins across the fence. Is this a common human dilemma or is something or rather, some groups, infiltrating those spaces on this earth which seem to be moving ethically and morally in the right way only to be met by those who need to make sure they are totally turned around to meet themselves as evil, unethical, horrible entities in retreat into the worst sides of human nature. Is this goodness reigning supreme only to be shocked into the dregs and ugliest sides of human nature.

The Republican Party started its descent into extreme bigotry years before, but it accelerated when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party with many of his followers and descended upon the Republican Party. There was also that moment announcing this is the way the Republican Party was moving when their great presidential candidate, who won his election, made the announcement that he was running for president of the United States from a small town in Mississippi. Excellent messaging and the GOP has since gone downhill, into hell.

Hypocrisy, lies, horribleness was brought into the GOP in spades at that time. We will deal with Haiti’s descent in another article. But they are similar – accounting for their different structures.

Senator Strom Thurmond was a recognized racist who was puffed up and a “leader”. His entire life and leadership of a Political Party becoming racist and very anti-Black was not only a farce and a lie looking at the entire extent of his life, but showed how tone-deaf America can be when it comes to race. Is our toleration of the evils and ugliness of Donald Trump’s life attributable to the fact that he made sure to make “better than ” the keystone of everything he did. Has the racism he has used to become a leader in these United States the genesis of his power? Most of us can’t stand the thought of equality on any level so he made a good calculation making sure U. S. voters would not even want to talk about or use his adultery, abuse, etc. against him to take him out of contention. He had a strong knowledge of what it took for him to take the ascendancy and he did – racism, his career on television, etc. His television career helped him the same way Bill Cosby’s kept him out of jail for decades and left him able to continue his sexual assault and abuse of women.

While Strom Thurmond was spouting all of his rhetoric and racist policies and more he was helping to raise his half-black, half-white daughter. He saw her through college and beyond and they did have a relationship. Something that simulated a father-daughter relationship, not one full of the racism he spouted when in his role as high-up in the Republican Party helping to craft its image, policies, history.

This, for us, is the height of duplicity; lies; unethical behavior; playing both ends to the middle and all of those cliches which also apply today to Donald Trump and those around him. Although there are puffs of smoke around Trump which seem to imply that many of his supporters are there because they don’t want some secret or other made public, he is still a leader with followers who hold him up. They hold up this man whose good friend was Epstein; who has been publicly and credibly accused of abuse and rape of women; who is known to be a liar on many levels; who has done so much ugly, unethical, immoral stuff publicly that his moral character is in hell without even a question about that.

Who are those who follow Donald Trump? The answer to that would also be the answer to the question – who are those who follow the head of criminal mafia organizations. Their character? Their morality? Their evil? Their expectation and approval of the fact that their leader, their “Don”, will lie as a tool in his toolshed? So many ask how Trump’s followers could believe him, do his bidding, knowing his penchant for lying constantly, etc. Ask the same question of all the mafia’s in this country and abroad. The answers would be the same – it is his job. My question is – has he pulled together the mafia groups and are these the people who now make up the Republican Party. Has the Republican Party become peopled by members of the different criminal mafia groups along with the people who have been and will be blackmailed?

What is the answer to all of this?

It is time for the formation of another Political Party to replace the Republican Party as one of two Political Parties in these United States.

Andrew Yang founded and is working to bring about “The Forward Party.” This particular Political Party may or may not be an answer. One problem we think Yang has is in casting his Political Party as a “Third Party” with many comments by others as to whether or not the United States will tolerate three political parties. The question needs to be rephrased. Is this the Political Party – “The Forward Party” – that will replace Republicanism?

Other political parties now need to start forming because one of them will totally remove the Republicans from their space, send them hurtling into history and become one of two Political Parties in these United States.

Danforth and Thiel have What in common?

Friday, October 8th, 2021

The more we research the more unbelievable it all becomes. Maybe we are naive with expectations we should dump. Maybe the world needs to stop idolizing white male northern-europeans-ancestry people and start over again including everyone in decisions, actions, all to advance better living for everyone. It is really tiring to see generation after generation making the same mistakes.

We have been digging to try to understand what is going on with the Republican Party. Why has it become so extremely racist/sexist/add all the other minorities, but waffle a bit on homophobic. That was our first clue as we followed the money. – who could cause that? John Thiel?

We were taught early on that when it comes to politics and trying to understand the underlying dynamics – follow the money. We’ve never really believed that because it is difficult to actually believe the people you know and want to respect make their decisions; take their stands; argue for hours, days, months for something, not because they believe in what they are saying, defending, promoting, but because it will bring big dollars into their bank accounts.

It is time to believe that and stop blocking our thoughts by giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.

We’ve known about former Senator Danforth and his backing of Clarence Thomas for quite some time. We have also known that he continued that kind of political machination to get Josh Hawley elected to the Senate. What we did not know was the involvement of John Thiel -lots of money John Thiel.

What we are also connecting is the influence John Thiel and his money have on those investing in the businesses which are and have become the billion dollar businesses – with their founding and hard work to develop the ideas done by and stolen from women and minorities to make sure young white males, mostly northern-european-ancestry-types, but also a small handful of males from other groups to keep the monied people in those outlying groups merging with his to control the world and Make America White Again. At least the Amazon founder is upfront with his need to become emperor of the world. John Thiel, one could say, roughly parallels the Wizard of Oz.

What we search for today is to know those who work with John Thiel to keep the world mostly white-male-northern-european-ancestry people.

Mr. Thiel apparently does have a lock politically on the Republican Party. The orange blow-hard at the top simply follows orders – from what we can tell.

While many of us look at Donald Trump as the one to whom Republican politicians are pledging their fealty, Donald Trump does not have the money to keep them loyal. Some have claimed it is Putin and Company. We are wondering if it is not John Thiel who is causing this mischief.

Many are looking today and worrying about what is and will happen to the women and children in Afghanistan. We are looking and worrying about what will happen to American women and children. We are seeing the same kind of crack down, happening in Afghanistan, coming to the women of America. Starting with the abortion issue and moving on from there to roll back the gains minorities and women have made including Brown v Board of Education.

Donald Trump’s slogan – “Make America Great Again” – which many believed was actually the public face of the real slogan which was and is “Make America White Again”. That slogan was stolen from Ronald Reagan and his time in politics and in political office. That was also a time when racism reared its ugly head and gains were rolled back. Strangely enough it was also used by Bill Clinton of “don’t ask don’t tell fame.”

One of our founders tells us how quickly the racism under the table surfaced when Reagan made his first run for office. She was Republican then and precinct chair in Wayzata, Minnesota – the area that was the bastion of some of Minnesota and the country’s elites. Into the meeting came all of these Texans – all new to the area. That would not have meant much to you then, but how much does it mean today when you see the damage Texas is trying to do to the civil rights of all the “wrong” people. The damage Texas is doing to “Make America White and Male Again.” We could go back even further in Texas’ racist history to bring up the story of the Texans who went to the prison camps and checked out a Nazi prisoner on a Sunday to take them to dinner. They were taken to restaurants which refused to serve African American soldiers unless they came around to the back door of the restaurant and didn’t eat inside, but in the yard outside with the garbage and other unhappy scenes, or left the area with their food to eat someplace else entirely.

When Marceline entered the room as precinct chair there was an audible gasp and the ugliness and racism that immediately surged was so obvious the natives experienced shock. Some of the Texans were newly working in Minnesota, some were there, not for jobs, but for the Republican Campaign to support Reagans candidacy.

Reagan was not elected during that precinct meeting, but Marceline was removed as precinct chair and Reagan was elected during the next such meeting four years later. The ground work was done in that precinct caucus – they just had to wait four years for their work to grow and spread itself across the country and it did.

All of that was supported by someone’s money. All of what is happening today around Trump and this Republican Party is being supported by someone’s money.

We are looking at John Thiel as the organizer of the money behind Trump. Et tu?

Donald Trump and Gay Folks!

Monday, December 31st, 2018

A series of articles to look at, give a partial analysis and outline of Trump’s base and what it cam expect of him.  We are starting with that portion of Trump’s base which are those who are very anti-gay, homophobic, are sure gay folks are trying to convert their children, destroy Christianity and the values they claim to hold close to their hearts and so much more.  You know the rhetoric and you know that portions of Trump’s base overlap.  It is very true that those who are homophobic have other bigotries against other groups which overlap, but this article addresses itself to the anti-gay community portion of Trump’s agenda.

Trump has tried to satisfy them by attempting to ban transgender people from serving in the armed forces, throwing out of the armed forces those transgender people already serving and more.

We will not say much about Donald Trump in his teens because those are tender years and can be the background for the direction in which a person travels, but could also be just experimental and a passing phase.

When we get to Donald Trump in his 20’s, however, we see a person beginning to show his values and to set his life’s path.

One of the people Donald Trump met, who became his mentor, was Roy Cohn.  Roy Cohn was a prominent New York attorney with an awesome reputation for bullying.  He was, at the time, a very famous attorney in these United States and not always for the best of reasons.  At the end of his life he was disbarred for many reasons like – particularly reprehensible conduct, and his ethics were called into question and so much more.   Cohn’s clients included several of New York City’s mafia, who he defended along with a large and impressive roster of clients.

Roy Cohn connects – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, the Rosenbergs, Roger Stone, Joseph McCarthy, and many more.  A surprising confluence of people.

For the purpose of this article, that which is right out there about Roy Cohn is that he was gay and he died of AIDS.  He is the person most responsible for helping Donald Trump move from his father’s businesses in Queens, New York to Manhattan.  In the process Donald Trump and Roy Cohn were extremely close.  If you could not find one you called the other and that person could tell you where to go or call to find the other – they were that close.

They spent evenings together over candlelight dinners at Club 54; once Trump married, Roy Cohn spent many evenings having dinner with the Trumps at their condo in Trump Tower and that in spite of the fact that Roy Cohn did not think Ivana was the person Donald should have married.  

Donald Trump was in the middle of the male gay community which surrounded Roy Cohn.  He was accepted as one of the boys and his relationship with Roy Cohn was common knowledge and also accepted.

Donald Trump was one of Roy Cohn’s most important clients.  If you did anything with Trump that would or could have resulted in a legal battle you had to deal with Roy Cohn, but Trump rarely, if ever, paid Cohn.  And if you went to Trump’s office during that time there would be a large picture of Roy Cohn on his desk.

We could go on for pages about Donald Trump’s relationship with Roy Cohn, but the point of this article is that during that time and for many years after Roy Cohn’s death, Donald Trump was in the middle of a very sophisticated gay group in Manhattan in which he was totally accepted.  According to some he provided an apartment, at Roy Cohn’s request, to one of Cohn’s friends who was dying of AIDS so he could live out his shortened life in relative comfort and Trump did just that – giving up a condo in Trump Tower – for free.

With that background, where does this hatred of people who are gay come from?  Where does this doing whatever he can to limit access to the gay community of the many things previously granted them as equality – like gay marriage?    The question becomes – why does Trump’s background and relationships  show that he would do the exact opposite?  Why did he have a mentor who was very gay and in the middle of a gay community bringing Trump into the middle of that community in a very public way?

At no time has Trump acknowledged that lifestyle, nor has he said anything about that personal history.  He did not come out, for example, to say that “at one time I was very supportive of the gay community, but in xxxx year I discovered my fault and reformed – turned my back on that history and all of the people with whom I had a close association and friendship and now have decided that homophobic is what I really am and have cut off associations and friendships with any and all gay people except those who have recanted, turned their lives around and are now straight.”

From where in his soul does this close association and friendship with many gay males come from – people with whom he had an extremely close relationship – to make him today able to move his campaign to take an active homophobic stance on many issues; to talk about people who are gay in very negative and subhuman terms; to go after those who are transgender to keep them away from serving in the armed forces and in many other ways.

More to the point would be – how and why do the people who really are homophobic and whose agenda is to rid society of everyone who is gay, transgendered, etc.  have simply taken Trump at his word.  Even knowing this background and history, they have never questioned any of this background.  What is going on here that they believe that he, without political campaigns to win,  would continue to act to make sure this gay group of people are clearly oppressed and not equal to the rest of society?

Surely they have had at least a passing thought that when Trump has no more campaigns to win he would then govern in such a way as to bring the gay community into equity with the rest of society and the goals of the homophobic community destroyed and turned against them.

Anything else makes no human sense.  To say God is using Trump makes even less sense because in my many decades of reading scripture God does not involve me and mine in any evil that God moves to eliminate.  God takes the evil hitting me and turns it into good.  God does the work and humanity benefits.  God upheavals and me and mine are playing God as we see fit.  But this part of Trump’s base has many excuses as to why they are supporting Trump because they believe, in the long run he will act in the interest of and promotion into society of their anti-gay, homophobic, anti transgender beliefs and life actions.

We believe that is nonsense and we believe something else is operating here and we believe we know what that is about.

Take a look at Bill Cosby and the evil he inflicted on dozens of women with his corrupt actions.  Look at how many years and how much pain and suffering and hard work it took to expose Bill Cosby and bring him to justice.  Why was that?  Why did so many people for so long support Bill Cosby in spite of what was showing right in their faces up close and personal?

For many, many decades television, books, and much more of media coverage portrayed Bill Cosby as this loving father and great man.  He received all kind of awards – not based on who he was, but based on his media persona – which many believed and would not let go of even in the face of facts which proved otherwise.  It took decades before it began to seep into the world’s conscience that the Bill Cosby on television and all of those Cosby family books and other kinds of media that circulated was created fiction and not the real Bill Cosby.  The real Bill Cosby was the person going to Court who was finally proven to be the sexual predator that he actually was and not the great, kind, with it father he portrayed in many media settings.  The kind of father we all want and many of us don’t have.  It is extremely difficult to give up on that kind of dream.  And the kind of dream Turmp portrayed – great business executive, incredibly successful giving others and maybe one day us the opportunity to follow in his footsteps.  That is like giving up on the lottery for those so addicted.

For many years, Donald Trump has been portrayed on television as this great business mogul with all of the trappings to create a romantic figure to get us to tune in year after year.  We have in mind the man created by good writers, camera people, directors, producers, in books ghost written for him by others.  We have not been able to believe and to take down the man so constructed for us by the media to see the real person who is the real Donald Trump.  The media is now doing its best to show us that person, but many are resisting because Donald Trump is putting himself in front of the public as the created, romanticized person who actually exists only on television and not in real life. 

Don’t you think it is time to look carefully and scrutinize this man the way many had to scrutinize Bill Cosby to see who he actually was and to look away from and put in the fairy tale books the Bill Cosby and Donald Trump created as marketing tools to sell all kinds of products to the average American citizen?

And don’t you think, given those two examples of human beings turned into almost monsters by their media persona and how far we have had to go to expose them as other than that romantic image – that we should give lots of thought to what we create and watch and give credence to in the media because clearly that is now roiling our society by the way it has seeped into our consciousness and affected decisions in real life and in how we make choices for ourselves and others?  

__________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – Wells Fargo Boycott

__________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Start writing or type / to choose a block



Bettina's Lifestyle Commnity!

Join us!

Bettina’s Lifestyle Community

Making a difference in this very difficult and changeable world.

Bettina's Lifestyle Commnity!

Join us!