One of the great double speak, hands over your ears, hands over your eyes, hands over your mouth moments came when Jared Polis, the Governor of Colorado, commented after rioters tore down and defaced Colorado’s Civil War statue of a Union soldier. He said, “Those responsible for the damage whether they were hooligans, white supremacists, confederate sympathizers or drunk teenagers….” Of course it was. Why would I think it was Antifa characters, Black Lives Matter dumpster fire starters, and members of the Democrat Party? I’m sure that those raging drunk hooligan supremacist rebel sympathizers who searched out that statue are responsible. The laugh out loud funny aspect is no one in other media outlets challenges that statement. As always, he gets away with it.
Can I ask you when did Mount Rushmore become the face of the conquerors, a symbol of white supremacy and the statue that was responsible for the genocide of indigenous people? It obviously wasn’t when Barack Obama visited. It must have occurred in the past three months.
In last month’s column we spoke about when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. On the award-winning radio show (yeah Peter keep this up), I mentioned the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key’s poem actually known as the Defense of Fort McHenry had the politically correct red dot on its forehead. And now the left and progressives scream we should change the national anthem to Woodie Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land or Lean On Me or John Lennon’s commie anthem, Imagine. Someone ask Polis which one of those works.
I read about Lyndsey Parker with Yahoo Music explaining why it’s time to finally replace the Star Spangled Banner. My response is, if you’re really upset by the Star Spangled Banner maybe you really just need to leave and find another country in which to live your life.
Now, of course , we have the decapitation of the Virgin Mary statue that took place in Chattanooga. This is also equally predictable when the Jesus statue is proclaimed as a racist portrayal of Christ. Maybe they’re right. Maybe if we all take Jesus and make him into the Semite that he was maybe we’re just setting it straight, but instead, hell let’s kill his Mom.
How many places in Colorado do you think are still available in the plain brown wrap that you grew up used to. This is my prediction. Buffalo Bill’s grave. When you read the revisionist history of William Cody, Indian fighter, he killed as many buffalo as he could thus denying native people their food. Reducing the herd, reducing the tribes and forcing them on to the reservation. The old Billster doesn’t have a chance in hell right now. And if you remember, the citizens in Cody, Wyoming, wanted his body when he died. So the city fathers of Denver, at the time, buried him and Mrs. Bill and covered them with railroad ties and concrete so the bodies couldn’t be stolen. Somebody call the Mayor of Cody. He’s all yours.
So maybe you could change the name of Cody, Wyoming, to Stapleton, Wyoming. How long will this last? Well, now George Washington University wants to release Winston Churchill and James Madison. The winds of change are blowing through Denver and Colorado. The Virgin Mary has been vandalized a number of times Shaun King, known as “Talcum X” has proclaimed, “tear them down.”
The deep state has made its move. I leave you again with a couple of great pictures and citing Creighton University’s Smith’s declaration that pro police rally attendees are white supremacists. Defund the cops. Democrats are advocating a social revolution to correct the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence states why the American Revolution took place. They intend to undo it. We really have mass amounts of really stupid people in this country.
How things have changed … how political correctness, which, in fact, is nothing more than Social Marxism reminding you all that the first person to use the term “we must be politically correct” was Trotsky in the Thoughts of Lenin.
Thomas Jefferson’s statue was pushed into the mud outside a high school in Portland, Oregon, named for the former President. The statue had been spray painted with the phrase “slave owner.” The group behind that act, Rose City Justice, is just one of many organizations demonstrating over the tragic killing of George Floyd. Many of these organizations are calling for an ever increasing number of statues to be torn down and destroyed.
Regarding Jefferson, I take you to April 29, 1962, when President Jack Kennedy was making remarks at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners from the entire western hemisphere. Jack Kennedy told that extraordinary tale when he said, “I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, human knowledge that has ever been gathered together in the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” Wow.
Note: the dinner was held in the State Dining Room and in the Blue Room as well. Nobel Prize winners were throughout the rooms and following the dinner that was emceed by Fredric March, winner of the Oscar twice, reading excerpts from Sinclair Lewis, George Marshall and Ernest Hemingway. How would any of those three men fare today?
I have used George Orwell so many times in my life and on the radio and in this award-winning column. We have spoken about Orwell before. You remember Winston Smith, the protagonist of the novel 1984. Do you remember what Winston Smith’s job was? Winston Smith’s job, while working at the Ministry of Truth, was to rewrite history every day. Remember also what the people of the Soviet Union would say — how they were sure of today and the drudgery and sure tomorrow the drudgery would continue. The problem they really had was the past because it changed from time to time to suit Stalin or Khrushchev.
Thomas Jefferson was brilliant. Roosevelt used Thomas Jefferson as a symbol to fight European fascists and in the famous Four Freedoms speech. Every time any politician begins with “We the People” he is stealing from Thomas Jefferson. And now Jefferson lays face down in the mud.
I think all of us understand how intense a time it is. And how on edge we all are and how many lessons from the past we must study and learn from, and please God, not repeat.
But Orwell says it best. The Orwell quote, writing about Winston Smith: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified. Every book has been rewritten. Every picture has been repainted. Every statue and street building has been renamed. Every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History HAS stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party and Big Brother are always right.”
So what do we learn? To teach my grandson that Jefferson was a slaver and white supremacist and a crypto fascist? Or, that because of the brilliant man that Jack Kennedy wrote about, I’m allowed to write this, the Chronicle to publish it, and you to read it.
March 1, 2020. Our nation was at full employment, the lowest unemployment rates among women and minorities in our history. A couple of months later over 26 million Americans are out of work. The sky fell, hair salon owners are being jailed because they won’t apologize to judges. Small cafes in Colorado are being stomped on for offering an omelet for Mother’s Day. The Chinese are claiming they had nothing to do with this. The World Health Organization has no idea. We, folks, have a virus pandemic/epidemic plague.
As the smartest talk show host I know is me, and the literary giant I have become, I have spent the past six weeks reading about mother nature’s little nasty bastards, the viruses. I’ve become a great respecter of viruses. In fact, I’m in awe of the little guys. It’s important to note viruses don’t have any politics. They don’t circle in the air deciding which minority person to drop on. They don’t think at all. They’re not political, they’re not analytical. They’re viruses dude.
They’re not Trump’s virus, not Putin’s virus, not Merkel’s virus. In reading the middle eastern press, the Iranians believe it’s the Israeli’s virus. And in our country, the major media, the progressives and the deep state believe Trump owns this virus.
The first recorded instance of virus is 5,000 years ago when an epidemic wiped out a prehistoric village in China. The bodies of the dead were stuffed inside a house that was later burned down. Starting to understand this now? Throughout history these have come before and will come again.
The Black Death radically changed the course of history. I am currently reading about Napoleon sending an army to Haiti, to quell a slave rebellion. Disease killed them all. Subsequently, Napoleon was flat broke and sold the Louisiana Purchase to Thomas Jefferson for money. The plague hit Europe in 1347. Most historians believe it came from, guess where, China; to the Crimea; and to Sicily. And then in 1352, the Black Death petered out. But it killed about a third of Europe and returned five times before the end of the century killing at least half of the continent’s population or 80 million people. That you guys, is a virus.
I read David Hackett Fischer’s book, The Great Wave. How many times these eruptions have come. Including the 17th century and 1850s in the Middle East. Recommended reading: Davis Quammen’s Spillover. He cites viruses as lions in the Serengeti. And when they kill, they kill the old, fat, weak zebras and the slow and sick wildebeests. When we look at how many died are they not the equivalent of the old zebras and wildebeests?
But we have been through SARS, MERS, Swine flu, Avian flu, Hong Kong flu, Spanish flu. Last month we talked about the brilliance of medical science eliminating polio, measles, and smallpox. This, some scientists argue, is not really the next big one. The next big one they say will be the equivalent of the Spanish flu. And my friends, that’s coming.
The viruses have stopped the Crusades after nine attempts. Probably helped the Bolshevik Revolution, destroyed the Roman Empire, knocked the living daylights out of the German army and stopped the U.S. from invading Canada. Viruses are to be gazed upon as phenomenal and there’s not going to be any inoculations to make people well and better, but my reading suggests only a couple of things can happen. One, like SARS it goes into a reservoir somewhere, or it morphs and that’s very Darwinian. Or we adapt to it which is what some people believed happened eventually in 1920. Or it hangs around and we all go back to work.
But it has no politics, no intelligence. It is only what it is and what it does. It’s the coronavirus. Like it or not, it doesn’t care at all about what you think.
Up and down the Front Range and around the world people are beseeching the heavens. How could this great medical crisis befall the most refined, politically correct, loving generation of all times?
People are asking isn’t there some sort of medical breakthrough that could have us all returning to get haircuts, playing tennis at the park, and getting together for a few drinks after work at Elway’s? How dare this strike down God’s favorite people, the Front Range yuppie puppies?
Well folks, I know this is a tough go for many of you who, on Easter Sunday, turned on TV and watched what my Grandma used to view, Mass for Shut-ins, and searching the internet for a visit from Bishop Fulton Sheen appearing in his cape, little red hat and a blackboard.
People ask what medical advances could be made so they can play pickleball again with their inner circle of friends?
You know guys, I spent a couple of evenings reading about medical advances in our country. The one that stands out in my slightly diminished memory is 1954 when a remarkable scientist-physician named Jonas Salk defeated a far more deadly disease, polio. Why don’t I remember my mother, father and grandfather blaming Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower for polio?
Because, as you know, this current virus carries heavy politics, known on most media outlets as Trump’s virus. When almost every other major disease or plague rips through humanity it is rare that it picks up politics like this disease has. I recommend everyone read Randy Shilts’s book “And The Band Played On,” about how the horrible disease of HIV/AIDS became politicized.
Spend a little time reading about 1846 anesthesia. 1861 germ theory. 1895 medical imaging. 1928 penicillin. 1954 organ transplants. Stem cell therapy and immunology in the 1970s. Artificial intelligence in the 21st century and my personal favorite of all, birth control pills. Now that folks is a medical breakthrough.
Our nation has come through, in my father’s generation, the Great American Depression. No one was ever quite sure of the total cost of the Great Depression in 1929 when the stock market crashed, the roaring twenties came to an end, the life toll, the destructiveness, and as many historians believe, really doesn’t end until Pearl Harbor. How, oh my God, did families survive all of that? Then comes December 7, 1941. Our nation spent more than $4 trillion, more than 400,000 U.S. troops’ lives were lost . Then comes the Cold War. How many snuck up and covered up, rolled up and kissed our behinds goodbye under a desktop. That was fear factor.
This nation has gone to the moon, this nation has helped cure AIDS, polio and incredible lists of diseases. As a grandparent I no longer fear that my grandson or anyone’s grandson will contract polio.
There is a great line through history, life finds a way. Find one. Let’s get the lights back on. Compare men and women who came through the Great Depression in America, took on the Axis, returned to build a country and do all these wonderful things we listed to the young people today that require a soft warm puppy and a quiet place to go to because
they heard a discouraging word. Who now pick up telephones and rat out neighbors, who become social scolds on neighborhood networks? My God, that’s the kind of stuff that made the old Europeans proud.
I ask you, as my father would ask, what the hell is wrong with you? This is a virus folks. It’s nasty and it does kill people. But civilizations, nation states and individuals need to be challenged in order to grow and mature. These people claim they want to make a difference in our society. I wonder if the young kid who went down to the Marine Corps on December 8, had the same mindset?
I leave you with this. Are we good enough, are we tough enough, do we care enough to come through this? My answer is yes and the history of our nation makes the case.
If you grew up in a traditional ethnic working poor neighborhood anywhere east of Detroit and north of Washington, D.C., there were a couple of set aside days when you could feel a little bit of sense of pride about who your parents are and your grandparents were. One of them, of course, has now become green Halloween, Saint Patrick’s Day, and the other is Columbus Day. I remember as a boy watching the Labor Day Parade or the Decoration Day Parade later called the Memorial Day Parade and the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade watching the Knights of Columbus march. They had really cool capes, Napoleon hats and a really cool sword.
They got lots of cheers as they marched by holding up a tall cross of Jesus and an Italian flag. That innocence has now been taken away in Colorado because, of course, Christopher Columbus is now known as single handedly enslaving Native Americans.
In one of the greatest bait and switches I’ve been able to witnesses in a state full of great bait and switchers is the current attempt to establish Frances Xavier Cabrini Day. As I ride my motorcycle up I-70 I first thought the Mother Cabrini statue was an old Jupiter-C missile. It’s not. It actually honors a very lovely and kind ethnic Italian woman.
Now, wrestling fans “can you see and smell what ‘the Rock’ is cooking?” Not only if you continue to support Christopher Columbus, racists that you are, and you negate Mother Cabrini you become a sexist. Here’s a show stopper. There are historians that believe Columbus actually was Jewish which in today’s politics would make him a suppressor of Palestinians. The man simply can’t win.
But in my favorite turn of events, if you follow politics outside of Colorado, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio had appointed a Director of the Manhattan Museum specializing in art by LGBTQ artists. What did they do? They snubbed Italian American icon Mother Frances Cabrini. The report is that somebody had to take the fall for the First Lady of New York Chirlane McCray who didn’t want Mamma there. They’ve told people that they want to quell the criticism of the statue. Why is that? Well obviously, she was a devout Christian woman. Are you starting to see the picture?
In my grandson’s lifetime these same politically correct witch hunters will also inevitably change Cabrini Day. She will go as Columbus goes before her. For exactly the same reason that the politically correct hacked her in New York.
Remember when Lenin said the end will justify the means? Columbus sailed for Spain, the sailors spoke Spanish, they conquered for the King and Queen, slaves were taken for the King and Queen of Spain. Close on his heels came Cortez, Pirazzo and deSoto who murdered tens of thousands of indigenous people while searching for gold, glory and the fountain of youth. Why aren’t we critical of Spanish language, Spanish culture and everything that came with it?
In 1979 out of that hotbed of intellectualism, Berkeley, also known as Baghdad by the Bay, comes Indigenous Peoples Day. The grifters at Colfax and Broadway couldn’t slip that one past you. So they set up Mother Cabrini who herself once celebrated Columbus Day. And as I leave you, Columbus Day was once stopped in the city of Denver in 1920s by the KKK. The Klan stopped the Italian Catholics from marching. The spirit of Mayor Stapleton lives on in the Democrat left, the political witch hunters of Colorado.
Remember the rhyme, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” In 2020, boys and girls, the legislative blue did what the KKK could not do. They stopped Chris in his tracks.
