Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, January 9, 2021

11

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, January 9, 2021 


MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

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Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
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Dean Lee 

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CONTRIBUTORS

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Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

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Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

ANOTHER TYPICAL 
WEDNESDAY

STUART TOLCHIN

 
My main goal for today was to follow my new 
dietary restrictions. My last blood test revealed some 
very concerning numbers which lead me to reading 
this book called Wheatbelly. After reading I now had 
clear direction. 

On January 1, which seems like a very longtime ago 
I decided to follow the advice in the book and to stop 
eating wheat and wheat products completely. Simple. 
I delayed writing this article until today because I 
wanted to talk about following the diet in the midst 
of political and social stresses. I’ve been glued to the 
TV all day and like Vin Scully said after witnessing the Kirk Gibson home run 
in 1988, “I can’t believe what I just saw.” So shocked am I that even following 
the diet, even though it might be life-saving, doesn’t seem very important. Right 
now I have many questions about what I saw today but I will follow the diet just 
because it allows me to feel less bewildered. 

 As to my questions, what is the explanation for the ease in which the 
crowd was able to enter the Capitol and make themselves comfortable and frolic 
around in the hallowed halls of American Government? Were the security forces 
completely unprepared and without notice of a planned demonstration? Was it 
the result of simple incompetence? Contrast the police behavior today with the 
typical Police conduct against People of Color, Black People in particular. Are 
angry White People which I guess incudes the President, attempting and perhaps 
succeeding in rolling back progress and maintaining inequality? Can we just 
blame Trump?

 Forgetting about Trump, which I wish I could, my question is what did all 
those demonstrators think they were doing? What was all that homemade store 
bought body armor about? 

Did Americans make the mistake of electing a clearly mal-adjusted looney to 
the Presidency? Well, after all mistakes happen and he did have a lot of name 
recognition prior to the election and Hilary Clinton did not seem to be the most 
pleasant of people. Sure, but my question is once it was recognized that there was 
something very wrong with Trump he should not have been allowed to stay in 
office. Why was he not forced to resign? 

His original Cabinet, many of whom resigned or were fired, described a person 
who was incapable and uninterested in acting responsibly as President. Is our 
system so encumbered by rules that nothing could be done? Or was the problem 
that those in powerful places were so interested in their own political futures 
that they feared offending their party base? Why blame it all on the politicians, 
who like most of their ilk are interested only in their own advancement and the 
Country be damned. What about the rest of us? What should we have done? 

 Why didn’t we go on work-strikes or take our money out of banks or 
stop using credit cards or something demonstrating to those in control that 
be that an immediate change was required? Perhaps from their point of view 
everything was fine—taxes were cut, the market was doing fine, abortions were 
being restricted, but those feeble leftist demonstrations were annoying. Perhaps 
a decision was made to put gloating Democrats in our place and shown what a 
real demonstration was like. Well, if they wanted to scare me they did a good job. 
Today I’m more scared than ever and it’s only Wednesday but I’m still following 
my diet. I will hold on to that plan. 

Of course, it would be nice to have a similar plan to affect more than my weight. 
I need a plan to save myself, the country and the planet. I don’t think we can we 
just assume that the Covid will go away and that Biden will make everything 
okay and that we will not make the same mistake again. We need to do more. Is 
there a Wheatbelly for the Brain? 


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LEFT, RIGHT OR CENTER! 

RICH MANIERI

MICHAEL REAGAN

LAYING BLAME FOR THE CAPITOL 

RIOTS WHERE IT BELONGS

You might have seen the photo by now. Of all the disturbing 
images of Wednesday’s insurrec-tion, this one lingers.

The photo, shot by Michael Robinson Chavez of the Washington 
Post, shows seven or so Trump supporters scaling the wall 
on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol.

There’s a certain irony in this photo, due only perhaps to the 
way my mind works.

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, a group of 225 Army Rangers scaled a 100-foot cliff at Pointe 
Du Hoc on the coast of Normandy in France. The soldiers used ropes and ladders as 
German gunfire rained down on them. It was chaos and carnage but they kept climbing 
and a handful made it to the top.

Most of the soldiers who made the climb are gone now, killed either that day, in subsequent 
days of fighting, or claimed by time.

If they were here, and we could ask them, I wonder what they would think of the photo 
from Wednesday. Would they simply shake their heads? What would they say?

I’m reasonably sure they would tell us they didn’t scale that cliff 76 years ago for this – 
for the business of our Republic to be shamefully disrupted by extremists who wouldn’t 
recognize the Constitution if it were stapled to their foreheads.

The soldiers who scaled the cliff at Pointe Du Hoc were fighting for an objective truth 
–“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

On the other hand, some can justify any sort of abhorrent behavior in the name of what 
they be-lieve to be a just cause.

The one thing far-left anarchists, neo-Nazis, Antifa, the Ku Klux Klan and the rioters 
who stormed the Capitol have in common is they believe they’re on the right side of history. 
This is the problem with a worldview absent of objective truth.

Let’s not confuse extremists who feel justified in committing violence with those with 
whom we disagree politically. The rioters involved in Wednesday’s national embarrassment 
are no more conservative than left-wing radicals, who lay siege to American cities 
in the name of “justice” are liberal.

“What is the difference between the left-wing fringe, BLM, that lit police stations on fire, 
tried to light a federal courthouse on fire, occupied two cities, looted and engaged in violence, 
and what the people did yesterday in the Capitol? There’s not much of a difference 
at all. It all needs to be condemned,” Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President 
George W. Bush, told Fox News.

What we saw on Wednesday was a violent, angry mob – not patriots – shamefully invited 
and incited by the President of the United States, engaged in what amounted to an 
invasion of the American Capitol, the likes of which has not been seen since the British 
set fire to the structure in 1814.

For six weeks, Trump had been telling his loyalists, and anyone else who would listen, 
that the election was stolen, that the fight must continue, that the election results must 
be overturned. On Wednesday, he worked his supporters, assembled near the Capitol, 
into a lather one more time as Congress met to certify Electoral College votes.

Yes, this is President Trump’s fault.

Former Attorney General William Barr, who resigned last month after he refused to 
cave in to the president’s demand to investigate unsubstantiated election fraud, told the 
Associated Press that “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable.” And, I 
would add, indefensible.

The president’s behavior aside for the moment, what about the rest of us?

I’ve heard many times since Wednesday, from politicians and pundits, “This is not who 
we are as Americans.” But maybe it is. It’s clearly not who we should be but maybe it really 
is who we are. Maybe the fringes are creeping ever closer to the center.

But we say, “Come on now! I would never do something like that.” Perhaps not but 
would we fire off a divisive tweet or post an angry Facebook entry? Would we bait our 
coworkers into ar-guments or fail to listen to those with whom we disagree?

If we’re really going to save the country, we need to admit who we are.

There is one thing on which we should all agree as we look at that photo from Wednesday. 
Whatever America should be, this isn’t it.


THE SAD LEGACY OF 

DONALD TRUMP

Wednesday was a sad day for America.

We watched the mob violence and lawlessness 
in Washington with a tear in 
our eye.

We saw images of the Capitol stormed 
by hundreds of yahoos who fought 
with police, broke windows and forced 
the evacuation of a session of the U.S. 
Congress. At least four died in the 
chaos.

Wednesday was also a very sad day for 
conservatives, the Republican Party 
and tens of millions of American citizens 
who voted to reelect President 
Trump for all the right reasons.

But it was a really terrible day for Donald 
Trump.

The shocking events in Washington 
on Wednesday – which he provoked 
with his stubborn in-sistence he had 
been robbed by the systemic cheating 
of Democrats – have soiled his legacy 
for-ever.

And please, before I continue, I don’t 
want you Trump supporters out there 
to tweet at me with any of that “What 
about the violent BLM and Antifa riots 
in our cities all summer?” crap.

Those destructive and deadly riots by 
leftists were wrong and so was Wednesday’s 
riot by Trump people in D.C.

It’s not brain surgery.

Riots, mob violence and destroying 
private property is never right, even 
though many Democrats and the hypocritical 
liberal media think they’re 
justified if they’re done in the name of 
“progres-sive causes” or benefit them 
politically.

Trump could have prevented Wednesday’s 
national embarrassment and 
saved Republicans from disaster, but 
his ego and his narcissism got the better 
of him.

He could have taken the high road and 
left office with a phenomenal legacy – 
and a solid con-servative one.

Despite the way the dishonest liberal 
media ignored or dismissed his record 
of accomplishments for four years, he 
could have been remembered by history 
for a lot of good things.

For getting the COVID-19 vaccine out 
so quickly.

For creating a booming economy, 
cutting taxes, 
raising workers’ 
wages and 
turning America 
into an energy 
superpower.

ut after Wednesday 
no one cares much about all those 
great successes and many others he 
nev-er tired of boasting about.

It a shame. It could have been much 
different for the president.

He’s still a hero to millions of Flyover 
Americans and still a major political 
player. But the coun-try he wanted to 
make great again is going to pay the ultimate 
price for his character flaws.

With the federal government virtually 
turned into a one-party socialist state, 
the Biden-Schumer-Pelosi troika will 
quickly flush away or turn around all 
the good things Trump did.

Unfortunately, it will be years before 
conservatives and the Republican Party 
can recover from the damage Trump 
has wrought just since Nov. 3.

We conservatives have been down and 
out before. The year 1976 comes to 
mind. But we bounced back with the 
right leadership and we can do it this 
time, too.

We have to regroup. We need to look 
forward, to find young new leaders to 
take us into the po-litical future Trump 
has made for us.

Maybe now is a good time to go back 
and listen to some of my father’s great 
speeches, or his ra-dio addresses from 
the late 1970s, and remember what 
he meant when he said he envisioned 
America as “a shining city on the hill.”

In the meantime, I ask all conservatives 
and Trump supporters – all 74,222,958 
of you – to please stop thinking of 
Donald Trump as the equal of Ronald 
Reagan.

There is nothing my father and Donald 
Trump had in common and there 
never will be.

Ronald Reagan’s legacy was tearing 
down the Berlin Wall. Donald Trump’s 
legacy is going to be tearing down the 
Capitol. So sad.

 Michael Reagan is the son of President 
Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, 
and author 


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