Big Bloody Birthday Bash

Editor, Times-Union:
Next Sunday, Donald Trump will celebrate his 80th birthday (and America’s Flag Day) by providing for us, We the People, a brutal, bloody display of manliness — right on the South Lawn of our house, the White House. (Couldn’t he at least have done this at his own house?) By the way, he is considering making the newly constructed NFC designed fight cage, lights, and seating a permanent fixture — just one more opportunity for photo ops when visiting our nation’s capital. Apparently, the UFC is footing the multi-million dollar bill for this event, but who will continue to pay for it should it remain a D.C. attraction?
Allowing Trump to celebrate the way he chooses may perhaps be a gift to him from his followers, but we must remember that he has been bestowing gifts upon us since January 2025. Since 2026 is also our nation’s birthday, our birthday boy has been working diligently (with the help of those wonderful folks from the Heritage Foundation), to return America to its greatness — you know, back 250 years. The Donald has seen fit to erase any ugly, embarrassing factual, historical stories about slavery, or the Civil War, or the more recent Jim Crow laws, or stories about Japanese internment camps, or voting rights for all, or civil rights for all. Even more recently, he has endorsed political candidates who believe women should no longer have autonomy over their own health care, or vote, or be allowed to join the armed forces. Behind the scenes he and his sycophants are slowly destroying the public school system by allowing an infiltration “during school time” of religious-based/millionaires’ plans with the aim of ending the idea of public schools and creating government-controlled “Christian” systems.
Our guiding lights during the process of creating a “more perfect union” for the last 250 years have been the U.S. Constitution and our accepted rule of law. However, those lights have been short circuited by Trump and his merry band of inept billionaire cabinet appointees and his brainwashed, ring-kissing, over-paid majority Congress. Washington D.C. is fast becoming Trump Land, all gold leafed, restored to its pre-democracy life — complete with the return of extremely objectionable names, statues and ideologies.
Gains in science, medicine, environmental programs and personal privacy and independence are vanishing with Trump’s firing of every member of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s governing body; the all but closing down of the Center for Disease Control and the withdrawal from the World Health Organization, (not to mention his pal, RFK, Jr. destroying the future health of all of us with his ignorance); his attacks on the EPA by repealing the endangerment finding, deregulating emissions standards, and supporting fossil fuels; his expansive building of government data centers containing all of our personal information (Big Brother is a real thing now.)
Nothing says “party on” like a display of men beating the crap out of each other. Let the bloodletting, sweat spraying, spit flinging begin. We’re getting great now!
Jeanne Tuka Schutz
Winona Lake, via email