Observations and Random Thoughts
By WILLIAM LEDFORD
It wasn’t that long ago that George W Bush and the Republicans made a big deal about Democrats wanting to withdraw our people from Iraq, he stated that “the party of FDR and Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run”. Last week President Donald J Trump made the GOP the party of cut and run as he made a deal with Turkey to save his Trump Towers in Ankara and pulled all American soldiers from the Syria-Turkey border. This move left our Kurdish allies who took the fight to ISIS alone to face the Turkish military and their militias. Russia and Syria have now joined in while our people head east with desperate and visibly angry Kurdish people throwing potatoes at their departing vehicles. Sad thing this is. I’m old enough to remember the fall of Saigon and the helicopter airlifts. Very sad and not much difference.
In his “victory speech” (only Trump can make a victory speech while leaving an ally hanging) Trump said that we “controlled the oil”. I suppose he meant in northern Syria but now the government of Iraq stated that no American troops will be allowed to stay in Iraq and they’re ordered out of Syria so, I guess we don’t control someone else’s oil after all. Why he thought that we had the right, or the might, to take and hold another country’s oil is beyond me. I guess it sounded good to some of his supporters but having a brother or sister to marry also sounds good to some of his supporters. You know who you are.
A certain holiday has come and departed. That holiday was once called Columbus Day. It was named after a guy, an “explorer” who got lost and who was basically an evil Gilligan. Evil Skipper doesn’t sound as cool so, sorry Gilligan. We at home ignore Columbus and observe and honor Tsali, who, according to legend and Unto These Hills, martyred himself to keep our people in the mountains. Here’s to you Tsali. In New Mexico, land of 23 tribal and Pueblo nations, we observed Indigenous Day. The rest of the country. The Jews may get upset because they want monopolize the term but, this is our Holocaust. They had Hitler, we had Columbus. My wife mentioned last night that because of the change from a sanctioned Federal holiday kids no longer get a day off from school and so, we’ll probably be blamed for that. Oh well.
For the first time in history a spacewalk was conducted with a female team of astronauts. Congratulations Jessica Meir and Christina Koch! In previous walks only one of the spacewalkers was female, the other was a male. Naturally Trump called to congratulate them by erroneously stating that they were the first female spacewalkers. To date there have been fifteen female astronauts to spacewalk.
There was a book written detailing the various differences between men and women, or women and men, whichever gender you prefer. As I recall it was titled Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. So, me being me, I have decided to write a book detailing the differences between the political ideologies in America today. I’m going to call it, Moderates are from Earth, Liberals are from Saturn and Conservatives are from Uranus. I think it’ll be a bestseller. Why Saturn? Think Beetlejuice.
The inauguration was held, our leaders were oathed and Principal Chef Sneed stated “We will exceed all expectations!” Excellent! I’m buying into that because as an elder I expect that bump in my Christmas “old timer” check I mentioned previously and I also expect some solar panels to be installed at Greybeard Hill Rd so I can get off the Duke Power grid. Even if they weren’t a mammoth energy monopoly I would still avoid anything named Duke.
Ledford is an EBCI tribal member currently residing in Albuquerque, N.M.
