​A trifecta of oligarchs, ogres, and oddballs

By Ed Raymond

fargogadly@gmail.com

The wizards and kleagles in whites now wear blue suits and red ties

A hundred years ago, more than 30,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan from virtually every state in the Union wearing their white sheets and pointy hoods marched by the White House and down to the capitol before thousands of cheering Americans. They came by foot, horse, steamboat, train, bus, car, taxi and perhaps plane. Rumor was the New Jersey KKK wanted to have a plane carry a huge Christian cross over Washington, but it never came to pass. There was even an all-woman band in white sheets and hoods from Cumberland, Maryland who entertained the marchers.

The Ku Klux Klan came to life in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee when veterans of the Confederacy fertilized the Greek egg of hate to fight the Radical Reconstruction program of the victorious United States. The cell’s purpose was to restore white supremacy in the divided country through intimidation and violence of former Black slaves. A similar organization called the Knights of the White Camellia was born in Louisiana in early 1867.

The Ku Klux Klan was finally morphed from those two eggs at an “Invisible Empire of the South” convention in Nashville in 1867 when former Confederate Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest was named the first “Grand Wizard” and other veterans assumed positions under Forrest called “Grand Dragons,” “Grand Titans,” and “Grand Cyclopses” as squad and fire team leaders of the Klan. The members decided to keep membership hidden by designing white sheet costumes and hoods to prevent identification — and increase the effect of the costume when Blacks were attacked at night or when large “Christian” crosses were burned to frighten Black neighborhoods.

History tells us there’s more hate in America than love

Science currently reveals that Homo sapiens started to populate what is called North and South America about 23,000 years ago and groups formed the Mayans, the Incans and hundreds of “Indian” tribes. We still have more than 500 tribes on over 300 reservations registered in the Divided States of America. California has nearly 100 active reservations. We must recognize that history and science reveals we have a history of wild, irrational hate, not love. We still use the extremes of violence against each other because of the natural discord of race, nationality, religion and lifestyle. Indian tribes fought each other for horses, buffalo, fish, whales, slaves and resources. Puritans and pilgrims killed Indians for water and land. Religions fought each other because the gods were always fighting each other.

The Ku Klux Klan has had three periods of extreme hate during its birth and adolescence in 158 years. During those three periods — the late 19th Century, early 20th Century, and the 1970s — the Klan lynched, murdered, burnt, bombed and assaulted its way to attempt to dominate Black folks by fear in those three periods. White supremacy has always been the main goal.

The main goal of the Trumusklican Party in the 21st century is to extend white supremacy in the white United States of America. The Ku Klux Klan no longer wears white sheets and white hoods and masks. We now have the fourth period of the Klan represented in adult fashion by people wearing dark blue suits, long red ties, and China-made black and red caps inscribed with Make America Great-Healthy-Wealthy Again.

In 1925, the Klan marched by the White House and capitol wearing their favorite whites. In 2025, Klan members wearing blue uniforms and long ties marched into the Oval Office, White House and capitol led by the Grand Wizard Trump followed by his billionaire Grand Dragons, Grand Titan, and Grand Cyclopses to murder, burn, bomb, assault, jail and deport black, brown, yellow, and red “invaders,” “criminals,” “murderers,” and “rapists” to their home countries.

A few personal experiences of living with Jim Crow Laws in period two

As a Marine, I spent a major part of seven years in Jim Crow territory in the 1950s. President Harry Truman had just integrated the Armed Forces. Black Marines in my heavy machinegun platoon who went on liberty in Jacksonville, North Carolina had to walk in the streets instead of on the sidewalks. If they did, they were beaten by white “citizens.” “White Only” and “Black Only” signs were everywhere on restrooms and businesses. Corky’s sister lived with us when she went to high school. Under the law of “Separate but Equal” she attended a brick high school for whites in Hampstead, North Carolina. Black students attended a high school in a tarpaper shack.

Confederate states passed more than 200 Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction failed. Here are just a few examples:

1. Birmingham, Alabama, 1930: “It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes, or checkers.”

2. Nebraska, 1911: “Marriages are void when one party is a white person and the other is possessed of one-eighth or more negro, Japanese, of Chinese blood.”

3. Missouri, 1929: “Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school or any white child to attend a colored school.”

4. Tennessee, 1891: “All railroads carrying passengers in the state (other than street railroads) shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the cars by a partition, so as to secure private separate accommodations.”

Most Confederate states passed laws prohibiting whites from teaching blacks how to read and write. Fines and jail times were often included.

When Trumusklicans close our universities, what happens to professors?

When our Grand Wizard Donald leads all of us to his Golden Age after he has closed our public schools and universities for teaching history, will our scientists and elite professors end up in the European Union? A few have already decided to move to England or European countries. When China’s Mao Zedong decided his country needed a cultural revolution, he closed all of China’s universities and sent the professors to the rice fields and factories.

David Brooks of The New York Timesis a moderate Republican who recognizes King Donald as a disaster for the country. “We’re going to have to learn a lot about stupidity over the next four years,” he says.

Brooks has come up with five principles concerning stupidity:

1. Ideology produces disagreement, but stupidity produces befuddlement. When stupidity is in control, words become unscrewed from their relation to reality.

2. Stupidity often inheres in organizations, not individuals. When you create an organization in which one man has all the power and everybody else has to flatter his preconceptions, then stupidity will surely result. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

3. People who behave stupidly are more dangerous than people who behave maliciously. Stupidity dares greatly! Stupidity already has all the answers!

4. People who behave stupidly are unaware of the stupidity of their actions. The Trump Klan is attempting to remove civil servants who may or may not be progressive but who have tremendous knowledge in their field of expertise and hire MAGA loyalists who often lack domain knowledge or expertise. The result may not be what the MAGA folks hoped for.

5. Stupidity is almost impossible to oppose. The German philosopher and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer notes: “Against stupidity we are defenseless. [...] In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.” Because stupid actions do not make sense, reasonable arguments fall on deaf ears. Facts are deemed irrelevant.

DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) means Driving Education Inferiority

Way back in my professional history, a fellow teacher at Fargo Central High School was a bomber pilot who remarked his butt and life was saved by Black fighter pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen when flying missions over Germany in World War II. Records show the segregated Black pilots never lost a bomber when they were the fighter escorts. I learned about the Navajo code talkers from the Central football coach who survived every major landing in the Pacific war against Japan.

There was a Jesus Moment in the movie “In the Heat of the Night” when Black Sydney Poitier, playing a detective, slapped a white rich businessman in the face who had slapped him a second before. A very quick reaction. Baseball films always show the skills of Jackie Robinson, a former Black army officer who could steal third and home plate in any major league ballpark. This is history. If the Grand Wizard of the Trumusklican Klan has his way, those incidents will be lost when all the images of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) disappear into a maelstrom leading to a black hole in history. Billions of facts will be lost to history and future generations…if there are any future generations.

It took Germany more than half a century to recover from Hitler’s battle to turn one of the most advanced cultures in history to white blond Aryans living in a rich paradise. Hitler did not achieve his Third Reich. Playing the best Grand Wizard in history, Trump, who led us to have the highest ratio of death per 100,000 in the developed world during the COVID-19 pandemic, fits all five principles of stupidity listed above. By DEI (Driving Education Inferiority), the jerk, prick, asshole and certified malignant sociopath-psychopath narcissist will cost us millions of lives, billions of dollars, and a democracy.

Why do Black men die at age 61 and white billionaires at 95?

The World Happiness Report sponsored by the United Nations has evaluated the good and bad life characteristics in 140 countries since 2013. One might think that the richest country in the world that has slipped to 24th place in 2025 might seek answers of why Nordic countries have been consistently in the top ten. Finland is at the top for the eighth time in the 13-year history of the report. Nordic countries have always dominated the survey at the top. The ranking: (1) Finland, (2) Denmark, (3) Iceland, (4) Sweden, (5) Netherlands, (6) Costa Rica, (7) Norway, (8) Israel, (9) Luxembourg, (10) Mexico.

Here are the reasons we are unhappy:

• The bottom 50% of Americans can expect to live seven fewer years than those in the top 1 percent.
• If you live in a rural working-class county, you will die ten years before your twin who is a resident of a wealthy suburb.
• If you live where the median household income is $27,682 you can expect to live only 69 years. If income is $142,299 you will live to be 84. Why?