Last June my husband and I were able to visit Gettysburg, Penn., and walk the battlegrounds from the Civil War. To call it sobering is an understatement. The Battle of Gettysburg resulted in 51,000 casualties, the highest number of any Civil War battle. The Union had 23,049 casualties, including 3,155 killed, 14,529 wounded, and 5,365 missing or captured.
The Confederacy had 28,063 casualties, including 3,903 killed, 18,735 wounded, and 5,425 missing or captured.
The Civil War is a tragic time in our country’s history.
We hadn’t even made it to our first century when the 11 Southern states left the Union and fought against the other 23 Northern states.
We had states fighting against states, families fighting against families, all because each side thought they were right and wanted to take up arms to stand by their convictions.
It is easy for some to look back on this period of time and think, “Well, that could never happen again.” I wondered how easily it could actually happen again as I walked that hallowed ground in Gettysburg. Surely some who fought in the Civil War, on either side of the battle, had grandfathers who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Certainly they wondered how they had gotten to this point of another war for the soul of the country less than 100 years later.
Winston Churchill said in a 1948 speech to the British House of Commons, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And in 1905 Spanish philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
This is why we must study history; not only should we learn about the past to know what has happened, but we should learn from the mistakes that have been made so that we can make our world a better one for ourselves and for our posterity.
The last three weeks have been difficult for me. I do not understand how Donald Trump could be elected to serve for another term as President. I was concerned that if he lost, we would have another Jan. 6 on our hands, since he had never accepted his defeat in 2020. But I was also surprised that he would win the election with all of the hateful rhetoric he had spewed at his campaign events.
His vile words about immigrants are so un-American to me. We are a nation of immigrants. I am tired of hearing people say “My ancestors came here the right way.” I would like to see the documentation that they claim to have. I am the product of many immigrants coming to American from the 1600s to the 1800s and all of them just got off their ships and walked right into
the country. I believe that my history is shared by millions of Americans.
His plan to deport millions of immigrants back to the countries that they have come from echoes what happened during World War II with the Japanese internment camps. During that time approximately 120,000 people were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in these camps for the duration of the war.
Two-thirds of them were U.S. Citizens. In the decades following the war, we have looked back in shame on this mass incarceration.
Because the immigrant population in the United States is much larger now than the Japanese population was in the 1940s, removing millions of people (many of which will invariably be naturalized U.S. citizens) will be akin to what the Nazis did to Jewish people during World War II. The emotional and financial impact will be devastating.
Again, we look at what happened in Germany and other European countries and shake our heads and think, “What a tragedy! We can’t ever let history repeat itself.” But somehow, we have enough people in this country who are so fired up about immigration that they elected a man that wants to deport close to 13 million people? Never mind that there was a bipartisan bill ready for Congress a year ago to secure the border, but Trump persuaded Republicans to vote against it.
I spent three weeks working early voting for Linn County. I have been doing this since the 2020 Election. It’s always a lot busier during the general election because voting for a President brings out many more voters. Each day our team worked very hard to process voters as quickly as we could, while following all of the rules to ensure a fair election. It broke my heart when I heard of the ballot boxes being set on fire in Oregon and Washington. That is not what democracy is about.
When Trump had the audacity to go on and on about how rigged and unfair this election was going to be, I took that personally.
At all voting locations there is always a bi-partisan team working. Steps and rules are being followed tomake sure that each voter
is registered and that each voter only votes once. I find it remarkable that the 2024 election “full of massive cheating” (Trump’s words) handed him the presidency and that he quickly changed his tune once the results were reported.
Perhaps you have read my words and have thought that I’m being worried about nothing. Maybe that will be the case. I believe that words matter and I believe that the President of the United States of America should be a woman or man of integrity and should stick by her or his words. The freedoms we enjoy in this great land have come at too great a cost to throw the Constitution aside. The landslide in Gettysburg is soaked with the blood of Americans who suffered the repercussions of what happens when disagreements cannot be resolved.