I don’t know, maybe we are not as smart as we think we are. If we are so smart, why does our species keep trying to kill ourselves off? With the human history of violence and hatred, it’s a wonder we’re still here.

Evolution takes a very long time, let’s hope humankind can survive long enough to evolve to a higher state where intelligence and kindness take over leadership, and stay there. I started thinking of our current politics in terms of evolution after watching a video of a commencement speech made by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in 2023.

Pritzker made the correlation between intelligence and empathy and said that if you find the kindest person in the room, you will have found the most intelligent. His theory is that “empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges.”

Here in the U.S. and in Europe, societies have advanced the farthest from our primitive ancestors, the democratic nations are leaders in that evolution. Kindness and compassion, concern for the welfare of others are modern democratic values, and the basis for most democracies which strive to take care of all their citizens. The Trump administration is trying to devolve our government into an autocracy.

Trump is not an intelligent man, and is an example of Pritzker’s theory because he is a mean old vengeful man. He has a one-track mind (what’s left of it, with the signs of dementia that are evident whenever he speaks or sends a late-night post) which focuses on benefiting himself, and he knows only one way to do that, running a con. His biggest and most despicable con has been to make the country’s most economically disadvantaged, educationally disadvantaged, and healthcare disadvantaged believe that he cares about them.

He is using weaponized cruelty through the ICE raids which have abducted more innocents than criminals and have struck fear into neighborhoods across the country. The military gear, the masks, the rough treatment, sweeping them away where family can’t reach them, separating parents from children, all of it is intended to show strength through cruelty. That is his way of showing his white supremacist base that he is their guy, large and in charge.

This is an attempt at national racial cleansing not unlike that of Hitler’s regime. Hitler claimed that Germans were the superior race, the Aryan race, and all others would dilute their purity. Among their targets were of course the Jews, the feeble in mind or body, and other eastern Europeans. They started by shipping them off to camps. Then the camps couldn’t support the masses of people they were removing, so they turned to the terrible solution.

Stephen Miller is Trump’s Heinrich Himmler; the orchestrator of the attacks on immigrants. This mass deportation plan is targeting anyone with brown skin. The illegal immigrant bringing in a crime excuse is a cover-up for something much worse, and Miller is leading it. We need to be vigilant about pressing our representatives to keep track of what happens to these people and to get those incorrectly detained, released.

In the measure of the evolutionary theory that Pritzker espoused, our current president appears at the bottom, with the troglodytes. I would say that many of our so-called Republican congress members can be placed low on that evolutionary scale also.

Rather than do what is in the best interests of their constituents, many are going along with the administration; agreeing to the big bad bill just to keep their seat safe even though cuts to Medicaid and Medicare will hurt them. The base instinct of self-preservation. Where is the kindness and concern of an advanced society? How does the comment “we all are going to die” by Senator Joni Ernst show compassion for the people who will lose healthcare and die because of it? Because Trump insists on rewarding his oligarchs with tax cuts that cannot be reached without cutting the programs that most of us need just to survive.

I don’t really recognize much of a Republican party in government right now. The ideals that the party had in the past are gone. Any true conservative republicans are becoming extinct. I think we have a third party which has taken over the majority of the Republican party and it might as well officially take the title of MAGA party.

If traditional republicans split from the MAGAs, the MAGAs would not have the majority they claim. Many republican voters are not happy with what the administration is doing. MAGAs don’t represent former Republican values.

Believe it or not, the GOP once stood for strong public education, to instill common values, to bind us together, not split us apart. Now the trend is to control and limit public education, to aim to replace it completely with privately run schools. Now the right of higher education institutions to educate freely is being attacked too. Republicans under Teddy Roosevelt supported environmental conservation, they encouraged more responsible business activity by enforcing anti-trust acts. Now businesses are coagulating at the top and industries are under the control of only a few massive corporations. The environment is no longer a priority, but is to be plundered, Teddy’s national parks are under attack. Republicans believed in moral world leadership, because of our belief in freedom and justice. Now we are reverting to showing power and might, not right.

According to historian Michael Beschloss, when asked if the U.S. should have a military parade like Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union, beloved Republican President Dwight Eisenhower said, “absolutely not, we are the pre-eminent power on Earth. For us to try to imitate what the Soviets are doing in Red Square would make us look weak.”

Eisenhower was a decorated military leader in World War II. In contrast to private bone spurs, he did not believe in showing off our military might, but viewed it as a necessity for defense of democracy, freedom, and liberty for our country and around the world. In a 1953 speech, “The Chance for Peace,” he said: “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

I would put Ike high on the scale of human evolution, especially after having experienced the worst of humankind in the midst of fighting a war against Adolf Hitler. His presidency was not one of force and fear, but the opposite, he led with concern for the wellbeing of all Americans. Dwight Eisenhower was an intelligent man.

Susan Bigler is a Sheridan resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com