Tag Archives: history

Who Will We Choose to Be?

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America stands at a crossroads. Are Nebraskans willing to decide? Or will many ignore history and choose the path of least resistance, comfortable in the safety of their whiteness (for now)?

Ask yourself: Was Joe Biden elected president in 2020? Current president Donald Trump says no, that he won the election and Biden stole it. There is zero credible evidence for this assertion. But here we are, more than five years later, with insurrectionists on the loose, pardoned by the president. Several have been arrested for new crimes. One—Jared Wise—is a senior advisor at the Justice Department.

Does the First Amendment guarantee freedom of speech? Is due process of law guaranteed to “any person,” as it says in the Fourteenth Amendment, before they can be deprived of their liberty?

What kind of system does the president prefer? He told America in 2018 that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had “fallen in love.” He has said that he admires the “loyalty” the people have for Kim (loyalty which is state-mandated), and Trump has said he wishes Americans would display that same reverence for him. It’s quite similar to statements he’s made praising “president for life” Vladimir Putin’s post-democratic Russia.

And during his second term, MAGA has repeatedly floated this idea of a third term, as well as a dynastic transfer of power to one of Trump’s children.

On Sept. 12, when a Fox News reporter asked Trump about the current rash of political violence on the right and left, offering him a chance to call for calm and national unity, he had this to say:

“The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy.”

The statement appears to make the claim that right-wing political violence stems from righteous anger at lawlessness, while left-wing radicals are simply “vicious”. Seizing the moment, Attorney General Pam Bondi noted

that the Justice Department would “go after” Americans for “hate speech,” a statement she later walked back.

But just recently, Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer told Nebraska Public Media, “It’s not free speech to celebrate the death of someone,” and that those who do so need to be “held responsible.”

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Now the National Guard is spreading nationwide—Portland is next— coordinating with ICE and behaving as an occupying force rather than the emergency-response “citizen army” that is their charter.

Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen is all in, circumventing the legislature to offer the McCook prison facility to ICE for detainment of those they sweep up in raids of workplaces, streets, and residential neighborhoods.

But they are not sweeping up the white male citizens who dominate the American assassination game in their dragnet.

Meanwhile Pete Hegseth, our hair-sprayed celebrity Secretary of Defense, has called every single flag officer in the US armed forces, wherever they may be, to an auditorium in Quantico, Va., on Sept. 30, ostensibly to hear a speech from him.

Many officers reportedly fear a loyalty purge well beyond the anti-DEI cuts to the GOFO (General Officer/Flag Officer) ranks Hegseth has made thus far. Aside from that, it is an unprecedentedly expensive and dangerous gathering that will impact military readiness in multiple active theaters of war. Is that important?

As a matter of history, at least one retired general pointed out online that Hitler called a meeting of all of his general officers in 1935 to extract a loyalty pledge prior to implementing his domestic plans. Hegseth’s winking response? “Cool story, General.”

And at a recent memorial for a MAGA-friendly pundit who was just the latest political figure—this time on the right—to be assassinated by a disturbed man with a gun, White House senior advisor on immigration Stephen Miller harkens back to a famous speech of the 1940s. He dramatically describes the “storm” that this particular killing has generated, rhetorically transforming the trigger-pulling “him” into a non- specific, broadly threatening, anti-American “they”—then switching to an ominous “You”:

“They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us…You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing.”

You get the idea. The many thousands in the crowd, in their Trump gear, heard him loud and clear. One man’s car was painted with the slogan, “Tolerance Killed Charlie Kirk.”

Now the environment appears right for Pam Bondi to make good Trump’s threat to prosecute his political enemies, as former FBI director James Comey—a lifelong Republican—faces a Justice Department indictment.

Of course, the administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, was just reported to have taken $50,000 in bribes from the FBI. The Justice Department apparently will not prosecute, and his job appears safe.

But it seems Trump will not rest until he finds a prosecutor to charge a member of the Federal Reserve—one he wants out—with a crime of his invention.

Former President Obama is being “investigated.” Former UN ambassador John Bolton’s home was recently raided. Dozens of career government prosecutors have been fired, and some are being investigated, for working on the January 6 insurrection cases.

Constitutional Republic or fanatical patriot cult? Respectful political opposition and rule of law, or constant attempts to frighten and dominate domestic “enemies” with dehumanizing Christian Nationalist rhetoric and veiled threats against citizens, all emanating from openly partisan elected officials? Which will it be, Nebraska?

As someone who wasn’t born in America, I think I’ve made my choice.

Commentary originally submitted and accepted by the Nebraska Examiner. I declined requested rewrites demanded from a “national editor (not the Nebraska Examiner editor), so the article was not published. I provide the final submitted version here.

Happy 250th Birthday to the United States Army 

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On June 14, we wished our United States Army a happy 250th birthday. It was a significant day for me, having grown up around the world among soldiers, sailors, airmen and their families. 

My father, George Wees, was born in Omaha to second-generation Polish immigrants. His father, Francis Wees, built houses in South Omaha, including the house he, my grandmother, and their nine children called home, near 38th and G. Dad attended Creighton Prep and graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1958. 

I was born a few years later, in Heidelberg, in then-West Germany. Young Lieutenant Wees was on one of his early assignments working with the newly established West German military, via a NATO attachment, to establish secure government communications networks just miles away from Soviet-allied East Germany.  

In 1966, Dad received orders for Vietnam. He was to advise a South Vietnamese Army unit in the burgeoning conflict between the communist North and the democratic South. He parked my mother and us kids in a little duplex in East Omaha, and off he went to spend a year on the other side of the globe. 

Cadet George Wees in his West Point dorm room
Cadet George Wees, USMA 1958

I remember, he furnished us with a little tape recorder and microphone, and he and my mother exchanged tapes, in addition to near-daily letters, during his deployment. She still has the tapes. In some of his messages, you hear the gunfire in the distance. And at those times, you hear a bit of unsteadiness in the young lieutenant’s voice.

When Dad returned in 1967, he was stationed at the Pentagon, now a Captain. We lived in a little house across from a park in Vienna, Virginia, where I attended kindergarten and first grade. It was there that I really got to know him. He set up a dark room in the basement to pursue his photography hobby, bought a Mustang for the Pentagon commute, and patiently hosted siblings from Omaha who wanted to come visit Washington.

But by 1969, it was time for his second tour in Vietnam. Back we came to Omaha, to another little house on 43rd and Center, a rental owned by friends. There my mother, sister and I would wait out another year of war. That is, if Dad survived. 

By this time, things were less taut, less military, and problems extended from the front to the rear. In command of American troops near Nha Trang, Dad survived at least one attempt on his life—from his own troops. 

Because by this point, many of the young draftees were convinced the war was pointless. Eventually, after resisting the notion for years, Colonel Wees agreed with me that the war, through Democratic and Republican administrations, was ill-conceived and badly executed. 

In other words, pointless.

But we should remember that rank and file soldiers like my dad only served. None of it was their idea, nor did they make the big decisions. That was the province of civilian leadership in Washington—folks who would soon be ousted, many imprisoned, the president resigning in disgrace. 

Our current civilian leader, who has already been disgraced by multiple felony convictions and a sexual assault judgment against him, used the occasion of the Army’s birthday to throw a party and have a parade. 

The Army, as always, followed the commander-in-chief’s orders, and rolled the tanks down Constitution Avenue in a light rain as the president attempted a few salutes. Nearby, at Arlington National Cemetery, Dad rested.  

Though drafted, the president never served (bone spurs), and according to witnesses, he has labeled as “suckers and losers” the rank-and-file soldiers who make up the service. His campaign-style speech to West Point’s 2025 graduating class—complete with MAGA hat— was thin on talk of duty or honor.

But those cadets did what cadets do. They listened to the president troll and dismiss his predecessor, threaten his political “enemies”, invent “facts”, and brag about himself, without visibly reacting, except to politely applaud as they shared their achievement with the commander-in-chief. 

That’s what it looks like when doing one’s duty, honorably, for one’s country. It looks like discipline, because that’s what is required to lead. 

Happy 250th birthday to the United States Army. May you continue to serve and protect the Constitution, and to quietly obey the lawful orders of whatever civilian leadership the voters place above you, for centuries to come.

Written for the Nebraska Examiner

https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/07/08/celebrating-250-years-of-the-u-s-army/