We don't write here often anymore; the outrages of the Trump administration could fill the Encyclopedia Brittanica at this point, and we just don't have the time. But occasionally the words and actions of our congressional representative, the smarmy Andy Biggs of Arizona's 5th Congressional District, force us back to the keyboard.
This time, it was this tweet:
Now for some important context:
It's been widely reported that Trump has known since at least February of this year, and perhaps early 2019, that Vladimir Putin has been paying bounties to Taliban fighters for the deaths of American troops in Afghanistan. That Biggs continues to ignore this fact--and indeed, praises Trump's comments on "patriotism" while knowing that Trump, by not acting when he first found out about the bounties, or even acting once they became widespread knowledge, and instead extending favors to Putin--has committed treason. Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution defines treason as "levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." That, Trump has surely done. Biggs knows it.
The mountain in South Dakota on which Mount Rushmore's famous faces are carved was sacred to the Great Sioux Nation. They called it the Six Grandfathers--the earth, the sky, and the four directions. That mountain, and the Black Hills of which it's a part, were stolen by the U.S. government in defiance of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. In 1980, the United States Supreme Court, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 US 371 (1980) ruled that the nation's violation of the treaty amounted to a "taking," for which just compensation was required. That compensation--with interest, now surpassing a billion dollars--has never been paid.
The sculptor behind the carvings was strongly associated with the Ku Klux Klan, and was an unrepentant racist throughout his life.
Currently in South Dakota, Trumpian Governor Kristi Noem is involved in a dispute with the Lakota nation over the state's anemic response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Knowing that nonwhite people are more susceptible to the virus (largely due to systemic racism and accompanying poverty; the Navajo nation, for example, has the country's highest per-capita rate of infection), the Lakota people established their own checkpoints--on their own land--to screen for Covid symptoms before people could be allowed into their territory. Gov. Noem has demanded the checkpoints be removed, and has in fact appealed to Trump for assistance in removing them.
Against this backdrop, then, Trump decided to hold an Independence Day event--in effect, a taxpayer-funded campaign rally--at Mount Rushmore on July 3. Noem announced ahead of the event that CDC and other public-health guidelines would be deliberately ignored. Fireworks would be part of the event, despite the fact that they haven't been allowed there since 2009 due to wildfire danger.
Ahead of Trump's arrival, protestors--mostly Native American--tried to block the road to the monument. Noem called out the National Guard to remove the people from their own land.
Trump's speech, as described in the Washington Post, was about what one might expect: "At the foot of Mount Rushmore’s granite monument to his presidential forebears, President Trump on Friday delivered a dark speech ahead of Independence Day in which he sought to exploit the nation’s racial and social divisions and rally supporters around a law-and-order message that has become a cornerstone of his reelection campaign."
All of this--a treasonous president holding a campaign rally at taxpayer expense, a Covid superspreader event made possible only by calling out troops to dispense with the land's rightful owners--fills Andy Biggs with patriotic pride.
And why not? Biggs consistently argues against any precautionary measures recommended by medical science. He wants the nation open for business, knowing that the plague kills non-whites in far greater proportion than whites. He recently referred to the governor's closing certain businesses as an "unconstitutional taking," while ignoring the much greater illegal taking of the Black Hills of South Dakota. He applauds Trump's racism because he shares it.
Biggs is, sadly, in a relatively safe district for a racist Republican. But he's tied himself to the coattails of our least popular president, one whose loss in 2020 is almost certain. Having lost white suburbanites--Biggs's own constituency--those coattails might drag him down to defeat. His likely challenger is Joan Greene.
We can only hope.
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