February 17:

You’re probably wondering, well, where’s the myth breaking? I used to share a lot of the historical events I found relevant to today at my old website, and I should bring a few of the better ones out to update and put here. But let me talk a minute about the book, “From Lincoln to Trump.”

Now second edition is better than first, as I take it to the end of the 2020 election cycle. I am in the process of creating a third edition, which will interest those who want a record of how we finally get rid of Trump and the ill-informed legion he’s created. But second edition has the great feature of showing the evolution of both parties, starting with Washington. It was fascinating for me to learn, for instance, that Jefferson opposed Washington’s politics as being too “king-like” and formed the second political party.

But several other things fascinated me in pulling this book together as well. (1). How Hawaii came to be a U.S. state. It’s not a nice story. (2). You will get the abbreviated version of why Custer’s troops lost the battle at the Little Bighorn. It’s not what you might expect, and I had big plans to share it at the Western Writers of America convention in South Dakota this June. But guess what? They rejected it. You’ll see the full version at Academia.edu and in my Civil War & Bloody Peace book, which ends with the death of the soldier’s orders in 1916. (3). Both that book and From Lincoln to Trump demonstrate how the Republicans dropped civil rights, and actually looked away from the Southern Democrats and Jim Crow law that developed. But in From Lincoln To Trump, you will see how this attitude is slowly shaken up by the various Democratic presidents, and, yes, Eisenhower, until the 1960s when it really got going.

Now, here’s the biggest thing I learned. I expected to show, simply by following all that happened in every presidency to 2020, how the parties changed. But, in fact, I learned that the GOP didn’t evolve. And this book is the biggest indicator of what the country needs going forward. We need to rename our political parties before we really do fight another civil war. Every time I hear some Trump supporter say that it’s the Democrats who supported slavery, so they’re the ones who are racist, I shake my head.

The real problem in this country is that different histories are being taught in the different states. That’s why I’m now a member of the AHA, because I think it’s time that education needs to have a federal mandate of what must be taught, and that’s truth. You know that public schools were formed initially to make us good citizens? But that’s where patriotic history comes from. It’s time we all learned real, true and objective history.

That’s where myths are broken.