Several days after my birth, we were driving home, up the big Third Street hill in Minot, and I was listening to Eisenhower speechify on the radio. It was a bit staticy, but I remember it like it was just several minutes ago. Frankly, he was boring.

President Ike was still in his first term and pledged to remain ever steamed at the Nazis, until flowers bloomed on the moon, at minimum. He was in the business of killing them not many years before becoming president, so Eisenhower didn’t have mixed feelings about Nazis. They were always bad. NOBODY compared. Over 400,000 Americans died in that war.

“During World War II, we we rushed to develop nuclear weapons because we were trying to defeat the Nazis, who, fun fact, pretty much all Americans thought were bad at the time.” — John Oliver

We liked Ike. He was stable, sane and looked better than fat@$$ Don in a golf outfit.  Eisenhower never tweeted and didn’t lie every 15 minutes. At the time, we had no idea that Dwight WASN’T getting up in the middle of the night to cuss out various people and talk smack on the White House party line. He behaved normally, to my recollection, and the clincher for me, Ike and I, looked liked twins when I was 3 days old. Bald as a Brunswick bowling ball and a pate as smooth as a newborn goat. My eyesight wasn’t fully operative, yet.

In 1957, the former general sent the National Guard into Arkansas, backed up by Fargo’s Judge Ronald Davies, to enable the Little Rock Nine, black youths, to safely attend school with the white kids. Dwight stepped up and did the right thing. Many whites weren’t happy. Too many still aren’t.

Dwight had dignity, and he was a tough SOB. Had Eisenhower witnessed the spectacle of Donald Trumps’s bat$#!* insane hee-haw tribalist airing of grievances for 77 minutes (all that was missing was the Festivus pole and the feats of strength) in Arizona, he would have latched onto Donnie John’s testicles with a pair of needle nose pliers and squeezed until 45 coughed up the keys to the country.

And if he knew that Trump was pandering to the tiki tots and their ideological inbred cousins, providing aid and comfort to the enemy, Ike would have done cool things, not approved by the Geneva Conventions, to Donnie with his two iron.

“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. nobody wants to say it, but I will say it right now.” — D. Trump

Nobody who stands up to heavily armed white supremacists is on any other side except good, but the alt-right knew how to interpret the president’s words. Fifty percent is a win for these @$$holes.

Many tried to convince us that hundreds were just there to to gaze into the bronze nostrils of Gen. Lee’s horse, Traveller, just one more time. Such malarkey.

And there are those like Fargo’s Scott Hennen, the frothing radio voice of the tattered fringe right over several blocks in downtown Fargo, who thought the sight of a marching herd of Nazis carrying kitschy Polynesian style torches and chanting racist favorites in an American city was a partisan issue. Maybe to his listeners, and Hennen’s twisted mind, but I would still like to think that most Republicans are anti-white supremacy. And certainly they are against a terrorist attacks, even if the perpetrator isn’t Muslim. Aren’t they?

Unfortunately, in North Dakota, Republican politicians are inclined to attach their campaigns to the mad king. Evidently, the Trumpster fire is still a popular figure with the N.D. GOP and its voters. And it boils to white identity politics, which isn’t new but was relegated to damp rock undersides with the other slimy critters.

Generally, being a racist wasn’t something you wanted to advertise. At least not in this state.

Then along comes the Trump idiot, hitting all of the right notes, for a range of bigots on the spectrum.

Mexicans are rapists, we’re going to build the best wall to keep them out. We’re going to make it so that an immigrant has to have a Nobel prize and be a gold medal Olympic pole vaulter in order to meet the new requirements for entry. The Muslim ban, that made no sense. Birtherism, that was a racial lie. Refugees can wait a few more years because the numbers to be allowed in have been greatly reduced. Transgender people can no longer serve in the military. A stone cold racist and cruel dick is given a presidential pardon. The dip praises a CNN pundit who was fired for tweeting a Nazi slogan. Donnie uses Pocahontas as a slur.  He’s currently screwing with the Dreamers. And then the equivocation on Nazis.

“Jews will not replace us, blood and soil, heil Trump, one people, one nation, end immigration, White Lives Matter, f**k you, fa**ots, and “Go the f**k back to Africa.” Some right-wing demonstrators called specific people “ni**ers” or “fa**ots.” Yes, good people.

“This city is run by Jewish communists and criminal ni**ers,” one @$$hole told Vice News’ Elspeth Reeve.

“As Jews prayed at a local synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, men dressed in fatigues carrying semiautomatic rifles stood across the street, according to the temple’s president. Nazi websites posted a call to burn their building. As a precautionary measure, congregants had removed their Torah scrolls and exited through the back of the building when they were done praying.” — Reform Judaism

“For my part, if I should ever get the chance to confront Richard Spencer (white supremacist honcho), I think I’d conclude my cross-examination with the proposition that by his views and actions he had implicitly renounced his American citizenship and should therefore be deported.” — Steven Hayward, libertarian and conservative author

So, our North Dakota Republicans aren’t running away from this racist in the Oval Office and some who have called for ethnic cleansing. Their constituents evidently find Trump just swell. But, don’t believe me. Forum Communications employs a shill boy blogger, who carries vast amount of oil for his legislative pals, and was responsible for this headline:

“Port: ND politicos are treating Trump like an election year asset”

“Maybe Trump isn’t the political liability some would like us to think. Some will say otherwise, but how the politicians place their bets speaks louder than words,” Port wrote.

Sounds about right. We’ve been hearing the high-pitched squeals, only audible to beagles, complaining about migrant workers, refugees, Native Americans and the LGBT community for years, and someone has been reassuring those with concerns about keeping these groups in check. Some descendants of Europeans feel that white Christian identity is being threatened by ethnic diversity and multiculturalism.

Here’s what Port had to say before the election and prior to his forced Trump brand blood transfusion:

• “While the left overplays the race card, Trump seems content to pander to actual paranoid racists.”
• “Trump knows exactly how dumb his supporters are and has manipulated their ignorance to great effect.”
• “The 2016 election for president now looks to be a competition between corrupt, bought off Clintonism and the former host of “Celebrity Apprentice” whose “America first” campaign has taken on the overtones of a modern sort of fascism.”

Perhaps the next time a legislative candidate knocks on your door, be sure to look through peephole and if you see a torch, latch the deadbolt.

“Since my boyhood, I had accepted without qualification the right to equality before the law of all citizens of this country, whatever their race or color or creed. In World War II, I had affirmed my belief in this principle through orders desegregating many Red Cross clubs, while during some stages of the fighting, I had sent into previous all-white units Negro replacements who not only fought well but also encountered little or no resentment from their comrades.” — D.D. Eisenhower