Happy Birthday to the father of Alaska statehood & why Trump would hate him

Happy birthday to the father of Alaska statehood… and here’s why Trump would hate him. The list is long.

When you think of Alaska, you probably think the reddest of the red – half-term governor Sarah Palin, almost-US-Senator Joe Miller, and the longest serving member of the House of Representatives (which I still cannot explain to anyone who asks) Don Young.

But I like to remember when we had someone else with different ideas at the helm. He was the 7th Territorial Governor, and one of the two first U.S. Senators from the brand new state of Alaska – Ernest Gruening. He’s everything the right hates today, but he’s a stalwart reminder of how it once was – the things we valued in leaders. I’ll highlight and annotate those currently-offensive things below.

[Everything gets wavy and you hear harp music…]

Gruening was Jewish and hailed from the state of New York [sounds a little too much like Chuck Schumer, and also offensive to Nazis, some of whom are very fine people], born there in 1887. He was Harvard educated [elite liberal east coast college!] and got his medical degree, but inspired by Roosevelt’s New Deal politics [socialism!], he decided he’d abandon that career for something more exciting and meaningful – journalism [fake news!]. 

In 1928, he published a comprehensive book on the country of Mexico [criminals and drug dealers], one of his areas of expertise, which the State Department and the Mexican government [won’t pay for the wall] tout as recommended reading, even today. For his effort he received the Order of the Aztec Eagle [wrong kind of eagle!] from the Mexican government [still won’t pay for the wall].

He was also the head of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction [come on, it wasn’t that bad, they’ll be fine] Administration 1935-1937. In 1939 he was appointed Governor of Alaska by President Franklin Roosevelt [socialist!] in 1939, and elected to the United States Senate October 6, 1955 from the Territory of Alaska as an advocate of Alaska statehood. He was elected as a Democrat [treasonous, traitorous, liars who hate America!] to the United States Senate on November 25, 1958 and served until 1969.

During his service he remained devoted to foreign affairs paying particular attention and pushing against aggressive U.S. policies toward Haiti [shithole country] and Mexico [the whole country should be illegal, also shithole], and denouncing the Viet Nam War [dirty hippie!].

Alaskans loved this socialist Jewish New York liberal elite Harvard fake news-writing lover of criminals and shithole countries so much that they even enshrined his image as one of each state’s two notable people in statuary hall in the Capitol in Washington DC.

So happy 131st birthday Senator Gruening. As much as you are missed, you’d probably be glad you weren’t around for this chapter in history.

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