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I suggested the following after my reply to a column in the DNT that I found serious fault with. You can read my reply in full in The Seditious Six post.
Harry Welty of Duluth is a former School Board member who says he “has been reading Pulitzer-worthy American histories in bulk since (President) Donald Trump’s first election.” He wrote this for the News Tribune.
I’ve mentioned in recent posts on some of these Pulitzer winning and worthy books in Recent posts from the Books category.
As I explain often I’ve never prioritized fiction although I have a pretty good knowledge of authors and book titles that are highly regarded. I have even taken some steps to catching up on them now that I’m in my last quarter century and feel like my knowledge of history is such that I can make better sense of them and I’ve recently dived into a book that is a book for our times as it was when published in 1946.
I’m only 29 pages into the 438 page All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. Its a thinly disguised treatment of the 1930’s version of Donald Trump. Governor Huey Long was probably the man Franklin Roosevelt was most wary of. A populist, opportunist and corrupt Governor of the first order Penn Warren uses the voice of his cynical but loyal right hand man to give us an intimate picture of Long who in this book is called Willie Stark. If you remember the rest of the novel’s nursery rhyme title you will get a foretaste of the real Long’s end.
I stopped and reread a passage that an earlier reader had marked because it perfectly described the empty corps of today’s Republican party and its Trump “idealism.”
To set the scene our story teller, Jack Burden, is leaning on a fence during a publicity stop at Willy’s Father’s home. He’s slipped away from everyone to take a couple sips from his hip flask when he hears but pretends not to someone about to join him in leaning on the fence:
In Burden’s words:
“I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn’t look around. If I didn’t look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of… What you don’t know know don’t hurt you, for it ain’t real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist… If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn’t real anyway.”
Robert Penn Warren
I will finish the other 409 pages of this book!
In other news I am not currently included in an upcoming Indivisible organizations series of Zoom introductions for people running for the 8th Congressional District seat. I got an invite to listen so I sent this question to them much as I did when I heard about the forum they put on in Denfeld a month ago.
Date: 2/18/26 10:23 AM (GMT-06:00)
To: Duluth Indivisible
Subject: Harry Welty’s participation in upcoming candidate forums
I must have missed the invitation for this.
A little more information about my campaign.
Upon reflection, I have reconsidered my intention to run as a Democrat. If I am not on the ballot I will support whichever candidate wins the DFL primary.
I am pleased that a candidate like Mr. George Conway in New York is moving to the Democratic primary.
But I think I can help our democracy more by being a thorn in the side of traitors like Pete Stauber in his primary. I would like to make that case in your upcoming zoom forums. I hope I can join them.
Harry
