• Last week a Sodus man was shot and killed by State Police after lowering a shotgun and firing at the responding police. Unfortunately and very truthful, the concern over many in the police world was that they were grateful the man was NOT Black! No doubt immediate questions would have popped up on the internet.

• At last, somebody was kept in jail for a felony crime. Mark L. Stedge Jr., age 24, of 80 Maple Avenue in the Village of Sodus was  charged, after it was reported to deputies that he was having sexual contact with a 9 year old child over a two year period. Luckily, due to Governor Cuomo and his Democrat-ruled Assembly and State Senate with their policy and laws to let everybody out of jail, regardless of the crime committed, a local judge committed Stedge on No Bail.

Of course, once the new “system” finds out, I am sure Stedge will be released due to their policy that no one really is bad,  just misunderstood. (I later learned he was released the same day).

• I agree the Confederate flag should have bitten the dust over a century ago. I also agree that promoting as heroes, those who promoted the use of slavery and racial bias as a social norm, should not be honored as national, or regional heroes.

I agree the statue of Theodore Roosevelt on a high horse as an American Indian and a Black man standing next to the horse on the statue at a NYC library was a bit demeaning. We have to understand that back when the statue was done, things and people were looked at a bit differently. 

Yes, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had their low points racially speaking, but they also had their high points in a society that has grown to understand the times in which they lived.

Should statues and reminders be removed? Yes, but only perhaps because the times of believing historical figures were flawless is upon us. We must take care to understand, respect and not overreact.

John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, were not perfect human beings. Nowadays we have learned not to worship, but respect history and the “heroes” it produced.

• Remember when we were taught about the destruction of the Spanish Armada during the time of Queen Elizabeth the First? We were taught the nasty Spanish were destroyed with the help of an inconvenient storm and then by the British Navy. Well, it did not really happen that way. In fact the Spanish fleet was damaged, but not destroyed. In fact the British reprisal a year later was perhaps more of a disaster.

FAKE NEWS, promoted by Queen Elizabeth #1, changed history, and something we were still taught in the 20th Century.

• The British garnered much support worldwide when they ended the practice of slavery 30+ years ahead of the United States. What history forgets to mention widely, was that slave owners  within the British colonies were compensated for THEIR loss for each slave freed.

• The Irish were quasi-forced into indentured service. They were far from the reality of real slavery dumped upon and forced upon African Americans.

As in education and history, we must look closely and try to understand the times they occurred, or in which they were written.  You know that all-encompassing phrase: “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it”, well it has a counterpart. Those who believe all history are surely deemed to repeat it. Fake news is a reality, not just attributed to media, but convenient to those who need to survive politically.