Musings and Thoughts for Friday, May 2, 2025

Late Morning, Friday, May 2, 2025, Miami, Florida

It’s another warm and muggy spring day in South Florida as another workweek winds down. Currently, the temperature is 79°F under mostly sunny conditions. With humidity at 60% and the wind blowing from the east-southeast at 7 MPH (11 Km/H), the heat index is 87°F (30°C). Today, we can expect mostly sunny skies and a high of 83°F (28°C).

Today I awoke – early, as usual – and immediately logged to Facebook, where I noticed two vastly different posts. One was positive, the other one…not so much.

‘Reunion: Coda’ Gets Book Blasted!

First, let’s talk about the positive post – a “book blast” for Reunion: Coda by my friend and fellow blogger, Thomas Wikman. Thomas and I “met” a long time ago when we wrote reviews for the late and lamented website Epinions, and even though we’ve never met in person, we have developed a meaningful friendship that has endured even 11 years after Epinions was shut down by its corporate owner, eBay.

Thomas is a retired software/robotics engineer and author of the book The Life and Times of Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle: Stories and Tips from Thirteen Years with a Leonberger (Thebes Press, 2022), a biography of his beloved dog Bronco, which doubles as a guide to the Leonberger dog breed. (I own a copy of this book and I highly recommend it.) He also has two blogs on WordPress, Leonberger Life and Superfactful; I strongly recommend those as well.

As I said before, I woke up well before 7 AM here on the East Coast, booted up my computer, and went straight to my Facebook profile. It’s a habit I’ve had since the 2010s when my mom was terminally ill and I needed the comfort of long distance connections through social media, and I haven’t shaken it.

Anyway, the first thing I noticed on my Facebook timeline was a post from Thomas featuring the cover for the Kindle edition of Reunion: Coda and this headline: Check out the book blast for Alex Diaz-Granados new book.

I’m not a public relations whiz, so until recently I didn’t know what Thomas meant by doing a “book blast.”  Basically, book blasts are spontaneous announcements of an author’s newest book and usually feature the cover art, a brief introduction, and relevant information about the content, its availability on various formats, and a brief biography of the author. Thomas bases his book blasts on the Amazon product pages and thoughtfully includes links to the Kindle, paperback, and hardcover editions.

I am, as you can imagine, over the moon with gratitude and happiness!

If you want to check out Thomas’s “book blast” for Reunion: Coda, you can go here: Book Blast Reunion Coda

Trump Touts ‘Victory Day’ to Mark the End of WWII – Like Putin’s Russia

The other Facebook post I noticed earlier this morning wasn’t on my personal page, but rather on the “general timeline” on Facebook. Earlier this morning, Jim Wright, a commentator I follow on Meta’s primary social network, posted a screenshot of a “truth” posted by our wannabe dictator Donald Trump on his Truth Social “Twitter from Wish” site, bragging that he was declaring May 8 as Victory Day to commemorate – on the wrong date, at that – the end of World War II and that November 11, which is currently observed as Veterans Day, will revert to its original commemoration of the end of World War I’s  hostilities.

“Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result in World War II,” Trump stated Thursday night in a Truth Social post. “I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I.”

It should be noted that President Trump has misrepresented America’s role in World War II, suggesting that the United States won the war single-handedly. While the late entry of the United States into the conflict was decisive for various reasons, it is important to acknowledge that the British halted Hitler’s series of victories when the Royal Air Force defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain in 1940—a period during which many Americans were advocating for the U.S. to remain out of the conflict with Nazi Germany. Additionally, the Soviet Union’s Red Army was responsible for killing three out of every four German Wehrmacht and SS members in battle from June 1941 to May 1945.

American industrial capacity and manpower were undoubtedly essential to the global conflict, and the United States emerged as a superpower alongside the Soviet Union in 1945. However, contrary to President Trump’s statements on Truth Social, the war was not won by the United States alone. Furthermore, World War II did not conclude on May 8, 1945. Nazi Germany officially surrendered twice within 24 hours: first on May 7, 1945 at General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France, and then again in Soviet-held Berlin due to the Soviets’ claim that the Red Army officer present at Reims was not authorized to sign the surrender document. This occasion was historically commemorated as Victory in Europe (V-E) Day until the 1970s, with some states recognizing it as a holiday.

However, World War II persisted in the Pacific theater until August 15, 1945. On that day, the Imperial Japanese government publicly announced its surrender to the Allies at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war one week earlier. This day was informally observed as Victory over Japan (VJ) Day. Ultimately, World War II concluded entirely on September 2, 1945, when Japanese government and military officials signed the instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri (BB-62) in Tokyo Bay.

(Historically, Germany did not remove Adolf Hitler or the Nazi regime in 1945. There were several assassination attempts against Hitler between 1939 and 1944, but only one—the July 20, 1944 bomb plot by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg—came close to succeeding. After this attempt, Hitler’s security measures were further tightened, and the severe reprisals against the conspirators discouraged other Germans from attempting to kill him. Albert Speer, who served as Hitler’s architect and Minister of Armaments and War Production, claimed that he planned to use gas to kill Hitler in the Führerbunker but was prevented by changes to the bunker’s air intake system. These claims have been questioned by historians. It wasn’t internal opposition that ended Hitler’s 12-year rule; on April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker alongside his wife of less than a day, Eva Braun, as Soviet forces closed in on the Reich Chancellery during the Battle of Berlin.)

Trump and his MAGA supporters deeply irritate me. The 47th President of the United States seems to have less understanding of history at 78 years old than I did when I was 10. While he may possess something I don’t—a college degree—he is historically illiterate, and many of his fervent followers are as well. His interpretation of World War II appears to be shaped more by Hollywood movies than by factual documentaries or the numerous history books on the subject. He is behaving like an arrogant, nationalistic authoritarian.