Strange Times

Several days ago, when I started this entry, it began with the old adage that a week in politics is a lifetime. My focus then was on the turnaround that had rescued Joe Biden’s candidacy from the graveyard and driven Bernie Sander’s to the brink. That was a few days before the corona virus overshadowed…

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If You’re Not Worried, You Should Be

We’re now in the fourth year of the Trump regime, with the daunting prospect that we’re only halfway to its end. The Democrats are flirting with disaster, while Trump continues to undermine institutions that are supposed to safeguard us. If anyone honestly thinks it isn’t so bad, here are at least three areas where we’re…

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A Lesson from my Youth

Back when I was in the 8th grade the de facto leader of the boys in my class was a good athlete named Donny G. Donny was the shortstop when we played softball (or hardball), and he was the quarterback when we played football. We didn’t play basketball. Donny was a so-so student and not…

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The Careless Beekeeper

If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees.                                                                          …

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My Anger, and Perhaps Ours

I haven’t written for some time, partly because of other commitments but mostly because I’ve been at a loss for what to say. Others, professional pundits, have beaten me to the punch as the cascade of outrages continue to pour out of the White House. But I have become slowly aware of the toll that…

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A Time to Speak

I’m suffering from Information Overload, or maybe Outrage Overload, or just plain Trump Overload. I suspect we all are. And that’s a problem. It drains us, saps our civic energy and leaves us exhausted. I’ve written about this before, but the last month has been extraordinary. The pace of the current president’s tweets has increased,…

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Let’s Stop Pretending

For purposes of discussion, let’s say that there are four broad categories where Donald Trump is concerned—those who adore him, those who merely tolerate him, those who think he’s a clown and those who know he’s a clown but pretend that he’s perfectly normal and, of course, The President, entitled to all the honor and…

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On Carnage–and Hypocrisy

“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Donald J. Trump, January 20, 2017 Carnage? Was he talking about the epidemic of mass murders committed by a variety of crazy and not-so-crazy gunmen and the even worse epidemic of daily gun deaths that had claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of American–young…

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The Sin of Silence

“To sin by silence, when they should protest,” it has been said, “makes cowards out of men.”* We are seeing quite a bit of cowardice lately, along with hypocrisy, mendacity and just plain sleaziness. The history of our Republic, as any number of commentators have pointed out lately, has forever been a struggle between our…

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Overwhelmed

I haven’t written anything for a while. It’s dispiriting when the torrent of outrages comes so quickly and relentlessly that it’s difficult to keep up. I start to write about one thing, and before I can finish something equally bad—or worse—comes along leaving my work in the dust. We had the Iranian downing of an…

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