Society
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Society
Recently during one of our regular morning conversations before we get up and start our day, my sweetheart and I talked fondly about our childhood memories, we both feel blessed to have experienced a somewhat idyllic childhood. We’re Baby Boomers to give you a reference on when we grew up, and we’re white so that certainly played into the equation, but this isn’t going to be about race, it’s going to be about the safety and security of our parents and why I wasn’t able to provide that to my children.
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Society
Despite all of our effort, our best intentions, the effort we make to rise above, the self-help books we read or the advice we get from those whom we respect we still come to a place when we have to do something we don’t want to, when we have to open our mouth and speak from deep inside ourselves and make the choice to use our voice to have a difficult and painful conversation. Sometimes we have to accept that we cannot love our neighbor. We have to accept that no matter how hard we have tried we will not be able to achieve a peaceful relationship with another human being. Sometimes we have to part ways and promise to do no harm. Hopefully, it is only rarely that we must turn away from another person because we cannot reach compromise and further interaction will only do damage. That is where I am today. And I am deeply saddened by it.
- Written by: Curtis W. Long
- Category: Society
France has completed voting in the first round, where an inordinate number of presidential candidates vied for the privilege of proceeding to the next round of voting. The two survivors are extreme right-winger Marine Le Pen and fulcrum-sitter Emmanuel Macron, who bested Le Pen by 2.5 points. They will meet in a decisive second-round shootout on May 7.
- Written by: Curtis W. Long
- Category: Society
There was a hit song built around an upper-class neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. No one ever mentions the nuclear physicist elephant or elephants living in “Gangnam style” in Pyongyang, North Korea.
No one doubts the abilities of the North Koreans; nevertheless, joining the world’s “Nuclear Club” certainly would require technical and material support from individuals or nations already in the club. Why is it that, in all of the angst over Kim Jong Un’s madness and The Bomb, no one ever addresses the pachyderms m-m? Could it be:
- Written by: Curtis W. Long
- Category: Society
Those amazingly pinpoint-accurate Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at a Syrian airbase carried with them the disgust of the civilized world. The DNA of that revulsion has long roots; they extend over time and space. In these modern times, there was Nanking; Kristallnacht/the camps; Cambodia; Bosnia; Rwanda... These were episodes of utmost political outrage against humanity that exceeded established perimeters, and wherein organized nation states could not or would not intervene. In these cases, the world tends to flagellate itself for some time afterwards. The last straw for the otherwise callous and isolationist Donald Trump was the suffering of, “Those beautiful babies” dying from chemical warfare in Syria. Also, his actions went in the face of his stated benign feelings toward Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin, who are in cahoots in the multifaceted Syrian mélange of combatants.
- Written by: Bent Lorentzen
- Category: Society
Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen meets with Trump in the Oval Office on March 30, 2017
March 31, 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Danish sale of the former Danish Virgin Islands to the US. And various groups representing the interests of the descendents of African-Danish slaves are currently in Denmark to again officially ask the Danish government for an apology. By virtue of that sale they experienced on their bodies and minds their own resale to a foreign power as objects to be traded and violently forced into corporate slave labor conditions on sugar and other plantations, even though on paper slavery had officially been abolished in Denmark, the Virgin Islands and the USA.
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Society
Watching adults argue, insult each other, and be mean to each other is difficult, especially for the empathetic heart. Watching children be mean is doubly painful. It is painful because we know that the child learned his/her behavior at home and the parents and family are not able or willing to be an example of openness and understanding. We know that children are sponges of their environment and when we witness cruelty and bigotry we know that an adult showed them how to be that way. And now..... now, we have an adult in the highest leadership role our country allows, the presidency, who is personifying racism. #45.
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Society
After the election I wrote about a local group forming in my neighborhood. I thought I would give an update on our local assembly and how we are progressing. Last night’s Farewell Address was more inspiring than I thought it would be, I had expected that I would cry (which I did, of course) but I did not think that I would be happy at the end of it, yet I was. Once again the man spoke with such passion that I felt how the Patriots at the Battles of Lexington and Concord may have felt. My thoughts were, “YES! We can do this. We should do this. We will do this.” In balance to President Obama’s speech last night, the minority elect president looked like a complete moronic buffoon at his first press conference, maybe it is better that he tweets instead of speak because the man cannot put a sentence together. He is Falstaff to Obama’s Cicero. Are the next 4 years going to be challenging? Oh, yes, they certainly are, but we can do it. We have struggled and triumphed before and we can defeat bigotry and hatred and greed. Let’s do as the president, who will surely go down in history as one of our greatest, asks, “....whether you are young or whether you're young at heart, I do have one final thing to ask of you as your President -- the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago. I'm asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change -- but in yours.” That’s what my little group in an obscure county are going to do, have faith in ourselves.
