Photo credit for photo of child: Mohammed Ibrahim, Unsplash All the News That’s Not Fit to Print The New York Times, the “newspaper of record” printing “all the news that’s fit to print,” won’t publish my comments about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. That is a bit strange since I was once what the Times called a “trusted commentator.” That category of those who commented on articles at the Times has long since vanished. I guess some of us…
Photo credit: Clem Onoighuo, Unsplash William Was Prescient There were many things that I liked about William. He showed up at our door during the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the early 1980s. William was a handsome guy who had graduated from Harvard during the Vietnam era. Despite his activism in the Freeze, he said that he never took part in an anti-war rally or march during the Vietnam War. I’ve heard that admission a few…
Photo by Nick Fewings, Unsplash Once There Was Hope Readers may react in shock that there was a time in not-so-recent memory where there was hope for a better nation and a better world. Looking out of any window today, the prospect for hope looks worse than dim; in fact, hope seems to have disappeared. But it was just after the Vietnam War when hope seemed a real possibility. We, in the peace movement, had…
Library of Congress, Unsplash Hugues Matthews, Unsplash Adventure Albanic, Unsplash Living in the Land of Trump Donald Trump is a disaster and a national disgrace, but his rise to authoritarian and absolute power, with a few federal judges nipping at him, was completely predictable within the confines of the federal government. I trace Trump directly back to the cue-card reader, Ronald Reagan. Reagan began the vicious right-wing attacks against the government that led in a…
The Atomized Society Photo credit: Pablo Chiabrando at Unsplash We’re living in a society that intentionally atomizes or separates people from one another. People are meant to relate to others; we’re meant to be social, but the incidence of loneliness and living separately is so prevalent here that it approaches being seen as normal, and it is not. Part of the cause is the Internet. With the rise of the Internet and smartphones, people could…
Photo credit: Mufid Mainun, Unsplash Their Best Shot I wanted Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. to give me their best shot. I don’t mean the daily worst shot I get when I open the British Guardian or the New York Times. Both of those papers tell me early every morning just how bad and how far to the political, economic, and social right we have moved as a society. If someone would have predicted…
Photo credit: Shane Cottle on Unsplash Unions on Labor Day The first attack against unions came with the anti-strike provision of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) following the employment boom of World War II. For a time, unions swelled as workers filled jobs created by the post-World War II boom in consumer goods. The housing market exploded as people like me filled the ranks of the baby boom. School enrollment also skyrocketed. It seemed as if…
Photo credit: Humphrey M, Unsplash All of the Rearguard Battles The realization that all of the movements for peace and a better world had come up short struck me recently. Since around 1973 in my case, there had not been one instance of a clear victory to defeat the forces of reaction. That’s one hell of a long time! It’s one hell of a lot of failures! The last unequivocal achievement that I can name…
I have a nonsensical commitment to staying the course. In sailing, that strategy could prove disastrous! I believe that something is owed to people who have provided services of one kind or another over several years. I’ve been going to the same hairstylist in Albany, New York, for about 10 years, so the commitment idea has long since kicked in. Over the past several months, however, the trip to Albany has begun to drag on…
Photo credit: The tree, Howie Lisnoff Howie, you must be out of your tree! Does that mean for being a leftist, or maybe even being the last new leftist? No, because there are many new leftists who are still hanging on, maybe by a single thread these days, but still hanging on in the face of the utter disaster around us. And the disaster of the US political system mounts each day. Inequality has festered…