You, along with millions of other American citizens, may be wondering where those tense confrontations in Minneapolis came from. What brought those 3,000 ICE agents to the Twin Cities and the angry citizens into the streets? Many different streams of…
A surprising elevator music Christmas prayer for peace
Not to rush the season or anything — the box stores, television ads and social media feeds have done that — but I want to call attention to a Christmas song you’ve probably already heard this year. It’s part of…
Learning from Trump’s unnatural impatience
Maybe Donald Trump is just a rich guy who is impatient and wants to get richer. He figured out that to get really rich, Musk-rich, you need to have political power, the more the better. Specifically, he must have reasoned,…
The arthritic giraffe
It always troubles me when I hear people say, “I don’t even keep up with the news anymore.” They might be referring to cancelling their hometown newspaper subscription. Newspapers have been hurting for decades, most of their advertising (car dealerships…
Why Trump has a National Police Force
In a previous column, I reported how President Donald Trump is under water on public approval ratings, showing the lowest first July approval rating of any president in the modern era. Today, six weeks later, he’s still under water. Donald…
Language and politics
This year, 2025, is the 100th anniversary of T. S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men, first published in 1925. World War I had ended seven years earlier, in 1918. The next year, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and in…
Religion and politics
I’m all in when it comes to separation of church and state. That’s why I oppose posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and wherever else legislators are clamoring to do so. That is The…
Two great divides
I titled my last column “Divides” because as I said there: “Divides confront us daily. The digital divide, political divides, economic divides, class divides, educational divides.” The focus of that piece was the divide between the world of television commercials…
Divides
Divides confront us daily. The digital divide, political divides, economic divides, class divides, educational divides. You can probably name some others. I still have cable TV. I’m not into streaming. Cable TV has commercials. Most mornings the Today Show is…
Elon, empathy and immigrants
On Feb. 28, Elon Musk took aim at “empathy” on a Joe Rogan podcast. He said empathy is “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” Barely one month later, April 1, in a New Yorker interview, Al Mohler, president of Southern…
Numbers, numbers, numbers
According to the Cleveland Clinic website, arithmophobia is a negative response to numbers or numerical tasks that some people exhibit — a condition that evokes such reactions as chills, nausea, heart palpitations and dizziness. I hope you are not one…
CONTROL Inc.
It’s all about control, not about balancing the federal budget, not about bringing down inflation, not about “waste, fraud and abuse.” President Donald Trump is all about control. Let me count the ways: The Kennedy Center. The president purged the…