For a Dignity Deserved

I have avoided writing about the blubber-butt we elected President. I lost my patience with the childish perlocutions that litter his speeches, press conferences, and tweets with half-truths, lies, and non-sequiturs. He paints an American portrait I don’t recognize. The falsehoods and toadyism hide a self-loathing incapable of supporting the charade of power and truth old blubber-butt wishes to…

“Lately, the words Donald Trump trigger two syllables.” We had sat down for dinner. “Yeah.” My wife dislikes it when I frame a question as a declarative sentence. “Rosebud.” I expect her to say, “Oh, okay” or “That’s silly.” “What?” “Rosebud.” “What the hell are you talking about?” My allusion to Orson Welles’s movie Citizen Kane was wasted. After 50 years of marriage, I didn’t know she…

Many, many years ago, I shuffled my books under my desk and folded my hands atop my desk. I straightened my blue tie under the collar of my pale blue shirt with the school’s emblem stitched on the breast pocket. I sat in a classroom on the second floor, above the Catholic Church, where I attended mass every Sunday at 9:00 am with the rest of the St. Vincent Ferrer Grammar School students. Yes. I…

Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his State of the Union on January 11, 1944. He issued a challenge, which observers have called the Second Bill of Rights. These words rang true 80 years ago. They still ring true. It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before…

Like River City’s Harold Hill, some politicians whip up a frenzy of discontent. A historical example is Senator Joseph McCarthy. He wasn’t fretting out supposed waste and fraud in government bureaucracy. He was looking for commies in government and the entertainment industry. His lead prosecutor was Roy Cohn, who later became a legal advisor for Donald Trump. They were merciless, destroying…

A new sadopopulism has dimmed American integrity. The sunlight of integrity faded about a decade ago when a political hopeful was caught on tape bragging that he grabbed women, and they liked it. There was a time when no political party would have endorsed such a candidate, but three times in less than a decade, the Republican Party has. Twice in that time, Americans elected him President. Under…

  As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.African Proverb.   One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they. Jean-Jacques Rousseau   The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good. John Locke   “Liberty is Equally as pre[c]ious to a Black man, as it is to a white one.” Lemuel Haynes,…

A few nights ago, I was eating dinner and listening to “my” station on Pandora. It was Otis Redding’s turn. He sings “Change is Gonna Come.” Otis and the song touched this child of the 60s. Change is Gonna Come I was born by the river in a little tentOh and just like the river I’ve been running ev’r sinceIt’s been a long, a long time comingBut I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will It’s been…

Economic Reality Lost in the Recent Census Bureau Report

The U.S. Census Bureau announced a few days ago that median household income in 2019 increased by 6.8% from 2018, and the official poverty rate decreased 1.3 percentage points. Great news. Americans are earning more and they are lifting themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, the percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2019 was 92.0% and 8.0% of people, or 26.1…

For the Want of Heroes

Friday evening, the world lost a superhero, Notorious RBG (a.k.a. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg).

Her body had not chilled, and Senator Mitch McConnell announced that he would put forward Trump’s nominee for the seat of Justice Ginsberg. Why? There was no one American with common sense who didn’t know that he started making phone calls as soon as he heard. Why did he have to announce the…

Being Handed the Short End of the Stick

Dear W. and M.,

Laila Lalami is a Muslim Moroccan-American. Sometimes American society considers her White, sometimes Black. Never Christain, which seems to be citizenship requirement in the minds of some Americans. She presents her story and that of Muslims here. She writes well. She’s emotionally dispassionate, allowing facts to ellicit the reader’s disgust for events facing Lalami or other…

Suburban Women Not Falling for Trump’s Southern Strategy

Dear boys,

You’re too young to care, but our president’s attempt to frighten suburban women is failing, according to an article in the New York Times: “Their communities feel safe to them, and they’re not too concerned about poorer neighbors moving in, according to polls in some key battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College. They say in a national Monmouth University poll…

The Looter of the American Spirit; the Arsonist of American Liberty

Dear grandsons,

There are days when I so dislike writing this blog that I feel sick. This is one of those days. It’s not the writing, nor the topic (equity for those not paying attention). I wanted to puke because of American’s willingness to accept those politicians who pander to the lowest common denominator of American society. They don’t respect minorities, women, the right of dissent, and…

Understanding “Lift Every Voice” in Context with Its Time

Dear Princes of my life,

Yesterday, I told you that “Lift Every Voice and Spring” should be our nation’s anthem. It’s a beautiful song—its lyrics, melody, and sentiment—reflecting the ideals of America. I forgot to mention its context. Thomas Mallon in the New Yorker reminded me. He wrote a powerful piece about the 1920 election of Harding.

The events of the previous two years unsettled the…