Gadfly

​From dark to dumb and dumber

May 5th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

What age has been determined to be the worst in world history?

Historians have estimated about one third of the population of Europe died of the bubonic plague, also known as the black plague, from the fifth century through the 15th century of the Middle Ages. The early years of this era are also often called the Dark Ages by historians. During this disastrous time, the Roman Catholic Church (with its denizens and popes in the Vatican) burned thousands…

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History Takes a Nanosecond

April 27th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

There is a big difference between ears and legs

Our English language adds words to dictionaries every year because there are more than 6,000 languages on earth and we do communicate with friends and enemies. We now have more than 600,000 words in the most complete dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary. This year we added 42 words from other languages as well as words created by new developments in many scientific fields. The dictionary added the…

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​A trifecta of oligarchs, ogres, and oddballs

April 7th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadly@gmail.com

The wizards and kleagles in whites now wear blue suits and red ties

A hundred years ago, more than 30,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan from virtually every state in the Union wearing their white sheets and pointy hoods marched by the White House and down to the capitol before thousands of cheering Americans. They came by foot, horse, steamboat, train, bus, car, taxi and perhaps plane. Rumor was the New Jersey KKK wanted to have a plane carry a huge…

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The Rise and Fall of the Second Trump

March 31st, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

A column on How Trumusklicans are trying to change history

It took William L. Shirer a couple decades to write and then publish “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany,” but it took a very short time to become the 1,599-page explosion that “shook the conscience of the world” after it was published in 1959. I still treasure my paperback copy I paid $1.65 for when I was teaching English literature and history to Fargo…

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​Moronic, idiotic, imbecilic and out-to-lunch

March 29th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

A description of “Big Boss” King Donald and his Trumplican mob

Our new Health and Human Services Dictator Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has sold and been addicted to heroin and other drugs and suffers from worms eating his brain, has a solution for people who have been addicted because of anxiety, depression, diabetes, and other “conditions” he has suffered. He would sentence those people to labor camps called “Wellness Farms” where they would…

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Democracy Does Die in Darkness

February 28th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Lennon: “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can!”

On January 8, 2025, Timothy W. Rybeck of “The Atlantic" magazine published “How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days” with the opening line: “He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.” What immediately leaped into my mind? King Donald Trump. He is going to try to do what Hitler did, so I’m going to insert Trump’s name and some appropriate facts in Rybeck’s opening…

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​Have Homo Sapiens Evolved to Humanus Stupidiens?

February 10th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Homo Sapiens are now old enough to know better

According to fossil experts — so far, Homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years, evolving slowly from a few other Homos, until most of the Neanderthals met our Maker — if there is One. Homo sapiens have been left “alone” at that point, although it seems some Neanderthals have been hiding in political parties for thousands of years. Notice the high cheek bones and the bellicose larynx on…

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​Billionaires, brain rot and bedlam

January 27th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

How billionaires with brain rot are creating bedlam in the USA

On January 21, 2010, the Republican-dominated United States Supreme Court approved a death sentence for American democracy of 250 to 300 years — and we have already served 244 years. The Citizens United decision removed any limits placed on current spending limits for political campaigns and contributions to political candidates, or even the amounts that could be spent by individuals running…

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Brave Old World Meets Hot New Planet

January 17th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Will the Divided States of America Add or Subtract to the Future?

In 1937, English writer Aldous Huxley published his novel of the future “Brave New World 632 A.F.” (after Henry Ford), a world restricted by a shortage of essential resources to two billion people. Now born and raised in human hatcheries, the amount of oxygen provided in a birthing bottle determines where you will spend your life, whether in a leadership role as an Alpha, or in menial…

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​To pee or not to pee — that is a question?

January 6th, 2025

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Maybe we will have a transgender insurrection at the capitol on Jan 6

About 3.18 million years ago an adult female chimpanzee eventually named Lucy (after that famous Lucy in the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”) fell out of a tree in Ethiopia, stumbled, and walked away on two appendages instead of four. Lucy is a relative of ours, a representative of the hominin species called Homo sapiens to which we belong. Although only 3.5 feet…

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