Gadfly

A tiny island and a huge country

March 28th, 2018

The beginning and end of two similar societies

A thousand years ago, Polynesians paddled across the Pacific to find new islands to settle. They landed on a tiny, lush, uninhabited island and called it “Te Pito O Te Henua” which means “the navel of the world.”

And over 500 years ago, three ships loaded with Spaniards crossed the Atlantic and landed on a huge inhabited land mass.

Generations passed on the “the navel,” which later was called Rapa Nui, building a culture known for…

A broken and bewildered country

March 21st, 2018

Why is our life expectancy dropping?
We don’t grow bananas in this country but we are rapidly becoming a banana republic. Because of prescription and illegal drug deaths, a firearms death rate 25 times any other developed country, a high suicide rate, and a health care system for the privileged that ignores half of our population, our life expectancy rate is dropping for the second year in a row. We led the world in life expectancy in the 1960s but now are about 15th.

Our military…

What military-style rifles do to human bodies

March 14th, 2018

Bones exploding, organs disintegrating
Let’s get real for a few minutes. Several trauma surgeons, most with Iraq and Afghanistan war experiences, collaborated for a New York Times article, “Wounds from Military-Style Rifles? ‘A Ghastly Thing To See’.”

Rifles with muzzle velocities over 3,000 feet per second explode bones and disintegrate organs. They have the X-rays to prove it. A Sandy Hook first grader was hit by 11 rounds from a Bushmaster. The doctor conducting the autopsy…

Freedom and gun control

March 7th, 2018

When will the NRA gun cult and the gun lobby culture inherit the wind?
It took National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre eight days to crawl out of his cult’s foxhole to answer the murder of 14 high school students and three teachers and the wounding of 14 others in six minutes at Parkland, Florida.

I have listened to Wayne’s rants numerous times, but his appearance before the right-wing nuts at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was different. He was foaming at…

A bloody stage-four gun-culture cancer

February 28th, 2018

The deafening sounds of silence
What have you heard from the Trumpistan gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, and members of The Best Congress Money Can Buy since the Parkland shooting?

I thought of Simon and Garfunkel’s great song “The Sounds of Silence” while waiting for responses. Lines in the third stanza stand out: “No one dared disturb the sound of silence/ ‘Fools, said I,’ You do not know/ Silence like a cancer grows.”

Where was Wayne LaPierre and the NRA? He…

Brave new world, part two

February 21st, 2018

When will we learn to share wealth?
Last week I wrote about how many predictions made by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 book "Brave New World" were beginning to come true in 2018.

When I read the toll to travel on Interstate 66 in northern Virginia last Tuesday morning reached $47.25 during rush hour, I thought another premise of Huxley was coming true.

When Corky and I lived in Washington during 1954-55 while I went through Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia, I commuted 70 miles…

Is it the end of liberal education?

February 14th, 2018

Do we finally have ‘beauteous mankind in a brave new world?’
British philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley used a line of Miranda’s speech in Shakespeare’s play "The Tempest" as the title for his book about the future published in 1932: “O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it!”

Two recent news stories reminded me of why I taught his novel to my senior classes in English literature at Fargo…

A sitting monument

February 7th, 2018

Finally, a fitting monument to the One Percent—a gold toilet
The Middle East has been a human maelstrom for thousands of years because of tribes fighting one another for the four necessities of life. If you wonder about it, study why the region has the highest unemployment rates in the world and presently has 29 million children living in extreme poverty. Many millions of their parents live in abysmal conditions, unable to supply decent housing, water, or nutritious food.

Poverty is the…

Christians who raise Cain

January 31st, 2018

Of witches, goblins, snakes, and other malefactors In this weird world we live in we have religions where worshippers beat themselves bloody with chains and other sharp instruments; true believers stick knives, swords, and other sharp objects through mouths, cheeks, tongues; and snake idolizers wrap themselves with poisonous snakes, hum hymns, and do a hokey dance. Sometimes they die because the rattlers and water moccasins didn’t like their shaving lotion.

Some are Christians who use the Bible to come up with bizarre ideas. We have…

Does the Bible really tell me so?

January 26th, 2018

Helen Grace James

According to modern scientific research, over 1500 animal and human species have different gender identities while evolving. We have presently identified at least 60. Facebook offers its clients the right to identify up to 50 different gender identities.

Many countries in the world have approved same-sex marriage, military participation by gays, and some recognize third genders on birth certificates. When King Donald decreed that our military would no longer accept…

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