Gadfly

Random Death By Bullets

May 30th, 2018

Our Culture Is Seriously Ill
I was not shocked by the murders at Santa Fe High School. Whenever there has been a mass murder, I just wonder how many and where the next mass murders will be. A society that trades the Second Amendment for a toddler killed every four days by firearms is practicing blood sacrifice and is seriously ill. We also kill 75 pre-schoolers a year with firearms. Our politicians are worshipping at the altars of Big Gun. We don’t even blink at the fact that we have…

Armageddon and Rage

May 23rd, 2018

Is Our Democracy Dying From A Koch Assisted-Suicide?
The One Percent is going after wealth like Captain Ahab went after The Great White Whale. Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal recently wrote about “the up-market way to prepare for Doomsday.” We already know of dozens of the American uber-rich buying up thousands of acres of “Doomsday safe” land while purchasing New Zealand “citizenship” for millions of dollars. We know of tech titans and other filthy rich creating…

A Biblical woman Is really “built!”

May 16th, 2018

We Aren’t Out of The Trees Yet!
Ever since we climbed out of trees and walked on two legs we have been faced with a whole bucket of troubles: sex, greed, political power, race, and religion. In the 21st Century we are still battling over male domination, homosexuality, same-sex-marriage, over 60 recognized genders, celibacy, contraceptives, pro-life and pro-choice, sex abuse, what to do about sex robots, and new items in the bucket such as physician-assisted suicide.

Betty Grande in her…

A Choice: Chateaubriand or Road-Kill Possum

May 9th, 2018

A Swift Solution for Poverty
In response to a column I had written about economic inequality in the United States, a reader emailed me about her experiences. After growing up on a farm near a small Minnesota town, she began cleaning homes for upper-class doctors, politicians, and bankers in the state. She saw wealth in homes, cars, and furnishings that surprised her. But she was absolutely appalled that the owners knew nothing about how other people in a lower economic level lived. In…

Of Nuclear Buttons And Slippery Screwdrivers

May 2nd, 2018

So we have reached the stage where we have Little Rocket Man and the dotard Emperor Donald posing their fingers just slightly above nuclear buttons. To give you some solace, ‘tis said the Pentagon chiefs have removed the nuclear codes from the briefcase carried by a guy who follows our Great Leader. We can only hope the briefcase is empty. Emperor Donald fired the government’s top nuclear expert in the first week of his administration. When we look at just two of our Great Leaders…

Some things are for the birds

April 25th, 2018

Maybe We Should Quote "The Raven" More
The January National Geographic magazine has a remarkable article about the 10,000 species of birds that live around and above us, and it prompted me to recall some of the species I have observed in my lifetime. As a five-year-old farm boy and the youngest of five kids, it was my responsibility to feed the chickens, ducks, and geese we raised for eggs and table. I remember holding the heads and bodies of birds on a wooden block as my mother brought…

What Is The Christian Thing To Do?

April 18th, 2018

Does That Old-Time Religion Signal The End Of Rational Thought?
An incident about gender identity in the Maryland Legislature last week magnified a microcosm of what we are going through in the United States about religion in the Age of Trump. Republican Senator Bryan W. Simonaire of Anne Arundel Countyl, the father of seven children who had strongly opposed same-sex marriage laws, stood up in the Senate chamber and spoke passionately for a law that would allow conversion therapy in…

Are We Losing Einsteins and Carvers?

April 11th, 2018

Don’t We Give A Damn About Education Anymore?
The Donald has been going on a tweet-firing rampage lately, evidently changing his status from king to emperor. Some kings must have approval from their courts and courtiers, but emperors have absolute rule over everybody. So here we have our Emperor-Great Leader, one of the few leaders in the world who is totally ignorant of government, of our and world history, of all scientific fields, of philosophy, of psychology, art, literature,…

Enough To Make You Puke

April 4th, 2018

The NRA Gun Lobby And Republicans Pick Guns Over Kids
After the record-setting “March For Our Lives” protest on March 24, the $5 million-a-year National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre stayed in his bunker and remained tight-lipped, but his trolls dropped their AR-15s, climbed out of their militia foxholes, and put some of the most deplorable crap I have ever heard on the airwaves. One NRA troll said: “Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and…

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…