Gadfly

Living in Arrogant Valley

June 24th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

In the DSA of Traumatized Homo Sapiens an Illiterate Sociopath was President

According to experts, the Bible contains several versions of an old proverb (Luke and Matthew) that resembles an old English proverb written by John Ray in 1678 that states: “A man be better half blind than have both eyes out.”

Germans have a proverb that says: “Those that rule and be deaf, must see and be blind.” My French ancestors came up with “When a blind man…

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Dystopia or Utopia?

June 18th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Modern Rastafarianism, Ancient Ultra-Orthodox Jewry, and Today’s Protopia

According to Donald Trump’s current “Big Lie,” we once lived in Utopia. He is the man with policies that will return our current life in Dystopia back to Utopia--where we were great. The Donald pledges to “Make America Great Again,” better known on bumper stickers as MAGA.

He stole the phrase from Ronald Reagan. Futurist and co-founder of “Wired” magazine Kevin…

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Dead Poets Mean Live Fascists

June 12th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Why Is the Divided States of America the Most Unequal Society in the World?

I have hundreds of favorite poems that mean much more to me than long-winded prose. My absolute favorite is T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It contains the most depressing line about the human condition: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent seas.”

My top short poem is by Ogden Nash in “Reflections on…

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​Sneakers for Sale

June 4th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Can Someone Tell Me Why Sneakers Sell for $1.5 to $2.2 Million a Pair?

It has to be something other than quality. I shop for used books in thrift stores because I have discovered thick books given as gifts usually have not been read. Last week I picked up a new Microsoft ENCARTA Dictionary—the first dictionary for the Internet age--for $2.50. It was priced at $24.95 U.S. and $36.95 Canada. It’s the first dictionary published in about 30 years, so it…

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​An All-American Virus

May 27th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Question for 2024: Will a Billion Guns and a Quadrillion Bullets Make DSA Safer?

Ever since Lucy fell out of an African tree 3.2 million years ago, animals have been designing new ways to kill each other. For the last 300,000 of those years, Homo sapiens have been inventing more efficient methods.

If we are still around in a few years, one can predict that nuclear weapons will be obsolete. The machine gun probably won the trench warfare of World War I,…

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​American Zombies as Legislators

May 21st, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Fargo Superintendent and School Board Know Right from Wrong

Back in the 1950s when Corky and I lived under Jim Crow laws in Virginia and North Carolina, we were angered to see our Black Marines and neighbors forced by law to walk in the streets of Jacksonville and Parkfairfax instead of on sidewalks.

By that time the southern slave states had passed more than 200 racist laws known as Jim Crow. Southern states passed laws making it a crime to teach Blacks…

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​Will American Nazis Replace Us?

May 17th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Do American Nazis Know the Angel of Death Operated on 3,000 Twins?

I was twelve years old when pictures of thousands of dead, naked, starved Jews stacked like cordwood in neat rows or dumped in concentration camp streets were published in the world press.

Because of the absolute horrors of the Holocaust, I have made a special effort to learn more about Homo sapiens who would do such things to other humans. I have kept a file on the Holocaust for 65…

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A Victim of Schizophrenia

May 8th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

What’s Too Little and What’s Too Much? The DSA Is Famous for Both Positions

Schizophrenia is defined as “any of a group of psychotic reactions characterized by withdrawal from reality with highly variable accompanying affective behavioral and intellectual disturbances.”

Well, this is a big country of more than 335 million people, so mental health experts have determined that as much as six percent of the population, or about 20 million, go…

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A Three-Week Graduation Ceremony

April 30th, 2023

By Ed Raymond 

fargogadfly@gmail.com

When a Spear and a Boomerang Equals a Computer and a Smartphone

Eighteen years ago I wrote a column “Graduating for Life” about Australian aborigine teenagers at age 13 either dying during their graduation ceremonies or surviving the dangerous environment and becoming an adult in their tribe.

With the battles about the role of parents in the education of their children roiling millions of…

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​Anarchy or Democracy?

April 30th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Will we goose-step backward with the GOP or stumble forward with Democrats?

Two hundred years ago English poet William Wordsworth wrote a 14-line sonnet “The World Is Too Much With Us” with these opening lines: “The world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; little we see in nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

A hundred years ago William Butler Yeats published “The…

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