Gadfly

​Democracy or Reich?

November 19th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

That’s the Big Question Today: To Be (Democratic) or Not to Be (Autocratic)

Here we are, only 400 years after our major trouble started with the Mayflower and other ships landing immigrants and slaves on “American” soil named after an Italian entrepreneur named Amerigo Vespucci. He explored possibilities here twice between 1497 and 1504—for Spanish and Portugal kings and queens. I don’t have the room to cover any of the 65,000 years it took to…

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​Some Senators Are Real Horses

November 16th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

A Trivia Question: How Many Horses Have Been Elected Senator?

There is ample critical historical evidence that horses, or their varying parts thereof, have played important roles in the governing of nations for over 2,000 years. Emperor Caligula, who ruled Rome from year 37 to 41, had the qualities of Donald J. Trump as presently listed in the latest Manual of Mental Disabilities---except for one. He trusted someone.

Caligula determined that his…

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​Adults Doing the Hokey-Pokey

November 5th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

This Country Is Going to Hell While Politicians of Both Parties Are Dancing

It’s been many years since Corky and I did the Hokey Pokey, that dance where you forced your extremities, including your head, to flail and shake to a musical Caribbean-like beat furnished by various instruments. The common lines were similar, only substituting body parts: “Put your right arm in, take your right hand out. Put your right arm in, and you shake it all…

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​Truth, Lies, and Tapes

October 31st, 2022

By Ed Raymond 

fargogagfly@gmail.com

Free Speech Costs Billions and Contains Billions of Expensive Lies

Our politicians lied from the very beginning with that infamous phrase: “all men are created equal.” That is, only if you were White and owned property could you vote. Many signers of that declaration owned Black property. The big lie continued for almost a century until 675,000 Americans died in battles over freeing Black slaves and allowing Black men to vote. But then the White…

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​The Death of a Baby

October 24th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Why Did One of the Most Civilized Countries Commit Crimes Against Humanity?

At the end of World War II I was thirteen and enthralled by aircraft carriers, 70-ton tanks, B-29s, and uniforms. Since then, I have read a dozen books and hundreds of articles about the Holocaust, and Corky and I have spent many hours in the Holocaust Museum in Washington. I have always wondered why human beings from one of the most civilized countries in the world could commit…

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​Is This London or Hell?

October 20th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

There Are Many Reasons Why Our Middle Class Is Disappearing

English novelist Charles Dickens, who experienced both poverty and wealth in his lifetime, included both poor and rich in his novels, particularly in Bleak House, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities. Remember Scrooge and Tiny Tim in Christmas Carol?

Raised in London in a family of eight, Charles went to work in a shoe-black factory when he was twelve because his father was…

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​School Lunches and Rookie Dinners

October 1st, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

A Rich Caveman Had Extra Skins While Today a Super Rich Man Has Two Yachts

The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch’s daily recipe for the rich and infamous, publishes a section called “Mansions” every Friday. In the September 16th edition, the section bragged shamelessly that a developer was asking $250 million for a penthouse on the 129th through 131st floors of a New York skyscraper 1,400 feet tall. It had 17,500 sq. ft. of livable space, seven…

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​Warm Wealth or Cold Poverty?

September 25th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

From Mansion or Hovel, We All End Up Dead

We are now living in the Divided States of America, which has been developing for more than 240 years. Economist Frederic Bastiat has come up with the main reason for the division: “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

English poet Thomas Gray captured the…

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​Terrible Transgenders in Trumpistan

September 18th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Double Jeopardy: Being a Member of the LBGTQ+ Community and College Debt

In the 16th Century, King Henry VIII told the Roman Catholic Church in England to go back to Rome after Pope Clement VII refused to give him an annulment or divorce from his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, because she did not give him a male heir to the throne—plus other reasons. Besides, he wanted to marry the beautiful Anne Boleyn, the sister of one of his mistresses.…

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​History Is Going Critical

September 17th, 2022

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Our Society is Facing Several Nuclear Options in These Critical Times

I always had my senior English students at Fargo Central High School read and discuss “The Strange Death of Louis Slotin,” because for the rest of our human history we were going to live or die with atoms.

It had little to do with literature, but a great deal to do with life. Canadian physicist Louis Slotin at the Los Alamos nuclear facility in New Mexico, in 1946, was showing his…

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