Garrison Keillor wrote a moving article called America Eats Its Young and his words are especially sharp today on Labor Day in the United States where we celebrate the working person before the real work of the Fall takes us over:
If we insist on looking for something of value in this war, then maybe it is this: Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us. For years they told us one thing while they did another. They said we were winning while we were losing. They said we were getting out while we were going in. They said the end was near when it was far.
Maybe the next time somebody says that our young men must fight and die somewhere, we will not take their word that it is for a worthy cause. Maybe we will ask them to spell it out for us, nice and slow, nice and clear. And maybe the people in power will have learned that the people of this country are no longer willing to go marching off without having their questions answered first…. If we haven’t, then we are as empty and cold as the intersection of Madison and State.
Continue reading → Condemned by the Past and Dead in the Future
I recently heard on the radio 45% of American Black males do not graduate from high school. Why does their education end before their 18th birthday? Is there something culturally askew where education has no value? Are they born not to succeed in life? Is there a genetic code that denies them fruitful opportunity for living? The answer to those questions is a resounding: No!
Continue reading → The Myth of Racial Harmony: Dumb and Dangerous
The other day Janna went into one of the local shops in our Jersey City neighborhood to buy some food. Janna is Deaf and she usually chooses not to use her voice with strangers because if you use your voice then you are expected to vocally communicate on both sides of the conversation and that puts her at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding what is being spoken by a large immigrant population with many accents and unique vocalizations that are impossible to always comprehend and interpret.
On Monday, four star Marine General Peter Pace — speaking in his current role as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the United States military — said, like adultery, being Gay is immoral and that Gays should not be allowed to “openly” serve their country in the armed forces.
Over 65,000 gay and lesbian soldiers currently serve in the military under the current “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” fallacy of a policy that General Pace, pictured below, must enforce.
Continue reading → Duplicity and Immorality: Women and Gays in the Military
Public Opinion is formed in America in the disparate experiences of the masses that the major media then forms and congeals into an entity that can be measured and exploited via advertising.
The Editorial Cartoon, however, has always found its most purposeful purchase just outside that mainstream media venom line to pock and poke fun of falsely considered mainstream media values with sticks of truth and the bones of what is real.
Are you burned out on 9/11? If so, is that a tremendous moral crime for which there is no remedy? How can we — as a world of nations — have so quickly become so tired and weary of an event that smothered the end of any sense of freedom we have left a mere six years ago?
The bigger crime is an ongoing inexcusable wallowing mass of death and despair at “Ground Zero” that started as this:
You must be logged in to post a comment.