Category: Opinion

Categories
At Large Opinion

Information Overload

“Covid met January 6th. They slept together and gave birth to the anti-Christ of anger, fear, distrust, disinformation, and trauma that plagues America to this day.”

That was an X/Tweet on my timeline last week. I hope it was written by a human and not a bot because it reflects a very human feeling I’ve been trying to get my head around. I think we’re in the midst of one of the most disordered eras in the history of this country, comparable to our great wars, our Great Depression, our presidential assassinations.

We are riding a chaotic chariot of change with no idea of where or when it stops. We have come to a place where we can’t even agree that the sky is above us, that day follows night. Facts are fungible. Everyone is entitled to their own facts because you can “prove” anything. Politics and religion have become intertwined and irresolutely tribal. Disinformation is the currency of the realm, a bloated ratatouille of content — true, false, and irrelevant — that overloads our brains. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, Truth Social, even such presumably benign sites as Nextdoor have become infiltrated with the madness of our political discourse. Every commenter is a pundit or a cynic or an expert … on everything. Crime is everywhere. Democrats are pedophiles. Trump shits his pants. Biden can’t walk. Trump has dementia. Be very afraid. Be very confused.

Former President Trump’s rally in New Jersey last Saturday provides a perfect template for what I’m talking about. Prior to the event, Trump touted that there would be 80,000 people there, so that number became the focal point. When Trump began speaking, pictures from Trump supporters, mostly taken from the stage area or from the crowd, were cited as evidence that Trump had drawn at least 100,000 people. “Let’s see Biden draw a crowd like this!” they said.

Then photos from anti-Trumpers appeared that purported to show a much smaller crowd. Next came photos of a full Michigan football stadium and of a Taylor Swift concert. “This is what 100,000 people looks like,” said these posters. “Compare this to photos of Trump’s pathetic rally. Hah!”

Not to be outdone, an aerial photo of 400,000 people appeared under the headline: “Trump Draws Massive Crowd to New Jersey Rally.” Roger Stone and lots of other Trump supporters retweeted it. But the picture turned out to be an aerial shot of a 1994 Rod Stewart concert in Brazil. Boo! Fake news! Then video appeared of Trump speaking to a small crowd, possibly near the end of his speech. No way, said his supporters. It was “AI-generated and put out by Antifa.” Or something.

So how many people came to hear Trump speak? Pick a number. There’s “proof” of everything, so everything is meaningless. And maybe that’s the point: Flood the zone with so much conflicting information that none of it can be trusted, that it all can be discounted.

How did we go from a country that elected a centrist African American 12 years ago to one that actually appears capable of reelecting an amoral, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed misogynist who took away women’s bodily autonomy, stole federal classified documents (and probably sold them), slept with porn stars, botched the handling of a pandemic that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and, oh yeah, tried to overturn a presidential election?

What. The. Hell?

Normally when a time of upheaval is over, a country will celebrate. There are parades, a coming-together, a time of kumbaya. Americans have had no downtime in the past eight years, no room to reflect — just unrelenting chaos. The Covid pandemic continued implacably, even as the 2020 political campaign unfolded. People were still dying by the thousands, while two major party candidates debated and campaigned in the midst of it. Remember the masked appearances and debates? Even masks and vaccines became political. So exhausting.

Then the election happened and Trump lost (really), and as most predicted, he claimed it was all rigged. Phony Venezuelan voting machines! Mule teams! Crooked election workers! A minute later and it was January 6th, and we all watched an attempted insurrection in real time. It’s all been too much. Too many bad actors, too many alternate facts that created an information overload, one that allowed a man with no moral core to attain the highest office in the land. And to possibly do it again.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

War, Money, and Universities

Pro-Palestinian encampment at Tulane University (Photo: William Morgan | Dreamstime.com)

Human politics — from global to local — remain mixed with hatred, dominance, and … well, dehumanization. We’ve organized ourselves across the planet around one primary principle: the existence of an enemy. The division between “us” and “them” can be based on anything: a difference in race, language, culture — or simply opinion, which is beginning to happen on campuses across the country, as peaceful, intensely determined protesters, demanding their institutions divest from the Israeli war machine, face violent resistance from police and/or counter-protesters.

Yes, the peaceful protesters are interrupting the status quo — setting up encampments, even occupying university buildings. For instance, at Columbia University, students renamed the occupied Hamilton Hall, declaring its new name to be Hind’s Hall, after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli armed forces, along with the rest of her family (and several aid workers), as they were fleeing their home in Gaza. The point of the protests is, indeed, to change the world: to stop U.S., including university, support of the devastating “war” (i.e., carnage). They’re not trying to eliminate an enemy but, rather, illuminate the situation — putting themselves on the line to do so.

Some of the responses to the protests are definitely illuminating. A statement from UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment, for instance, noted: “The life-threatening assault we face tonight is nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror. For over seven hours, Zionist aggressors hurled gas canisters, sprayed pepper spray, & threw fireworks and bricks into our encampment. They broke our barriers repeatedly, clearly in an attempt to kill us.”

Furthermore, the account went on: “Campus safety left within minutes, external security the university hired for ‘backup’ watched, filmed, and laughed on the side as the immediate danger inflicted upon us escalated. Law enforcement simply stood at the edge of the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help. … The university would rather see us dead than divest.”

In other words, those damn students are the enemy. Even when the response to the protests isn’t outright violence, it’s often rhetorically violent, such as GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee calling the protesters terrorists and declaring, “Any student who has promoted terrorism or engaged in terrorist acts on behalf of Hamas should be immediately added to the terrorist watch list and placed on the [Transportation Security Administration] No-Fly List.”

This is utterly linear, minimalist thinking. Critics aren’t engaging in a debate on the nature (and necessity) of war, plunging, with the protesters, into a complex discussion of global politics, military industrialism, and the morality of killing. That’s too much trouble! They’re simply calling the outraged protesters “the enemy” — just a bunch of terrorists, same as Hamas. And yeah, no doubt part of that good old axis of evil. 

This is the thinking the protesters are trying to disrupt! Alas, it’s also solidly part of the infrastructure of the status quo. Militarism is baked into the American core. When we’re not waging our own wars, we’re enabling various allies to do so.

As Heidi Peltier, writing at Brown University’s Costs of War Project, points out, regarding this country’s annual budget of nearly $2 trillion: “Almost half of the U.S. federal discretionary budget is allocated to the Department of Defense and more than half of the discretionary budget goes to ‘defense’ overall, which includes not only the DoD but also nuclear weapons programs within the Department of Energy and additional defense spending in other departments. … As a result, other elements and capacities of the U.S. government and civilian economy have been weakened, and military industries have gained political power. Decades of high levels of military spending have changed U.S. government and society — strengthening its ability to fight wars, while weakening its capacities to perform other core functions. Investments in infrastructure, healthcare, education, and emergency preparedness, for instance, have all suffered as military spending and industry have crowded them out.”

The campus protests around the country, at which, so far, more than 2,000 students have been arrested, primarily address the twisted irony of money. Universities have multi-billion-dollar endowments — donation money — which they then invest in the stock market, in various companies, including … well, yeah, weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and many more. Oh, the mysterious, ironic flow of money!

At New York University, a spokesman informed protesting students that the university is not divesting from such companies because it needs to maximize its investment returns in order to “help the university fulfil its research and educational mission.” You know, to bring truth and knowledge into the world — for the sake, among others, of the protesters themselves. 

American college students are facing this irony head on — at a personal cost. But the cost, as they say, is minimal, compared to the one being paid by Palestinians, and by victims of war all around the world. 

Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his newly released album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The ‘Accepted Insanity’ of World War III

“National interests” are the prize at stake. (Photo: James Vallee | Dreamstime.com)

“Mr. Netanyahu faces a delicate calculation — how to respond to Iran in order not to look weak, while trying to avoid alienating the Biden administration and other allies already impatient with Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.”

Yeah, this is virtually nothing: a random, utterly forgettable quote pulled from The New York Times — from the basic corporate coverage of our present-moment violence, as the world shimmies on brink of … uh, World War III. It’s the forgettable quotes, especially in regard to ongoing war, that may be the most dangerous because all they do is solidify a collective sense of normalcy. My term for it is “accepted insanity.” We have the technological and psychological capacity to kill not simply thousands or even millions of people but the whole human race, but let’s talk about it in terms of strategy, tactics, and public relations! Let’s talk about it as though we’re covering a bunch of 10-year-old boys throwing stones. Which one’s going to win?

That’s the key issue here: winning. When two cowboys face off in an armed confrontation, the one who draws and fires fastest, hitting the other guy in the stomach or wherever, wins. He gets to walk away with a self-satisfied smirk.

I’m not singling out the Times story quoted above as uniquely problematic in its coverage of the latest turn of events in the Middle East, but rather as representative of the accepted insanity of endless war — the reduction of war to an abstraction, virtually always involving clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and describing murder (including mass murder) as retaliation, self-defense, “show of force,” etc., etc. “National interests” are the prize at stake. Human lives are just bargaining chips, except, of course, when the bad guys kill them.

The Times story, for instance, steps beyond its abstraction of the Israel-Iran confrontation at one point. Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing several Iranian officers, the story informs us. Iran retaliated two weeks later, firing 300 drones and missiles at Israel, almost all of which were shot down, and very little damage was caused. The Times notes: “The only serious casualty was a 7-year-old girl, Amina al-Hasoni, who was badly wounded.”

War affects children! Yes, yes, yes it does. My heart goes out to Amina al-Hasoni. But my God — some 13,000 children have been killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza, and thousands more injured, not to mention orphaned. And some are simply missing, lying under the rubble. What are their names?

What if war were covered the way street crime is covered — not as an abstraction, but with awareness that it’s a profound social problem? What if war were covered with external awareness, i.e. with wisdom that transcends political platitudes — rather than in obeisance to those platitudes?

Here, for instance, is CNBC reporting on the Israel-Iran confrontation. Noting that Israel has pledged to “exact a price” from Iran in response to the missile attack, CNBC then quotes President Biden condemning the attack and adding that the United States “will remain vigilant to all threats and will not hesitate to take all necessary action to protect our people.”

Can you believe that his words didn’t make me feel safer? I’d been pondering not just the possibility but the likely reality of World War III, and to read these words — “take all necessary action to protect our people” — made the wolves start to howl in my own soul.

Platitudes plus nukes? Biden wasn’t talking about transcending war and shunning the country’s trillion-dollar military budget. Presumably, he was talking about using it, putting it to work to “protect” us — you know, to “defeat” our declared enemy (Iran, apparently), no matter the price exacted on Planet Earth, including on you and me. How about some media coverage that doesn’t blow this off with a shrug?

Coverage of war requires awareness of the lies that prop it up politically. For instance, as World Beyond War has put it: “According to myth, war is ‘natural.’ Yet a great deal of conditioning is needed to prepare most people to take part in war, and a great deal of mental suffering is common among those who have taken part.”

In other words, war is not a product of human evolution — humanity finally becoming mature enough to fight itself in an organized, collective fashion — but essentially the opposite of that: an unevolved aspect of who we are … an embedded failure to evolve, you might say.

So many veterans, as the World Beyond War quote implies, often bear the burden of this truth well beyond their time of service. They are forced to face, on their own, the psychological and spiritual implications of what they did — of following orders, of participating in the dehumanization and murder of alleged enemies. In the wake of wars, vet suicide rates can be horrific. While such psycho-spiritual trauma is officially defined as a mental illness — post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — others with deeper understanding, including many vets, call it moral injury. Following orders forced them to act beyond their own humanity: When you dehumanize others, you dehumanize yourself.

This is the accepted insanity the corporate media cover with such win-lose abstraction, even when we’re on the brink of World War III. Multiply moral injury by several billion human beings and what you could wind up with is human extinction.

Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his newly released album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Course Correction

Photo: Charles Brutlag | Dreamstime.com

The jokes write themselves.

In January, when I asked Dr. Nickalus Khan — the talented young neurosurgeon from Semmes Murphey Clinic who had rebuilt my upper back a year earlier — if I could play golf again, his answer was a reassuring “Absolutely.” When I told my friend John Ryan that my doctor had said I could play golf, his response was: “That’s amazing! You couldn’t before.”

See what I mean?

For six months, I had been working to get my body back in some sort of shape after a bout with lymphoma and a concurrent rebuild of my upper back because of damage from the tumor. I was declared in remission last July — a happy day to be sure — but I’d lost 30 pounds and almost all my muscle tone during the six-month chemo protocol: too much time on my back; too little time moving. I’m in my 70s, and it didn’t take long for me to realize the road to full recovery would be long.

When I began my comeback in July, the slightest exercise made me stiff and sore. Getting out of bed required pushing off the wall into a seated position. My oncologist, Dr. Mike Martin of West Clinic, said my condition was a common one following chemo treatment and that I needed to begin — slowly — working to strengthen my stomach and back muscles.

Getting back into the swing of things (Photos: John Ryan)

Thanks to the fact that I have two very persistent dogs, I resumed walking every day last summer, mostly in Overton Park. When I began, I was winded after 15 minutes, but after three months, I worked my way up to a brisk 35 to 40 minutes with no stress. Progress! I also began something of a fitness regime at home: pushups (at first, from my knees), leg lifts, stretches, sit-ups. As hair returned to my head, strength began to return to my muscles.

What about playing golf again? I used to play at least once a week, but my golf-friends and I got out of the habit during the pandemic. They still play, though less frequently. Now that Covid is a lesser concern and cancer is in my rearview, I began thinking maybe it was time to get myself out on the links again. Perhaps golf could even be a way to accelerate my physical recovery.

Feeling frisky in early January, I tried swinging a 5-iron 100 times. The next morning, the pain in my lower back was nearly intolerable. It was obvious that I would need golf-specific exercises.

I checked in with Dr. Google and found lots of interesting connections between golf and fitness. I learned that golf is often used to rehabilitate people from addiction: “Since golf is a type of exercise that enhances the release of endorphins, it becomes an effective way for patients to recover from substance abuse disorders,” claims a site called Healthy Life Recovery. And I learned, from the same source, that golf is used in the treatment of some mental health disorders: “Golfing enables patients to form and foster cordial relationships based on shared interests, a crucial factor for mental health recovery.”

All good to know, but what about getting my ancient body back in shape to make a full swing at a golf ball and not embarrass myself in front of my friends? You know, the physical stuff (and the pride stuff). As I’d learned the hard way, golf puts a lot of stress on the back muscles. This paragraph from a golf-instruction website sums it up: “The athletic, correct golf swing is a total body movement that requires flexibility, mobility, and stability in a wide range of joints. Utilizing the ground for a powerful hip extension through the shot along with pulling left and delaying release of the clubhead puts a great amount of strain on the body. That is the swing most of us are searching for.”

There’s a huge body of literature online on the subject of how to get your body in “golf shape,” and lots of instructional-video options: “Best Back Exercises for Golfers,” “Tips for Maintaining a Healthy Back While Golfing,” “Rehabilitation of the Back for Golfers.” The list goes on longer than a Dustin Johnson tee shot. I eventually settled on HansenFitnessGolf.com. Coach Mike Hansen has a lo-fi approach, and looks a little lumpy, like the kind of guy who’s not going to be too judgy, even if he can’t see me. He clearly lays out the issues for senior golfers, and for those trying to return to playing golf after injury or illness. I qualified on both counts.

The three major issues that Hansen addresses are, yep, flexibility, mobility, and stability. If we can improve those three areas, he says, we’ll be well underway to finding a real golf swing again. Hansen’s exercises are easily done at home on a carpet or yoga mat and focus mostly on strengthening lower back muscles, stretching and turning the torso, strengthening the knees and thighs, and my favorite, “firing your glutes.” Frankly, mine should have been fired a long time ago. I jest. But anyway, yes, strengthening your butt muscles is important.

After a couple of weeks, I was swinging that 5-iron 100 times a day with no pain cropping up. I still couldn’t turn into a complete back-swing because of the reconstruction of my upper spine, but I felt like maybe I was ready to try the real thing — with a ball. I enlisted my cynical friend John and we drove out to Mirimichi Golf Course and each bought a big bucket of balls to hit on the practice range.

As I rolled a shiny, white Pinnacle into position on the astroturf practice mat with my trusty 5-iron, I got a little nervous. I was worried I might be unable to hit the ball straight with my shortened swing, or worse, shank it horribly. It was my first time on a golf course in 16 months.

I said something to John about not feeling comfortable over the ball and he said, “Just swing smooth and easy and try to make contact. You don’t have to kill it.”

He was right. I focused on just hitting the ball and took what felt like a half-speed swing. I was elated to see the white pellet fly straight, and to feel the joy of flushing a shot right in the middle of the clubface. I hit the remainder of the bucket of balls, maybe 75 or so. Sure, I hit some clunkers, but I hit enough good shots with my new, easy swing that I was eager to try the real thing.

Playing a round of golf is, of course, much different than hitting balls from a mat. There is grass and dirt and trees and water and sand, all of which delight in diverting golf balls from their mission of falling into a hole on a green. I drove to the Links of Riverside on a Sunday afternoon in late February for my first test. Riverside is a modest, nine-hole muni run by the city. Nothing fancy. I figured I’d be able to play by myself with no issues. But nope. As I drove my cart to the first tee, a single golfer was preparing to hit. “Hey,” he said, cheerfully, “Want to play together?”

The guy looked to be about my age and was playing from the old-man tees, so how bad could it be, I thought. “Sure,” I said, “but I have to warn you I haven’t played in more than a year, so I might slow you up.” No worries, he said.

And there weren’t any. We had a great time and I didn’t embarrass myself. After the round, we had a beer in the clubhouse and agreed to play again. I’d made a new friend and was back in the swing of things. You might even say I was rehabbed. Huzzah.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

(Don’t) Break a Leg

I can’t even think about my bones. I’m not sure why, but envisioning the inside of my body — nerves, muscles, veins, and organs — gives me the ick. I’m the type to faint while a nurse gathers blood for a routine lab test. And I’ve learned my veins are small and hard to find, so even the pushing and prodding of my flesh as they attempt to plump up a good one to poke makes me woozy. Once I was watching a TV show where a character had undergone breast augmentation surgery and described the feeling as having salt rocks in her chest, and I went pale and tingly and had to splash cold water on my face and lie down on the bathroom floor. Until recently, although I’m probably the clumsiest person I know, I’d prided myself on never having broken a bone. All my structural pieces were intact and in working order, aside from some likely weak tendons from many ankle sprains through the years — most recently a gnarly sprain to the left ankle last May (and another the previous December). Walking is harder than one might think.

Today, there are seven prescription bottles on my nightstand, and I am writing this from bed with my left foot iced and elevated on a pile of pillows. Some of you may have noticed I’ve been absent from this space for a few weeks — and a shiny new table of contents with accompanying photos teasing the week’s feature stories took the place of my editorial. We already had plans to occasionally run an illustrated table of contents in lieu of an editor’s note on those pesky weeks when words escaped me, but wound up launching it unannounced. I was down for nearly a week in early April with a flu-like illness, and in my feverish haze was unable to conjure up a column. So the first of the designed table of contents pages was set forth into the world. When I started feeling better, I decided to get dressed and go visit a friend. I’d been cooped up for days, swapping out one pair of pajamas for another, and at that point needed desperately to speak to another human in person before turning into a goblin. I put on some makeup and real pants and my favorite clunky platform Doc Martens (middle-school Shara would think today Shara was so cool with those boots) and left the house — free at last!

As I mentioned above, walking is harder than one might think, especially for a person who is prone to rolling their ankle, and even more especially when that person is wearing heavy platform boots. All I know is I was walking down the sidewalk one second, and the next I was on the ground in pain. When I managed to get that super-cool boot off, my ankle shifted unnaturally and sort of dangled at the end of my leg like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Needless to say, a trip to the emergency room was in order, and what followed was as close to me living my actual nightmares as I’ve yet to get in this life. (I had to think about my bones!)

Medical staff sedated me and attempted to perform a manual “reduction” on the dislocated ankle. A funny aside, one of the medications they gave me before the procedure was propofol, which, a nurse informed me while I was still somewhat alert, was the drug that killed pop star Michael Jackson. After a dose of morphine that didn’t quite do the trick, I saw them coming toward me with another needle and asked, “Is that the Michael Jackson drug?” Then proceeded to sing, “got to be startin’ somethin’ …” as I drifted off to dreamland (I have no recollection of this). The reduction — basically several medical professionals roughly tugging at my foot — was unsuccessful, there was mention of risk of necrosis, and I was rushed to the OR for surgery. I awoke with metal pins in both sides of my heel and two in my shin. The contraption — a multiplanar external fixator, to be exact — holding everything together was bulky, heavy, and increasingly uncomfortable, and I laid up for several days in the hospital awaiting the second surgery, in which I had a titanium plate installed to hold my “blasted” fibula in place. (The surgeon said the mess I made by simply falling looked like a “high-impact” injury. I never half-ass anything.) There’s a pin in there somewhere holding things in place that will have to be removed in a few weeks. So, yeah, a broken fibula and tibia, a dislocated ankle, 30 staples, bionic parts, and seven nights and eight days in the hospital. (I’ll spare you the gruesome photo of my mangled Frankenstein leg.) The past couple of weeks since surgery have been both physically and mentally taxing, as I consider myself an incredibly independent (and stubborn) person — laying around unable to do things on my own is a pain unlike any other. Well, aside from that hospital bill.

Anyhow, that’s where I’ve been. I’ll be recovering for several more weeks at least but now I’m on the other side of the worst of this ordeal (and mostly out of the pain-killer coma). See you here again soon. In the meantime, don’t break a leg!

Categories
At Large Opinion

Animal Instincts

Photo: Jarihin | Dreamstime.com

I’ve been sitting on this story for a bit, just waiting for a chance to work it into a column. That time has come, my friends. It’s the tale of one Reginald Cook, 26, who allegedly attempted to rob a Shell convenience store on Elvis Presley Boulevard — three times — on the night of April 14th.

The official Memphis Police Department report states that Cook went into the station around 2 a.m. and demanded money from the clerk. The clerk told police that Cook kept reaching into his clothing, indicating that he had a weapon. The clerk didn’t buy the ruse and told Cook to scram.

A few minutes later, Cook returned, again demanding money and again reaching into his clothes as though he might have a weapon. And again, the clerk was having none of it and told Cook to leave the store. This is where the story takes a turn.

At 3:05 a.m., Cook returned once again to the scene of his Kabuki Krimes. Only this time he had a live, five-foot-long snake wrapped around his neck. Emboldened, he shouted, “Gimme all your money or I’ll unleash my attack snake, you bastard!!!” Or words to that effect, one presumes.

By this time, the clerk was getting boa-ed by the whole thing and pulled out a handgun, taking Cook and his slithery sidekick into custody.

Only in Memphis (or maybe Florida). Seriously, Cook has to be one of the dumbest crooks of all time. Who did he think he was going to fool? Anyone could see that snake was unarmed. Heh.

The cops soon arrived and hauled Cook off to jail, charging him with attempted robbery and a reptile dysfunction. After letting the snake make one phone coil, the police let him slide on his own recognizance, mainly because they were unable to get cuffs on him.

Speaking of dumb crooks and animals … How about South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, the evil creep who outed herself in her own book last week as a puppy killer. And a goat killer. And god knows what else, at this point.

Noem’s book — No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward — will be published next month, but Guardian.com obtained an advance copy and revealed the literal money shot: Noem shot and killed her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, because she was “untrainable.”

In her book, Noem describes taking Cricket, a wirehaired pointer, on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, hoping they would calm the young dog down. It didn’t work. Noem writes that Cricket was “going out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life” and “ruining the hunt.” Little did Cricket know it would be the last “time of her life.”

On the way home, Noem writes that she stopped at a farm and Cricket got out of her truck and killed some of the farmer’s chickens. Noem writes that Cricket was “the picture of pure joy” during her spree. “I hated that dog,” Noem says, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” So, when Noem got home, she led the unsuspecting (and probably still joyful) Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her. As one does, apparently, when one is a “farmer” from South Dakota. Or Hell.

Then, since Kristi was already in a killin’ state of mind, she went and got a goat that “smelled of urine” and had “knocked her kids down and ruined their clothes,” and executed it, as well. She had to go back to her truck and get another shell, she writes, since she only wounded the goat with the first shot.

Noem is angling to be Donald Trump’s running mate. She’s fond of posting pictures of herself with dead animals: bears, elk, deer, pheasant. I doubt that she posed with her dead pup but I wouldn’t be shocked. Noem says that she included the animal assassination story in her book to show her willingness to do “anything difficult, messy, and ugly” if it needs to be done. So far, she’s had plastic surgery, dental implants, and an affair with former Trump operative Corey Lewandowski, so she’s three-for-three. Kristi Noem is scum.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Memphis is My Boyfriend: Summertime Is Calling

Just a few of this author’s favorite summertime activities (Photos: Courtesy Patricia Lockhart)

Hopefully you’ve been reading my articles for a while and you know that my kids are 15, 12, 12, and 10 years old. I desire for my teens to love this city as much as I do, so I intentionally plan out fun, safe, and engaging things for them to do. Now I know that school is still in session and summer is a full month away, but prior proper planning prevents a poor performance! The streets are calling our name! Here are a few of our summertime favorites that we can’t wait to get into.

Redbirds Game

I’ve met several Memphians who have never been to a Redbirds game. And I always ask them, “What are you waiting for?” They usually shrug and reply, “I’m not a baseball person.” Then I have to explain that the Redbirds games are so much more than that. Recently, my daughter’s school choir sang the national anthem at the start of the game. I watched the players warm up and had my proud-mommy moment. Then I had the best time ever! There is just something mesmerizing about chilling at a Redbirds game. Maybe it’s the hot sun, with an ice cold drink and a hot dog. Or maybe it’s the intermittent games and crowd engagement opportunities. Whatever the case, I will be there!

My favorite games are on Thursday nights. My hubby says it’s because I can get $2 beers, but I promise it’s because of their throwback jerseys. Sundays are cool too because kids 12 and under can receive a free ice cream sandwich. There are also nights where they have post-game fireworks and where kids can run the bases. Definitely check out their promotions page. Pro-tips: 1. Bring a hat. 2. Bring a credit card: The stadium is cashless. 3. Got a purse or bag? Make sure it’s clear.

Overton Park Shell

As soon as school state assessments were over, I placed our picnic blankets, lawn chairs, mosquito spray, and incense in the trunk. I also tossed in a few empty water bottles and our picnic basket that has plates, napkins, and silverware. Those items will remain in my trunk for the entire summer and fall. I do all of this in preparation of one thing: the Overton Park Shell Orion Free Concert Series! The shows start at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays starting this month. On weekdays, this gives us enough time to pick the kids up from their after-school activities, stop by the store for a few snackerdoodles, and score some perfect seats on the lawn. As the sun sets, I let the good music and cool vibes roll over me. I close my eyes and lay my head back. I don’t have a care in the world.

My kids have been to a variety of music genres that aren’t normally available to them through mainstream radio. Through this music, they learn acceptance and appreciation. This summer they plan to chill to the symphony, dance to Bodywerk, and regrow some roots to Talibah Safiya, just to name a few. Although if I’m honest, we’ll probably attend about 14 shows.

Gardening with Everbloom Farmacy

Gardening has been in my family for generations. My grandmother was a gardener. My great-grandmother was a sharecropper. Her mother worked the fields during slavery. We can trace our roots all the way back to Ghana where we nurtured the land to provide nourishment for ourselves. While we can go to big box stores for our gardening needs, we prefer to build relationships with people who positively impact our community. Everbloom Farmacy, a nonprofit organization, is the perfect place to go if you want to start growing your own food but don’t know how. Need seeds? Need seedlings or soil? Need knowledge so your garden can thrive? Reach out to Everbloom!

Kenneth Anderson founded Everbloom Farmacy on his 21-acre homestead. It promotes food production and food literacy to support urban homesteads and community and church gardens. While we don’t have the acreage for a homestead, Anderson has educated us on how we can make the most of the space that we have. We went to Everbloom and picked up sprouts of bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, cabbage, and several gallons of soil.

This summer, Everbloom will offer culinary and medicinal herbs and a host of classes about growing your own food and canning for food preservation. Currently, they have almost 10,000 vegetable seedlings (grown by volunteers) for promoting at-home gardening as a community practice. Everbloom’s Community Nursery will also donate over 10,000 vegetable plants for fall gardens starting in September 2024.

Patricia Lockhart is a native Memphian who loves to read, write, cook, and eat. Her days are filled with laughter with her four kids and charming husband. By day, she’s a school librarian and writer, but by night … she’s asleep. @realworkwife @memphisismyboyfriend

Categories
At Large Opinion

Welcome Turnaround

Volkswagen ID.4 (Photo: Courtesy Volkswagen)

“The reality is companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity. We have worked tirelessly on behalf of our constituents to bring good-paying jobs to our states. These jobs have become part of the fabric of the automotive manufacturing industry. Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy.”

Sounds just like the kind of statement a well-paid automaker CEO would make when faced with the prospect of his company’s lowly worker bees forming a union. Except in the preceding case, it’s the kind of statement six Southern Republican governors would — and did — make at the prospect of the United Auto Workers unionizing a car-manufacturing plant in their state.

The governors — of Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and, of course, Tennessee — were getting the vapors over the notion that factory workers would dare to organize for better working conditions. “Lawsy mercy,” said Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, in a statement. “We cain’t have no communist unions moving into our bidness-lovin’ Land o’ Cotton™. Old times here are not forgotten! Next thing you know, these uppity workin’ folks will be wantin’ gummit healthcare and decent public schools and gun reform.” Okay, ol’ Voucher Bill didn’t really say that, but he sure as hell thought it. And to be fair, he wasn’t the first Lee to get his butt kicked by a union.

Here’s another gem from the governors’ statement: “We want to keep good paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto manufacturing sector here. A successful unionization drive will stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.” Right, because you clowns are always all about the “workers.”

The scare tactics didn’t work. Employees at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted by a three-to-one margin to join the United Auto Workers last Friday, making their factory the first in the South to unionize since the 1940s.

It’s no wonder the governors were scared. The GOP economic model is to keep workers underpaid and uneducated, grateful for any crumbs their corporate overlords deem them worthy to receive. In return, the politicians get fat corporate “contributions” and corporations get sweet tax breaks to move into the states of the old Confederacy. When it comes to workers’ rights, the mantra for those at the top of this pyramid scheme is, “Look away, Dixieland.”

Another vital part of the GOP’s strategy has been to keep working-class Americans fighting amongst themselves, mostly by exploiting racial division. Gotta make sure the MAGA whites stay mad at the African Americans and the Latinos. And vice versa. The GOP knows that if all those folks ever organized to challenge the game being played on them, well, it could get ugly for their overlords.

That’s why it was so edifying to see videos of the Volkswagen plant workers — white, Black, and brown — celebrating their successful union vote with fireworks, chants, and cheers. They were celebrating getting a voice in their workplace, including better healthcare and retirement benefits, and more paid time off. They were celebrating getting some skin in the game.

Current wages for workers in Chattanooga range from $23 to $32, according to Volkswagen. The UAW noted that following their strikes last year against Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, wages for the highest-paid production workers at those plants rose to more than $40 an hour, plus improved benefits. Fireworks, indeed.

Interestingly, Volkswagen said it respects its workers’ right to determine who should represent their interests. “We fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a chance to vote in privacy in this important decision,” the company said. It’s almost like the state governors were fear-mongering or something. Or maybe the company actually respects its workers. What a concept.

Next up for the UAW — which says it plans to try to unionize a dozen Southern automaker facilities — are two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama, where a vote on unionization will take place in mid-May. The UAW says a majority of workers at those plants have already signed authorization cards supporting union membership.

The results of the Volkswagen vote, could have far-reaching consequences for the labor movement in the region, said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University who was quoted in a recent Washington Post article: “If the UAW can prevail,” he said, “it means that the Volkswagen victory isn’t an anomaly and we’re really seeing a turnaround in attitudes in workers in the South.”

If so, it’s kudos to Tennessee’s auto workers for standing up to the governors and for leading the turnaround in attitudes toward workers’ rights. And here’s hoping Alabama can keep the momentum going. Roll Tide.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Survival Without Bombs or Borders

Photo: Ig0rzh | Dreamstime.com

An enormous flash, a mushroom cloud, multi-thousands of human beings dead. We win!

Nuclear weapons won’t go away, the cynics — the souls in despair — tell us. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You can’t, as Gen. James E. Cartwright, former head of U.S. Strategic Command, once put it, “un-invent nuclear weapons.” So apparently we’re stuck with them until the “big oops” happens and humanity becomes extinct. Until then: modernize, modernize, modernize. Threaten, threaten, threaten.

David Barash and Ward Wilson make the case that this is completely false. We’re not “stuck” with nuclear weapons any more than we’re stuck with obsolete and ineffective technology of any sort, bluntly pointing out: “Crappy ideas don’t have to be forgotten in order to be abandoned. Useless, dangerous, or outmoded technology needn’t be forced out of existence. Once a thing is no longer useful, it unceremoniously and deservedly gets ignored.”

This is a valid and significant challenge to the cynicism of so many people, which is an easy trap to get caught in. Nuclear weapons will eventually go the way of the penny-farthing (huge front-wheeled) bicycle, according to the authors. Humanity is capable of simply moving beyond this valueless technology — and eventually it will. The genie has no power to stop this. Praise the Lord.

Transcending cynicism is the first step in envisioning change — but envisioning change isn’t the same thing as creating it. The next step in the process is hardly a matter of “better technology” — i.e., a better (less radioactive?) means of killing the enemy. The next step involves a change in humanity’s collective consciousness. As far as I can tell, we’re caught — horrifically caged — in the psychology of a border-drawn, divided planet. Social scientist Charles Tilly once put it with stunning simplicity: “War made the state and the state made war.”

The human race cuddles with the concept of “state sovereignty.” It’s the basic right of the 193 national entities that have claimed their specific slices of Planet Earth — and I certainly understand the “sovereignty” part. Who doesn’t want to make his or her own life decisions? But the “state” part? It’s full of paradox and contradiction, not to mention a dark permission to behave at one’s worst. The militarism that worships the nuclear genie couldn’t exist without state sovereignty.

To me the question in crucial need of being asked right now is this: What is our alternative to nationalism, which currently claims free rein (and reign) on the planet? And nationalism strides with a lethal swagger — especially nuclear-armed nationalism. For instance, as the AP recently reported, “President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, issuing another blunt warning to the West just days before an election in which he’s all but certain to secure another six-year term.”

Or here’s the Times of Israel: “Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said Sunday that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas could be to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip …”

Plunk! Finish the job!

And then, of course, there’s the global good guy — USA! USA! — leading the charge to bring peace to the world wherever and however it can: for instance, by claiming “sovereignty” (you might say) over the national interests of South Korea and declaring, as Simone Chun puts it at Truthout, a “new Cold War with China” and implementing a “massive expansion of the provocative U.S.-led military exercises in the Korean Peninsula.”

Wow, a new Cold War! More than 300,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 American troops, in a series of war games known as “Freedom Shield 2024,” have conducted numerous field maneuvers, including bombing runs, at the North Korean border.

Chun writes: “The combined United States Forces Korea (USFK) and South Korean forces far overshadow those of North Korea, whose entire military budget is $1.47 billion compared to that of South Korea at $43.1 billion, not to mention that of the U.S. at $816.7 billion …

“The U.S. is using North Korea as a pretext for its new Cold War against China,” she goes on, “and, with its control of 40 percent of the world’s nuclear stockpile, is even willing to risk nuclear war to further its geopolitical aims.”

And she quotes Noam Chomsky who, addressing the country’s blatant indifference to this risk, points out that “the United States always plays with fire.”

How do we get it to stop? We live in a self-declared democracy but we, the people, are not the ones with real authority here. Those who run the show seem essentially blind to the consequences of militarism, war and, for God’s sake, nukes. Having power means having the ability to threaten — and, if necessary, cause — harm … beyond their divinely sanctioned borders, of course (not counting the likely consequences that know no borders).

If Tilly is right — if “war made the state and the state made war” — then the state, as currently perceived, at least by those besotted with military power, is the problem. Knowing this is the beginning … but of what? Survival means finding an answer.

Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his newly released album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza

The war in Gaza has exacerbated food insecurity and malnutrition. (Photo: Mohamed Zarandah | Dreamstime.com)

Among the many brutalities in war prohibited under international humanitarian law are starvation of civilian populations and deliberate attacks on aid workers. Here are some new findings worth considering as we ponder the continued decline of human security in the Gaza fighting.

By now we are all familiar with the appalling food situation in all parts of Gaza. Now, a multiparty global initiative known for short as the IPC — which stands for Integrated Food Security Phase Classification — has documented and closely analyzed the matter.

Half the Gaza population, 1.1 million people, now face “catastrophic food insecurity.” Unless a ceasefire can be agreed upon, by July just about the entire population will be in that condition. Moreover, “Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.”

The report further notes: “The famine threshold for household acute food insecurity has already been far exceeded and, given the latest data showing a steeply increasing trend in cases of acute malnutrition, it is highly likely that the famine threshold for acute malnutrition has also been exceeded.”

Decreasing delivery of food and other basic necessities is a major cause of the famine.

“From a pre-escalation average of 500 trucks a day of which 150 carrying food, in the period between 7 October 2023 to 24 February 2024, only 90 trucks per day, of which only 60 carrying food, entered the Gaza Strip. Consequently, virtually all households are skipping meals every day and adults are reducing their meals so that children can eat. In the northern governorates, in nearly two thirds of the households, people went entire days and nights without eating at least 10 times in the last 30 days. In the southern governorates, this applies to one third of the households.”

We need to remember just how destitute the Gaza Strip was before the war. The IPC report reminds us: “In 2022, the Gaza Strip faced an unemployment rate of nearly 45 percent and, by September 2023, the poverty rate was at 60 percent, among a population that included nearly 70 percent of refugees. Due to severely constrained livelihood opportunities, in 2022, over half of the population was relying on humanitarian assistance as their main income source and about one-third on casual labour, with 70 percent of the population food insecure.”

As I noted in a podcast on opinion polling of Palestinians, many believe the war has finally focused international attention on Gaza’s desperate conditions.

Adding to the food insecurity in Gaza are the perilous conditions for humanitarian relief workers. That was brought home with the death of seven members of the World Central Kitchen in an Israeli raid that the Israeli Defense Forces have called a “tragic mistake,” but which WCK’s Chef José Andrés has called Israel’s “war against humanity itself.”

Prior to that attack, 196 aid workers had been killed in the war between last October and late March. That’s an astounding figure when, according to a group that tracks humanitarian assistance projects, no aid workers had been killed in all the Occupied Territories in the three previous years. Nor has any conflict zone ever experienced so many deaths of aid workers.

The unprecedented number of aid worker deaths in Gaza has raised accusations that relief organizations are being deliberately targeted. As one writer puts it:

“Israeli forces have targeted healthcare facilities, aid convoys, and ambulances with apparent impunity. Aid groups say they have shared the GPS coordinates of their facilities and convoys with Israeli authorities to avoid unintentional bombing — a strategy known as deconfliction — but aid facilities continue to be hit. ‘There is complete disregard for the norms of modern warfare,’ said Bob Kitchen, vice president for emergencies and humanitarian action at the International Rescue Committee.”

Now, according to a report in The New Humanitarian, Israel has set up a separate, privately contracted aid system that it can protect and control, avoiding reliance on the UN’s relief organization as well as on NGOs.

Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is professor emeritus of political science at Portland State University and blogs at In the Human Interest.