Crossing Nebraska

“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” Supposedly Twain said this, or maybe it was Churchill, or perhaps neither. Maybe it’s simply a truism passed down in various forms since who knows when. The Quote Investigator notes that, before Twain or Churchill were even born, Jonathan Swift is known to have said in 1710 that “falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” Yes, lies seem to have a certain power all their own. A truth meter Our POTUS and his supporters have harnessed this very human reality to great effect. No amount of fact-checking, countervailing arguments, outraged responses, shame, or, um…, truth seems to make any difference. Lies work. Lies sway opinion. Lies help their unethical, unscrupulous, and immoral purveyors to gain and maintain power. Keep in mind, though, that the real power of lies resides in the frequency with which they are told. A single lie might not be so difficult to rebut. Multiple lies, however, tol...

If you’re inclined to believe in evil as a supernatural force that’s been unleashed upon this world, you’ll not have to look very hard. Everywhere we look these days we see evidence of its existence: self-serving executive leadership that appears constitutionally incapable of telling the truth, that uses the levers of power to reward friends and punish political foes instead of improving peoples’ lives, that celebrates people losing their jobs, healthcare, and food assistance; a government that enables and empowers such leadership contrary to our constitution and the needs of the people, that allows the murder of children to continue in mass shooting after mass shooting, that revels in the suffering and abuse of immigrants at the hands of masked agents seemingly accountable to no one; and a populace that cheers all this on, perhaps even engaging in violent action to take their leaders’ talking points to their suggestive conclusions or, at the very least, enabling the whole evil mess wi...

We’ve entered a new season of gun violence of late. Each time a mass shooting takes place, we now rush to read the tea leaves for evidence of the shooter being from the Left or Right. And each time a shooter is found to have been politically motivated in some way, those on the other side stand ready with narratives prepared. And, oh, how the disingenuous self-righteousness then oozes forth! In fact, violence is committed by individuals all along the political spectrum. It serves no productive purpose to pretend otherwise. However, it’s also a fact that the majority of politically motivated murders committed in the U.S. are perpetrated by right-wing idealogues. It’s not even close. There are five right-wing motivated murders to every left-wing one . And, no, that’s not coming from some left-wing source. Those statistics were compiled by the right-leaning Cato Institute . Regardless, it doesn’t do any of us any good to dive into our respective narrative thickets each time a shooting ta...

The very public murder of Charlie Kirk earlier this month as he engaged in debate on a college campus has shocked our nation’s conscience and thrust us into a meta-debate of sorts over the nature of free speech and our responsibility to be both truthful and civil. One popular late-night television host was suspended for allegedly inaccurate and irresponsible musings as to the motives of the shooter. Others have reportedly already lost their jobs for making comments deemed either too celebratory or too dismissive of Kirk’s fate. Even members of the military are being suspended for the content of their social media posts. Suddenly, a great deal rides on the subtle tone of our words, which is odd given that truthfulness and civility have been so absent from public discourse over the course of this past decade. No. YOU'RE the violent one! Yes, if only the debate over truthfulness and civility were an honest one. It used to be that folks on the right of the political spectrum decried ...

We don’t stop loving a family member who falls ill with a life-threatening disease. No, we show our love even more in their time of need, even though we may loathe the disease which has beset them. Such is how I feel about our country at the present time. Even as I love it, I must recognize that it is sick with a culture of ignorance, delusion, cruelty, and violence. Rather than being a populace guided by shared values and principles, we’ve become a writhing snake pit of views with widely varying degrees of connection to reality. Are vaccines good or bad? We can’t agree. Are our elections fair or not? We can’t agree. Should gun control laws be strengthened or thrown out altogether? Should we have separation of church and state? We can’t agree. Should we have meaningful checks and balances amongst our three branches of government, or does the executive branch wield overarching power? Should people in positions of power be chosen for their subject matter expertise or for their ideologi...

I thought I might touch on the power of politically oriented humor in my previous post. “Laugh!” I wrote in an early draft of Maintaining Peace and Joy Under Authoritarianism . “Laugh at the goons, buffoons, and loons propping up this destructive regime.” There’s no denying the power of humor to buoy our spirits in even the darkest times. And yet I still had reservations as I wrote that line. It occurred to me that our ability to laugh, and what we hope might result from our laughter, very much depends on our privilege. It was then I realized I’d need to delve more deeply into the nature of humor in order to do it justice. Satirical image of Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, and Tucker Carlson  laying hands on Governor Newsom Yeruchem Eilfort states that humor has been an important part of Judaism since Biblical times, whether for the sake of preparing the mind for Talmudic study or otherwise coping with the vicissitudes of existence. This appreciation for humor would later play a role in h...

“You’ll never reach your destination if you stop to throw rocks at every dog that barks at you” is an aphorism often attributed to Winston Churchill. I hope nobody reading this is so hounded by critics that they need to heed this advice as it’s usually intended, but if we tweak it just a bit, it becomes advice for us all to follow in these current times. You see, there are so many outrageous things being said and done by the current POTUS, his administration, and his enablers that we would be well-served to consider a variation: “We’ll never successfully resist fascism if we fritter away our energy being outraged at everything there is to be outraged about. Ferocious dog superimposed on Presidential portrait I’m not suggesting we ignore injustice, turn a blind eye toward inhumanity, or normalize authoritarianism. I am suggesting, however, that we risk burning ourselves out, harming our mental health, or otherwise losing our joy when we get caught up in every inane or downright evil...