Recent Extremism Commentaries

What Really Matters
Embed from Getty Images In the 1950s, a junior senator from Wisconsin blanketed America with lies and conspiracies. The “Red Scare” he created led millions to believe that communists had infiltrated the federal government, and he persecuted those who stood up for the Constitution. The cycle repeats with a former president who continues to lie and spread conspiracies as easily...
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January 25, 2024
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What Matters
Tomorrow, New Hampshire voters go to the polls for the first primary of the season where Republican voters appear poised to select front-runner and former president, Donald Trump, as the party’s candidate for a second term in the highest office in the federal government. This is a good time to take a clear, hard look at what matters. The New...
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January 22, 2024
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The Orange Jesus
“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”—The First Commandment In last week’s caucus, the good, decent, hardworking people of Iowa overwhelming supported Donald Trump. Evangelicals make up 55 percent of supporters. Their conversion began when they leaned away from the holy Bible to the scriptures of Donald Trump. It began when they believed the lies the former president told...
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January 19, 2024
Words Matter
Embed from Getty Images It begins like this: Bit by little bit, misleading words grow in shadows where they are picked up and spread. Bit by bit, false conspiracies are created and multiplied. Lies spread, becoming a wildfire of hate from those who feel isolated, threatened, fearful. According to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll,  » Read more about: Words Matter...
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January 5, 2024
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A Nasty, Brutish Man
Seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (known by his pessimist fans as Hobb-sy) warned us of Donald Trump. “It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.” In full-dress duplicity, Donald Trump fully embraces Hobbes’s notion. “I alone can fix it!” To his MAGA based, Trump is their hero of hate. (By the way, in Japanese, MAGA means confusion, complication,...
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November 28, 2023
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Hate
Hate is a sickness; a dark force that shuts out the light of humanity. It grows in darkness, feeds on suspicion, fear, and doubt. It debases others in a torrent of racialism. In times of distrust and disaffection, it grabs onto any rationalization for violence. On September 11, 2001, the country witnessed the power of hate in the murder of...
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October 24, 2023
We’ve Seen This Movie Before. We Didn’t Like It Then.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana, American writer, and philosopher Embed from Getty Images After watching much of today’s House committee hearing where the extreme right focused with reality show appeal, on attacking America’s well-respected Attorney General, I recalled a series I wrote in January 2022. Sadly, things have only gotten worse....
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September 21, 2023
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From Humanity to Inanity
As the death toll rises after a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria, one dramatic story—a miracle, really—took our collective breaths away. Amid the rubble and the bodies in the town of Jinderis in northern Syrian, rescue workers recovered a baby which doctors believe was only 3 hours old. With the umbilical cord still attached, the mother had...
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February 10, 2023
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Shortness of Breath
How much anger and rage do five police officers have to have to beat a man to death after being pulled over for a traffic stop? Watching and listening to Tyre Nichols’s plea for help during a police gang attack in Memphis, Tennessee, the most heart-wrenching moment came when Nichols called out to his mother, twice. Nichols’s death is another...
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January 31, 2023
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Ignore Trump? I Was Wrong!
Last week, I wrote that the media needs to ignore former president Donald Trump. I was wrong. None of us should ignore Donald Trump. Time and time again, Trump has proven himself to be a bigoted, misogynistic, narcissistic and dangerous liar. Now, he’s crossed the Rubicon . . . no course correction . . . no going back . ....
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December 6, 2022