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The Save America Act will destroy democracy in order to save it. Tradition!
Another redux: ICE is the New Klux Klan. Meanwhile, Vietnam joins the Board of Taking a Piece, while the New York Times declares it will uncover wrongdoing without pointing out that it was wrong. Prexy cancels saving the earth, again, since it conflicts with beautiful clean his friends (with benefits, clearly). Israel moves to annex its illegal colonies, while Mamdani moves to convert a business-boosting committee tyo a justice-boosting one. No baby steps here.
Dr. Bob Fitrakis and Dan-o Dougan play a variety of songs about Black history and the Black experience, good and bad, in our nation.
Listen live at 11pm Fridays, February 20 and 27 streaming at wgrn.org or on the radio at 91.9FM
and
Mondays at 2pm streaming February 23 and March 2 at wcrsfm.org or on the radio at 92.7 or 98.3FM
The Texas state education board recently has considered draft legislation that would create the nation’s first-ever statewide K-12 required reading list for public schools. Inevitably, Jewish sourced material is prominent among the texts on the list, including Elie Wiesel’s holocaust memoir “Night” and Anne Frank’s Diary. It appears that the legislation will be approved and, if it is, each of the selected works would become mandatory reading for Texas’s 5.5 million schoolchildren as soon as the 2030-31 school year.
A January 2026 Gallup poll showed that 89 percent of all Americans expect high levels of political conflict this year, as the country heads toward one of its most decisive midterm elections ever.
Gallup, however, was stating the obvious. It is a surprise that not all Americans feel this way, judging by the coarse, often outright racist discourse currently being normalized by top American officials. Some call this new rhetoric the "language of humiliation," where officials refer to entire social and racial groups as ‘vermin’, ‘garbage’, or ‘invaders’.
In Greek mythology, Zeus reigns as the supreme guarantor of cosmic order. He punishes transgression, enforces hierarchy, and claims stewardship over justice itself. Yet Zeus is equally defined by his exemption from the laws he upholds. Law, in this mythic universe, does not constrain sovereign power; it expresses and organizes it. It structures hierarchy while shielding its apex.
The contemporary international order exhibits a similar paradox. Since 1945, the United States has occupied a position often described in the language of leadership, stewardship, or hegemony. Within the framework of hegemonic stability theory, the United States appears as the system’s indispensable stabilizer: underwriting security, liquidity, and institutional cooperation. In this view, order depends on a dominant power willing and able to supply public goods—open markets, stable currency regimes, security guarantees—and to enforce rules against challengers. Hegemony is presented as functional and stabilizing rather than imperial.
Hey, want to read a poem with me? Warning: It opens several disturbing doors, the least disturbing of which is the “crazy old coot” part, i.e., me. Once you start getting lost in the paradoxes of life, you need to watch out. They could start coming after you.
But more disturbing is the paradox itself, which is both environmental and spiritual. And it’s right there on my front lawn. The life I’ve been given — the lives we’ve been given — are partially disposable, apparently. Mostly I took this for granted, but suddenly one summer afternoon, as I was pushing my hand mower up and down the lawn, something shifted in me. I started feeling . . . reverence for garbage? Tossing out the trash is something you’re just supposed to do, no questions asked, at least if you want to live a normal, respected life. Doubting this could be a tad problematic.
The poem is called “Buddha’s Lawn.” I wrote it a decade ago. Back when I still had a lawn to mow.
I mow the lawn and feel gratitude
my neighbors
haven’t pigeonholed me as a crazy old coot.
I’m stalled in my transition
from a lifestyle and sense of order based on
For 50 years, we fought side-by-side and sometimes fought face-to-face. He’s the only man, other than my dad, I’ve ever kissed, a year ago. When I kissed him goodbye he was holding our Vigilantes film poster in his wheelchair.
Two Old Guys and a Bridge: A call from Selma
This is something I wrote after receiving a call from Jesse Jackson in the run up to the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday on March 5, 2023.
I got a call this morning from Selma, Alabama. It was the Reverend.
Two old guys with our old-guy ailments and decades to reminisce about.
But Reverend Jesse Jackson doesn’t waste time on nostalgia. Before he went off to a prayer meeting with President Biden, he was pushing me, in the few words at a time his Parkinson’s allows, to get my film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, back out in public.