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Showing posts with the label "Sometimes Ridiculous"

Hope in Who We Become - Umberto Tosi

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Umberto Tosi, New Year's Eve, 2026 "Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph, " wrote  Thomas Paine to George Washington in the darkest days of the American Revolution when the British Empire seemed invincible.  Mad King Donald-abused  America needs more Thomas Paines right now.  " These are the times that try men's souls," Paine wrote. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."  George Washington , then commander in chief of a demoralized, underfunded Continental Army promptly  had Paine's  The American Crisis   pamphlet, read aloud to them. Thomas Paine-Laurent Davos By the 1990s, when my youngest daughter took her first steps, I blessed the stars that seemed to finally give her generation respite from...

American Fascism's Ground Zero

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Civics assignment It's not easy being an American metropolis these days - besieged by neofascist nativist, hassled by hatemongers, lied about, loathed, baited while its people struggle to live up to challenging dreams of opportunity, freedom, enterprise, and cosmopolitanism. We urbanites visualize of our hometowns as centers of art, technology, education, science, architecture, and enterprise. Meanwhile, the Trump 2.0 demagogues recently returned to Washington DC have made us their convenient targets again, just as they did in 2016. Last time, they separated immigrant families and jailed children in detention camps. The cruelty was not accidental. It was the goal. This time Trump's goons are apparently taking special aim as U.S. schoolchildren. As if it's not enough that American kids and their teachers have been exposed to mass shootings for decades thanks to the political clout of right-wing gun fanatics and gun makers. Now, less than a month into Trump 2.0 our kids worry...