President Donald J. Trump has returned to the United States from his worldwind tour – emphasis on worldwind – of Europe only to find that all Helsinki has broken loose. …
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When Donnie met Vladdie, again
There’s much outrage on the left and even on the right about President Donald J. “Donnie Two Scoops” Trumpet’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir “Vladdie the Laddie, Rootin’, Tootin’” Putin in Helsinki Monday, in which he threw U.S. intelligence under the bus and sided with his BFF. But really at this point why is any of this surprising? What else was he going to say? …
Read MoreBaby Donald in Europe
Well, that went well.
President Donald J. Trumpet’s meeting with NATO allies was akin to the belligerent uncle who insists on reminding you at the holiday dinner that you still haven’t repaid the money he loaned you to buy the house – with interest.
Donnie Two Scoops came out with guns blazing, bullying the allies to ante up more for defense and dumping on Germany for, well, everything …
Read MoreTrue sons and daughters: Immigrants in Trump’s America
Conrad Richter’s 1953 novel “The Light in the Forest” tells the story of John Butler, who is kidnapped by the Lenni Lenape Indians in 18th-century Ohio when he is 4. His Lenape father, Cuyloga, loves him, raises him and renames him True Son – a name that resonates with irony and poignance as the story progresses and True Son confronts nature and nurture amid the realization that when you come from two worlds, you often wind up belonging to neither. Thus marooned, True Son asks, “Who is my father?”
It’s a question that some 2,000 undocumented children may be asking in the future. The Trump Administration has said it will need more time to reunite them with their parents. But already parents of 19 of the 101 detained children who are under the age of 5 have been deported. The parents of 19 others have been released and seemingly vanished – all of this according to The New York Times. …
Read MoreNo excuses for child detention
On Saturday, people took to the streets in more than 700 cities in every state to voice their opposition to separating children of undocumented immigrants indefinitely and perhaps forever from their parents. They carried signs and, in Atlanta, dog crates containing baby dolls to signify the cages in which the children have been held.
Saturday’s protest was the culmination of a week of civil disobedience that has drawn the usual backlash: Oh, these are just abortion-loving feminists protesting in support of illegal children they would never carry to term. Honestly…
Read MoreOn uncivil civil discourse
In Luke 7: 36-50, the writer paints a portrait of limitless love and the limits of the unloving. Jesus dines at the house of Simon the Pharisee, where a woman known to have led a sinful life washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and anointed them with perfume, an expensive commodity. It was a profound display of contrition, humility and love, though the Pharisees saw it as an extravagant outrage, given her reputation.
After offering a parable, Jesus “turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? …
Read MoreWhat makes a nation?
In his superb column titled “White Extinction Anxiety,” The New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow quotes archconservative Pat Buchanan as saying that the great issue of the day “is whether Europe has the will and the capacity, and America has the capacity to halt the invasion of the countries until they change the character – political, social, racial, ethnic – character of the country entirely.”
Let me fix it for you, Pat: Do Europe and America have the will and capacity to turn back the hordes of people of color beating on their doors? That’s really what he’s asking, though I would turn it around: Do we have the intelligence, talent, industry and character to be greater than ourselves and truly become a global society? …
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