Category: Michael D
Money & Racism on a Friday Morning
When I travel for retreats to be with friends, peers, and colleagues I often alter my morning routine. Sleep is needed after late nights discussing the issues of the day, and at this retreat, ideas about outdoor ministry and my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Luckily, my routine doesn’t include exercise right now, but it does include reading of news and information. I found these three compelling this morning.
From Axios, reporting on some words from the Commander of the Air Force Academy that were first reported by the Colorado Springs Gazette.
“Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, yesterday “stood all of his 4,000 cadets at attention … [c]hins in and chests out … to deliver a message on racial slurs found written on message boards at the academy’s preparatory school,” The (Colorado Springs) Gazette reports.”
Click here to read more.
“Mark Felt,” the Movie, and Donald Trump, the President
Jeffrey Toobin, The NewYorker
“Follow the money.” These are the words most closely associated with Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s famous Watergate source, as memorably portrayed by Hal Holbrook in the movie version of “All the President’s Men.”
What the Rich Won’t Tell You
Rachel Shermon, Sunday Review, The New York Times
“Is the society we want one in which it is acceptable for some people to have tens of millions or billions of dollars as long as they are hardworking, generous, not materialistic and down to earth? Or should there be some other moral rubric, that would strive for a society in which such high levels of inequality were morally unacceptable, regardless of how nice or moderate its beneficiaries are?”
Monday Viewing . . .
Somehow we’ve made an idol of the American Flag and the National Anthem. It’s just another 3 card monty game that the current President has offered to distract from the growing mountain of actual facts that he probably was aided by a foreign Nation in winning the election. We to this day do not know whom he owes or how he has avoided paying taxes. We know by his rhetoric that if you are not white you are a second class citizen and that is just fine with him. We know that the white male cabinet of is American brand of oligarchs for whom shame has no effect and that applies to all of the Republican Congress who, in the name of power and winning, look the other way as the President destroys American exceptionalism, world leadership, and shouts loudest, like all bullies do, when they are clearly in the wrong. It’s how bullies react. Be fierce and frighten even more when you are caught and wrong.
Here is Dale Hansen. He is a longtime sports reporter at WFAA in Dallas, TX, laying it on the line and I applaud him. Now, stop being distracted, distraught, and astonished by the bigot-in-chief’s racism. It is a given. Hold Congress responsible for looking the other way and the Mueller will do his job.