Category: 2020 Election

BENZONIA — Earlier in my life, I lived in Charleston, S.C. and spent almost four years roaming the South as a journalist. Later I did the same thing as a national correspondent for the New York Times. In the 1980s and 1990s, the South was emerging from the dangerous era of segregation that had allowed — by state authority — white people to abuse black people in virtually any way that whites thought was necessary …

Not very long after a wildfire’s flames and heat rip through a western forest — in some places a week, in others a bit more — oak seedlings break through the ashes in tight clusters of green. Seeds of golden daisies, Indian paintbrush and scarlet larkspur, stirred by bright light, fresh air and open spaces, appear as little gardens of color on scarred hillsides of fallen trees and blackened soil. The emerging foliage after a …

Three days ago, March 23, President Trump signaled his intent to relax guidelines on self-quarantining, saying “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.” Health authorities and citizens all over the country (including me) reacted with profound dismay at such a precipitous and apparently dangerous decision. But across a separate civic and political landscape — call it The Great Divide — the president’s decision to open the economy and tilt away from public safety is …

SOMERSET, KY. — “That’s not who we are.” A number of Democratic presidential candidates have joined other national leaders in uttering these words. Presumably they’re meant as a rallying cry for the sane among us, served up to define principles of fairness and justice — the country’s core values. Actually, it’s not who we are. What we are is the spasm of lies, violence, injustice, and hate that has characterized much of American history, a …