Current Events

The 2017 FBI hate crime report is a tremendous opportunity to lie with numbers. The Tree of Life synagogue shootings and Democratic rise to power in the House add unwanted substance to this newly-released data showing hate crimes rose for three years in a row. Politicians, pressure groups, and the media will use the findings for their own purposes, but do the numbers show what they want them to show?

Trump created a new firestorm over what he did or didn’t say about rocks and rifles and border troops. On one side our commander-in-chief is determined to prevent a flood of Latin American nationals from entering the country on their own terms. On the other we have Democrats who insist that the newest horde consists of people desperate for help who should enter on his party’s very liberal conditions. What happens when people get hurt and this turns ugly?

Democrats got the political crisis they wanted. Except for the president they didn’t have to use a single citizen to get the ball rolling. Instead, they used migrants as the best excuse ever to convince Americans to hate their country and their government. We are getting hit from all sides with disinformation and propaganda about migrants and asylum-seekers. The only thing we can be certain of is that this isn’t about morality. It’s about old fashioned, self-interested politics.

It is ludicrous that First Amendment rights are defined by cake and football. That’s what happened thanks to a Supreme Court case and an overblown White House decision. If we placed our trust in free enterprise none of this would have been necessary, but politicians refused to do that and chose their favorite hot buttons instead.

There is no way to rationalize or justify the stupid, violent things that mankind does. Years of condemning weapons of mass destruction culminated in another gas attack in Syria that the UN Security Council can’t agree to condemn and is powerless to prevent again. Russia sent a bleak message with the test-firing of a new Satan 2 missile on the eve of an escalating war of threats between the two most dangerous superpowers on Earth. We haven’t destroyed our Earth yet, but that won’t stop us from looking for other worlds to wage war on. The push to militarize the galaxies has already started and just got a big push from Vice President Pence in remarks about the U.S. Space Force. Intelligent life on other planets should stop us the moment we show up on their doorstep.

Students planning walkouts, visits to state legislators, a talk with the president, and other strategies to finally get our gun laws to wise up and keep kids safe are about to learn a harsh lesson. Government doesn’t jump because we want something. It jumps when the people who run it want something. Federal and state legislatures have been fighting over gun control for a long time. That’s how educating kids created a market for bulletproof backpacks and why “safe students” doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean.