Browsing: Opinions

     In 1914, shortly after he moved to Berlin to serve as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, Einstein was horrified by the onset of World War I. “Europe, in her insanity, has started something unbelievable,” he told a friend. “In such times one realizes to what a sad species of animal one belongs.” Writing to the French author Romain Rolland, he wondered whether “centuries of painstaking cultural effort” have “carried us no further than . . . the insanity of nationalism.”

    Being unvaccinated today is like having unprotected sex with a stranger carrying HIV—reckless, selfish, and deadly. Both are ticking time bombs. Both gamble with innocent lives.

   Kimmel, who has taken potshots at every President and other newsmakers without incident, suddenly has his career interrupted by this narcissistic clown who is adept at name calling and insults without no filters or consequences.

       So, when I learned that Tom Homan, acting director of ICE and a central architect of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, was born and raised in West Carthage, I felt two things at once: surprise and recognition. Surprise, because very few people from my neck of the woods rise to national prominence in government. Recognition, because Homan’s brand of xenophobic nationalism — his cold efficiency in tearing families apart — is not some foreign strain in the North Country. It’s native to the soil.

    In 2017, I visited the House of Flowers in Belgrade, Serbia, the mausoleum that holds the remains of Yugoslavia’s once-indomitable leader, Josip Broz Tito, and his wife, Jovanka. The site feels less like a tomb and more like a time machine. Inside, the relics of Tito’s rule transport you to a moment when Yugoslavia stood proudly at the helm of the Non-Aligned Movement, commanding respect as a bridge between East and West.

     More than 120 million people have been displaced from their homes due to war, climate change, political instability, and oppression in the past few years, a figure that has doubled in the last decade. Millions more are living in vulnerable situations as stateless individuals, frequently unable to exercise even their most basic rights.