We are trained to see war as a failure of diplomacy. It is often a failure of perception long before diplomacy begins.
Browsing: Opinions
I also believe I have a role to play, as a writer, to help push our collective awareness beyond a public shrug over the cost and consequences of militarism: our trillion-dollar-plus military budget and ho-hum acceptance of the “collateral damage” that budget inevitably winds up creating . . . over there somewhere. This is simply assumed to be the nature of power. You know, dominance. It’s how we stay safe.
Faith is to religion what ignorance is to white supremacy: the invisible fuel that keeps both systems alive.
In its May statement, BSO emphasized that while deputies and first responders operate on the front lines, their work is supported by the Department of Administration, which manages budgeting, purchasing, grants and strategic planning to ensure resources are used efficiently and transparently.
The Liberating Risk of Interfaith
The Compromise In American Politics Isn’t Working With Many Of Our Country’s Lawmakers.
Perhaps theologian Walter Wink can help us understand Pete Hegseth, America’s self-declared “secretary of war” and spokesman, for God’s sake . . . for God. At a recent prayer service at the Department of Defense, for instance, Hegseth, after calling the Iranians “barbaric savages” who deserve no mercy, called on the citizens of his country to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Two days before this year’s, a friendly neighbor asked, “Going to Thunder over Louisville, Russ?” My smart-ass reply was rhetorical—“No, how many of the thousands will consider thunder over Tehran?”—but his puzzled look led me to clarify my antipathy to military prowess parading as family fun.
In this lifetime specifically, I’ve penned this open letter on the cusp of Black Girl Speaks! The show, which is more than a show, but a movement as well, is elemental and transformative for healing. The show is needed more now than when it was first done. The show existed in a world where social media was embryonic at best. It existed before all the subsequent movements for hearing from and holding up women while they moved to bring light on how they survived assaults from men. The show existed when the voiceless were still without voice, and it was created to bring voice in those times. Now, more than twenty years later, there are questions of if there is still a place and a space for such work. The answer is yes and it is for a myriad of reasons. I want to highlight a few:
In every democracy, power is meant to transfer through ballots, not bullets. Yet whenever violence is aimed at a national leader—whether successful or not—it shakes the foundations of public faith in elections. An assassination attempt, by design, tries to override the will of millions with the will of one. And in that sense, an assassin’s bullet is not unlike any scheme that suppresses or distorts voters’ ability to cast ballots freely. Both undermine the same principle: that the people alone choose the president.