The magic of Christmas in action

I’d like to share this story with you:
Throughout the kettle season, we watch the numbers and speculate: “How does this compare to where we were last year?”; “How does this compare to the average of the last few years?”; “Will bad weather affect bell ringers and donations?”; and “What will happen if we don’t meet our goal?” As of Christmas Eve, the final day of red kettles for The Duluth Salvation Army, we ended up with a little more than $195,000, leaving us shy of the $250,000 by a bit more than $54,000. Now, regardless of how much or how frequently someone donates, we never assume or expect subsequent generosity. Throughout the kettle season, people kept telling me that things would work out, to which, my response was, “Will they, though?!” Well, indeed they did. Hartel’s Disposal donated $55,000, pushing us to the top of our kettle goal. I like to think that the magic of Christmas brings out the best in people. Don’t you? 

Thank you so much for your support during the Christmas season!
Happy New Year to you all!
Cyndi Lewis
Community Engagement Director
The Duluth Salvation Army
 

Pointing fingers reveals nothing

Several years ago, I was commenting on a social media thread that looked comical when viewed at arm’s length. All up and down the thread were liberals angrily accusing Trump supporters of being antisemitic and racially biased–which drew a turn-the-tables response in which conservatives shot right back that liberals were the antisemites and racially biased ones. When viewing a long list of comments and replies throughout the thread it seemed sort of like watching a Punch and Judy puppet show in which liberals batted clubs at the heads of conservatives and then visa versa. I laughed a bit to myself when I was conversing with a right-wing commenter who eagerly tossed such judgmental words at me, just because I disagreed with him on many points. My response though, completely surprised him – I told him it’s easy for one man to judge another man for his heinous attitude before actually examining oneself. I also admitted to racial uptightness every time I saw angry black men who seemed upset with me as I looked at them, and I tried to explain that because of the racially volatile political reality in America, all of us probably had some amount of fear and uptightness toward black Americans simply because they exist with us in the same social zeitgeist which has been perpetrating misunderstandings and angry accusations toward those who looked different from others for centuries, as well as toward those having different prejudices and political views, and thus voted differently most of the time. He was impressed by my comment yet he thought I was pretending. I wasn’t!

During my college days, while enjoying some beers in the student union I shared them with a close friend as well as with two dark black students from Nigeria. I naively expressed amazement about how well they spoke the English language, and my friend quickly reminded me that Nigeria was a British colony. But what impressed me the most, is that while looking back at our conversation, I realized that these two black students were easy to talk to with no racial uptightness involved. Why, I suppose because they did not grow up in the same political and social cauldron that African Americans and the rest of us grew up in. They expressed no bitter histories and no pent-up anger toward the U.S. and thus, I began to feel much more relaxed while I talked to two fellow human beings. Later in the evening, they told us how they were forced into the military at 14 years old, which they did not resent and instead, displayed a “those are the breaks,” attitude. Their military days included vicious fights between themselves and other politically affiliated “Tribes,” who were extremely angry and were at ideologically opposite polls. So, ever since then, I have known there is much more at work with racial bias than just the colors of our skin and therefore we should try not to accuse others of feelings things that we may hate about ourselves.

What made all the “culture wars” bunk so successful is that it exposed politically raw nerves that many of us have long suffered from. However, I still completely reject Trump because he has deliberately exposed our raw racial and religious nerves so well he is the primary person most responsible for using all of our biases to propel him into office.

This is the favorite tactic of all authoritarian wannabe dictators, and Trump has also set back scientific knowledge about global warming and how the public perceives it. And more than any traitorous patriot during the War of Independence he is far more corrupt and power-driven.
I anticipate minor improvements at the beginning of Trump’s term which will later fail to bring about the political Shangrila that was promised by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini and now himself. It’s uncertain where the anecdote originated, but it’s the one in which an outsider asked an Italian something like, Well if (fill in the name of any dictator) you know he is such a corrupt person why do you support him?–the reply–“Because now the trains run on time.”

We all give up our freedoms so easily in return for empty promises and by mischaracterizing Biden as someone who was, “destroying the country,” even though at best Trump secured a small amount of extra take-home pay for the electorate, and blamed it on Biden–while under Biden the economy was truly regaining its resilience “biggly!”
Peter Johnson
Superior, Wisconsin

Doomed?

 The Oxford dictionary defines “demagogue” as “a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.” Merriam Webster defines “autocrat” as “a person ruling with unlimited authority.” Hungarian sociologist Balint Magyar developed a model to describe the 3 stages of autocratic transformation that Victor Orban had forced upon once-democratic Hungary. First came “autocratic attempt,” then “autocratic breakthrough,” and, finally, “autocratic consolidation.” In their book, Surviving Autocracy, Masha Gessen writes of how, at the time, both Hitler and Stalin struck many of their countrymen as “men of limited ability (and) education…as being incompetent in government and military leadership.” “IT WAS … THE BLUNT INSTRUMENT OF REASSURING IGNORANCE THAT PROPELLED THEIR RISE IN A FRIGHTENINGLY COMPLEX WORLD.” Many Americans suffer due to extreme income inequality, but instead of focusing their anger on our financial system, they have succumbed to demagoguery, and this has left us vulnerable to encroaching autocracy. If Trump’s buffoonish and staggeringly unqualified cabinet nominees are confirmed by the senate there will be a fox guarding every henhouse. If the media capitulate due to cowardice and greed, our democracy is doomed.
David A Sorensen
Duluth, Minnesota