News & Articles

Where have our values gone?

What do we as a community stand for? What do you stand for as an individual? Do you have any values that you adhere to no matter what is happening around you? What about kindness and goodness, compassion and empathy, respect, truth telling and justice? Do those get forgotten when you are with a stranger, a foreigner or a family member who disagrees with you? Are you afraid of showing what matters to you when they come for your co-workers or your immigrant neighbors? Who are the brave heroes, fearful cowards, gun-toting bullies or pathetic followers when one’s values and morals are on the line? Are you the ‘monster’ or ‘just following what you were told’ as one of our citizens replied when he abducted another human being?  How can you stand with a conscience when you’re employed by a fanatical lunatic? Or the weapons industry? What do you really stand for?

Most of our ‘leaders’ are con men who only stand for themselves. Likewise, many of our religious leaders are moral failures. Instead of living their lives with compassion and empathy for all humanity, these ‘men and women-of-god’ spew hatred and division while enriching their pockets and egos. Corporate CEO’s and billionaires with no values except the mighty dollar have corrupted and stolen our democracy. Our actions show us to be greedy, self-righteous, and revengeful liars. Do we really want to be a country of mean, spiteful haters?

So, who are we going to be? Self-reflection, as an individual and as a citizen, is needed now. If you don’t understand why our country is acting like a corpulent bully, go out and research our history before all the books are burned. We have seldom been the ‘mythical beacon-on-the-hill’. Instead, we were the white supremacists, slaveholders, warmongers, colonialists committing genocide on the Native Americans and now the Palestinians. If these words make you uncomfortable, then you have not been educated with the full truth. Ignorance is not a healthy value and only leads to disempowerment and repeating past mistakes. We are at a huge crossroads in this country. Which values are we going to uphold? It is time for us to decide where our hearts lay. Then we must live responsibly with our chosen values so maybe we can become the beacon-on-the-hill that most of us thought we were. The choice is ours.

Barb Tacyshyn-Roth
Moose Lake

Fascism’s mission creep has begun

Let’s all drink a toast to our late, great democracy. It was nice while it lasted. While disobeying a unanimous Supreme Court ruling re: the unlawful deportation of a legal resident to a torture prison in El Salvador, the Trump administration has crossed the Rubicon into outright fascism. In a matter of weeks they have gone from targeting undocumented immigrants, to targeting lawful residents, to scheming about how to deport lifelong U.S. citizens, all without due process. This is theatrical cruelty meant to terrorize us all. The D.O.G.E. attacks on our meager social safety net, and Trump’s idiotic tariffs may have pissed off enough voters for the GOP to lose control of Congress in the 2026 midterms, but don’t count on those elections happening. Watch for a manufactured “national emergency” preventing those elections, or massive voter suppression rendering elections empty theatrical events. If you think you’ll be fine because you’re a straight, white, Christian conservative, you should study the history of fascism’s mission creep. Either we’re all free and protected by the constitution, or none of us are. 
David A Sorensen
Duluth, Minnesota

Our destructive urges

Why do so many of we humans have obsessive urges to cause destruction? Possibly because many of us still see the need to survive as the only path to safety.
Remember the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which our hominid ancestors huddled together for warmth and protection while fearing all the threatening unknowns in their world?—until they discovered that being part of a group, not just individuals, was the best way to protect themselves. Then the large mysterious Monolith appeared as a message from beings vastly more intelligent than humans, and after they dared to touch it, a frightening noise made them retreat. However, soon after, our ancestors discovered that the bones of a dead animal could be used as a weapon against other animals and groups who threatened to steal their food and territory. 

So, maybe the same threats are still at play between different groups of modern humans because our first close relatives go back only 6 or 7 million years until a spark of intelligence changed everything.
Science fiction is just science fiction, but today, we all know the many positive ways that being part of a larger group can give us the means to survive. However, perhaps we are not yet evolved enough to give up those essential needs we have as part of a larger group mentality, which frequently involves physical survival, fear, and violence. We all know the many positive ways that being part of a larger group can give us the means to survive. However, perhaps we are not yet evolved enough to give up those essential needs we have as parts of a larger group mentality, which frequently involves physical survival, fear, and violence towards those who threaten us.

Currently, although we have advanced scientific knowledge by leaps and bounds compared to previous centuries, we still don’t know how to resist the mesmerizing drum beat that dictators and autocrats use to hypnotize ordinary people—using the power of kings, emperors, grand poohbas, or corrupt religious leaders who belong to the same extended human species as we do? Yet any government we choose to accept, no matter how destructive and/or violent, can only exist if we give it our permission to govern us—something preliminary and typical of many human societies and cultures run by devious leaders who hide their greed and self-centered ambitions just long enough to be elected. And any of us can also add a long list of things we are willing to do, as supposedly tolerant members of a democratic nation—even if we are not beaten into compliance! i.e (we steal, manipulate, and kill our fellow human beings in the name of patriotism), etc.

A friend of mine once told me to consider that without us, the dictators, kings and authoritarians throughout history couldn’t control the world, if we just learned how to use critical thinking to avoid being hooked by greedy leaders seeking to gain control over us—primarily to enhance their own personal power and financial gains.

Trump is such a guy, and now we are seeing what many politically aware human beings have known all along, such as those mentioned in the lyrics of famous 1960s recording artist named Buffy St. Marie. She sang, and this is not an exact quote – “We are the universal soldiers who give our bodies as the weapons for their wars? Without us, how could Hitler have condemned them at Dachau? Without us, Cesar would have stood alone!”….it comes from you and him and me, and brothers can’t you see, this is not the way to put an end to War!”

Yes, this is currently just interestingly stated idealism and most of us realize that wars will go on and on no matter what we as individuals do, but the essence of Buffies song is about how we need to become aware of greedy politician’s ways, and then actually educate ourselves in ways that allow us to slip through the clutches of such leaders. So, although my temper often flares when I try to reason with MAGA true believers, I know that facts do exist, and that, depending on how pivotolly they’re used, they can cause real changes in human behavior—even if only a few of of us are initially receptive to their heartfelt messages—simply because they, and all the rest of us, really could end every last Goddamn war if all of us knew more about what was happening behind the stage, and after aquiring the knowledge to effectively dispute their propaganda!

The answers are in our willingness to give up our ego hangups, in favor of a more difficult but rewarding willingness to become more tolerant, compassionate, and loving, so that many of us can see the “benefits of using facts.” 
In high school, as a thin non-athletic young man, I was humiliatingly bullied with kicks in the butt and other inescapable aggressive actions from a classmate who had complimented me just one year earlier.
We now see kids being bullied at school and then on their cellphones or PCs all evening long in very hurtful ways. So the answer is in the hands of parents and educators who understand that the psychological causes of bullying are right here, hiding behind our better natures. Otherwise, the obsessive urge for destruction might destroy our peace of mind, our humanity, and perhaps, even our entire world!
Peter W. Johnson
Superior, Wisconsin