Hinessight

People here in Oregon, as elsewhere on the West Coast, have been wonderfully generous with their time, money, and effort in helping others affected by the massive wildfires burning in our forests. The nightly local news is filled with stories about meals being prepared for firefighters, livestock being cared for after homes were destroyed, donations of clothes and other household goods being used to aid the newly homeless, and other acts of kindness.  Such isn't surprising. Most people are generous. They feel empathy and concern for those in need. They want to make things better when suffering is rampant.  I've…

For most of us, wild has generally positive connotations. We like to be out of civilization and trekking into a wilderness. Being called a "wild thing" made for a popular song. We're more excited to see an animal in the wild than in captivity.  But while a bit of wild is a good thing, too much leaves us exhausted, scared, anxious, uncertain. That's where the West Coast of the United States is at the moment. Sure, other parts of the country also are suffering from an excess of wild. Oregon (where I live), Washington, and California just have wild to an…

It's a familiar happening. Some event stimulates an outpouring of concern about a societal issue. Like mass shootings, global warming, police killings of Blacks, Postal Service slowdowns, Trump's outrageous actions. Protesters march in the streets. Facebook and Twitter erupt. Legislators are contacted. Passionate views are expressed. Vows of "we've got to do something about this" are plentiful. And then... the familiar trajectory of the bell-shaped curve is evident. What goes up, comes down. A peak level of societal concern is reached, then declines to about the same level it was at before. Maybe a bit higher, but nowhere near as…

Last Friday Bill Maher's Real Time show on HBO featured a discussion between Maher and two people who signed a letter calling for more tolerance of opposing views and the free exchange of information and ideas -- Thomas Chatterton Williams and Bari Weiss. (There's a video of their Real Time segment on a Daily Beast story. It's well worth watching.) Williams spearheaded the letter, which I've copied in below from a Harper's web page. To see who has signed it so far, click on the preceding link. It includes some familiar names: J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Fareed Zakaria, Malcolm Gladwell,…

As a progressive, it deeply bothers me when progressives turn on each other rather than on the real current enemy, Donald Trump and his Republican enablers. All too often progressive groups fall prey to extreme political correctness, where the slightest deviation from left-wing political purity is met with extreme vilification.  This has befallen the founder of the Wall of Moms movement, Bev Barnum. Barnum is a Mexican-American mother who wanted to do something to protect Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland from the aggressive tactics of federal agents sent by Trump to supposedly guard the federal courthouse, while the real…

I doubt they read blogs like mine, but if some of the jerks who have been aiming fireworks at the federal courthouse in Portland every night, trying to dismantle the temporary fence that surrounds the building, and otherwise provoking a violent end to the otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protests do come across this post, let's have a debate. My position is: Violence should never be part of a Black Lives Matter protest. Not ever. Repeat, never.  Now, let me give reasons for why I think I'm correct about this. The first reason is much less important than the second,…