READERS NOTE:

War, peace, and the way forward ...

Dear Friends,

Today we are at war, because we never learn.

Trump involving our troops in yet another Mideast War is the most Republican thing ever. The blood-thirsty GOP and the presidents they choose, have a sickening fixation with the Mideast, and mostly all that oil, and don’t care how many lives — Americans or otherwise — they have to incinerate to get it.

I had intended to speak with you today about the Democratic Party, the continued failures of the media, the people’s response to the past five months of hell, and this burgeoning community of readers.

I will get to that after a quick word to any Democrat who goes along with this latest war: DON’T.

I promise you, this war will come to no good end.

I offer these wise words from Pope Leo XIV immediately following the U.S. strikes in Iran late last night. I am not a religious man, but I am a Navy veteran, who knows the travails of war, and common sense when he hears it. I implore others to listen to this counsel:

“War does not solve problems; on the contrary, it amplifies them and inflicts deep wounds on the history of peoples, which take generations to heal. No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, or stolen futures. May diplomacy silence the weapons! May nations chart their futures with works of peace, not with violence and bloodstained conflicts!”

Now more of what I intended to discuss with you today …

Like so many of you, I have become frustrated with the Democratic Party’s inability to effectively pushback against the hideous Republicans’ lawlessness, hate and relentless attacks on the truth, women, the environment, human rights, and peace — just to name a heaping handful of their favorite targets.

The party of FDR, Kennedy and Obama is clearly struggling to find effective messaging and a unifying strategy to hold the line against a belligerent Republican Party that has no lines. There is nothing Trump’s thugs won’t attack — including, and mostly this country — or people they won’t hurt.

They are backed by billions of corporate dollars, and a right-wing propaganda machine that spins their fascist hate into gold, and is clouding the eyes and clogging the ears of tens of millions of Americans, who seem to like it just fine that way.

That makes them dangerous as hell, and all the more reason Democrats, Independents and the unaffiliated need to stop talking at each other, and instead start talking with each other. We’re all on the right side of this fight, good people, even if we don’t agree on everything — including this preposterous war.

I don’t give a damn how liberal or centrist you are just as long we can all understand that this isn’t the damn problem right now. There’s not a single Democrat who has all the answers today, because there’s never been a single Democrat who had all the answers yesterday, including FDR, Kennedy and Obama.

We have already dealt with one self-inflicted wound when we all couldn’t rally around a candidate last year while in search of the perfect, when good enough might have been more than enough.

I’ll never forget standing in front of a high school stage in Madison, Wisconsin, just 51 weeks ago, where Joe Biden begged to keep his 2024 candidacy alive after failing miserably on a debate stage just a week before. We were but four months away from the election and I knew right then there we were in deep trouble, even if I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

At the time, I encouraged people to stay with Joe, because time was short. None of that matters one way or the other now, because the only thing I know for sure is we weren't aligned when we absolutely needed to be.

I was proud to support Kamala Harris, and know for a fact she would have been a better president in her sleep than the gross degenerate who is currently wobbling around our White House in a racist stupor.

But alas, there is some good news here: People are wide awake and in the streets in record numbers right now. People, not parties, will fix this mess, and the people are finally making themselves heard.

It’s about a year too late for my liking, but late beats never, and I am taking everything good I can get right now.

I’m certainly not finding much of that in our mainstream press.

I could stand to hear a helluva lot less from them about all the Democrats’ shortcomings, and more about their damn failure to warn America about what was coming if Republicans got their meaty hands on power — like another damn Mideast War.

This has been the worst, most destructive first 150 days of a presidency in history, and second isn’t close. This isn’t being reflected by our press.

As an old newspaperman our media’s failures disgust me to no end.

Because of the heat that’s come in like a blast furnace, I was forced to put off my weekly hike into the woods to get away from people on Saturday. Instead, I spent too much of the day banging around places like The New York Times and Washington Post.

They’re still doing too much reacting and ham-handed both-sides slop on toast, instead of accurately reporting all the trouble we are in. They are taking little to no accountability for their failure to warn America about the most significant threat to this country since the Civil War.

The reasons for their failure vary: Incompetence, corporate interference, and fear itself are probably the headliners.

But this is a fact: If you can’t take accountability for your failures, then you can’t be trusted to be credible. And if you can’t be trusted to be credible, then you have become completely worthless as a news organization.

Too many in our media are in this loathsome place right now ...

But you are here, and I am proud as hell to be spending all this time with you. We are the future. That might sound pretty funny coming from an old guy, but like so many of you here, I’ve seen a few things.

Like it or not, we are engaged in a battle against fascism and for our Democracy. We don’t choose the times, the times choose us.

We must take all we’ve learned from the past, to help guide us going forward. I am proud to stand alongside you, and fight like hell for what is most assuredly good and right.

Thank you for your readership, friendship, and continued support.

Peace,

-Earl

(That’s a photo of last week’s No Kings march in Madison, Wisconsin.)

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)