How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney offers what could be an eye-opening look at how to talk to “the other.” It’s about much more than when every day becomes Thanksgiving Day and seemingly reasonable people turn out to be crazy Uncle Harry. McRaney shares what he has …
Category: Politics
Israel’s response to Hamas: when does enough become too much?
The October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel was barbaric, gut-wrenching and a blatant violation of international law. For many, especially those whose extended families have been caught up in the terror, the attack was also deeply personal. At least 1200 Israelis were killed, many of them raped and dismembered. The much-vaunted Israeli intelligence apparatus …
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Manager to the frozen section, please!
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I have some questions in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children. If they are, indeed, children, shouldn't keeping them in freezers at some -230F or colder be a barbarous form of child abuse? Shouldn't the parents be prosecuted? Who else along …
Will raw politics kill immigration reform?
Do we really need to arm the Statue of Liberty? It’s no secret that there is an immigration crisis in this country. Since Biden became President, more than three million migrants have crossed the border, and an estimated 1.7 million more have snuck in or overstayed their visas. The influx is now a problem for …
Healey’s State-of-the-State – a gift of optimism
Governor Maura Healey's report January 17th on the state of the Commonwealth was nearly an hour of celebration: what her new administration has accomplished, what challenges remain, how she intends to address each and every one of them. The standing O's from the full house were as stretch-and-dip a workout as at the Boston Sports …
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Reflections on my 1,000th blog
This is the 1,000th blog I have written since creating marjoriearonsbarron.com. These essays follow 20 years and several thousand editorials written and aired for WCVB-TV, Channel 5, Boston's ABC affiliate. Above my desk at the station hung a framed picture of a self-satisfied, slightly overweight pussycat with the inscription, "Everyone has a right to my opinion." Back …
More winter reading – pt. 2, non-fiction books
Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown is the story of Japanese American patriots fighting for the U.S. in World War II while their parents and siblings were incarcerated in concentration (euphemistically termed relocation) camps in the West and South. In this intensely moving and deeply researched narrative, Brown lays out in grueling detail the …
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Haley and DeSantis – a So’s ya mutha! debate
Former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Governor Ron DeSantis were like two playground kids pretending to be scorpions in a bottle in Wednesday night's debate, jabbing at each other, oblivious to the big foot about to crush them both. You lie. Nah, you lie. Back and forth they went, with slanted opposition research about each other's …
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Harvard president gone – for the right reasons
Few windows into today's higher education leadership were as shocking as the testimony of three distinguished university presidents (from Harvard, Penn and MIT) before the star chamber hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last month. In their obtuse, overly lawyered statements on anti-Semitism on their respective campuses, they wrapped themselves in a …
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Headlines you may – or may not – see in 2024
It's bedtime for 2023. It has been an ugly year. Ukraine. Hamas'October 7th attack. Bloodshed in Gaza. Wildfires and floods from global warming. House of Representatives chaos and gridlock. Biden's slump in polls. Social media's pollution of young minds. Misinformation. Disinformation. Need I go on? In this posting, I present my traditional list of headlines we could …
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Marjorie Arons-Barron 