Throwing around the word fascist should be as heavy a lift as heaving a manhole cover like a discus. It can't be done lightly. But Donald Trump's love of authoritarian dictators, modeling their behavior, becomes more deeply troubling every day. His sending unrequested federal military personnel into crowds of protesters in Portland, Oregon, evokes images …
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Statues of limitations: which stay, which go
When the statue of Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003, it was easy to join the chorus of cheers. He was a repressive tyrant who killed an estimated 250,000 of his own people. Easy, too, was the destruction of statues of Communist dictator Joseph Stalin, responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians …
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Looking for the Best on July 4th
Politics isn't everything. On a holiday like July 4th, celebrating our nation's independence and its brilliant founding documents, it is tempting to recount the myriad ways that our President has trampled on the promises made therein. Unsparingly, he sucks the joy out of our lives, most recently yesterday at Mt. Rushmore standing before the greats …
Another escape into books
When I found myself agreeing with President Trump that the media were making too much of his super-cautious walking down a ramp at West Point, I knew I needed a break from media coverage. Yes, he might well have been wearing shoes with smooth leather soles that didn't grip the slope the way rubber soles …
Kennedy’s real reason for the Senate race?
What's the real reason Congressman Joe Kennedy is challenging Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey this year? It may well be that he fears if he waited for an open race for the Senate, after Markey or Senator Elizabeth Warren, he might have to run against Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. Pressley spoke Friday to a virtual meeting of …
“Defunding” versus “reprioritizing” the police: language matters
The peaceful protests continue amidst emerging proposals for policy change, but will they amount to anything? Longtime Boston leader and community activist Hubie Jones, in his unpublished book Black in Boston: A Lover's Quarrel, came to understand the dynamics of race demonstrations in the confrontations and riots of 1967 and 1978. Usually, he says, they …
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Nation at a crossroads, not a replay of ’68
The lump in my throat won't go away. It's not the onset of the coronavirus. It is the result of another terrible disease afflicting this nation, the lethal virus of racism and racial injustice. I close my eyes and see the video that grips the country, African-American George Floyd pinned on the street, the knee …
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Could this be Donald Trump’s “no sense of decency” moment?
Has Donald Trump finally reached his Joe McCarthy tipping point moment? Trump’s malevolently vicious attack on the memory of Lori Klausitis, which he wielded as a weapon to sully persistent critic Joe Scarborough, took me back to 1954. It was in that year’s Army-McCarthy hearings that attorney Joseph N. Welch’s famously retorted to bullying behavior …
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Remembering COVID-19’s victims on Memorial Day and beyond
Donna Morrissey was a ray of sunshine. She was an authentic humanitarian, beautiful, intelligent, warm, and committed to serving the community. After early work in television, she handled public relations for the Boston Archdiocese in the first year and a half of the priest sex abuse scandal. There were times her life was threatened, and …
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Time to move on from Tara Reade’s charges
Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote in 2016. But Donald Trump was able to convince enough battleground state voters who disliked both nominees that she was worse. In 2020, he knows he can’t win re-election running a positive campaign about himself; his only chance is to turn off enough battleground-state Republican and …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 