FREE WHITEWATER

America

A Roadmap for Renewal

No map provides all the detail one encounters when traveling a terrain; it is enough that it makes one’s chosen direction discernible.  Our present national conflict will one day end, and when it does millions who will have swept Trumpism into the dustbin will then have to renew American politics, restoring to this society once…

We Unhelpful Many

Over at The Atlantic, Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute scolds critics of Trump, as she believes The Anti-Trump Hysteria Isn’t Helping: President Donald Trump’s press conference with Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a debacle. The president went from an anodyne prepared statement to a question-and-answer session that ping-ponged between stunning and appalling (with…

Happy Independence Day

In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the…

Sounds of Trumpism’s Malevolence

Robert Kagan, writing of Trump’s foreign policy, describes the uncaring malevolence of Trump’s perspective: Trump’s America does not care. It is unencumbered by historical memory. It recognizes no moral, political or strategic commitments. It feels free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. It has no…

Print’s Continuing Decline (and the Message for Digital)

One can be a critic of newspapers (for their low quality and high boosterism), and yet feel a sadness at their decline. There’s a notice in the Janesville Gazette about downsizing of the daily print edition. See Objective: Preserve local journalism in the face of rising costs. Editor Sid Schwartz tells readers that the Gazette…

A Detention Machine

America, of all places, should not be in the business of this sort of detention. Not now, not ever. We are, and always will be, at our best as a free and welcoming place. “Maybe it is a concentration camp; I don’t want to make it look nice.” Joe Arpaio stands by his 2008 description…

Supporting Civil Disobedience in Support of Dreamers

A hard condition of our communities is found among Dreamers vulnerable to unjust deportation; the hard work on their behalf is found among those who have actively protested in defense of those Dreamers. For the rest of us, Voces de la Frontera offers an opportunity to contribute to pay the fines of twenty-three who protested…

A Conventional, But Omitted, Question

Whitewater’s looking for a new police chief, and has two candidates from which to choose. During a hiring process, it’s conventional to solicit community opinion on residents’ preferences and views on policing. Whitewater, expectedly, has done so, too. (There are, however, significant limitations with surveys of Whitewater’s kind, as I’ve noted. Whitewater’s method will produce…

Reading Next: Truth Decay (‘An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life’)

I’m currently reading Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury on the Trump campaign & administration. (FW has a currently reading widget on the right sidebar of this website.) Afterward, I’ve something in queue, from Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich – their just-published Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis…