Letter to the Editor - The Millerton News - 4-27-23

Just Another Thursday in the U.S

Odd going-ons have become the ordinary—a former President indicted, the daily mass shootings, FDA approval questioned by a Texas judge without knowledge or evidentiary fact, a Supreme Court Justice not financially disclosing hundreds-of-thousands of dollars received. What would have been shocking to me and the public at large in prior days is just another Thursday in America.

Tap into the internet, turn on the TV, read your New York Times, New York Post  and the headlines are rife with coverage of the tales of the day — tales of law and order discarded, disclosures of national security documents, violent perpetrators laden with praise and promise of pardon, women endangered, killed by the legislative whims of white men in red states.

Negative gravitational pull makes rising above it all a near impossibility.

An Australian Sheepdog hoofed his way across 150 miles of ice to a place where the locals with good ‘ole American goodwill traced his home, his family, and returned him by cooperative ingenuity. A doctoral student has devised a low-cost plastic window with easy install to replace windows bombed and gunned down across Ukraine. Insulin prices are down. Overall unemployment in the U.S. is 3.5%, Black unemployment is at 5% after hovering at 17% during Covid. The pay of the lowest wage earners in the U.S. is up 7%. Two young Black state legislators ousted for supporting protests against mass gun violence are reinstated in Tennessee. In prior days tales of good news: generosity, local Samaritans, innovations were not out of place in the news — we cheered rescuers, applauded helping hands, admired a chef traveling with volunteers, food and equipment to feed the distraught, the endangered, the survivors at sites of disaster. High performance news was headline news.

Today I had to go to the Good News Network to find an actual listing of this week’s good news.

Some prominent news agency have good news segments accessible on line but only when the ask includes good — not just news.

Irish headlines are Biden Joy, U.S. headlines are Marjorie Taylor Green defending the source of the recent national security leak as “a white, male, Christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.” Unspoken by Green is the endangerment/death to 1000’s of civilians in Ukraine in war as well as their military by this leak. Whistled out of New York City when she went to the courthouse to cheer on Trump, Green possesses high regard for doing violence unto others — she seems to be casting her own do unto others golden rule.

In the U.S., Easter week ends in a dense fog of falsity and fraud. Negative gravitational pull is undaunted. I have however found a source of good news on line — ask for good news. Perhaps soon noteworthy coverage of human triumph, human honor, and human goodness will once again fill columns, segments, and headlines.

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” 

Napoleon Bonaparte

Kathy Herald-Marlowe Sharon