A novel… a raft of hope, perception, and entertainment that might help us keep afloat as we try to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal. – Ralph Ellison, introduction to 1981 edition of The Invisible Man (1952).
“Words on Paper” is a metaphor for a response to the drawbacks of the Postmodern Era and the digital age. It looks forward to a restoration of values such as truth, trust, credibility, faith, and hope, yet seasoned with honest questions and skepticism, or a sort of informed or wise naiveté – the so-called Metamodern Era. Post topics include philosophy, faith, history, and current events. Of course, you are reading this on a screen, which symbolizes the synthesis of the Postmodern and Metamodern Eras, appreciating the best of both, words printed on paper or on a screen. I hope you enjoy reading these! If you have any questions or comments, please respond. Thanks! – Forrest
Cancelling commentary creates chilling effect – Students entering journalism can restore healthy media landscape
High school students visit the newsroom at a local paper a long time ago.
In the daily struggle to fend off despair in our current political and cultural quagmire, as a reporter and commentator I caught a glimpse of hope in a recent news story about college student newspapers.
In a news story April 1, MinnPost colleague Brian Arola nicely summarized student newspapers at several colleges in Minnesota: “Despite declining readership in the newspaper industry, many student-run publications remain up and running in Minnesota.”
That is the hopeful part of the story. I characterize it as a good example of venturing into the Metamodern Era, where faith, hope, and truth are rebounding, while retaining the skepticism and questioning of the Post-Modern Era, when necessary. That part showed up a few days later in several stories about a former employer.
“Fargo Forum lets go of liberal columnists, sparking protest,” reads an April 3 headline on Minnesota Public Radio. Not long after, Minnesota Star Tribune columnist Karin Tolkinnen’s comments came headlined “Fargo Forum’s cuts are no savings,” reflecting the lame excuse about being a business decision.
In a statement to MPR, the Forum Communications president said it was “strictly a business decision based on data and feedback from our readers.” In the paper, the editorial board wrote the changes will allow the paper to “be choosier about creating a better balance of voices.” Language straight out of the Waffle House, and batter for ridicule among serious, respectable journalists.
As I read these news stories, I had been waiting to see if the commentary that I had submitted some weeks ago would show up on the editorial page of the local newspaper that is part of Forum Communications. Although I had not asked, I now have a good idea of why it hasn’t. The commentary was a version of my Feb. 26 post, “‘The devil made me do it’, In quest for political power, Christian nationalists playing with fire.”
In normal times my political perspective as a news commentator by no means could be labelled ‘liberal firebrand’. Depending on the day or the topic, my perspective is a mish-mash of slightly left-of-center, radical moderate, or progressive conservative.
The latter could also be ascribed to “North Dakota Republicans,” at least as I once understood them: fiscally conservative yet socially moderate, somewhat. Also, Minnesota Republicans in the 1940s and 1950s (before the Post-Modern Era); Republican Governor Luther Youngdahl was a champion of reforming state hospitals in the late 1940s. In today’s version of the Republican party, they would be banished to perdition along with all Democrats and moderates.
You’re welcome
If readers of our local Forum Communications newspaper appreciate seeing commentaries by conservative columnist Cal Thomas, you’re welcome. Decades ago, as editor it was my decision to add Thomas in an attempt to provide some balance to the editorial page. He seemed old when we subscribed. Today I’m still amazed to see his byline and photo, still going strong at age 83.
I am less impressed by his commentary. Often repetitious, predictable viewpoints bashing Democrats and government in general. In one column he blames FDR and the Democrats if our nation is heading for a constitutional crisis. He quotes Thomas Jefferson (a slave owner) saying that all government should be tightly reined so that everyone has a chance to gather as much wealth as they can.
Thomas has made millions over the years saying essentially the same thing, bashing liberals and Democrats for whatever they happen to be doing at the time, with no supporting evidence, and then spewing the usual conservative line about small government and the right of people, the super-rich in particular, to do whatever they want.
His April 9 column criticizes Pope Leo and supports an administration that calls for the wrath of God on our nation’s enemies, in this case Iran. He calls the war on Iran “a pre-emptive strike on an evil regime,” conveniently forgetting that the nuclear deal with Iran forged by President Obama, had it been finalized, would have prevented the current conflict.
Agree with Cal?
But I do agree with Thomas on his March 1, 2025, column: “A warning for President Trump. There is one enemy that is far more dangerous than any foreign threat or the high price of eggs. That enemy is pride, which as Scripture warns “goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall.” (Proverbs 16:18).
“History is replete with leaders who have been consumed with and destroyed by pride. Let this serve as a warning, Mr. President. The best friends are those who speak the truth, disregarding the effect it might have on their own positions. Will you listen and avoid the fate of others who traveled down this dead-end road and learned too late to regret it?”
You could say that some of those “best friends” could include the former columnists at the Fargo Forum newspaper. Or reporters afflicted by the “chilling effect” arising from new, right-wing, billionaire owners of major news media such as the Washington Post or CNN. History proves that attempts to muzzle journalists from telling the truth will fail.
I am hopeful if not greatly confident that students and young journalists today will find ways to have a voice in a media landscape sinking into the control of billionaires. Learning the principles of journalism is as important as ever in the digital age, said Winona State University adviser Doug Westerman in the MinnPost story. “You still have to check sources, you still need to do research, whether it’s going on a printed page or going on a post,.
I will be exploring this in future posts, and in person at a community education program at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 29 at the Jefferson Learning Center in Willmar. The title, “Misinformation, Disinformation, and the Freedom of Speech,” sounds much more impressive than my credentials. I will do my best.
The outline includes the mediascape today, some background, legal framework, and hope for the future. Our digital free-for-all can be traced to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which removed any liability for harmful content. Murdoch and Fox have done great damage to facts and truth. Hope for the future includes reining in the internet, managing AI, and educating about media use.
One would think that a commentary about all that, if submitted to the Forum Communications op ed sections, would be accepted for publication. The odds could improve if it includes a mention of Cal Thomas.
Metamodern Era ascending – As Trumpism fades, so does the Postmodern Era. At least, we hope.
This is an update of my first post Aug. 31, 2024, experimenting with Substack, and no subscribers. If not prophetic, it’s at least worth repeating as we witness what we hope is the unravelling of what may be America’s first Postmodern presidency. Photo: May 25, 2025 No Kings rally.
If you are old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, that is a marker of its early years, the Postmodern Era. If you remember what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, that is a marker of the beginning of its decline.
In these times of political division and information overload, often obscuring truth, it’s sometimes helpful to step back and seek the big picture, cultural paradigms, or eras. (About disinformation, see my Oct. 2 post, “Disinformation vs. democracy – Attack from within, abetted by digital technology.”)
If you remember 1963, you probably have some recollection of the preceding years. The Modern Era extended into the 1950s. There was unity following World War II, economic growth, hope for the future, a common understanding of society’s norms and values, facts were facts and truth the ideal. Nostalgia for those days, including their dark side, appears to underlie the so-called MAGA sentiment today.
A web search about the Postmodern Era shows much information and conjecture about the 1960-2000 years where cynicism, skepticism, irony and subjective truth characterized much of culture and politics. The Vietnam War, Watergate, economic recession, Reaganomics, the digital age combined in a deluge that drowned the ideals of the Modern Era.
Of course, eras overlap. Modern, Postmodern, and now Metamodern, are names for paradigms that help us understand culture and society. All of their defining characteristics continue, while attention shifts to the one that currently predominates. Today the consensus turns to the Metamodern paradigm, which revives hope, truth, and resolution.
Donald Trump has been called “America’s First Postmodern President,” (Jeet Heer, The New Republic, July 18, 2017). While the MAGA populist movement had been underway years before, it finally broke into the White House. This populist movement has no ideology other than worship of a charismatic, self-serving entertainer, who infects his base with a feeling of power against the elites.
“Trump’s ascendance is no accident. He’s the culmination of our epoch of unreality,” says the Jeet Heer article’s subhead… “As the president regularly decries ‘the Fake News Media’ and journalists catalogue his many lies, the battles of our time seem not just political but philosophical, indeed epistemological: What is real? How do we reach a consensus on the truth?”
Metamodern ascending
Many scholars now point to the so-called Metamodern Era gaining ascendence. Basically, it’s a return to Modern Era values of truth, hope, progress, while maintaining a healthy skepticism. Much of the conversation has been going on in the academic and literary worlds for about two decades.
Today we are seeing these positive values in the momentum among ordinary Americans pushing back against the chaos in an administration that threatens the fundamental beliefs and values on which our nation was built: Constitution, rule of law, justice, public service, voting and civil rights, moral character, freedom of speech and religion, and plain decency.
“Postmodernism died around 20-30 years ago, but academic fools in universities keep teaching it as if it were the latest revelation,” says Jeshel Forrester, an American author who now lives in New Zealand. “Metamodernism goes by many names – metamodernism is the best – but basically it’s about not throwing out the baby of modernism with the bathwater of postmodernism. Synthesis is the key, with discernment.”
My introduction to the Metamodern paradigm came from research for my novels. While striving for meaningful themes, realistic problems, and positive outcomes, I felt out of step with the Postmodern paradigm dominating literature. Metamodernism is a worldview that combines the modern faith in progress with the postmodern critique, says Gregg Henriques in Psychology Today, April 17, 2020.
“As distinct from Modernism, which seeks truth through human inventiveness and rationality, and from Postmodernism, which is skeptical of any sort of universalized, objective truth, and tends to contextualize away individual subjectivity, Metamodernism finds truth in interiority, in felt experience,” writes Greg Dember in his 2024 book, Say Hello to Metamodernism. This evokes Descartes in updated terms, “I experience, therefore I am.”
Postmodern counterattack
If Nine Eleven shocked us out of the Postmodern morass, and if the Obama presidency embodied Metamodern values (Yes We Can, Change We Can Believe In, Winning the Future, Greater Together), today we must unite vigorously against the Postmodern counterattack from Trumpism.
Like the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, when fascist Germany counter-attacked the prevailing Allied forces in World War II, Donald Trump is at the head of a counterattack against truth, hope, and progress. These values were rekindled in the wake of Nine Eleven as Americans rallied together against international terrorism.
Today the terrorism comes from within, and abetted by foreign adversaries (Russia, Iran, North Korea, China). It has found a home in the so-called MAGA populism. Ironically, its adherents long for the values perceived in the past Modern Era, faith, family, fortune, progress. At the human level, from whatever camp, we all wish for those good things.
Yet, the figurehead of MAGA couldn’t care less about those good things. Thankfully, with renewed vigor from the majority of Americans who still believe in democracy, it feels like Trumpism is fading in a last gasp of the political Postmodern Era.
Good riddance to both, and hello to the Metamodern Era, where faith, facts, truth, decency, and hope prevail.
Kritikstorm efter ‘dödsbön’ – Even the Swedes know, Hegseth and Christian nationalists are scary
Sheep in Sweden. Credit: Panek on Wikimedia Commons.
My grandmother once tried to teach some of her grandchildren Swedish, at least a few words. I don’t recall any, and I remain completely baffled while meandering through IKEA. Seeing the products at least you can make the connection with their names in Swedish, if not the pronunciation.
When a distant relative from Sweden recently sent a news article in Swedish to me and several others and seeking our opinion, Google translater became necessary. The headline read: “Kritikstorm mot Hegseth’s pastor efter ‘dödsbön’ – Brooks Potteiger har beskrivits som USA:s försvarsministers andliga rådgivare.”
Google translation: “Storm of criticism against Hegseth’s pastor after ‘death prayer’ – Brooks Potteiger has been described as the US Secretary of Defense’s spiritual adviser.” At least the first word in Swedish was understood. ‘Kritikstorm’ – very efficient and with fewer letters. Much less understandable is the religious movement behind the subject of the news story.
More than being difficult to understand, as in one of the responses to the Swedish relative, it’s “scary as hell.” Or another’s response: “It’s blasphemous and worse that a pastor will use Christian theology (being crucified with Christ) in a way that makes it a veiled threat. I don’t know how Pete ended up doing evil things. I sat with Pete Hegseth in a dinner and tried to argue him out of supporting Trump in the run up to the 2016 election. Obviously my argument fell on deaf ears.”
It is appalling to hear about Hegseth’s frothing statements about war, violence, killing as if it were ordained by God to vanquish the heathen. To hear about him praying such at the Pentagon is an abomination. His pastor, Doug Wilson, founded the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches that self-identifies as a Christian nationalist.
While Pete Hegseth and other ‘Christian nationalists’ or ‘reconstructionists’ are worshipping this Sunday, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, his life, and his teachings, they will either block out any thoughts about the madness of warring with Iran, or have some alarming ability to manage such cognitive dissonance. (See ‘The devil made me do it’ – In quest for political power, Christian nationalists playing with fire, Feb. 26, 2026).
Old and New
For Christians the Bible consists of two major parts: Old Testament and New Testament. I once remarked to a friend, Republicans are Old Testament, Democrats are New Testament. A few sparks arising from that were extinguished with an agreement that you need both. Reading about noisiest sector of the Christian church today, you might think they have forgotten about the New Testament. This seems especially ironic as we approach Easter Sunday.
The Christian nationalists seem to ignore the message of Jesus in the New Testament. He was not about an earthly kingdom, and disappointed some of his followers who hoped that he would bring political power to overthrow their Roman overlords. Nowhere in the New Testament is that supported.
And as they are feeding on the Old Testament, the Christian nationalists, other nativists and xenophobes, should also consider such citations as Leviticus chapter 19, verses 33 and 34: 33“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. 34 The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Works and faith
Somewhere in a later assessment of the evangelical church of my childhood and youth, I recall thinking that most attention was given to the New Testament. That would make sense for a Christian church. However, there was sufficient sermonizing from the Old Testament, enough to instill guilt in young children with a healthy fear of hellfire and damnation.
As an adult I joined a Lutheran congregation (ELCA). The difference, as I once remarked to a Lutheran pastor acquaintance, is that salvation with the former came with a question, ‘are you saved?’ while the Lutherans make it a statement: ‘You are saved!’
Martin Luther helped explain away much of the anguish about works and faith. The law and works alone cannot provide salvation. The new covenant announced in the New Testament came to the rescue. I also appreciate the Lutheran liturgy, basically the same as the Catholic Church.
In the New Testament we learn about Jesus’s ordeal of 40 days the desert being tempted by Satan with dominion over the world, or political power. If Christian nationalists want to compare their current political party leader with Jesus, in the desert he would have yielded to Satan. God ordains governments to manage human behavior, to curb the bad and support the good. With our current federal government misleaders, the opposite seems true.
All theists know that God wants each individual to grant him dominion. God sent Jesus to correct the course of humanity, and away from its dark side of division, power and greed. The earthly kingdom he talked about is within each individual, with the Sermon on the Mount being our guide. Until then God’s word came through the prophets. Remotely, which as we know is never as good or effective as in person, face-to-face, two millennia ago.
Or, symbolically, maybe some decades ago. We were living on a small farm site raising a small flock of sheep. In early spring all the ewes had lambed, except a young one, and we were not expecting her to. Easter Sunday morning I went to the barn to check on the sheep. There she was, standing over one lamb she had just borne, a poignant reminder of that day.
Happy Easter!
Picture worth a thousand (or more) words – Society’s verbal mainstream can miss genius of visual thinkers like Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin signed her books at a recent conference.
Not very often do I feel some emotion while watching a movie. Ironically, it happened recently with a movie about someone whose autism often interfered with emotion and expressions of affection in human relationships.
“Temple Grandin” is a 2010 Emmy award-winning HBO movie featuring Claire Danes. Danes did an excellent job (LA Times review) portraying Temple Grandin and her journey from a child with autism who did not even speak until nearly four years old, to a path toward being listed at 105 on Forbes magazine’s 2026 list of America’s 250 “Greatest Innovators” for “improved efficiency—and humanity— of livestock handling systems.”
Temple Grandin is not well-known outside the worlds of livestock agriculture and autism. These are connected by her innovative approach to handling livestock, primarily cattle, created by her “visual thinking” and ability to see and understand what the animals were seeing. She has written or co-authored more than 20 books.
At 13 Grandin got a job sewing; at 15 she cleaned horse stalls; at 16 she moved from Massachusetts to an aunt and uncle’s ranch in Arizona, eventually working her way into the cattle industry. Her career began as a correspondent for cattle industry magazine. Today, systems using her design of chutes handle about one-half of the beef cattle in the U.S.
Her journalistic research and accuracy increased her credibility in an industry unwelcoming to women in the 1970s. A movie scene expressing that view showed her truck at a cattle yard and its windshield covered in bull testicles, with a group of cowboys in the background laughing. She wiped the windshield with her hands and drove away.
“An Open Door” , a 2025 documentary about Grandin, drew a full house recently at the local high school. At 78, she currently is a professor in animal science at the University of Colorado, and has a full calendar of speaking engagements, with both livestock groups and the autism community. Her local appearance occurred at a conference of the Sustainable Farming Association in Minnesota.
The documentary title comes from a scene in the movie. Grandin had a phobia about automatic doors. Fearful of passing through one, she waited until a woman came by and Grandin followed her. Outside they spoke, leading to a work connection for Grandin at the cattle company of the woman’s husband. That and other experiences have Grandin advocating, ‘you see a door, go through it.’
Visual thinking
It may seem a bit incongruous for a column labeled “Words on Paper” to espouse “visual thinking.” In reading Grandin’s 2022 book Visual Thinking, I began to appreciate her insights. The book’s subtitle, The hidden gifts of people who think in pictures, patterns, and abstractions, argues that much creativity and talent is pushed aside by the mainstream of verbal thinkers.
“Being visual thinker helped because I looked at what cattle were seeing,” she says. “I designed the front end of every Cargill plant in North America. That’s pretty good for someone who can’t do algebra. I don’t even know if I could graduate from high school today.” With determination, family support, and strong mentors, she earned a PhD in animal science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Most people are a mix of object visualizer, spatial visualizer (math), and verbal thinking, but one usually dominates, she says. Language is not required for thought. Early hominids before spoken language obviously had thoughts, which must have been visual, as we see in prehistoric cave paintings, or the petroglyphs carved 7,000 to 10,000 years ago on the exposed quartz in southern Minnesota and elsewhere around the world.
Hands-on learning
Grandin strongly advocates for practical learning environments that benefit visual thinkers. She mentions inventors like Thomas Edison, or artists like Michelangelo, or the old guy in a machine shop with an 8th grade education who can build just about anything. “What would happen to yesterday’s great innovators in today’s education system?” she asks.
Today we hear politicians crowing about the need to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. If you could wave a magic wand and make those jobs suddenly appear, there wouldn’t be enough qualified people to take them. Much industrial equipment is now manufactured overseas, in Europe or China where the educational system still values technical and mechanical skills.
“I would put a lot of hands-on classes back into the schools and add a technical track,” she says. “I’m very concerned about the loss of skills.” Visual, math and word “must work together in a complementary manner.”
Our educational system has drifted too far from hands-on learning, internships, and practical skills. For 22 years my wife worked in elementary schools providing hands-on learning with “science kits” brimming with tools and artifacts, and organized visits from a variety of science education programs. Unfortunately, much of that ended at their schools when she retired.
Many of my good memories of school come from shop, phys. ed., and biology on the days we dissected frogs. And occasional films, even when as ‘student projectionist’ I struggled threading film through a projector. I have thought that had I been more proficient in math, that I could have succeeded in mechanical engineering.
No questions, please
When it became my turn in the book-signing line at the local event with my copy of Visual Thinking, her detail-oriented vision quickly noticed my name tag that identified me as Press. In a careful, almost meticulous manner, she printed my first name. Then, with a scrawling flair she quickly scribbled some zig-zag lines for her signature.
With her background as a reporter and author, I wondered what her thoughts might have been. Like an invisible wall there was no chance for further questions or comments; however, following her talks she welcomes audience questions. While her speech and mannerisms give clues about her place on the autism spectrum, she strives to make her work and presence available to all people.
I don’t clearly recall the scene in the movie that triggered an affective response. It may have been the one showing a home-made “squeeze chute” she built to give herself a big hug, which she could not do with people. The chute inspired one she designed for cattle to do the same thing, calm then down in a stressful environment.
Perhaps a bit like her, I sometimes feel more connected to animals – dogs, cats and horses. This thought appears in a line from my first novel, Good Ice, where the main character oscillates between protagonist and antagonist: “Dogs and horses are the only people you can really trust.” And visual thinkers like Temple Grandin. Words can be imprecise, or worse, may obfuscate; (real) pictures don’t lie.
No walk in the park – Contradictions of war with Iran overshadow common civic interests
A woman feeds cats in Laleh Park in Tehran. Credit: ZarlokX, a Wikimedia Commons contributor.
The name of the park in Tehran caught my attention, Laleh Park. It appears in the second paragraph of a November 2015 Time magazine article by Karl Vick entitled “Iran 2025 – How its next decade will change the world.”
Viewing online photos or YouTube video of Laleh Park, you see much peaceful greenery, walkways, and benches typical of any park in a large city. I can almost envision the scene described in Vick’s article describing Iran with a metaphor of the hijab, the headscarf required for Muslim women.
Vick writes in 2015: “A visitor might even think Iran has already joined President Barack Obama’s (remember him?) ‘community of nations’, black tresses flowing free as those of the young women playing badminton in the twilight of Tehran’s Laleh Park, headscarf not around her head but around her neck, like a bandana.”
The reporter’s name also drew my attention, and admiration: Karl Vick, a former colleague on the staff of the University of Minnesota Daily student newspaper many years ago. He made the big time, as did several other of my college classmates.
Vick’s hijab metaphor presages by a few years a 2018 book by Masih Alinejad, The Wind in My Hair – My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran. Alinejad, described as “an ordinary working-class village girl in Iran,” succeeded in becoming an international activist for equal rights. In 2014 she founded My Stealthy Freedom to campaign against the compulsory hijab.
Deep contradictions
Ten years may seem like a long time, until it’s not. In 2015 Iran, the U.S. and other world powers enacted an agreement that rolled back Iran’s nuclear ambitions for 10 years. After that, Iran would be free to ramp up its nuclear program.
Although the Biden administration worked hard to renew the agreement, it fell victim to many complications and then disappeared after he left office, with no interest from the new president. And now we have war, again; thankfully not nuclear, yet.
As with most of the previous wars in the Middle East, this one comes with some deep contradictions. Iran’s oppressive, ultra-conservative theocracy needs to go. Since the end of World War II Israel receives our strong support, except for its mistreatment of Palestinians, and now leading this U.S. administration into war.
Iran will not be a pushover as the current U.S. misleaders seem to think. If only they would study history. This may be the first time that I or any reasonably educated person could say that we seem to know more about Iran and the history of the region than do the current president and defense secretary.
The result of war will not be peace; rather, a pause until the next war, with munitions makers the only beneficiaries, and much suffering by the people and military casualties, not to mention the economic cost and disruption. “We believe the U.S. is really pursuing regime change,” an Irani journalist is quoted in Vick’s 2015 report. Today, it will not succeed.
93 million
The image in the 2015 Time article helps you to think of the people in Iran, more than 93 million. Laleh is a common woman’s name and means ‘tulip’. I learned that from three Iranian students, a man and two women, I met years ago at Iowa State University in Ames. I reached out to them hoping to better understand Laleh, a main character in my third novel, The Swineherd’s Angel.
I was surprised and humbled by their eagerness to talk about their country and their experiences in the U.S. I attribute that to their appreciation of someone showing interest in them, and also for the deep cultural appreciation and understanding of the arts in Iran, literature in particular.
The women were eager to know, did Laleh wear a hijab? The story says that she usually doesn’t, but only sometimes when necessary. They smiled and seemed to understand. The other main lesson involved their status in the U.S. They arrived here as students with single-entry visas. If they returned to Iran even just to visit it would be very unlikely that they could get a new one to return and complete their studies. They said they often felt homesick, assuaged by socializing with their ‘family’ of Iranian students.
This is explored somewhat in my July 3, 2025, post, “ ‘Empire of the mind’ – Cancel conflict; learn about vast history, culture, and people of Iran.” Beyond this limited personal experience, like most others, I rely on other experts in trying to understand what is happening there.
Sy and Tom
If you are old enough to remember the Vietnam War, you may recall Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter who uncovered the My Lai massacre by U.S. troops in 1969. In 2005 he was 20 years ahead of history writing an article in The New Yorker, “The Coming Wars,” saying that Iran was the next U.S. target in the Middle East. I recommend watching the 2025 documentary about his career, Cover-Up, on Netflix.
Approaching 89 years old, Hersh is still writing on Substack (March 5): “Is Trump a liability in his own war? Trump’s loose lips may be undermining the war against Iran he and Netanyahu started.” Hersh writes: “Before the attacks on Iran commenced, US and Israeli operatives inside the country worked intensely under deep cover to recruit future leaders of Iran from various groups…
“The president apparently spoke without recalling that this fact is top secret… the casual comment has led to a Revolutionary Guard witch hunt to search out the insiders who may have been dealing directly or indirectly with Israeli or American intelligence agencies… the war launched by the US and Israel did not have to be.”
In a Feb. 17 column in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes, “Netanyahu has played Trump for a sucker… He has gotten them to focus on Iran and ignore the fact that everything he is doing in Gaza, in the West Bank and inside Israel will strain ties between the U.S. and its major Middle East allies, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Qatar.”
It’s tragic that the misguided egos wielding such political power and military might on all sides have usurped the will and welfare of their citizens. If the outcome of the current conflict becomes more dire, it makes the question of wearing a hijab or not seem trivial. Compared with a fighting war, a culture war is the lesser of two evils.
In the U.S., Israel, and Iran, the only solution comes from the collective political power of their people ousting the authoritarians and voting to restore the rule of law and representative democracy. In the U.S. that process will start Nov. 3, 2026.
Hopeful predictions: The pointless ‘war’ with Iran will be long forgotten by then or overshadowed by its impacts; U.S. voters will stem and reverse the current slide into autocracy, but it won’t be a walk in the park.
Note: This content was created by a human being with a soul. No use of artificial intelligence other than occasional questions to Alexa or Google-Meta about specific facts.
Column topics: 1. Words on Paper overview. 2. Literature expresses and influences society, the Great Conversation. 3. The Human Condition. 4. Story-telling: Power of the Narrative; Information is Power. 5. Aristotle and Plato: Cave to the Light. 6. Religious literature: Vedas, Bible, Quran. 7. What is Art?: Visual, drama, literary. 8. Important books that shaped and reflected America. 9. Authors, who are they? eg. Ellison, Carson. 10. Same old same old: Persistent topics. 11. Challenging challenging books, banned books. 12. Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Digital world pros and cons. 13. Old world mass media (Newspapers, magazines, broadcast). 14. Benefits of reading vs. viewing: High and low involvement. 15. Why write fiction? Writing with a purpose. 16. Literary fiction, genres, aboutness. 17. Writing process, story structure, In the Beginning. 18. Resources, opportunities. 19. My journey as an author. 20. My novels. (As the need arises, columns on other topics may be interspersed among these.)