Susan Losinger-Odegard
Between the disastrous and the unpalatable
I've been sweating a lot this summer, and not just because of the high temperatures and humidity. It's mostly due to the scorched-earth tones of the 2016 presidential election and what the outcome could portend for our country.
As the famous economist, diplomat, and intellectual John Kenneth Galbraith said, “Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” He's long gone, but his words nailed this election for me.
Teaching hate, learning love
When I was young, I thought the years would give me answers to life’s harder questions — like how children learn to be racist — but I was wrong
When I watch the racist violence at Trump rallies, it really gets to me. I see the faces of young people filled with hate and wonder who taught them to be so hateful. I think of the song “You've Got to Be Carefully Taught” from the 1949 musical South...
Poverty, hunger, and grace
Could I keep going until the heating bills decreased and I had more money for food? I was weak and sometimes faint, and my grades were starting to suffer. I was scared.
The issue of poverty and hunger hits home - literally, in my guts. Throughout most of my 20s, I was poverty stricken, and hunger was my unwanted companion way too often. The worst stretch was my junior year of college during a bone-achingly frigid winter with seemingly endless blizzards.
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‘Southern strategy’ taken to its logical extreme
In the 1960s the Republican party formed a “Southern strategy” that sought to attract southern, white conservatives by appealing to their racial resentment around the civil rights gains made in the 1950s and 1960s. The presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon were among the most notable. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, the revered icon of the Republican party, launched his presidential campaign just a few miles from Philadelphia, Miss., the site where the infamous 1964 civil rights murders took...