Opinion

Write a comment

You’re probably sure by now I’m a hardcore free speech advocate, even when those speaking are either a) ignorant and repeating half-truths or b) saying something I don’t particularly like or agree with.

Part of that belief, though, is that we have a level playing field, and that regardless of message, it’s at least based in truth.

Truth is, period. It’s not truth that has been washed through the lens of current zeitgeist, or interpreted by “scholars” and pundits and anyone with a Karen complex. It also shouldn’t come with penalties.

Take the latest manufactured uproar regarding Whoopi Goldberg and her comments regarding the Holocaust, in which she downplayed the death of millions into something that was “whites killing whites.” Her comments, while ignorant in the extreme, served to illuminate a few things, in that currently it’s only criminal for people of color to be attacked, that the lives of whites are meaningless.

Dismissing it as white-on-white crime discounts a group of people — Jews, in this case — who long have been considered a race, is a form of racism in and of itself, and that’s the truth, although if you listen to her apologists — every one in the media — and herself, she doesn’t believe that.

The people that populate that side of society would have you believe they’re adamant about the truth, and even like to spout trite sayings like “you’re entitled to your opinion, you are not entitled to your own set of facts,” which was coined by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Normally, that is tossed at my side of the fence, and people like Ms. Goldberg get a pass. In this case, the company that broadcasts her show “The View,” on which she made her ludicrous statement, opted to suspend her for two weeks.

This was a paltry attempt at holding her accountable for her words, paltry in that other people not of liberal persuasion have been excoriated for saying less. Gina Carano, who made the dire error of putting out a meme to illustrate the ridiculousness of mask mandates (that alluded to the Holocaust), was fired by Lucasfilms and was dropped by her talent agency.

Others have suffered similar fates, such as Roseanne Barr, fired for making a tasteless joke about Valerie Jarrett.

Double standards in reaction aside, there is a real problem with reacting to what people say with any sort of punishment. When people are cautioned about what they say with phrases like, “Choose your next words carefully” or “you will be held accountable for what you say,” it shows that our country has backpedaled to become exactly what it was prior to the Revolution.

Which is to say that instead of saying, “I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it,” we’ll say “Shut it if you know what’s good for you.”

From there, it’s a short trip to the gulag.

Wouldn’t it have been simpler to explain, using things like facts and truth, to Ms. Goldberg that what she said was not only extremely dismissive as well as factually incorrect? Use a constructive instruction to teach the truth? I realize that not only does that require Ms. Goldberg to be receptive, but it also takes a deft hand to present the information without seeming to be insulting, thin skins being what they are these days.

Look at it this way. You want to teach a child, do you beat it and send it away when the answer is wrong (or not to your liking)? Or do you take the time to instruct, to correct, to give the child the information and the truth, and let it make its own mind up on what it feels?

Build up, or tear down. We all benefit from one, and only an elite class benefits from another. 

Or, as Murrow said, “Good night and good luck.”

Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Write a comment

By Jim Powers
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Republican National Committee last week voted to censure Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. In that resolution they characterized the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

 Between 1968 and 1998 3,700 people were killed and over 30,000 injured during a civil war in Northern Ireland labeled “the Troubles.” While it was not a civil war exactly in the mold of the American Civil War, it featured all the hallmarks of civil wars that have occurred through history. There were constant bombings, street fighting, people were locked up without trial, etc., all characteristics of a civil war. The two sides stubbornly engaged in an unwinnable extended insurgency.

One of the senseless bombings toward the end of “the Troubles” killed two children and was memorialized in the song Zombie by a band called the Cranberries. If you haven’t heard the song, here’s a few verses:

Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence, caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it's not me
It's not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs
And their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are crying

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What's in your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie, oh…

After 30 years of war among themselves, most people likely no longer knew what they were fighting for. But the song asks an important question. What’s in the heads of people who would bomb children? After so long, the people engaged in the violence were like Zombies, mindlessly killing and maiming their own countrymen simply because they had done it for so long.

I’ve been a student of history my entire life and have read of more civil wars than I care to remember, and for the first time I see the signs of an impending civil war in our own country. Not a civil war like the first one, where we line up across a large field and shoot at each other, but one very much like the Troubles in Northern Ireland, an extended insurgency, where civil society collapses, and neighbor is pitted against neighbor.

In a real sense, this country has become ungovernable. The population is so diverse that consensus is impossible to achieve. The political left and right are so philosophically apart that no compromise is possible, and this is only going to get worse as the country continues to get more diverse racially, socially, and religiously. 

Changes in our society are inevitable, yet there have been those in many failed societies over time that have attempted to halt or reverse that change by force, as happened in our own civil war in 1861.

I wish I could say that things will be different this time, that by some miracle we will all gather around a campfire, sing Kumbaya, and everything will work out for the best. But I’m not very good at self-delusion. 

If we don’t get out of our own heads, escape our own bias, and stop listening to the noise of social media that’s being used by bad actors who believe they can benefit by throwing the U.S. into anarchy, we risk finding ourselves decades from now as Zombies, killing and destroying for reasons we can’t remember.

(Declaimer: As a matter of full disclosure, I am politically Left Libertarian. I include that because I am sure someone is going to speculate about my potential bias)

Write a comment

Sometimes, you just gotta step away, and as much as I like movies, which is to say a lot, I like books even better.

(Just like sometimes, I have to step away from the doom and gloom of the political and social landscapes, so I alternate between dad jokes, puns and other forms of digression.)

So let me tell you a story.

For a large part of my formative years, I lived in an area without television. As a dependent of a military father living in Spain during the Franco Regime, I didn’t have my mind mushened by early 70s television. There was a theater on the base, but at only one or two offerings a week or more, plus the cost, I couldn’t really live in a theater.

Plus, I played baseball and had school, but that’s a different matter.

So what’s a feller to do when he is trapped inside on a blustery, cold day with nothing to do and nowhere to go? He reads, especially if that feller was taught to read very early on and always read above grade level.

(My mother, God bless her, gave me this gift. Today, Feb. 3, would have been her 81st birthday.)

Turns out that a good book and an active imagination was a great form of escapism.

I tried all the genres, but I really fell hard for the science fiction/fantasy element (my favorite writer is Harlan Ellison). So to help you get through some of the chilly winter days, grab a blanket, your favorite hot beverage, and one or six of these tomes to warm you through and spur your imagination.

• “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series (there’s five books in the trilogy) by Douglas Adams. You want a serious dose of comedy with your travels to other worlds, this is by far the best I’ve read. For me, the books elicited guffaws, which is a tough thing to do.

• “Dune” et al, meaning the six books in the original Frank Herbert batch, as well as the 14 written by his son Brian and all the compendiums. Rich in depth, lavish in description and a great discussion on both government, religion and how we interpret both.

• Stephen King’s “The Stand.” Whether you prefer the original release or the expanded and updated re-release, I liked the good vs. evil story that has such a detailed world. (Don’t cheat with either of the two TV shows. They’re … not well done.)

• The Dresden Files (17 books and counting) by Jim Butcher. This contemporarily set series about an honest-to-God wizard plying his trade in Chicago, and his ham-fisted answers to problems normal, paranormal and supernatural are some of the most entertaining books I’ve read ever. For me, real page-turners.

• The Lord of the Rings saga by J.R.R. Tolkien. Much like the late Christopher Lee, I had read these books pretty much annually for many years, along with “The Silmarillion.” Has to be something there since they made such amazing movies, right?

•“Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury. This book I attribute to my love of this genre, since once I read it, I searched for anything I could find that was similar.

• “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke. How it started gave me no idea or foreshadowing about the ending, and I was pretty floored.

• “Born of the Sun” by Jack Williamson (who used to teach at my former alma mater). A short story, to be sure, but one who’s impact on me still remains.

• Either the numerous short stories (not much into novels, this one) or his collection of essays and columns on television by Harlan Ellison. He hated the term sci-fi, called all of it speculative fiction, and was a bombastic, boastful and combative soul. Even so, everything I read made me think, made me wonder, and made me mad that I couldn’t come close to that level of genius.

(Many of you have probably seen television shows penned by Ellison; he was a prolific contributor to “The Twilight Zone,” “Night Gallery,” “The Outer Limits” and even “Star Trek.” Look up the episode “Soldier from Tomorrow” and “Paladin of the Lost Hour” on youTube. His most famous, or rather notorious, Trek episode was “City on the Edge of Forever.”)

Buy, borrow or rent, books are comfort, and what’s better than comfort during winter?

Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Write a comment

I’m not seeking sympathy, but I’m writing this on the eve of my annual physical exam.

Don’t infer that I’m bragging about a commendable lifelong habit. By “annual,” I mean “I’ve (almost) done it two years in a row.” And by “physical,” I mean, if I had my druthers, I’d suggest, “Hey, doc, when I turn my head and cough, how about standing over there in the corner and reading my aura?”

Before my renewed dedication in the last couple of years, I could always make an excuse for kicking the can down the road. Until one day my neuroskeletal system gently implored me, “Stop kicking that %$#@ can!! It hurts, bro!”

I came by my erstwhile procrastination honestly. Several generations of my family have showcased individuals leery of routine medical care. This foot-dragging stretches at least as far back as the days when a thespian-turned-pitchman might intone, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on the telegraph.”

My mother delights in preemptively telling nurses that she suffers from the dreaded “white coat syndrome” – a phenomenon in which normally stable blood pressure or some other vital statistic spikes solely because the patient is nervous about being in the examination room.

I experience a touch of this myself from time to time. And by “a touch,” I mean, the sight of cotton balls and tongue depressors has been known to make me start developing a conjoined twin.

Self-image is another issue. Most Americans could stay on a bucking bronco longer than they can stand to linger on that judgmental doctor’s office scale. Sadistic nurses don’t help, when they estimate the weight of your clothing as no more than Tinker Bell would wear in a burlesque show.

All of this ties in, of course, with the hallowed Body Mass Index, this week’s position on cholesterol and lectures about portion control. My friend Cletus has a few choice words for the medical experts behind such shaming. (“See if you can control the portion of my foot that goes up your…”)

Some patients merely dread the stilted bedside manner and observations such as “None of us are getting any younger *chuckle*.” Be glad your doctor graduated near the TOP of his class. Think of his less accomplished classmates. (“Ohhhh…Mr. Danvers went into a fetal position because of the diet regimen I handed him and not because he was getting YOUNGER. Let me put that in his chart…”)

Many people proudly declare a “What I don’t know can’t hurt me” attitude about diagnoses. When these responsible adults aren’t putting duct tape over their “CHECK ENGINE SOON” light, they’re doubtless wrestling with varmints on the front porch without turning on the light.

I don’t know if my cheerleading will influence my peers, but perhaps it will inspire future generations. I know most young people think they’re 10 feet tall and bulletproof (despite uttering phrases such as “I need a ‘safe space’ with an 11-foot ceiling and a ‘gun-free zone’ placard”), but they should form a lifetime habit of regular medical checkups.

This will allow them to keep their immunizations up to date, detect problems early and read drug brochures at their leisure, to determine if they were just imagining it when the fast-talking TV announcer seemingly listed “writhing in the Stygian depths” between “projectile earwax” and “heat-seeking ballistic unibrow” among the side effects.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”