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By Chris Edwards and Jan White

You need only drive down any given street in almost every part of town to see that it’s that time again – voting season. Incumbent candidates have already stated their intentions to seek re-election, and contenders new to the game are throwing their hats into the ring for the first time in a bid to serve.

Elections are an exciting time in the news business, and as observers of the human condition, writers can find it fascinating to see what trends emerge or disappear in the turmoil and drama caused by elections. Because of our jobs, reporters generally just watch from the sidelines, taking neither side but trying to present candidates from a non-biased position.

But one thing we can chime in on is what can be done for the good of the people and finding candidates who are running for their respective offices with that willingness to serve, and not their party affiliations. People willing to step up to the plate and take a few swings for the betterment of their slice of the county or their cities is a sign of good things.

Chris Edwards, news editor, put in his two cents on the subject, pointing toward a moral code that can be applied to pretty much every aspect of life, including voting.

“It’s called “The Four-Way Test of the things we think, say or do.” Created by businessman Herbert J. Taylor in the early 1930s and adopted by the service organization Rotary International, the test was intended to help save Taylor’s struggling aluminum products distribution company. His four-way test consisted of these questions:

•Is it the truth?

•Is it fair to all concerned?

•Will it build goodwill and better friendships?

•Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

In our current political climate, where it feels like basic humanitarian ethics are disappearing, these four questions can be used to help determine who to vote for in the upcoming elections.”

Courier community editor Jan White shared her thoughts on the subject: “One of my favorite quotes is ‘actions speak louder than words.’ My advice to voters considering a candidate is to ask how involved that person is with the office he or she is running for. For instance, when examining someone’s bid for city council, ask how many times the candidate has attended a city council meeting over the last couple of years. Question them as to what civic or service organizations they are members of or how they have contributed to their precinct or district so far. Same goes for the school board or the hospital district board candidates – how many times have you seen the person running for office attend a board meeting? I feel like in order to run for office, you can’t just look at it the incumbent and think, ‘Oh, I can do a better job than that.’ You need to be invested. You need to be able to prove to your constituents that you understand the organization, how it runs, how you are currently involved, and how you can best represent their needs and concerns.”

So as you head into this voting season, think about the Four-Way Test and question what each candidate brings to the table. Hopefully, when the time comes for you to cast your ballot, you will have eliminated some of that confusion that oftentimes comes with elections. You won’t begrudgingly vote for one candidate just to spite another but more than anything, that your vote will yield officeholders and policies that will be truthful, fair, beneficial to all concerned, and bring us back from the ever-increasing divide.

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By Tony Farkas
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I’m sure it will come as a surprise to no one that I got into an argument on social media the other day.

The subject in question was President Biden and his Trans Day of Visibility or whatever that was, which was connected to a Facebook post from a U.S. senator who was praising the idea.

One person was being excoriated for mentioning the heinous optics of celebrating the visibility of a subset of society only days after a trans person had gunned down several people in a Christian school in Tennessee.

Something that happened during the Lenten season, I might add.

I first asked the senator in question, who is pretty much just a Democrat shill, to perhaps hold a day of visibility for Christians, particularly in light of the events in Tennessee; I pretty much knew he wouldn’t respond, given that Democrats worship the (non-existent) separation of church and state. I did, though, get a response from someone who said the Christians needed a day before that would happen.

Someone else chimed in that Christians have Christmas and Easter, etc., so why shouldn’t trans people be recognized?

I pointed out their ghoulish position, asking what about this since there have been so many “straight, white males” committing mass killings. The responses also took the tack that trans people, being the “most prevalent demographic” on Earth, are being persecuted, as if that is a justification for reprehensible, murderous behavior.

All of the shootings are horrible, regardless of who commits those crimes. There shouldn’t be any comparison.

Calling trans people the most prevalent — widespread in a particular area and in a particular time — is just an example of politics du jour, meaning this is what’s in front of us, and this is what’s considered important.

I pointed out that there are 1.2 billion Christians in the world, who have been persecuted in some manner for thousands of years, and admonished them for thinking that comparing body counts is disgusting and extremely unhelpful.

The conversation devolved from there, and even included racial insults on their part, and other ridiculous claims, all of which I ignored, since that always happens when logic departs and histrionics jump in. But it was instructive.

Making comparative statements are extremely unhelpful and a backhanded way to justify crime and bad behavior. Saying what about this or that to me just points out the problem is bigger than one incident, and maybe we should stop turning perpetrators into victims.

Moreover, forgetting about the past, as the saying goes, condemns us to repeat it, and the cycle of suffering will continue.

Don’t misunderstand this; I’m not advocating silence, nor am I saying that a person’s beliefs are not important, regardless of my feelings.

I am saying that it does no good to ignore the issues by saying the issues are ignored, and that it would be better to tackle events logically, putting blame where it belongs, and actually trying to heal and grow as a society.

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“So, I mean, woke is, sort of the idea that, um, I…woke is something that is very hard to define”
Bethany Mandel, author of Stolen Youth

By Chris Edwards

The above quote is taken from an interview by someone who wrote a book purporting to be the end-all definition of the term “woke.”

Many folks have words they tend to use in abundance, buzzwords, I guess one might be inclined to call ‘em.

There are certain words I say frequently, a few of which wouldn’t be printable in a family friendly publication such as this.

I have a friend, a plumber, who is known far and wide for the exclamation “Son!”. Another friend, in the education business, loves using the phrase “moving forward.”

Sometimes, like in the case of the aforementioned “Son!” the word becomes such a catchphrase for that person that others might utter the word before that person does upon seeing them out and about. Think of a mass media analogue: Jimmie Walker of Good Times fame with his “dynomite!” exclamations.

Currently we have a man who is the governor of Florida, who seemingly cannot go two seconds without uttering the word “woke.” He has gone so far as to claim that the Sunshine State is “where woke goes to die.”

He is not alone in his obsession. It would seem that the GOP has, at present, embraced anti-woke-ism as its unified field theory for the ages, yet while it pops up in national discourse nowadays in a fashion even more ubiquitously than mentions of beer and whiskey in Morgan Wallen songs, Gov. Ron DeSantis is on a whole other level with his “woke” fixation.

So what is to be made of DeSantis’s obsession with the word? He hasn’t really spilled the coffee beans on what the word actually means. DeSantis is, also, a man who prognosticators are predicting will put in a bid for the White House in 2024.

Politicians are constantly pushing inane culture war garbage on the electorate because, well, let’s face it, anger = campaign contributions.

DeSantis is a graduate (magna cum laude, no less) of Yale and a Harvard Law alumnus (where he graduated cum laude). He should know better, and he does, but again, fomenting anger over some type of folderol = mega campaign contributions. We The People are smarter than this, or at least we should be.

Think of this current obsession with the word “woke” as being as useless of a word as “grunge” was when discussing punk and metal bands who were united through the geography of the Pacific Northwest. Those bands and artists, despite their shared locale and shared taste for comfy flannel, were seriously great acts who would likely want to take a swing at proles who used the useless word “grunge” in their presence.

“Woke,” like “Grunge,” in the current cultural milieu is a word favored by non critical thinkers; those who blindingly commit to using whatever buzzwords are of the times. To what end, I’m not really certain. It really doesn’t make anyone sound any more intelligent and/or informed. If anything, it has the opposite effect.

A poll published in USA Today and conducted through Ipsos polled the definitions of “woke” among all Americans polled as 56% choosing it to mean “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices” while 39% chose “to be overly politically correct.”

Now I’m no fan of political correctness, but if the binary choice above is to represent two possible definitions of the term, the majority view sounds pretty alright to me.

I’m by no means an expert on semantics, linguistics, semiotics or any of those exotic disciplines, but I do find etymology a fascinating field to dip a toe into once in a while. As such, I discovered a while back that the first documented use of the phrase “stay woke” occurred in the 1938 when the legendary Leadbelly ended a song titled “Scottsboro Boys” with the phrase. The message of the song is explicit, telling Black Americans of the time to be aware of racially motivated threats.

Upon learning that factoid, I said to myself, “Well, any bit of history that contains a Leadbelly reference and a fist to the face of white supremacy is a win.

Words are fascinating things and their histories tell stories of how culture evolves. In spite of that, it seems a little silly to base an entire political platform around a single word. The complete lack of substantive policy stances and ideas from lawmakers decrying and screaming about “woke” or “wokeness” leave me asking “Where’s the beef?” more frequently than a curious elderly lady in a vintage Wendy’s ad.

Whatever one assigns the modern reading of “woke” to mean: whether it’s political correctness run amok or a better understanding of injustice and heightened empathy, the phrase will be used, misused and abused by politicians and political hopefuls, many of whom can no more define the word than Shane MacGowan can turn down a glass of cold gin.

In closing, a quote from Albert Einstein, a man who could distill seemingly impossible concepts to the simplest of terms seems applicable.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” is what Einstein wrote.

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By Tony Farkas
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I’d bet there will be countless pundits, talking heads, regular folks and people who consider themselves to be journalist rampaging toward the quote from Sol Wachtler.

For the uninformed, in “The Bonfire of the Vanities” Wachtler, who was the Chief Judge in New York State, famously said “a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, if that’s what you wanted.”

So now, count me as one of the countless, as I’ve listed here my particular thoughts on the Thursday indictment of President Trump, the ham sandwich of the Manhattan grand jury.

When I started out in journalism in the mid-80s, I covered cops and courts, mostly because my familiarity with the subject (I grew up in a law enforcement household). One thing I felt was right was to learn everything I could about the process, from arrest to sentencing or exoneration, which would help me spot inconsistencies.

In most cases, grand juries are empaneled to determine if there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, normally felonies and in particular white-collar crime. Prosecutors present the evidence they have in a case, witnesses testify, and a conclusion is reached.

In Trump’s case, the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, tossed his investigative pasta against the wall, and out comes an indictment — for an unspecified charge since the document is sealed — and now Trump is the only former president to ever be indicted on criminal charges.

The indictment is puzzling because of the investigation by a DA in a city, claiming Trump paying hush money to women over reported affairs was somehow illegal, when the Federal Election Commissioner and the Department of Justice both looked into the allegations and both passed on prosecution. In 2018. Five years ago.

Normally, I would wait for some sort of information from the DA’s office or court filing to make up my mind about how I felt about it. But since it’s been 5 years, I’ve had plenty of time to form an opinion, which is there is no way this indictment, regardless of its validity, is anything other than political grandstanding and persecution of the highest water.

There are numerous examples that can be cited about how other politicians and famous people have been given a pass for matters that are worse — Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton come to mind here — yet both of those people are Democrats, and Trump isn’t. How can it be anything but political in nature.

More to the point, if a group of people who believe themselves to be morally and ethically superior decide that something must be done about a perceived ill, who’s to say that any one of us won’t be facing a grand jury somewhere.

One of the most telling aspects of this event is a quote from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said that no one is above the law, and everyone has a right to a trial to prove their innocence.

The bedrock of jurisprudence is that all people are innocent until proven guilty; what are we to make of this, when guilt is presupposed? Doesn’t that mean the fix is in?

Even after nothing came of the investigation, Pelosi also squee’d over the fact that regardless of whether there was any merit, Trump would be the only president in history to have been impeached twice.

If a crime has been committed, then let an objective investigation prove that, and let an objective judicial system make that call. Trying a case like this in the realm of public opinion already has tainted any jury; there will be two attitudes only — guilty as sin, or persecuted for being a frontrunner for the 2024 election.