Ward on Words

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am an ordinary citizen, raised in the Chicagoland metropolitan area now living in Appalachia. I am not a DC pundit or constitutional lawyer who regularly appears on cable news to tout my expertise. I am just a voter and a patriot and I write this post as a marker of this moment in our history. Donald Trump will become president on 1/20/25 and he promises authoritarian rule and expensive lawsuits against anyone who opposes any of his ideas .  The president-elect has been found liable by a jury for sexual abuse of a woman in a department store dressing room - he owes her millions in penalties for defaming her - he claimed he wouldn't ever assault a woman as ugly as she was but in a videotaped deposition , he thought a picture of E. Jean Carroll was a picture of his ex-wife, Marla Maples. He buried his first wife hastily on his golf course - h er grave is overgrown and ignored by the groundskeepers, apparently . (WTAF?!) Trump is legally prevented from being involv...

In one of the biggest news stories of the week, Brian Thomas, the CEO of United Healthcare (UHC), was gunned down and murdered early one morning on a Manhattan street. Bullets with the words "Deny," "Defend" and "Depose" were found at the scene of the crime. The suspect is still at large.  News of Thomas' murder sparked a huge response on social media – some saw the murderer as a " folk hero ;" many expressed no sympathy for the man gunned down on his way to an investor meeting ; some in news media took the opportunity to chastise anyone who did not express appropriate sympathy for the murdered man; many people shared on social media their perspectives on the murder - here are a few found on Threads and Twitter:  A big question prompted by this murder - who are we as a nation? Why are so many people expressing such enormous lack of sympathy for a father of two boys in high school? What has happened that so many are cackling and crowing over ...