My dad thought teenagers were just putting a finger in the eye of grownups.
I thought it was all about the music.

Half a century later the debate about the same kids has a ring to it.

- More -

The most devoted Trump support comes from those impatient with the traditional code words and dog whistles offered by Republicans for the last half century.

A fictional advertising executive explains what they want instead.

- More -

In 1948, a plane carrying migrant workers crashed in Los Gatos Canyon. Those deaths were nearly ignored by the press and public of the day. An echo comes to us as a small child traveling in hope from Guatemala to America is lost to dehydration and neglect.

- More -

Those of us who grew to adulthood in a atmosphere of derision toward others know a terrible truth we hope will never be known by our great-grandchildren.

We know what it is to accept without question the prejudices of a deeply bigoted society.

- More -

It is especially tragic when someone who accepts danger in order to protect the rest of us, a law enforcement officer, is killed.

How must we react when that death is used to attack an ethnic group?

- More -

Traditional logic does not explain the elements of childhood insularity, willful ignorance, and ethnocentric hatred.

- More -

When Conservatives attacked President Obama as "arrogant," that word held a very special, very specific meaning.

- More -

President Trump has pardoned Joe Arpaio. Good folks are angry.

They have a good case. Why aren't they making it?

- More -

He had been forced to betray his most loyal followers and his own deepest beliefs.

Then the fury erupted and rage spoke in his place.

- More -

Leaders of countries once at war now spoke of peace.

The message of hatred replaced by partnership, of conflict yielding to compassion, seemed innocent, uncontroversial.

Then guilty minds became angry at imagined insult.

- More -