Mash Notes, Hate Mail & Other Correspondence

“They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should a father object to your inventing a better plow than he had? They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn’t …

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by Jennifer Davis Carey and Winslow Myers The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise. —F. Scott Fitzgerald At this profoundly uneasy moment in the American story, when neither the President nor the Vice-President has committed to accepting the results of the election, the authors of this piece, one a white man, the other a Black woman, thought it might be useful to write a piece together. …

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by Paul Buchheit In a distressing analogy to the relentless surge of Covid-19, which has disproportionately impacted low-income communities and people of color, there has been an unstoppable transfer of wealth from desperate Americans to the people who already had most of our nation’s financial assets. While the great majority of us have been focusing on the health and well-being—and the very survival—of loved ones, the super-rich have become “pandemic profiteers,” isolating themselves from Covid while riding the stock market to its highest-ever level. At the same time we are seeing a dramatic demonstration of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with the “perfect conditions for governments …

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Dear Mr. Fowle, Within this email I have written a mammoth a letter. I hope you will forgive me for any headaches or eye soreness induced if you humor me and read it. I started writing and did not, and frankly could not, stop. Then I edited, and rather than excising content like any good editor would, I added even more. A previous letter in your paper by a self-proclaimed “doctor” about the ineffectiveness of mask-wearing combined with recent reports of conspiracies, fraud, and violence from little boys who call themselves “proud,” triggered a flurry of words and emotions that I, for whatever reason, felt …

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Dear Editor: In the 1980s we had a made-for-TV movie, “The Day After,” about nuclear exchange between Russia and the U.S. Now we are at the day after the 2020 election. Out-of-whack President Trump is making up and distorting what happens with a democracy’s election. He wants vote counting stopped in some states but continued in others, depending on whether that would help him stay in our White House for another term. That nuclear exchange movie woke up a lot of people, though we still maintain, with the other nuclear nations, such destructive power that our planet could not survive. “Wake up, America.” This time …

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To the Editor: After watching a several minutes long tribute to veterans on WWE’s Monday Night Raw, it occurred to me that yahoos who parade around in camo toting assault weapons are disrespecting military veterans who wear that garb and carry those weapons into combat. One wonders how many flag wavers think that’s all there is to patriotism, and how many who wear the flag are aware that they’re in violation of the Flag Code and thus disrespecting the flag. A tip of my civilian hat, and a curtsy, to the Flag Police for their unremitting vigilance. One wonders if the Flag Police t-shirts might …

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