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Transcending War: Everyone Wins

By Robert C. Koehler When will we as a nation admit it? Barbara Lee was right. She was the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force back in 2001, following the 9/11 disaster, which allowed George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan. A year later she voted against […]

Politically Correct Racism

By Robert C. Koehler “The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie.” I offer these words of Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose 2019 essay is part of the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” to the Heritage Foundation and the horde of Republican politicians currently trying to update the look and […]

Protecting Borders, Not Life

By Robert C. Koehler Remember the Space Force? You know, the sixth branch of the U.S. military, officially created in 2019, “establishing space as a warfighting domain and guaranteeing that the United States will dominate in that environment just like all others.” Thus declared President Donald Trump at the time, unleashing a Hollywood script on […]

Nukes, Lies and Invisible Murder

By Robert C. Koehler Let’s listen in for a moment to the gentle, awkward language of mass killing: “The employment or threat of employment of nuclear weapons could have a significant influence on ground operations. . . . Integration of nuclear weapons into a theater of operations requires the consideration of multiple variables. Using nuclear […]

A Permanent Structure of Peace

By Robert C. Koehler Suddenly a shard of history comes flying at me from the ebbing days of World War II, hitting me in the heart. You mean world leaders (not to mention all the rest of us) were serious about transcending — for good — the hell the world had just been through and […]

Terror Plus Public Relations

By Robert C. Koehler “The president reiterated his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attack,” The Guardian has informed us, as conflict flares once more in the Middle East. But, oh the humanity! Good guy Joe also “encouraged Israel to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians.” […]

Transcending ‘the Religion of Whiteness’

By Robert C. Koehler Basically, Derek Chauvin was convicted of enforcing the status quo. Because his behavior was caught on video — his knee on George Floyd’s neck, oh my God, choking him to death — and looked so disturbing to most of the public, official American “justice” had to take some sort of action. […]

Our Own Wisdom Is Telling Us To Evolve

By Robert C. Koehler Let’s use up the planet and bless the future with its corpse. If politics involved speaking the truth, those words could well be the core slogan of mainstream politicians and their media cohorts, with the purpose of the election process (you know, democracy) being, simply, to choose the specific ways in […]

Armed Racism Keeps No One Safe

By Robert C. Koehler “Get out of the car! Get out of the car NOW!!” The officer — the mad man with a badge — probably shouts those words 50 times at the driver, Second Lt. Caron Nazario, at a gas station in Windsor, Va., all the while holding a gun a foot from his […]

Trapped at the Border: Their Fate Is Our Fate

By Robert C. Koehler You’d think that the “border crisis” begins and ends as a problem for Americans. Oh, what to do, what to do? All these people showing up at our back door, trying to get in. They want to take our jobs, drink our water. . . . And think about the dangers […]

Ending the Endless War

By Robert C. Koehler Will Joe Biden end the endless wars or won’t he? I have serious doubts that he has the will or political acumen to do so. But that’s only a fragment of the question that needs to be asked, as we approach the twentieth anniversary of our global “war on evil.” A […]

Waging War . . . at the Supermarket

By Robert C. Koehler When a lost soul attempts to reclaim himself in the American way, it becomes, far too often . . . we all know this . . . another mass murder. In the past week or so, there have been two more of them. “This cannot be our new normal. We should […]

Growing Up Ecologically

By Robert C. Koehler Is it possible that the country is truly rebuilding itself . . . from the soul up? Deb Haaland has been confirmed as head of the Department of the Interior. A Native American congresswoman and, as she describes herself, 35th-generation New Mexican, has been given the reins of the department that […]

Voter Suppression: Jim Crow Revisited

By Robert C. Koehler “The United States of America has open wounds.” Ever since its founding, the United States has been attempting to build a society around those wounds, on the belief that hyped-up language — “all men are created equal,” and so forth — can paper over deep wrongs. If you put the ideal […]

Taking War Personally

By Robert C. Koehler “For Washington, it seems that whatever the problem is, the answer is bombing.” So wrote Stephen Zunes, in the wake of Joe Biden’s first act of murder as president . . . excuse me, his first act of defensive military action: bombing a border post in Syria last week, killing 22 […]

Windmills: The New Scapegoat

By Robert C. Koehler The cornerstone of every social structure is its belief system, and those who control and benefit the most from the system have one primary job: Keep its myths and scapegoats viable. That explains the emergence, in recent weeks, among right-wing politicians and media hacks, of a truly bizarre and unexpected scapegoat: […]

Vulnerability in the Moment

By Robert C. Koehler Pardon me while I break the fourth wall. I’m in the human stew right now, you might say: drowning in politics, technology, the weather and my own crazy ego. I’m trying to write a column. What makes this one different . . .well, I’ve been forced today to set aside my […]

Stealing the Vote, Building a Wall

By Robert C. Koehler Imagine a “USA!” that has truly outgrown – transcended – racism. Would it still have a Republican Party? One recent and shocking – but hardly surprising – piece of news is the huge scramble in legislatures, especially the Republican-controlled ones, all across the country to draft and pass legislation restricting the […]

National vs. Human Security

By Robert C. Koehler “It is long past time for . . . a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security . . .” Yes, yes, yes. These words cut to the soul. Can we create a grown-up America? This is how it begins. The quote is from a letter […]

Nukes Are Illegal, Now What?

By Robert C. Koehler Let’s not forget: We are standing at the edge of global change. I believe what’s visible in this fleeting moment is our own evolution. Let’s not let this moment flicker and die, to be replaced, with a despairing shrug, by business as usual. Donald Trump shattered the centrist political norms, sent […]

Countering the Fascism To Come

By Robert C. Koehler Normalcy and tradition held sway as — for the first time in my life — I watched a presidential inauguration live, listening to Lady Gaga sing the national anthem and, then, Joe Biden take the oath of office, becoming the 46th president of the United States. As I write these words, […]

Lynching Political Correctness

By Robert C. Koehler I still see the noose in front of the capitol building, dangling oh so metaphorically. “No matter how all this plays out, it’s only the beginning,” wrote a user on TheDonald message board, according to the Associated Press. Actually, it’s anything but the beginning — though I get what the writer […]

Real Change on a Living Planet

By Robert C. Koehler As the New Year asserts itself — a year that begins in global lockdown and political shock-and-awe — an extraordinary question emerges: Are we on the brink of real change? Are we moving, politically speaking, beyond the small and stupid? Is the era of Trump really over? Assuming that to be […]

Restoring the Soul of America

By Robert C. Koehler “One major difference between GOP and Dems is that [Republicans] leverage their right flank to gain policy concessions and generate enthusiasm, while Dems lock their left flank in the basement [because] they think that will make Republicans be nicer to them.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nailed it once again, tweeting her frustration and […]

One World: The Wisdom of Wholeness

By Robert C. Koehler “We won’t be in a position to make permanent progressive changes until the bad governments are changed permanently into good governments. And all governments are bad governments now and will remain bad governments until we have a global humanity.” The words are those of Mark Haywood, in an email to me […]