Local View: Wasting political control would be just as ‘deplorable

From the column: "Anybody who has studied civics knows that rule by the majority party is partisanship and that it can be reversed by winning an election — not by storming the Capitol and killing people."

Published 2/24/2021

By John Freivalds

Duluth News Tribune

On Sept. 9, 2016, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said this at a fundraising event about half of candidate Donald Trump’s supporters: “They are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.“ The next day she expressed regret for saying “half” while insisting that Trump had deplorably amplified hateful views and voices.

The Donald, the Dictator, Left Us Quite a Mess

Published 1/20/2021

Roanoke Times, Roanoke, Virginia

By John Freivalds

It’s no longer just pejorative or outrageous to call Donald Trump a dictator or someone with dictatorial tendencies; he is one. And this shakes many of us to our self-serving core. How did this person appear in our political system? Aren’t we better than that? This is a banana republic on steroids. TV shows, pundits, social media, snobbery of the elite, all led to a false illusion, if not delusion, of who Americans really are. All men are created equal? Here’s the dictionary definition of a dictator: ”A person who orders others about domineeringly, or one whose pronouncements on some subject are meant to be taken as the final word.”

Truth Is The Enemy of the People

By John Freivalds

Duluth News Tribune

In 1882, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote the well-regarded “Enemy of the People.” In it, a local doctor (the Anthony Fauci of his day) discovers that the water feeding his town's hot spa, a major tourist attraction, is heavily polluted. Intent on saving his town, he tells the town leaders, imploring them not to hide from the truth. But the good doctor is ostracized and declared an "enemy of the people" for threatening the town's tourism industry. Left alone by the town, the good doctor states at the end of the play, “Let me tell you, the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.”