The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2025 Palestinians are being bombed, shot, poisoned, and starved to death by Israel. U.S. media outlets are strangely silent about it. One seldom sees, hears, or reads news coverage about Israel’s aggression against Palestinians. But the most unsettling silence is from U.S. religious congregations. Despite daily news reports from non-U.S. media outlets Palestinians are dying every day from Israeli military actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, most U.S. religious bodies are not protesting Israeli aggression. I suspect that they also are not praying about it. They are not praying for the unsheltered, starving, defenseless, and occupation-weary Palestinians in Gaza. They are not praying even though a panel of United Nations experts estimates that 500,000 people are starving in Gaza ( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/12/famine-stalking-across-gaza-500000-face-starvation-analysis ). They are not praying as men, women, and children are being slaug...

 Here is my latest Substack Post. I hope you will read and share it. ©Wendell Griffen, 2025 Donald Trump's 100-minute-long State of the Union address will be remembered for many things. It was the longest in recent history. It was the first such address delivered by a twice impeached President. It was the first SOTU address delivered by a convicted felon. It was the first SOTU address delivered by someone who was found civilly liable for sexually assaulting another person. It was the first SOTU address delivered by anyone who won election as President of the United States after having been previously fired from that position by U.S. voters. Donald Trump's 2025 SOTU address was a stream of lies, insults, expressions of personal resentments, and malicious statements. If you watched it you were not made smarter, more hopeful, or more inclined to anything except what Trump wants. Dismantle the federal government. Fire as many federal workers as possible. Deliver control of federal ...

​Heather Cox Richardson's latest message follows her typically positive assessment about Joe Biden's presidential leadership.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2025 I agree that Biden's leadership was a welcome change from the dysfunction of the first Trump administration. His appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court was principled. And Biden's effort to make much-needed improvement to U.S. roads and bridges certainly exceeded anything Trump wanted to do, let alone tried to accomplish, assuming that one believes that Trump tried to do anything about infrastructure during his first term. It is also true that the Biden administration helped restore jobs to many workers that had been outsourced abroad.   However, Richardson's favorable assessment of Biden's leadership downplays or disregards the harms and longstanding societal wrongs that Biden seemed unwilling, if unable, to address. What follows is...

Heather Cox Richardson’s assessment about the life and career of President Jimmy Carter is commendable, yet incomplete.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2024 Richardson failed to mention that it was President Carter who led the transfer of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama. She did not mention that Carter fired Andrew Young from his position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after Young privately met with representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Movement. Yet Jimmy Carter was the only U.S. president or former president who termed the Israeli government an apartheid regime! President Carter was not only the most decent and respectable president of my lifetime. He was also the most sincerely reverent, realistic, compassionate, and just.  The nation disrespected and rejected him, but Jimmy Carter never dishonored the nation. He was the best patriot, diplomat, humanitarian, and egalitarian politician on the global stage of my lif...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024   Heather Cox Richardson’s latest assessment on U.S. politics is worth pondering. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-20-2024 . Historians will soon record that the 2016 and 2024 elections of Donald John Trump fueled an era of fascism in the United States that threatened the world for decades. And, if Trump’s tenure as President of the United States does not ultimately result in the death of democracy, it could still leave democratic norms in shambles. Trump’s deference to Elon Musk, Musk’s fascist capitalism, and white pseudo-Christian fascism and Zionism already endanger women, indigenous people of color, LGBTQIA people, immigrants, and dissidents across the world, as well as the planet’s ecosystem. Lust for greed, violence, domination, and self-worship does not make a society or its leaders great. It is a force that eventually consumes its host like metastasizing cancer or a raging virus. It is important to remember that...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024 Following a recent meeting with about 40 people from a cross-section of Pulaski County residents, I formed an exploratory committee to determine whether to be a candidate for County Judge of Pulaski County in 2026. This group will help me “test the waters” so to speak about whether that effort would be feasible, and who would be likely to help me if it is feasible.   Perhaps you’re wondering why I am considering leaving retirement and taking on the challenge of seeking to become chief executive of Pulaski County government. The short answer is because I want to serve the more than 400,000 people who call Pulaski County our home.   Whether we were born here, moved here to study, teach, do research, obtain health care, retire, or for other reasons, Pulaski County is our Community. I want to help our Community learn, work, and grow, by celebrating and promoting the fact that Pulaski County is home to wonderful people, the seat of state govern...

The 2024 U.S. presidential election result is being analyzed by pundits, commentators, journalists, and historians as has been done following every other presidential election. Donald Trump's MAGA fascism has clearly been embraced by a majority of Americans who voted.  The Republican Party regained control of the U.S. Senate, and retained its majority control of the House of Representatives. Trump's super-majority hold on the U.S. Supreme Court - thanks to the machinations of out-going Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - means that MAGA fascism is the dominant political ideology of all three branches of U.S. government for the foreseeable future. It is already clear how MAGA fascism is likely to operate judging from the personnel Trump is nominating to fill key leadership positions. Heather Cox Richardson has written about that in her November 13 edition of Letters From An American.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-13-2024 I agree that Joh...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024   The January 1969 issue of Playboy magazine included an essay from a prominent American theologian that contained the following haunting words. Why is the issue of equality still so far from solution in America, a nation that professes itself to be democratic, inventive, hospitable to new ideas, rich, productive, and awesomely powerful? The problem is so tenacious because, despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist, and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially… Today’s dissenters tell the complacent majority that the time has come when further evasion of social responsibility in a turbulent world will court disaster and death. America has not yet changed because so many think it need not change, but that is the illusion of the damned… Those words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were published in Playboy Magazine, almost a year after he was murdered, under this title: A Testament of Hope. The entire essay is republ...

Heather Cox Richardson has penned a report that depicts the Trump and Harris campaigns in starkly different ways. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-4-2024.  It is hard to disagree with her observations. I agree that we should not ignore the hard truth about the fascist movement that Richardson and other observers have now - much too late - finally recognized in Donald Trump’s MAGA campaign. That does not mean Harris will win the election. It means that Trump and his supporters will never concede defeat if Trump and J.D. Vance lose. Trump’s backers will do ANYTHING to prevent Harris from being declared the winner of the 2024 election. They will flood courts with frivolous lawsuits. That has already started. They will incite and commit violence at polling places, against election officials, and news reporters. That has already started. They will claim victory BEFORE all votes have been tallied, and declare Trump and J.D. Vance President-elect and Vice President-ele...

I've been asked to explain why I recommend voting AGAINST Issue 2.  Matt Campbell wrote a solid article about the pros and cons of Issue 2 that ran in the September 30 issue of the Arkansas Times Blog. I am posting a link to the article, but also will paste the entire article so you can read it without being blocked by the paywall. Here's the link: https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2024/09/30/confused-by-those-casino-tv-ads-heres-what-a-vote-for-issue-2-would-really-mean. Here's the entire article. Odds are you’ve seen or heard an advertisement in recent weeks about Issue 2, which goes by the rather unwieldy short title of “Countywide Voter Approval for New Casino Licenses and Repeal Casino Licenses in Pope County Initiative.” It’s one of three ballot measure that Arkansas voters will vote on in the November election. Honestly, you might have tuned out those ads, considering how often casino-related fights have been on the ballot in the last dozen years or more. Even if yo...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024   Early voting begins across Arkansas on Monday, October 21. I urge you to cast your vote as follows in the interest of advancing fair and more effective government.   U.S. President                                                      KAMALA HARRIS U.S. Vice President                                             TIM WALZ U.S. Congress 1 ST Congressional District                   ...