Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinel 5-9-19 E-edition

Opinion
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A4 | Thursday, May 9,, 2019
they shared in school. In my opinion, the 1960’s and 1970’s was the era when our country came closer than ever in history to being consumed in anarchy. Thugs along side professors and students participated in and led the ensuing riots. Academia ruled the roost and “if it felt good, do it.” Everyone was exhorted to rise up and defeat “the man.”
The pendulum of events normally
is self-correcting in that it normally will only swing so far before self adjusting in the opposite direction. The American people are not stupid— contrary to what many of the politicos have come to believe. We believe that over the past three years the reality
of the situation is such that most people realize that ever increasing government is not the answer to a strong country and a vibrant nation.
I know that it often seems that we overuse the term common sense but seems increasingly that a return to common sense for the electorate has begun to arrant that over swinging pendulum. Several areas and states like the entire “left coast” and the New England area leave one to shake one’s head at the silliness that is still occurring in elections and governance. Once again there is ample evidence that a lazy press corps and a corrupt political system have combined efforts to further exacerbate the erosion of good government. California, are you listening?
We believe the real answer is as simple as controlled immigration, elections that are fair and closely scrutinized for irregularities such as ballot harvesting and a voting public that is well read and educated on the real issues which are involved. Use and belief in that which is garnered from social media further erodes any hope of having an aware citizenry. Nothing appearing on social has been checked or otherwise edited for content or veracity.
The time to control our own destiny and return government to the original parameters of our Constitution is now. The old saying in sports is that the ball is in your court. Begin right now to become the arbiter of good government!
But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.
Fred Hall is publisher of the Dinuba Sentinel.
Guest Column
Fred Hall - Publisher Rick Curiel - Editor
In My Opinion
'Become the arbiter of H good government!'
ave you ever wondered if Our greatest some of these “progressive” concern is that politicians truly realize a bunch of kids
just how dumb and unrealistic their ideas are, or are they just so propped up and surrounded by sycophants that the truth of their ignorance is shielded from them? Frankly it’s easy to feel embarrassed for them until one realizes that what is pouring from their mouths is exactly what our own children have been taught in school and university over the last several decades.
One would assume there is some sort of pain associated with being completely void of cogent thought. A short list could be compiled
of virtually all of the announced Democrat candidates for President, as well as Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez, Mazie Hirano, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, Maxine Waters, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and all of the commentators at CNN and MSNBC.
At some point, we are going to be forced to realize that the seed of failure and destruction of our lifestyle has been sown and has begun to take root. I, personally, see it as a huge threat to about everything that become known as American but can, and should
be, reversed by sending more sober people to our capitols!
We’ve seen how quickly one weed can become dominant and soon take over an entire plot of land. Socialism and Communism offer great promises to the people of the country which they infest and once established it usually results in the entire economic collapse of the entire nation. Venezuela is a current glaring example of that premise. Those great promises are little more than great lies used in the seduction of gullible voters.
Our forefathers envisioned a free press as a guardian against lies and misinformation but the American media have been “missing in action” over the past couple of decades. Sad to say, it has become even worse over that past three years, with few signs of objective reporting. Not only are they shirking their duty, they have become so opinionated and compromised that they have formed an allegiance with one of major political parties. Outside of clearly identified opinion pieces, that is an absolute no-no.
The job of an effective press corps
is to inform the public, provide them with pertinent information and then let them make up their own minds. We have a major problem when America’s press corps begins to feel they are smarter than anyone else and must provide the “great unwashed with instructions about how and
what to think. It certainly was never intended for a group of privileged writers, reporters, editors and news producers to carry the water for the current crop of corrupt public officials.
Fred Hall
from the 1960’s and 1970’s have graduated college, entered the field as educators and are now in a position to teach current youngsters the socialistic views
Time to address the moral crisis at the border
F
nuns, bishops, rabbis, and grassroots congregants to learn about realities rarely covered in the news.
stunts by the Trump administration that have dramatically slowed
the processing time for asylum applications, three former officials wrote in Politico recently.
But our moral responsibility for the crisis goes deeper than that: In fact, decades of U.S. foreign policy have led to the massive displacement of Central Americans today.
Free trade policies such as NAFTA and CAFTA pushed hundreds of thousands of Mexican and Central
or more than 30 years, I’ve led faith-focused delegations to Central America — and since 2016, to U.S.-Mexico border communities. We’ve taken
This April our delegation visited El Paso, Brownsville, and McAllen, Texas, as well as Juarez and Matamoras, Mexico. We talked to U.S. border patrol agents, religious and NGO workers on the ground, and migrants who recently crossed over, including those caged under the bridge in El Paso.
The migrants’ stories, gaunt faces, and vulnerability continue to haunt me. Nearly all the children were sick, and some were so malnourished their hair was whitening.
The discrepancy between what’s portrayed in the media and what our delegation witnessed is stark. I worry for my country as fear-mongering politicians spread disinformation, instead of the truth: What we’re seeing at the border is a crisis of our own making.
While we were in those Texas border communities, I read the White House’s daily email blasts depicting an “invasion” of criminals, gang members, and traffickers pushing children across the border.
Yet everywhere we went, we felt safe — and our faith partners living in U.S. border communities report that they do too. Research has shown that undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
Yet the administration is exposing innocent asylum seekers to terrible danger. They’ve instituted a “Remain in Mexico” policy to force asylum applicants to wait indefinitely on the Mexican side of the border. I met a Mexican priest who picks up dismembered body parts outside his migrant shelter, where organized crime networks engage in organ trafficking.
As a result, many desperate migrants feel they have little choice but to cross illegally in the deserts, and then ask for asylum. The majority are families who had to make the wrenching decision to leave their homelands because of the dangers, only to be treated like criminals when they arrive.
The current chaos at the border is the result of political
Guest Column
IIf you've su ered, don't be afraid to seek help
Jean Stokan
American small farmers off their land, benefiting big agriculture companies but destroying local economies. That’s left countless now-desperate migrants unable to feed their children.
Meanwhile, U.S. military support of repressive regimes in Central America — going back to the 1980s, but even still today — has propped up rapacious elites and crushed democratic social movements for change, most recently in Honduras.
These policies have consequences, and the migrants at our border are the faces of those consequences.
Distorting the truth to demonize the vast majority of migrants crossing the border, while treating them as criminals, is unconscionable. Asylum is a right, protected under U.S. and international law, including for people without travel documentation.
Neither a wall nor cages are the answer to the desperate people arriving at our borders. What’s needed are major reforms to the U.S. asylum and immigration systems, as well as to foreign policies that have defined “the national interest” against the needs of human beings.
More deeply, we need a national soul-searching. Or else, we should erase the quote on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Jean Stokan is a member of Justice Team at the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
’ve spent the past three years in therapy for trauma. think anyone reaches adulthood
I do a type of therapy called Somatic Experiencing completely unscathed, although some that’s highly effective and has turned my entire life people are far more healthy and whole
Join the discussion
with them. They’re obviously suffering and yet they’ll say they’re fine.
There’s three versions of this I see often: 1) Nothing bad ever happened to me and I’m fine. 2) Something
bad happened but it’s in the past and I’m fine now. 3) Something bad happened and I hurt a lot now but I won’t get help for it.
Knowing what their problem is and how they could get help for it — if they can afford it, which is a big “if,” at least until we get universal health care — feels like the world’s most pointless superpower. I know what they need to do to heal and there’s usually nothing I can do about it but give them time to realize it on their own.
I’m angry that it took me decades of pain to discover what my problem was and then find help for it. It feels like I had to follow the Yellow Brick Road when I could have clicked my heels together three times all along. I wish I could help other sufferers click their heels together and get help faster than I did.
Please, if you’ve suffered too, seek help.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in San Diego. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
around.
Thanks to this therapy, I’ve lost weight, I’ve developed
healthy sleep habits, and I smile more. I’m more present, my body feels less stiff, and I feel more at home in it. I used to have a migraine every day (for 23 years) and now I don’t. I’m doing better socially and professionally.
It turns out that virtually everything I don’t like about myself was a symptom of my trauma — and underneath all of that is a person I actually like. I’m finally getting to know her and share her with the world.
Before, I couldn’t feel most of my emotions, but I didn’t know it. I thought I felt emotions the same as everyone else does. But trauma manifests itself in what Donald Rumsfeld would call “unknown unknowns.” That is, parts of your body and soul go numb, and you don’t even know they’re missing.
That numbness makes the problem easy to deny or minimize. You can’t feel it, so you believe it’s not there.
Abuse can be disguised as parental discipline, or “advice” given out of love (“I just need to tell you how bad you are because I love you and want you to get better.”) The spectrum of abuse doesn’t just include physical or sexual acts. Neglect hurts too. So do words.
Once I became aware that what I’d suffered wasn’t normal and wasn’t OK, I talked about it constantly. I couldn’t feel anything, so I couldn’t feel how much it hurt to think about or talk about my painful past. I had no idea how much it probably hurt to hear it too.
I thought perhaps if I just kept talking about it, maybe it would somehow get better. It didn’t. Trauma’s sticky. It doesn’t go away easily, and simply talking about it won’t fix a thing.
Trauma’s more common than you might think. I don’t
Jill Richardson
than others.
Suffering some pain is just part of the
human condition, and a lot of us have unresolved traumas from our past, even if we’re mostly muddling through our lives okay and we feel fine.
Sometimes I’ll meet people who describe horrific traumas from their past and who clearly haven’t not dealt