Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

Random Thoughts to Take Your Mind off the Deeper Stuff

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | ARP 2, 2026

Deep thinking can give you a headache.

While peeling a bright red hard-boiled egg during Easter time, a random thought creeped in. Where did the tradition of the Easter Bunny and the colored eggs come from? I turned to the Internet and found more than I cared to know.

The Easter Bunny was first introduced by German immigrants to Pennsylvania in the early 18th Century. The origins actually dated back to an ancient pagan festival that celebrated the goddess of fertility. The bunny laid colored eggs for the children. The egg is a symbol of life, spring, rebirth, and renewal. During the Christian observance of Lent, a 40-day-long period of prayer, fasting and charity, eggs were not eaten, and after the observance, were and are now adorned with bright colors and decorations in celebration of the resurrection of Christ.

Easter to Christians is of course a sacred celebration of their spirituality and eternal life reminding the faithful that death is not the end of life, but a new beginning. It is this holiday that should serve as the renewal of our devotion to the teachings Christ preached during his time on earth, which serve as the essence of our human experience and the promise for everlasting life.

And now a return to the daily grind: Continue reading →

J6 Committee Wrong Path to the Right Place

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | AUG 9, 2022

The special committee probing the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol has slowed for the summer and so has the avalanche of media coverage that smothered the news cycle for months.

The coverage covered everything from the chilling stampede into the Capitol and the violence that ensued to the behind-the-scenes evidence of President Donald Trump’s culpability to the trivial but titillating tales of you-can’t-make-this-up behavior.

The protestors have been portrayed as wild-eyed insurrectionists. However, a good many of those who gathered in DC that day were not. To the contrary, according to a study by Harvard University, the vast majority were motivated by their loyalty to Trump and their misguided belief in the fraudulence of the 2020 elections.

But make no mistake about it, there was a hard core of hundreds of true insurrectionists stirring up rebellion, trying to stop a constitutional process of election certification, and worst of all, threatening Vice President Mike Pence and the members of Congress trapped inside the building. If their actions didn’t fit neatly into the Trump apologists’ legal definition of ‘insurrection’, so be it; their actions conveyed nothing less. It was a despicable spectacle; a black mark on the nation’s history. Continue reading →

Woodward, Inc.

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | SEP 20, 2020

What should have been a blinding dust storm of controversy over the pre-release promotion of Bob Woodward’s new book Rage, turned out to be a minor dust up quickly swept under the rug by most of the journalistic establishment.

The media seem to adore Woodward and largely for good reason. His stature is iconic. He paved the way for a whole class of tell-all books that have no doubt made some enterprising reporters a lot of money. He and Watergate sidekick Carl Bernstein were modern-day pioneers in a new brand of investigative reporting powerful enough to bring down a President. He is a publishing industry tycoon. What a guy.

The pre-release public relations campaign for Rage, however, raised enough troubling ethical questions that the press should not have let slip through the crack of professional courtesy so easily. Continue reading →

Institutions and Values Part III: Lies and Damn Lies

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | AUG 7, 2018

Within the currency of American values, none has been devalued more than honesty. It’s become okay to lie, especially within one of America’s great institutions, our political process.

A lie, according to Merriam Webster, is to “make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive.”

A scholarly analysis of lying produced at Michigan State University cited this definition:

“Simply and broadly lying occurs when a communicator seeks knowingly and intentionally to mislead others….” and another conclusion: “Thus it is not sufficient that something is false for it to be a lie; it is the intent that distinguishes the lie.”

But in politics, as in life today, lying is becoming commonplace.

Continue reading →